Cowgilled

It wasn’t a great omen to start the game with a pitch clock violation. I mean, you don’t have 15 seconds to throw the first pitch of the season. You technically have hours to throw it. So 0-0 top first, and you can’t get the pitch off in time, that should have been everyone’s first clue.

But it all went downhill from there. There were three other violations, one of which struck out Mark Canha because he had is feet in the box with 8 seconds left but was looking down, Carrasco was trying too hard to be Greg Maddux razor sharp (at least by his self-analysis), and wound up giving up five runs in four innings (including a dinger to Brian Anderson), and left a mess for Tommy Hunter in the fifth which led to a Cowgill-esque grand slam by someone named Brice Turang to make the score 10-0 and pretty much end the game there.

It was interesting to hear Carrasco talk post game about how “crazy” the new rules were playing into his pacing and him not being able to take a breath between pitches. He seemed to think that it was the determining factor in the sharp dip in his velocity in the 5th inning. We can’t even blame Carrasco being away at the World Baseball Classic for not being able to adjust to the new rules because he wasn’t away at the World Baseball Classic. So if the extra pace really was the factor in Carrasco all of a sudden losing his velocity in the 5th, then that’s going to be a major problem because these new rules aren’t going away.

Carlos Carrasco talks about his outing today and how he is adjusting to life with the pitch clock: pic.twitter.com/0lT3Sf41RP

— SNY (@SNYtv) April 3, 2023

Canha also discussed in the post game how he struck out on the pitch clock violation because he was looking at the scoreboard for the pitcher’s velocity and couldn’t find it, so then he took an extra breath to get back in the box. But Canha totally blamed himself for that, and at least his hitting isn’t going to be affected too much. But these are the growing pains that these new rules are bringing to us. Better the growing pains happen in a 10-0 loss where there was no way Mark Canha striking out was going to make a difference in a game where the Mets had three hits, Daniel Vogelbach looked like a cat running on an area rug trying to stretch a single into a double, and the only Met pitcher that didn’t walk anyone was Luis Guillorme.

Mark Canha is used to checking the pitch type and velocity displayed on scoreboards between pitches.

He was given a pitch clock violation and a strikeout because the velocity and pitch type never showed up: "That's on me. I need to figure out a way to change." pic.twitter.com/MJd4dDk6eK

— SNY (@SNYtv) April 3, 2023

The less said about this game the better, especially when the grand slam by Turang led to Gare bringing up that the last Brewer whose first career home run was a grand slam was Shaun Marcum. I didn’t need to be reminded that Shaun Marcum, despite having one win during the season that he was with the Mets (which I attended), had the audacity to request a personal catcher. 2013 was not the most fun year ever, and I don’t need to ever be reminded of that.

We had Brandon Lyon too.

Today’s Hate List

1. Brice Turang
2. Freddy Peralta
3. Brian Anderson
4. Jesse Winker
5. Shaun Marcum