A lesser-known quote from the great Rogers Hornsby has been on my mind recently: “People ask me what I do in summer when there’s baseball like this. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for winter.”
Today is Greg’s recap, I plan to be on the East River in a kayak during the matinee, and all of us are better off.
Well, maybe my poor blog partner won’t be better off (sorry Greg), but the Mets will get less bile spewed in their direction on Bluesky, you won’t have to roll your eyes at my moaning and complaining, and then there’s the fact that I would rather perform emergency eye surgery on myself with a spoon than watch David Stearns’ prized offseason acquisition Freddy Peralta try to avert a Dodgers sweep.
(Baseball being infinitely perverse, Peralta will now probably spin a no-hitter. Great! It’ll boost his trade value!)
I was definitely not better off Saturday night, when the Mets inflicted another tooth-grinding loss on what’s left of their fanbase. Everything went to pieces in the third inning: a bolt of a Kyle Tucker home run off the foul pole adjoining Carbonation Ridge, a double play turned into nothing when not-a-first-baseman Brett Baty‘s throw glanced off Dalton Rushing‘s helmet, a fielder’s choice that wasn’t a double play because Nolan McLean couldn’t find the first-base bag on the back end, and a passed ball by Francisco Alvarez to let in another run. The Dodgers are hard to beat without spotting them extra outs; the Mets gave them three freebies to make hay with, and they set to work with pitchforks flashing.
The Mets fought back, more annoyingly than successfully. In the eighth, down 4-1, they put the first two on in front of Jorge Polanco and Marcus Semien, those mighty twin pillars of Stearns’ 2026 vision. Both struck out haplessly, with Polanco underlining his incompetence by using up the Mets’ last ABS challenge on a strike that was, in fact, a strike.
The Mets drew within one on a pinch-hit double from Tyrone Taylor (who, to be fair, was also added by Stearns), and sent Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette and Carson Benge to the plate in the bottom of the ninth against Brock Stewart. Bloop and a blast? Ha ha ha, oh you sweet summer child. Lindor struck out on a high fastball, Bichette grounded out, and Benge — who we should remember is still just a rookie despite a positive first season — was eviscerated on three straight strikes to end the game.
Sigh. The trade deadline can’t get here soon enough — to say nothing of the last pitch of this miserable season.
It appeared on that Polanco at-bat, that he went off balance after one of those swings because he may still be too injured to stop himself.
And really scary about Soto. His thick body type lends itself to injury, and as he gets older, this will only get worse. If we do not offer him the raise after 5 years, hopefully the opt-out will take effect, and we may be able to get out from under this. After all, all the other playoff teams will make the playoffs without Juan Soto. Just see the team across the river.