Perhaps the only good thing about Wednesday night’s belated loss to the Braves was that I found it hard to take it personally.
I imagine it isn’t fun to watch from the root cellar as a tornado reduces the house to kindling. But I also imagine one doesn’t feel singled out to be in the path of something so huge; rather, I’d think, you’d feel a small, dismayed awe at witnessing something vast and impersonal cut a pitiless swath down the middle what you thought of as reality.
What does this have to do with baseball? Well, one moment the Mets were cruising along behind David Peterson, AKA Our Only Reliable Starting Pitcher. Francisco Lindor had jump-started the offense in a way we hadn’t seen in weeks, Juan Soto had homered, and the Mets were pouring it on against Old Friend Carlos Carrasco, who soldiered on gallantly despite having no respite in sight. It felt like the worm had turned, like the Mets might actually be OK from now on despite their long summer swoon.
And then … the sky went black, the siren wailed, and BLAMMO.
Before you could blink Peterson had lost the strike zone, surrendered 5/6 of the lead and departed in the fourth inning, a depressingly familiar sight for a Mets starter but a shocking one for him. Before you could blink again Reed Garrett had served up a grand slam and the Mets were down by three.
Nine Atlanta runs in a half-hour from Hell. Citi Field sounded more … well actually it didn’t sound like anything at all. Shock is largely communicated via silence.
Go back a night to Tuesday, with the benefit of hindsight, and some patterns we didn’t want to acknowledge given polar bear-related celebrations are all too visible. There, we also had a starter cough up what felt like a comfortable lead and depart with unseemly haste. That’s been one leg of the three-legged stool of suck for this team since June — unreliable starters not going deep, putting too much strain on overtaxed relievers, and the lineup too anemic to provide a counterweight. On Tuesday all that was masked as the lineup came through for once, letting the Mets outhit their mistakes. (And Justin Hagenman stepped up in relief, for which his reward was of course a ticket back to Syracuse.)
Wednesday night? Same script, only this time the Braves’ outburst was too much to overcome. The writing was on the wall in the aftermath, when Starling Marte singled with two outs and runners on first and second — all of us had watched enough baseball to know that Pete Alonso would score from second, cutting the Atlanta lead to two runs, and we felt hope stir that maybe the Mets would rise up in indignation again.
Except Alonso … well, a day later I’m still not sure what happened to him. I turned away for a moment, looked back in shock when I realized there was a play at the plate, and was briefly baffled. Had Jeff McNeil tried to score from first? But nope, that wasn’t it. Alonso had gotten a slow start off second, or blundered into quicksand rounding third, or been held back by an invisible rubber band, or something.
He was out, the Mets were still three runs down, and when Paul Blackburn served up a homer to the loathsome Marcell Ozuna I decided that I could sort through the wreckage of the house in the morning.
But hey, at least I didn’t take it personally.
I’m not gonna claim to be psychic so I’ll just say I’m lucky. I turned it off at the end of the 3rd. Saw it was 10 and knew I didn’t have another 2 hours in me. Figured if we managed to blow it I’d miss some aingst or (more likely, or so I thought) we won, if anything interesting happened I’d catch the replay today, another 95 degree day. I did see Peterson got to 2-0 on the first batter in the 4th with a 6-run lead which I didn’t love but I didn’t figure on our best pitcher blowing up.
Peterson’s been good enough all season that I’m not about to get too worked up but he’s another guy bumping up against the “most innings he’s ever pitched” mark.
The baseball gods gave us Pete’s game, in all its glory, and now we return to the stormy trajectory they actually have us on for the season.
The starting pitching just seems shot. All the other struggles or improvements don’t matter if that is the case. It’s a depressing way to collapse.
Maybe it’s time we stop looking only at the players, and pay some attention to the coaches and trainers and scouts and Mr. Mendoza. They sure do take a lot of credit when the team is doing well.
I can accept a pitcher having an off night (tiring in the fourth inning is another matter, but still). But the bats going silent after the 2nd inning??? Maybe the Braves knew what they were doing went they sent a position player to the mound only down by 8 rounds
Not sure why anyone is surprised by the turn of events in past month. Some have warned from beginning that overrated Stearns had weak plan for pitching and innings from the start.
He went into the season counting on:
>>Senga, who we knew has been fragile, would need time to get up to speed AND was only ever an every-six-days pitcher going back to Japan. So how many innings could he log at best?
>>Holmes, converted RP, need we say more?
>>Peterson, pitched out of a relief a lot of last year and has never logged a full season of starting
>>Montas, a very questionable signing from the start, plus injury history.
>>Blackburn, let’s just leave that there.
>>Plus the hopelessly bad/mediocre Megill, supposedly giving us “great depth.” Canning was starting to fall off the cliff even before his injury.
>>NO decent starters waiting in wings at AAA, though they are now there now and should have come up 3 weeks ago.
>>and add to that a mediocre at best bullpen beyond Diaz. Yes, Minter got hurt but come on, counting on Brazoban, Stanek, Kranick…even I see Danny Young’s injury lamented.
>>So at deadline Stearns goes all in on fixing the bad pen without aiding starters, and failing to pick up at last an actual decent CF.
To this, I would only add the injury to our number 1 starter, Manaea, in March, followed by his seeming inability to pitch into the 6th so far.
Certainly an uninteresting season, that’s for sure. 7, 8, 9 years ago or so might not have been very interesting either, but at least we had one or more aces in the starting rotation. Whatever the team’s management has done to build this team, they have not built a sustainable starting rotation. In fact they’ve dismantled it.
To whomever wrote ‘Down Goes Straw’ on the baseball: It is a classless thing to do. However, since we are in an era where appealing to the lowest common denominator (see alternate uniforms, for example) gets you credit rather than shame, please come forward and claim your credit.
“alternate uniforms” is an oxymoron.