The Mets have won two games in a row.
For Mets fans like me (yes me) that can mean yay … whoopee … pop a beer and celebrate.
Here’s the thing. Mets rooters haven’t had much to cheer about this season.
Oh sure. There was the six-game winning streak just before the all-star break.
There was that modestly good start the team got off to in the first three weeks of the season.
But for the most part, and that’s putting it mildly, this team of high hopes, huge expectations, and the most expensive payroll of any baseball team – ever – has been a big disappointment.
Last night, the Mets eked out a narrow, nail-biting 11-10 victory over the lowly Chicago White Sox, an American League group suffering its own struggles. That the Mets nearly lost this game after jumping out to a seemingly insurmountable 11-4 lead almost typifies this sorry season.
A bullpen that has represented mostly fire-starters rather than firefighters has been a big problem all season and surely raised its ugly head last night.
But this has also been a team of lackluster hitting, unreliable starting pitching including from hurlers Max Scherzer and Justine Verlander, both headed for the Hall of Fame but now perhaps showing their ages, as well as an assortment of underachievers.
There is 2022 National League Batting Champion Jeff McNeil, a singles hitter, scuffling along at a .250 clip. Starling Marte, a big part of the team’s 2022, 101-win season, is either hurtling to the descent of his career at age 34 or not fully recovered from a neck injury. Pete Alonso has knocked out 26 dingers but has seen his average dip toward the Mendoza line since early in the season. The club’s biggest bopper has been slumping terribly of late.
Perhaps the play that has summed up the Mets woes of this season was that of Brett Baty. The rookie third baseman on Saturday night circled rather awkwardly under a pop fly transcending the Citi Field evening skies only to lunge unsuccessfully for the descending ball before it hit the infield turf and rebounded to hit him in the face. That play in a close game seemed to open the floodgates and led to another Mets loss.
To be a Mets fan is to suffer and see the glass half empty rather than half full. And that means feeling the first breezes that foretell of a bad storm coming, like the injury to bullpen ace Edwin Diaz in March that shelved his season.
At this writing, the Mets record is 44-50, surely far below the lofty expectations of fans and those responsible for putting together this team.
As the July 31 trading deadline nears, the Mets surely appear to be sellers rather than buyers of players to help them get into the playoffs this year.
Can the team instead run off a pile of wins and pull off a miracle? If you truly are a Mets fan and grab at iffy prospects such as leprechauns appearing on your front steps swinging bats, then … okay … Lets Go Mets!
Mike Reuther is a writer and the author of the book, The Baseball Losers, a novel of the New York Mets 2007 season.
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