Ollieitis

I miss the all-star break already.

I don’t know what the Mets were doing during the long break, but it seemed like involved going to Oliver Perez’s Sucking Camp, as the team as a whole gave away walks like they were stripper catalogs in Las Vegas. Eleven in all, three by Chris Young, who was awful, and four by Miguel Batista in one and a third innings … that’s a walk for every out (and it’s two more than Perez has had in his 9.2 innings this year … your Mayans at work). This, ladies and gentlemen, is the guy the Mets want to give Dillon Gee’s rotation spot to. This is who Terry Collins wants to save the season.

Poor Josh Edgin. Makes his major league debut by saving Batista’s bacon by striking out two hitters after the poet walked the damn bases loaded, thus earning the nickname “Le Magnifique” which fits his uniform number. Then, Le Magnifique gets the first two outs before giving up a home run to Larry Jones. (The Braves call it one step closer to history, and for the Mets that’s called Tuesday.) Then Edgin’s next inherited runner comes home to score thanks to Ramon Ramirez. So Edgin, who had probably the most impressive performance on the mound all night leaves the game with an ERA of 13.50. Batista, who had the worst performance of all the relievers, sees his ERA go down. Where’s the damn justice in this game?

And the news gets better for the bullpen as Frangag Frantsisk has been shut down during his minor league rehab stint. How bad is this bullpen when I’m pining for the return of Frantsisk? But hey, fear not … C.J. Nitkowski is making a comeback, and he’ll be in Binghamton waiting for the first opportunity, which at this rate will come in the next three weeks … days … minutes. But hopefully not before Matt Harvey’s debut at the expense of the poet Batista, who by this time next week should be working full time on his next work of fiction: 50 Shades of Gravy. Hell, I’m longing for the days of Darren Oliver … and he’s older than Batista!!!!!

Good thing R.A. Dickey is starting on Saturday, because we’re one game into the second half of the season and the bullpen is already tired.

And through all this … and here’s the truly insane part … the Mets were still in the game until the very end. But that’s not to say the Mets were their usual “gritty, gutty” selves. It means they should have won this damn game after loading the bases with nobody out in the fifth. But Scott Hairston, Cyborg, and Josh Thole couldn’t knock them home off of Cristhian Martinez and basically lost the game right then and there. They even brought the tying run up to the plate against Craig Kimbrel in the ninth. But then … of course … Lucas Duda comes up with a terrible at-bat with one out and Ike Davis on first. And it had nothing to do with how good Kimbrel is (and he was good), but when you take a fastball for a strike to go down 0-2 you have to know that any … any good pitcher is going to go out of the strike zone to try to get you out. So what does Duda do? Swing at a garbage pitch and goes down in three pitches. One batter later, the game was lost. A game that was 7-5 but felt like 11-1. A game that was three hours and forty one minutes and felt every bit of it.

Worst of all was the shit-eating grin that Larry had on his face for pretty much the entire post-game interview with Kevin Burkhardt. This has prompted Jones to name his next child “SNY Jones”. (This farewell tour can’t end soon enough.)