Colossal Waste Of Time

Your enjoyment of the following passage is best enjoyed while the following is played on your computer:

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The Mets like to waste our time … in many different increments. Whether it's wasting 20 innings of everyone's life in a 2-1 loss to the Marlins on Saturday, the 27 day long Rick Ankiel era, which ended mercifully after that 20 inning loss, or the last six going on seven years, the Mets are great at making you wonder why you didn't take up pottery or meditation or hiring somebody to kick you in the nuts for six months straight.

On Sunday, the Mets blew a 4-1 lead to the Miami Marlins and lost by a score of 8-4 in ten innings, wasting a solid start by Jon Niese. The Mets took 30 innings to score five runs and lose two games to the Marlins … and make sure that a team bad enough to take the 1962 Mets out of the record books will be safe. The Marlins are now 8-3 against the Mets, who by right have now become the worst team in the league. Screw the record. The Mets have not only blown up their season, they are single handedly keeping the 1962 Mets in the record books. The current team is creating ripples in the space time continuum that go back 50 years. I'm sure the guys on the '62 Mets feel like they're losing 120 games all over again. (Felix Mantilla is wondering why his head hurts all of a sudden.)

I'm not sure what's worse: this team being so unwatchable, or having to listen to Jim Duquette on the post game show talk about how the Mets lost because Mike Baxter can't lay down a bunt. The same Mike Baxter who has gotten big hits in the ninth inning twice this season … which is two more than the number of sacrifice bunts in his career. But yeah, let's have him bunt, and then blame him for not being "fundamental". Five runs in 30 innings, but blame Mike Baxter's bunting skills when he never should have been made to bunt in the first place. And also, Duquette tried briefly to say that the Mets were merely playing down to the level of their competition, as if they were a first place team that can't blow anybody out. The analytical gymnastics it took Duquette to avoid reality is stunning. An art form, really.

Going back to the original theme of wasting time, Baxter was part of a post-game purge as he, Robert Carson, and yes kids, Ike Davis were all optioned to Las Vegas after the game in a move which probably should have happened a month ago … a month which has become more wasted time. The three guys who are coming up will probably not be named Jimmie Foxx, Frank Robinson, and Hoyt Wilhelm. So chances are this is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. (Get ready for a lot of Justin Turner at first base, kids.)

You can make this out to be a wake-up call of sorts, but that plays into the theory that every move made in sports is a result of getting into people's heads as if athletic competition was nothing more than a Rorschach test. Don't buy it. This team is simply terrible. (Yes, it can be that simple sometimes.) The manager is managing so safely that it seems as if he is just trying to get to the end of his contract without getting fired so he can call his final managerial stint a comparative success. And the GM can't do a damn thing because there's no money to improve this team until next season. And even then he may not be allowed to spend it because the Princeling is putting all of his funds into commemorative fire hoses for visiting players.

Zack Wheeler is going to have a lot of savioring to do. Or at least save me some time this summer.