String Cheese

The movable object met the resistable force tonight. One could argue that there were no winners. Jenrry Mejia would disagree with you, as the history books will denote him with his first major league win … a 6-2 victory where Mejia went five innings, gave up four hits, two walks and no runs. Though I question the wisdom of keeping Mejia in the game once his pitch count soared about 3,000. (Not really … he only threw 97 pitches, believe it or not. It must have just seemed like 3,000 as he reached 71 in the third inning.)

Also, Ike Davis became the first Met to reach 30 home runs in the Citi Field era, as he had two bombs tonight which drove in five runs. (But yeah, let’s trade him because he drinks beer at night to make room for Lucas Duda and his 5,000 ground balls to the right side of the infield as he tries to pull outer half fastballs.)

The most impressive part of the night, to me, was Ruben Tejada turning a double play when instead of throwing to first after forcing out a runner on second, he whipped around and threw to third to catch Josh Harrison rounding the base too far. To me, when a team is playing out the string against bad teams, home runs and other statistics don’t impress me as much as somebody who’s still using his brain when the games are meaningless. Absolutely a good sign to see that from Tejada (or anybody) when other teams have gone into golf mode and forgetting how many outs there are after catching line drives. (I still love ya, Jose … but I’m looking squarely at you and your beard.)

And speaking of those other teams that I didn’t mention, did ya hear what Gary Cohen said about Heath Bell on the broadcast?

“He’d throw himself under the bus but he wouldn’t fit.”

Wow! Ba-zing, Gary. Love it. Will make it kinda awkward though when Sandy inevitably trades Jason Bay for him. Oops. But let’s not worry about consequences right now. Let’s just appreciate that there’s still a reason to sit through these games. And it has nothing to do with any momentum that is carrying over into next season by winning these meaningless games. Thoughts, David Wright?

“It would be nice to finish on a strong note. You look at what the Orioles did, they finished strong last year and it carried over into this year, so it would be nice to do that.”

Well that’s all very puppy dog and lollipopish. But stop it. When was the last time you heard of players being interviewed in April saying “well, we had that five game streak last September, we hope to build on that”? How about never? But even if you want to subscribe to that, I’d be more willing to believe it in the case of the Orioles, who finished the season 22-16 against teams that, except for Minnesota, finished .500 or above. That’s not even mentioning that they were featured in games that changed the course of the season under the bright lights of national television. The Mets are finishing the season with slightly less incompetence than NFL replacement referees are showing in games that nobody is attending or watching on television. Tell me how beating the Pirates, Braves, and Marlins in games that mean absolutely nothing can be used as momentum, when there’s four months of no games, and a month and a half of spring training games with … hopefully … a very different roster than you had the season before? We’ll all forget about these meaningless wins by the time April comes around, just as we’ve forgotten that Tejada only showed up to spring training on time.