A Unique Path To A Loss

I hate games like this.

When Jon Niese was hit in the ankle in the third inning by Mark Ellis and had to leave the game on Tuesday, with Clayton Kershaw on the other side, I was thinking, "well, this game is shot to hell, so I'll save my angst for what the Rangers do against the Panthers, or better yet I'll save my angst for a double dose of explosion on Thursday for Jeremy Hefner and the manner in which the Jets screw up the draft."

But then the Mets rallied in the third inning against Kershaw, previously 5-0 with a 1.37 ERA against the Mets in his career. And Robert Carson, just called up to take over for the recently jettisoned into outer space DFA'd Aaron Laffey, was holding the fort down pretty well under unusual circumstances. The hope that maybe the Mets can steal this game started to ascend. The struggles of the $783 billion payroll of the L.A. Dodgers started to manifest before the eyes of the throngs of people at Citi Field. (Term "throngs" used very loosely … it was more like one throng.) There was a distinct possibility that Don Mattingly would be fired by the sixth inning and replaced with Willie Randolph.

But then Carson gave up a home run to Mark Ellis. Then Brandon Lyon gave up a three run homer to … F'ing Mark Ellis. Then Josh Edgin gave up a two run double to A.J. Ellis. Then Dock Ellis came in high on LSD and gave up a grand slam to Ellis Valentine while he was wearing that chin bar, and the game was over … and I had to reserve some angst for the Mets after all. Point being, I wish Kershaw had just run over the Mets and pitched 8 shutout innings, I would have felt a hell of a lot better about things. Instead, players that had a job to do and weren't put too far out of their way to do it like Brandon Lyon couldn't get it done. Niese's injury isn't an excuse. Brandon Lyon came into the game in the seventh inning. He wasn't asked to perform this Herculean task or do anything that was out of his realm like, say, Carson might have been on Tuesday. He wasn't facing Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Kemp, and Andre Ethier. He gave up a hit to Justin Sellers, walked Juan Uribe, and gave up a three run HR to Mark Ellis.

And then Edgin in the eighth. He pitched a third of an inning and gave up two runs, and his ERA is 10.80. Terry Collins for one, is concerned.

"One of the things that I am just a little bit concern about — and I've seen it before, and we've mentioned it — is a young pitcher like that, last year he got into a lot of games. He had a lot of appearances. He had a lot of games he warmed up and maybe didn't get in. All of those can lead to the next year just not having your arm respond right away. I've been there before where I've seen that. And I'm a little concerned that might be what we're facing here."  

Yeah, Terry. I mean, who asked him to go into all these games after going from A ball to the majors in a span of 10 months? How dare he put himself into so many games and warm up when nobody asked him to. I mean …

Oh wait, that was YOOOOOOOOOOOOU! YOU put him into all these games and are now wondering how something you've seen a million times before could possibly happen for the 1,000,001st time. Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall 84 times hoping that the 85th time will result in me winning Powerball.

So the Mets finally get to Clayton Kershaw, only to be taken to the woodshed by two guys named Ellis who aren't even related. The good news is that Matt Harvey starts tonight against L.A., but with Niese going down and all this chaos going on around him, you couldn't blame him if he started to feel like he was starring in Final Destination: Flushing. And give SNY credit, they know how to butter their bread. You have Matt Harvey "Next Start Tomorrow" graphics coming up on the screen during Tuesday's game like it was a 24 promo ubiquitously appearing during an episode of The Simpsons. And you also had a good chunk of the post game show hyping Harvey's start the next day. And guaranteed a good chunk of Thursday's pre-game show will focus on what Harvey did the night before, good or bad. It's almost like if you squint hard while looking at your television, Harvey actually starts three out of every five games. Oh how we all wish that could happen.