Death Spiral: 2014 Edition

You know its bad when I start pining for the days of 2007 and 2008. The Mets were the laughingstock of baseball, but at least they were good.

Friday night the Mets gave us yet another microcosm of the last six years. No offense, no drama, no reason for the other team to sweat. Hell, not even a reason to be mad. And that’s a reason to be mad. At least in ’07 and ’08 you could pull your hair out and others felt your pain. Now when I pull my hair out over this team people look at me like I’m a crazy person because why the hell am I worked up over this stupid team? Well … because I’m a crazy person.

The Dodgers scored their first two runs on singles which immediately followed Dodgers not being able to get a bunt down. That’s the difference between a team like the Dodgers and a team like the Mets: The Dodgers can screw up their fundies and still have enough talent to overcome it. The Mets screw up one fundie and everything falls apart because they have to be perfect in every other fact of the game to make up for their abysmal hitting ability.

Three of the four Mets infielders made errors tonight. And not one was named Daniel Murphy. That’s how disheartening this game was. The worst of it was taken by Wilmer Flores, as one error was made in the fifth that didn’t cost the Mets any runs but he just looked ridiculous doing it. The one in the seventh was just plain disgusting as it was with two outs in the seventh, and he just plain threw away a routine grounder by Adrian Gonzalez. This led directly to three Dodger runs on that play plus a Matt Kemp double, and it turned a 2-1 game that felt like a 4-1 game into a 4-1 game that felt like a 40-1 game. The Mets wanted to find out about Flores at shorstop. And by God they’re finding out … in the field, and at the plate. So … mission accomplished!!! (Can’t wait until he’s traded and becomes the next Miguel Cabrera and everybody will be all “hey, remember when the Mets thought he was a shortstop? LOLMets!!!”)

The Mets are 60-69 after Friday’s maddening 6-2 loss. It’s just one game … but it seems like one game that has lasted six years. Here are their records after 129 games the past five seasons, from ’09-’13:

• 58-71
• 64-65
• 61-68
• 60-69
• 58-71

Point being this: We suck. Six years is a big enough sample size to figure that out. And nobody knows what to say after these rotten games anymore. Terry Collins spent the post-game newser feeding us gruel about how they had a day off and their ragged, and this was just one of those nights. Yeah, and as long as Terry Collins takes that attitude, these nights are going to last for another six years. It has reporters scrambling for questions, because they dont’ even know what to ask anymore. After Flores’ two errors, a hot shot went through David Wright’s legs, and Lucas Duda dropped an easy foul pop-up. It caused one reporter to ask: “Is fielding contagious?”

I give up.