I did a little research.
On April 8th, the White Sox played a night game in Arlington. The next day they traveled to Cleveland, a 2 hour 30 minute flight. They won 4-2.
On April 29th, the Rangers played a night game in Arlington. The next day they traveled to Toronto, a 3 hour flight. They won 4-1.
On May 20th, the Cardinals played a night game in Los Angeles. The next day they traveled to St. Louis, a 3 hour 35 minute flight. They won 4-3.
And yet, when the Mets lost to the Cubs on Monday after a 2 hour 39 minute flight to Chicago after a Sunday night loss to the Yankees, everyone blamed lack of sleep for it. Hell, Terry Collins saw it coming.
“I just told them I understand what they’ve been through in the last month, and there’s been a lot of talk and written about it and mentioned about it. And they played their hearts out. They got us where we are, but we can’t stop now. We can’t just sit on the last 25 days and the fact that we’ve played all these teams that are in playoff contention. We’ve got to take a deep breath, reach inside, grab some energy and finish the first half out strong, until the break.”
I’m not going to say that there’s absolutely no excuse for this. MLB should seriously think about scheduling an off day after a Sunday night game, or perhaps limit the travel to under two hours or so. But other teams have seemed to deal with this kind of travel just fine. Other than the Angels on May 14th, teams that had to travel over two hours (and in some cases three) did very well the night after a late Sunday extravaganza, as noted above. So either the Mets don’t know how to handle travel, or the travel really had nothing to do with their loss.
If there’s one team in Major League Baseball that the Mets should be able to beat even while half asleep, it’s the Chicago Cubs … the future 100+ loss Chicago Cubs who can’t even put their batting helmet logos on straight. Travis Wood? After smacking around CC Sabathia they couldn’t hit Travis Wood? And those misplays in the seventh? Does not getting eight hours of sleep make one too tired to put up both arms to catch a pop up in front of the plate? Lucas Duda could take a nap with Rip Van Winkle and Todd Van Poppel and still misplay that baseball. Listen, the guy needs subtitles to watch a Tom Emanski video because no hablo defense. And by the time Ronny Cedeno made the third error of the seventh inning, Jon Rauch may not have wanted to kill himself but I’m sure he had just a little murder in his heart at that point. But that’s okay, so did the rest of Queens.
Too bad the flight from NYC to Chicago wasn’t a pajama themed road trip so they could go right to bed after checking in to the hotel. Hopefully they can get some sleep tonight. And if they can’t fall asleep, I have a lullabye for them:
“Rock a bye Metsies on the rooftops. When the wind blows, the pop-ups are dropped. When the bat breaks, hey Duda will fall. And down will come the Mets in the standings after losing to the g*d damn Cubs and all.”
It always works for me.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
