I Said Don’t …

Now don't get swept by the Marlins.

— Metstradamus (@Metstradamus) May 31, 2013

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I should know better than to put the whammy on my team. But if this team is susceptible to something as harmless as my whammies, then it has bigger problems.

Bigger problems … as in the guy the Mets acquired for his defense misplaying a fly ball to center field costing Matt Harvey two runs.

Or as in giving up four hits to Ed Lucas, a 31-year-old rookie who had four hits. This is the reverse of the usual script the Mets give us where they can't hit a ham and egger pitcher. This time they make 31-year-old rookies look like Stan Musial. This is a new one.

Or perhaps their manager decide that after a season's worth of overmanaging, he's going to undermanage and cost them the game. The Mets had a 6-4 lead after scratching and clawing to get Harvey off the hook. So with a two run lead and Harvey out of the game, Terry Collins puts in Scott Rice … who has all of a sudden become the premier left-handed reliever of this generation (at least that's how he's being used). But he has actually had a couple of days off, so why not, right? Rice comes in, gets an out, then walks three guys. It's clear to even my novice eyes (and the novice eyes of the entire world) that he doesn't have it. So with the right-handed Marcell Ozuna up, the no-brainer move was to bring in a righty. And if Brandon Lyon or LaTroy Hawkins had spit the bit, then it's on them because the manager put the team in the best position to win. Scott Rice … an ineffective Scott Rice … was left in the game. Predictably, Rice gave up the game tying double. The manager did not put the team in the best position to win, so this loss is on him. I don't second guess moves all that much but hell even I saw this coming … and I'm an idiot.

But the explanation was a doozy: Collins left Rice in the game because Marcell Ozuna was hitting .160 against sinkerballers. Ozuna also had, to that point in his long and illustrious career, 115 major league at-bats. So yeah, that made a whole lot of freakin' sense to treat Marcell Ozuna like a ten year veteran. Good job.

And of course you can't have bigger problems without Greg Dobbs being a part of it, as his three run jack against Hawkins sealed the game, and the sweep, for the Miami Marlins. The Mets did exactly what I told them not to do. And in the process put this season firmly back into the hell it was in before the Yankee series. Now they'll have to hope that their pitching stays hot so that they can climb out of it again. Though I doubt it because the Marlins, who have six wins against the Mets and ten against the rest of the league, are back in town just just four days.