Phantom Blame

The Mets probably didn’t lose to the Yankees on Friday because Jose Reyes tried to take two bases on a sac fly, or because Ted Barrett made a wrong call on a bang bang play. The Mets lost because the Yankees tried to hand them the game by teasing them with baserunners, only to have Ivan Nova’s curveball go into some sort of hyperdrive.

But that Reyes play bothers me. It bothers me because he didn’t make the wrong play. If there were none or two outs then that would be one thing. But to try for third with one out where a Carlos Beltran sac fly could bring him home was a good aggressive play. Reyes has been a bonehead on the bases before, trying to take third on grounders to the left side. This wasn’t a bonehead play. This was Reyes using his hustle to try to take advantage of Eduardo Nunez lollygagging after the throw from the outfield kicked away from him when Reyes tagged and went to second. Usually in life, the player who hustles gets rewarded and the player who gets lazy is punished. Reyes made the hustling, aggressive, correct play, and Nunez deserved to get burned.

Of course when the lazy player is wearing a Yankee uniform, your baseball gods decides that there’s an exception to every rule, and cradle the lollygagging Yankee in their bosom and cover him with kisses made of sunshine. And that’s what bothers me. Nunez’s leisurely pace bought him an out he didn’t deserve. (Must have dipped into the Derek Jeter intangible pool.)

Also, if a Met had done the same thing Robinson Cano did and not score from third on a pop-fly that dropped behind Reyes for a single, not only would that play have been the difference in the game, but said player would be immortalized for all eternity by the tabloids (and probably me too) as the stupidest baseball player on earth. (I’m not saying it would have been Luis Castillo but, well … yeah.) But Robinson Cano does it and the baseball gods forgive him, even after he doesn’t score. The Mets had plenty of chances to make him pay, but couldn’t tie the game off of the likes of Luis Ayala, who is of course more successful now that he’s a Yankee than he was when he was facing Dan Uggla.