Persons of Disinterest

Major League Baseball commenced its annual draft of amateur players on Saturday afternoon. The Mets made their first selection with the 27th overall pick. Their choice was righthanded pitcher Carson Wiggins, a flamethrower out of Arkansas State. The upside is velocity that has measured 102 MPH. The downside is he’s been working his way back from Tommy John surgery “with an internal brace” for the past year and hasn’t thrown many competitive innings since high school.

I know nothing about any draft pick in advance, so I went to those who follow this stuff for a little insight.

Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com: “This one is super interesting.”

Keith Law, The Athletic: “The most interesting pick of the first round…”

That’s two draft mavens telling me there’s something “interesting” about the Mets. Having read these appraisals after watching the Mets succumb to the Red Sox, 4-0, I was almost shocked, for I had just immersed myself in the doings of a baseball enterprise that, on the field, couldn’t be less interesting.

Maybe that’s not fair. If you choose to be anthropological about it, you might be very interested in discovering how a baseball team functions so resolutely uninterestingly. Perhaps you’d determine there was a hangover effect following a series of what scientists would call “kooky” games (winning 10-9 and 7-6 in Atlanta, losing 16-12 to Kansas City at home), followed by two relevantly robust and competent contests (victories by scores of 7-3 and 6-2 that were each essentially decided by one inning of effective Met offense). The Mets, who’d been dull for months on end, were bound to get dull again. They were dull on Friday night versus the Red Sox. Saturday afternoon, they were about as exciting as watching the MLB Draft on television.

Red Sox fans (of which there seemed to be a surfeit at Citi Field) probably found what we’d call “the Mets game” less dull. That’s their prerogative, given that their team won handily. Their string of bullpen pitchers quashed every potential Met rally. The Mets recorded three singles and accepted seven walks over the course of nine innings, so all their rallies were no more than potential. The clue that reveals what kind of effort it was for the Mets at bat comes from the club’s official internet home page, where video clips of the most recent game are highlighted to present the team in a flattering context, as is state-run media’s wont everywhere. “Francisco Alvarez singles after Mets’ successful challenge” (it could have been scored an error) and “Carson Benge’s 15th stolen base” are the shining beacons here. Neither Alvarez nor Benge went on to score. Of course they didn’t. You already know the Mets totaled no runs.

“Freddy Peralta gets K to escape jam” and “Freddy Peralta K’s Anthony Seigler looking” say more than intended, because Fastball Freddy didn’t leave Saturday’s matinee with one out in the fifth as a result of key Ks. His six strikeouts were accompanied by five bases on balls. After four-and-a-third, with the bases loaded, Peralta had thrown 92 pitches. One had gone for a two-run homer to Andruw Monasterio in the fourth. The next to escape a jam would be Huascar Brazobán, who entered as Freddy exited and stranded Peralta’s trio of runners. Huascar doing his wriggling, then A.J. Minter doing a little of his own (after allowing a leadoff triple in the sixth) were probably the most highlighty things the Mets produced as Saturday ground on.

Which is commendable, but not that interesting when the team they were pitching for was going 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position and leaving nine on base. You can’t overcome a 2-0 deficit by scoring nothing. You certainly can’t overcome a 4-0 deficit by scoring nothing. It became 4-0 when Masataka Yoshida tagged the since re-optioned Tobias Myers for another two-run homer in the eighth. If the Red Sox were hungover from their well-documented travel travails, they found the right opponent to ease any downturn in their performance. It’s possible they availed themselves of the secret to the Mets’ slight spurts of success in 2026. When the Mets win, it tends to be against the few teams that aren’t any better than them (like the Royals) or good teams going through a touch of turbulence (like the Braves). The Red Sox have been hot of late. The Mets have been no match. Nor interesting to the naked eye. This Mets fan’s naked eyes wished to cover up with a pair of eyelids as Saturday’s game sat on the tarmac going nowhere for two hours and fifty-seven minutes.

Good luck to the interesting Carson Wiggins should you opt to sign a professional contract and board this flight to nowhere. Stay interesting and arrive at LaGuardia soon.