A Major League Team vs Major League

Francisco Lindor’s seven RBI and a club record 17 walks led the Mets to a very ugly 17-6 victory in Oakland.

So first off, let me lead this off by giving the Mets a lot of credit. They’ve been so overanxious this season in bases loaded situations that it would have been completely on brand for them to turn James Kaprielian into Sandy Koufax at the absolute worst time. But when Kaprielian was walking batter after batter in the second, the Mets stayed patient and took their bases.

Five straight walks in the second scored two runs and brought up Lindor who, quite frankly, has been one of the worst offenders of being overanxious. But he keyholed a pitch from Kaprielian on the first pitch, knew that he would try to groove one, and it was in the exact place that Lindor wanted it and he parked it over the center field wall for a 6-0 lead.

SLAMCISCO LINDOR! 💥 pic.twitter.com/0dFwc4Ignl

— New York Mets (@Mets) April 15, 2023

At that point, it should have been cruise time for Kodia Senga to get his third straight W to start his Mets career, something nobody had ever done before. But Senga got touched up a bit by the A’s, who ran his pitch count up and up and up while scoring four runs off him on seven hits and four walks. When the Mets were rallying in the 5th inning for five more runs courtesy of more walks and another big hit by Lindor (a three run double) to make it 11-3, Senga had to warm up in the bullpen to keep himself sharp. Remember, he hasn’t responded to sitting during long innings very well, so he had to warm up in the bullpen like a reliever.

The inning has gone on so long that Kodai Senga is warming up in the bullpen. pic.twitter.com/JuInVOosrp

— SNY (@SNYtv) April 15, 2023

Unfortunately it didn’t work, as Senga got touched up for another homer and saw his saw his pitch count rise to 96, giving Buck Showalter no choice but to pull him before he could get that easy win. It was a lesson learned for Senga, as he blamed himself for not being able to deal with the pace of an ugly MLB game like this one was. But better he learned it in a victory than in a soul crushing defeat.

The Mets bullpen worked a little bit harder than they should have because of Senga’s outing, and because Stephen Nogosek had to leave the game after being hit with a line drive. But Dennis Santana pitched two and 1/3 innings for the victory, and John Curtiss finished it off by pitching a scoreless ninth. And the Mets finished off the game by walking against old friend Jeurys Familia four times before Eduardo Escobar and Luis Guillorme drove in runs off a cacther, Carlos Perez.

This win may have been more ugly duckling than beautiful swan, but ugly duckings can be fascinating in their own way, and this game was certainly fascinating between Senga’s outing, Lindor’s night, scoring six runs on one hit in two separate innings (something not done since at least 1957) and the 17 walks. Hell, it got so weird that the umpires had to confer during the ninth to make sure that Daniel Vogelbach actually saw four balls instead of three from Familia. They must have been counting them like Harry Doyle did. Ball four. Ball eight. Ball twelve. I can blame the umps for a lot in life, but when you get to ball 68, it’s easy to lose track.

Speaking of Harry Doyle …

Today’s Hate List

I have to get on the A’s here, because they have absolutely become the modern day version of Jake Taylor, Wild Thing Vaughn, and Willie Mays Hayes. Look, there have been bad teams in baseball, and we’re in an era now where half the teams in baseball have no shot at winning anything on Opening Day, and they’re fine with it. But even most of those teams are waiting for the right times to go all-in.

All the A’s are looking to do is get out of Oakland, and they’re avoiding all expense to do so. Gare and Ronnie had to take residence in a spare broadcast booth because … get this … a possum that was living in the walls of the regular visitors broadcast booth had decided to emerge while Wayne Randazzo was calling one of his first Angels games. Since then, the A’s had put out traps for it, but he peed all over the booth to the point that it looked and smelled like a urinal. So it’s uninhabitable (except for the poor photog that still had to work in there.)

Then later in the game, security at the Oakland Alameda County Stadium (yes, this team got so bad they lost their naming rights deal with two years left) started ripping down the ghost fork signs that Met fans were putting up for Senga’s strikeouts. These were signs that weren’t blocking anyone’s view, they weren’t harming anyone, and they weren’t antagonizing any of the Oakland fans, who were just happy to still have a team at this point.

A’s fans having a good time tonight #LGM pic.twitter.com/z36j5NGd6R

— matt (@notbrockbottom) April 15, 2023

So let me get this straight: Possums living in the walls are okay, but blue signs are where you draw the line? Maybe Rachel Phelps really owns this team. Either that or the Wilpons bought it while we were all asleep one night.

Meanwhile, the team on the field is stripped down to bare bones because they could care less what happens to it until they get their new stadium. And if you really look at it, the A’s have been like this since they were great in the 70’s when they tried to sell Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi to the Red Sox (a transaction which was struck down by the commissioner.) They never kept any of their stars for the duration of their careers. Not Catfish Hunter, not Jose Canseco, not Mark McGwire … the field is named after Rickey Henderson, who they traded … TWICE!

But it’s an all time low this season. This organization has one foot on the Vegas strip already. The team might seriously challenge the ’62 Mets for most losses in a season. In the fifth inning they brought in Hogan Harris to make his major league debut. This guy was 3-10 in three seasons in the minors and walked 4.8 hitters per nine innings. So he comes up here, and he can’t find the plate … at all. I put no blame for this on Harris, who can now forever say he made The Show. But the owners of the A’s have put Harris, the entire rag tag roster of leftovers, manager Mark Kotsay, and every single one of their fans in awful positions. And you watch: when they finally move to Vegas, they’ll blame it on the fans, framing it as “well, fans weren’t coming, what could we do?”

What could you do? Well let’s start with spending money on an exterminator so that you wouldn’t need a poor overworked possum to live in the walls so it can eat the rats!