Variations on Losing

So let’s see. The Mets…

…turned Sean Manaea‘s sixth pitch of the game into a 1-0 deficit, as Juan Soto let what should have been a George Springer single bounce over his head, after which it also eluded A.J. Ewing, allowing Springer to dash pell mell around the bases and score.

…hit about eight zillion balls on the nose, but approximately eight zillion of them found Blue Jay gloves, generating a soundtrack (at least in our house) that was primarily moans of frustration. The lone exception was a bolt into the right-field stands by Francisco Lindor, an eerie echo of his no-hitter-breaking blast in this ballgame from late 2024. That home run kicked off a rally and a feel-good Met win; this one could only get the Mets within spitting distance of an opponent they couldn’t quite reach.

…managed a ringing double against brief Old Friend Tyler Rogers, struck by Francisco Alvarez, but could do nothing else against their former mate. I don’t really have anything against Rogers, generally accorded to be the good acquisition of David Stearns’ otherwise ill-fated 2025 trade deadline, except that I’ve always muttered that Rogers wasn’t so much good as he was “better than Ryan Helsley or Gregory Soto or Cedric Mullins,” which is like winning a high jump competition against a sea urchin and two box turtles, one of which smells funny and might actually be dead.

…saw Ronny Mauricio hit Alvarez with a bat in the on-deck circle, which didn’t hurt either player, unless you count Mauricio getting bodied by Louis Varland on three straight breaking pitches to end the game. Let the jokes about swinging at anything fly, except actually it was Alvarez’s fault for being too close to his teammate when he should still been in the dugout.

Good things? There was Lindor’s homer, and all those hard-hit balls, and Bo Bichette showing some welcome human emotion in trying to assess what it was like to return to Toronto with all the memories it holds for him. And Manaea pitching OK if you ignore the fact that the Blue Jays also hit about eight zillion laser beams right at fielders, and Joey Gerber pitching better than OK by any metric.

Those aren’t enough good things, not when you lose 2-1. The most interesting thing about this year’s Mets might be how many ways they can find to lose: by a ton, by a sliver, in embarrassing fashion, despite their best efforts, because they couldn’t pitch, because they couldn’t hit, because they couldn’t field, because they could do all those things but not quite as well as the other guys could. It’s a little different every night, around a core of essential similarity: another L on the ledger, another day off the calendar. The 2026 Mets find a way, and I suppose that’s remarkable in its own hopefully inimitable fashion.