Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap to the other guys. (The role of cap tipper will be played by Jorge Sosa … for no good reason.) The Cardinals had a great approach against Matt Harvey on Tuesday, going the other way whenever possible, laying wood on hide, taking it the other way, and just plain having the kind of approach the Mets used to have this season before losing Vinny Rottino (yeah, because he was the difference) and getting shut down by guys wearing goggles. Oh, and in the process, frustrating the living curse out of Harvey.
“I’m not happy about it. I’ve got to go out there, go deeper in the game. I’ve got to get quicker outs, keep the pitch counts down, and I didn’t do that tonight. I should have been better.” –Matt Harvey
We all should be better, Matt. Every single one of us. And certainly every single one of your teammates should have been better, Matt. And Jorge Sosa should have been better. And if Matt, his teammates, and maybe even Jorge Sosa was just a little bit better, maybe Tuesday’s game would have turned in a direction other than a ho-hum 5-1 loss. But nobody was better, and the less said about this game the better.
(Though Jeurys Familia was very good in his major league debut.)
That’s not what’s giving me cause for concern though. You see the Yankees, who had a ten game lead in the A.L. East, have given it all back to the Baltimore Orioles with the Rays nipping at everybody’s heels as well. Here are the 2012 A.L. East standings:
| Team | W | L | GB |
| Yankees | 76 | 59 | — |
| Orioles | 76 | 59 | — |
| Rays | 75 | 61 | 1.5 |
Now, here are the 2012 standings without the results of games against the Mets:
| Team | W | L | GB |
| Orioles | 76 | 56 | — |
| Rays | 75 | 58 | 1.5 |
| Yankees | 71 | 58 | 3.5 |
This basically means that if the Yankees hang on by a thread and make the playoffs, the Mets will have been the ones to put them in. Our very existence will have given them life. Think about that. It’s like the Mets will have unleashed a plague on humanity. They’ve already given the world Gregg Jefferies, now they’ll be responsible for that preening imbecile Nick Swisher smiling all over everybody’s television sets in October in all those FOX promos. In high definition at that.
Both the Orioles and the Rays must keep winning, if only to clear my conscience.
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