Just the other day the Mets rode some goodwill across the country from San Diego, goodwill that lingered through an off-day in which the Knicks took up all the city’s oxygen anyway, but was still ready to be tapped at Citi Field on a lovely Tuesday night.
Well, so much for that.
The Mets squandered all that goodwill early with a fallen souffle of a game [1] in which they looked inert against a Cardinals team that played with verve and dash and an agreeable recklessness. The Cardinals made superb plays on defense, stole a run against a flat-footed Marcus Semien [2] and Jared Young [3], and battered Freddy Peralta [4] on an off-night. Going into this season, the rebuilding Cards looked like a lead-pipe cinch to record consecutive full-year losing seasons for the first time since Eisenhower was president, a pretty astonishing run. Instead they’re in the hunt, playing with the pinch-me confidence of a young team that’s arrived early and is betting with house money.
They’re fun to watch, where the Mets are too often unwatchable.
Games like this happen, and the wisest thing would be to advance one’s mental calendar to Wednesday and be done with it. Which I’m trying to do, except for one thing that keeps annoying me, and that’s Freddy Peralta.
Peralta has been … fine. His numbers are pretty good (though they weren’t tonight). He generally keeps the Mets in games (though he didn’t tonight). But I’m not that annoyed about tonight — again, games like this happen. What annoys me, and I now realize has been annoying me more and more all year, is that Peralta was billed as this great get and instead he’s been … just a guy. He’s felt interchangeable and replaceable, a No. 3 starter whose contract status should be on the Mets’ to-do list somewhere down around “touch up stadium paint.”
I don’t know why I have it in for Peralta. He’s personable enough and thoughtful about his craft, and God knows plenty of his fellow imports have been too fragile to take the field or less than impressive when they do. (Seriously, I have no need to ever see Jorge Polanco [5] again.) But Peralta just leaves me cold, and makes me wish I was watching Jett Williams [6] and Brandon Sproat [7] try to figure things out alongside the rest of the Mets’ kiddie corps.
A look at the stats is a reminder to be careful what you wish for: Sproat has been battered as a Brewer and Williams isn’t exactly tearing it up in Nashville. Still, those two at least have futures one can imagine being excited about. When every fifth day rolls around and I realize Peralta’s pitching again, I think, “Him again?” I have questions about a lot of aspects of David Stearns’ offseason plan, but I’m pretty sure that reaction wasn’t what he had in mind.