Successful Triage

If this season turns around because Terry Collins gave his standard “no more excuses” speech at the end of Thursday’s loss, we’ll all probably point to April 28th as the day we all escaped the bottom.

I know, that statement sounds awfully familiar, and it serves as a reminder of the perils of putting historical significance on an April win or a loss in a 162 game season. But the Mets have gone through stretches of longer than 24 hours where they give us a lot to chew on. Yesterday, Noah Syndergaard was scratched, Yoenis Cespedes needed more shock therapy on his hamstring, and Matt Harvey threw floaters after a hard workout, then threw his team under the bus. All this going into Washington where Max Scherzer was waiting for them after keeping the Mets at arm’s length over eight innings on Sunday night.

Both Scherzer and Jacob deGrom struggled early, as the battle of two aces was 3-2 after two innings. Scherzer gave up a dinger to Travis d’Arnaud, and deGrom gave up homers to Ryan Zimmerman and Matt Weiters. But while deGrom settled down and became the first Met since David Cone to top 10 K’s for three straight starts (deGrom had 12 as he was stretched to 112 pitches over seven innings), Scherzer gave up a second home run do d’Arnaud. (This caused my wife to shriek when she realized that the Met that had two home runs was actually Travis d’Arnaud.)

The Mets bullpen struggled after deGrom left, as Addison Reed relieved Jerry Blevins in the eighth and gave up Ryan Zimmerman’s second home run of the game to cut the Mets lead to 7-5 (by the way, we all thought Ryan Zimmerman was done but he has nine home runs so far.) Then Jeurys Familia came in for the save and immediately gave up three hits to load the bases with nobody out. Perilously, he then struck out Trea Turner to set up the big showdown between Familia and Bryce Harper.

But then Terry Collins must have realized that when he made his little speech yesterday, it applied to him as well. No excuses for Terry either. So in a move that was very un-Terry-like, he took out his closer and put in Josh Edgin to face Harper with the bases loaded. At the time I honestly thought that if the Mets go down, at least they go down with Terry knowing he did everything he could. Yes, Edgin scares me. But he saw something in Familia he didn’t like and he went for it instead of holding on to the towel which caused Apollo Creed’s death in Rocky IV. I was fine with whatever happened after that, because at least Terry was proactive instead of his usual reactive.

Thankfully, Edgin got Harper to bounce into the 1-2-3 double play to end the game and give the Mets a huge April victory over Washington by the score of 7-5. It was huge because if after all that happened on Thursday they blow a 7-3 lead, I’m not sure the team recovers from that. Now at least the Mets have a chance to split the next two and get out of Washington with their testicles intact. If ever a team had a must-win situation in April, this may have been it. The hole in the sinking ship, for now, has been plugged by something from the Flex Seal family of products.

(No, I was not compensated for that plug.)

Today’s Hate List

1. Ryan Zimmerman
2. Matt Holliday
3. Troy Tulowitzki
4. Koda Glover
5. Sidney Crosby

(Editor’s Note: I felt bad about slamming the Bash Burger served at Citi Field this season. So I wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy and went to the actual place that serves them, which is Burger & Barrel in Manhattan. I had to know that this somehow wasn’t Josh Capon’s fault. And it wasn’t. Guys and girls, if you want a Bash Burger, just do yourself a favor and go to B&B and have something else at Citi Field. The burger is much better there, proving that the problem isn’t the burger itself, but the way it translates to ballpark food. Burger & Barrel is on 25 W. Houston St.)