There were clouds in San Diego on Saturday night … not usual for the city known for its boring weather of 72 and sunny. (I believe John Kruk once said that he liked playing home games in cities other than San Diego because the weather was too boring … I always knew Kruk wasn’t playing with a full deck.) I believe that the movie that they are showing on the Citi Field scoreboard after the game for their $200 sleepover is “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs”. That should have been clues number one and two that the winning streak was about to end.
Dillon Gee … perhaps with two much All Star break rest … threw some meatballs that begged to be smacked. And smacked they were by the Padres as Yasmani Grandal and Will Venable went deep off Gee to lead the onslaught of Friar runs to their promised land of a 6-0 Padre victory. The game also featured Kirk Nieuwenhuis throwing to an unoccupied third base, and five Met hits total thanks to the wickedness of Padres starter Tyson Ross. Ross went seven strong only giving up four hits and three walks, most of which came in his final inning of work.
The Padres had scored a total of five runs with Tyson Ross on the mound in his previous eight starts.
— Adam Rubin (@AdamRubinESPN) July 20, 2014
Ross’ final act was to strike out Ruben Tejada to end the only legitimate threat the Mets had all night. The Mets had the bases loaded with two outs when Tejada’s turn came up. That scenario seems to happen way too often through no fault of anybody’s except fate. However instead of pinch hitting for their light hitting shortstop which managers with balanced rosters would do, Tejada was forced to remain at bat because there are six outfielders and no legitimate back-up infielder. This might not be a problem on other nights if the chips fell a certain way. But with Chris Young basically squatting on a roster spot, there are absolutely no benefits to having a roster with six outfielders, one light hitting shortstop, and no true middle infield backups.
And what also didn’t help was Tejada picking the seventh inning with the bases loaded to have an at-bat that consisted of complete garbage: Swinging at the first pitch, weak check swings, flails that look like he’s trying to use tweezers to catch a butterfly hopped up on heroin and Red Bull. Tyson Ross can do that to a hitter, but that was still absolutely among the worst at-bats I’ve seen this season not involving Bartolo Colon.
Regardless of that, there was no way the Mets were winning Saturday’s game. So shake it off, win two out of three and don’t turn this loss into a 3-13 stretch. Simple, right? Zack Wheeler goes against Odrisamer Despaigne on Sunday so that game could either be extremely entertaining, or reach through my soul and rip my throat out. Me being a Mets fan, there is no in between.
Sleep tight, Citi Field dwellers. (And remember, no fornication on the field. Enough fans get screwed at Citi Field.)
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