The Urge To Generally Manage Is Swelling

It’s not a great sign when you’re already looking at other team’s rosters to see who you can trade for in July.

I mean, it’s Game 12. We shouldn’t be doing this at this early stage, But that’s what we were doing about a half hour after the Mets lost to the Padres on Tuesday. And that’s what happens when you have a game where you’re so overanxious at the plate, you wonder if it’s ever going to change. I mean, it will. I’m fairly confident of that. But the consternation over the lineup is going to go on until August 1st whether they’re hitting or not, so we might as well have fun with it.

Tuesday’s loss to the Padres was the first game where the starting pitcher, David Peterson, pitched halfway decent in a loss. This one was on the offense, who couldn’t get much going against lefty Ryan Weathers as they only touched him up for a very lonely sacrifice fly in the 4th for a 1-0 lead. That was a short lived lead as Peterson, who gave up two runs in 5 and 2/3’s on 6 hits and two walks, gave up a two run double to Manny Machado to give the Padres the lead for good.

The Mets would follow by coming up zeroes against Brent Honeywell, Luis Garcia, and Steven Wilson who throws something called a “slutter” (I have a joke that I would have went to about ten years ago but I’m not about that lawsuit life so I’m keeping quiet.) The key inning though was the 9th, where the Mets were staring down Josh Hader for the bottom of the 9th. Dennis Santana gave up a crushing two run HR to Xander Bogaerts to give the Padres a 4-1 lead, and it was brutal because Hader was very shaky in the ninth and the Mets were able to touch him up. Pete Alonso walked to start the inning. Mark Canha then did what Mark Canha does best: get hit by a Josh Hader pitch. One problem:

Mark Canha gets hit by a pitch while swinging for a third strike and there's frustration with the umpires pic.twitter.com/0VHuiHANx9

— Shea Station (@shea_station) April 12, 2023

You can’t take first if you swing at the pitch, so down goes Canha. Then McNeil walked to set up Tommy Pham with runners on first and second. Pham, still earning his faith from Met fans, slapped a single up the middle to cut the gap to 4-2, hereby making the Bogaerts home run and the Canha strikeout all the more painful.

Tomas Nido then grounded out to Hader with the runners in mostion … for some reason … for the second out, setting up Francisco Alvarez to be in the positon to tie the game with a single. But after Alvarez was patient enough to go ahead in the count 2-0, he started swinging at everything from Hader, who just started going up and up and up the ladder. He didn’t even have to throw a strike to Alvarez to get him out, as the rookie was heavily overanxious and struck out to end the game.

It’s hard to be frustrated with Alvarez, still a baseball baby. That’s where being mindful of certain situations, such as the reliever being wild enough to draw comparisons to Mitch Williams, would have helped him. Would more minor league seasoning have helped? Maybe. But he has to be up with the big club because of injury so that’s where we’re at. And it’s not like a lot of big league ballplayers are that mindful of situation and context that they don’t go up there swinging from their shoes either, so to pick on Alvarez would be slightly unfair. In any event, it’s not on Alvarez so much as it’s on every single Met to bring a bat to the batters box on Tuesday. Five hits against pitchers not named Kershaw, Koufax, or Carlton is a tire fire. And it has us looking at other team’s rosters. In April.

The most brutal part of this is that I was ready to blame it on the fact that the Mets can’t hit lefties. But checking their team splits going into the game, the Mets actually hit much worse against righties than lefties. That actually really shocked me. And if that’s the case, then that’s a problem since righthandedness is the dominant gene on planet Earth.

Today’s Hate List

1. Jose Jimenez
2. Denny Neagle
3. Kent Mercker

In reference to the above three: Highly disappointed that when asked what his favorite moment as a Met was, Ryan Weathers’ father David didn’t respond with “It was when I threw at that Rockies hitter intentionally after they decided to use Timo Perez for target practice in Colorado. Man, f*** those guys.” Because it was certainly MY favorite David Weathers moment in a Mets uniform after the Mets were thrown at THREE straight times because Perez threw his arms up in relief because his home run gave the Mets a lead for the first time in a month. So the two ex-Braves can eat it as far as I’m concerned.

(The ironic part of that whole thing in 2002 was that in looking it up, I was reminded that the guy that Weathers plunked to get him ejected from that game in 2002 was … Juan Uribe.)