The Mets were playing the Brewers Saturday night.
I had recap.
I went to see “Superman” with my family — a movie I’d already seen.
I did that because I’d reached the point where I can’t stand this team, which right now combines a deep-rooted cruddiness with a magnetic attraction to disaster. Knowing they’ll find a way to lose and wondering how they’ll do it was starting to infect the rest of my day, and two hours of the determined optimism and indefatigable sunniness of James Gunn’s “Superman” felt like exactly what I needed.
Which it was! We walked out of the theater and for a minute or so I completely forgot the Mets were playing.
And then I remembered and we turned on the MLB Audio feed for the drive home. The Mets were up 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh, with Ryne Stanek [1] on the hill, nobody out and a runner on first.
Yes, that’s when I tuned in — sometimes the jokes really do write themselves.
You know what happened next — or if you don’t, you’re better off and I’d strongly advise you to stop reading now.
Lineout to shortstop. Ball off the right-field chalk that bounced into the stands, sending runners to second and third. A grounder to shortstop where Stanek got in the way of Francisco Lindor [2]‘s throw home, forcing Lindor to take the out at first as the tying run scored. Enter Ryan Helsley [3], who got a grounder to Ronny Mauricio [4], who muffed an in-between hop to give the Brewers the lead. Helsley got William Contreras [5] to line out to Juan Soto [6] — only, incredibly, to have the out nullified on a pitch-clock violation. Contreras then clobbered Helsley’s next pitch into the stands, and the Mets were dead [7].
As a friend noted on Bluesky, I should have seen a double feature.
(Yeah, Pete Alonso [8] tied Darryl Strawberry [9]‘s franchise home-run record. Don’t really care right now.)
Going to the movies was a smart move. Returning to the reality of the Mets was a deeply dumb one, a lesson they rubbed my face in by giving me the so-far worst 10 minutes of a rapidly decaying season.
Honestly, I should find a movie to see Sunday. Why should I watch this team? Why should you? Why should anybody?
The Mets’ vaunted lineup hasn’t hit in weeks (they struck out 12 more times Saturday night), and the response of David Stearns isn’t to fire coaches whose failure is statistically obvious but to serve up happy talk [10] about a process that pretty self-evidently isn’t working.
But it’s not just the nonexistent offense that’s gone rotten. The defense has collapsed (particularly Lindor, who’s having an inexplicably horrible year), there’s only one reliable starter, the newly acquired relievers have mostly been terrible and the previously employed ones have been taxed beyond their capabilities. If there’s a way to lose, these current Mets will find it — whether early and limply or late and tragically.
There’s no urgency and worse than that, there’s no accountability — which sure isn’t something I expected from a business run by Steve Cohen.
Until there is, why give this team any of your time?