Timing is everything.
On Friday evening the Memphis Redbirds postponed their game against the Iowa Cubs and Mike Mayers and his teammates got an unexpected night off.
Later in the night/early morning, the Cardinals engaged in a 16 inning affair with the Dodgers. Since they played a doubleheader earlier in the week and used Tyler Lyons for 4 2/3 relief innings, the team was in need of a spot starter for Sunday.
The Cardinals are currently in a stretch of 30 games in 31 days and decided against a bullpen game. So Mike Mayers got the call.
With an extra day of rest, he would make his MLB debut on ESPN’s national telecast of Sunday Night Baseball against one of the most storied franchises in sports.
It went poorly. Mike Myers bad.
https://twitter.com/RNs_Funhouse/status/757375115445301248
Hope Mike Mayers gets another chance. His career 60.75 ERA has to the worst of any non-replacement player ever #mlb pic.twitter.com/SX5tTsTqCl
— Larry Vignola (@LarryVignola) July 25, 2016
No one felt particularly good about this situation heading into the game.
The Cardinals (I’d guess) were hoping for 4-5 innings and 4-5 runs surrendered. If it turned out to be a ballgame, they’d take it. But the A#1 objective was to not have a complete implosion that would cost the bullpen a bunch of innings.
Mayers lasted 1 and 1/3 innings.
And because national telecasts of baseball need to bring in casual viewers, the visuals of his family (pictured above) were too tempting to not keep cutting away to. A bad situation for everyone magnified by the large audience.
Baseball is hard.
Major League Baseball is the hardest.
Mike Mayers wasn’t ready. And the game got away from him from the very first batter. The plan was always to send him back down to Memphis after the game and that’s what will happen.
Here’s hoping that he gets another crack at the bigs when he is ready.
Because, truly, Timing is everything.
Photo: Collider
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