The Mets have sunk from amazing to confounding to unwatchable.
Tuesday night’s one-run loss to the Guardians showcased everything about this team right now that no one sensible would put in a showcase: one bad inning from a starting pitcher who (once again) didn’t give his team much length, a bit of ill-timed bad luck, and an absolutely inert offense. The Mets scored their first run of the game without a hit, which feels like the punchline to a joke, their second run on a single, and that was the sum total of the scoring. In fact, Jeff McNeil [1]‘s leadoff single in the fourth was their final hit of the night, with the last 14 Mets making outs without so much as a whimper.
The Guardians, for their part, took the lead in the seventh on a mildly absurd trio of two-out hits against Tyler Rogers [2]: a grounder that bounced through the 5.5 hole into left, a little poke job over the infield on a pitch 18 inches outside, and finally a disgustingly Sojo-esque seeing-eye single up the middle.
After all that, Jeremy Hefner [3] strolled out to the pitcher’s mound to talk to Rogers; we were in the car and wondered what a pitching coach possibly says in that situation.
“Hang with ’em?”
“Keep doing what you’re doing?”
But then Emily nailed it: “Sorry that you’re now on the Mets [4].”