Mascots Tell No Tales

This has been an annoying weekend.

First you had Saturday, where it had become abundantly clear that while the top of the rotation lived up to their expectations, the bottom of the rotation had lived down to theirs. Add to that two straight blowout losses to Miami, the only consistent hitter being Jay Bruce, and Rafael Montero being sent down Fernando Nieve Rd. by Terry Collins as he’s making Montero pitch three innings a day, and you have a team off to a rockin’ start at 2-3.

Thankfully Sunday night turned over the rotation, and Noah Syndergaard brought his best stuff as he went seven innings while striking out nine and only giving up one earned run in a 5-2 victory to salvage getting swept by the Marlins. Bruce continued his hot hitting (look, for Bruce .250 is hot) with a solo HR, and Michael Conforto cracked the lineup and did the same. But with the game being on ESPN, everything was clouded. And look, I’m not the guy that’s ever going to cry “These guys aren’t Gary, Keith and Ron.” Because of course they’re not. Few people are. I like to enjoy people on their own merits, and not on the merits of unreachable stars.

That said, I wanted to pour lye on my eyes and ears. First, the Mets take a 3-0 lead in the first inning and ESPN puts up their “win probability” stat, which had the Mets at an 83% chance at victory. Win Probability is fun, but it’s not a stat that translates to a live broadcast. It’s fun to look at on a boxscore to see how much of a chance a team had to win a game that they blew. But it’s meaningless in real time, and it isn’t applied right. When the Marlins scored two runs in the third (after everybody and their mother was trying to get ahead of the game by saying that Noah had “no-hit stuff”), the stat disappeared. Bob Murphy was great because he always gave the listeners a reason to stay tuned to a broadcast of a game that had become a complete dog. ESPN, on the other hand, is telling everybody that the Marlins only had a 17% chance to win a game where they were down by three runs in the second inning. Television directors from the sixties were spinning in their graves.

Then, in a 3-2 game in the fifth, the ESPN crew decided to forget that there was a game going on and dissect the twitter war between Syndergaard and Mr. Met. Fine. But then they had Mr. Met in the booth and had Dallas Braden tried to interview him. The next mascot that talks back would be the first, so it became the most predictable bit of non-comedy that has ever happened. Look, they’re probably never going tell a Met or Marlin fan anything they don’t know about their teams. But I’m not sure anybody else learned anything either, including the fact that mascots don’t talk because everybody already knows that!!! I wonder if things would have been different in the booth if the ball used in the sport that was being aired had laces instead of stitches.

Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

Today’s Hate List

1. Interviews with mascots during close games.
2. Live Win Probability
3. Justin Bour
4. Marcell Ozuna
5. Jerad Eickhoff