The email came from a work colleague: We’re planning our annual Mets outing, please RSVP.
My instinctive response: Oh God, do I have to?
That’s where this death march of a season has brought us: A free ticket to a Mets game feels like a burden.
The Mets have gone from confounding to infuriating and finally to the place marketing people pray their team never reaches: embarrassing.
Witness Tuesday night’s all-you-can-eat buffet of horrors. Kodai Senga [1] was front and center, resuming his quest for the not particularly cherished distinction of Most Exasperating Starter Ever. Senga blazed through a promising first inning, pitching aggressively and annihilating the Cubs. But in the second he reported for duty with his velocity noticeably down, nibbled on the corners (without hitting them) and got strafed for five runs. I have no idea what’s wrong with Senga and no longer care: I just want him to be somebody else’s problem.
The Mets did some other embarrassing things we’ve grown used to, such as look inert on offense — no, ninth-inning lipstick on the pig of a lost game [2] doesn’t count. And then there was whatever they were up to in the seventh inning: Down five, they made us sit around for eight minutes or so to win a challenge on a ticky-tacky overslide by Pete Crow-Armstrong [3] of second base, which came on ball four to the batter. (Never forget: PCA was a Met farmhand whom we traded so we could watch Javy Baez sulk for two months of garbage time.) Craig Counsell [4]‘s disgust was palpable; so was mine. By God, is that ever not what replay is for: The Mets not only shouldn’t have won the challenge, they also should have lost their right to challenge for the rest of eternity.
I felt sorry for this year’s kidcaster, who had to endure an endless half-inning of Senga being terrible before getting to call a few plays by himself. The Mets of course supplied a one-two-three half-inning with nothing worth calling; by then the poor kidcaster was in his late thirties, wild-eyed and bearded and shouting out warnings of the apocalypse from his fetid lair under a bridge. So it goes with the 2026 Mets.
Oh, and Juan Soto [5] left with a side/back ailment. Though perhaps the real injury is to his pride from having to be a party to this shambling horror show.
By that metric, we should all be on the IL.