The Mets are so bad at everything, and not good at anything
Some reinforcements could be on the way as early as tonight, but the Mets continue to flounder nonetheless
What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️
The Mets continued their long weekend of disappointment, falling to the Reds 7-2 on Memorial Day - they have now lost four games in a row (Box)
RHP Nolan McLean started for the Mets and didn’t have it once again, allowing seven earned runs in 3.1 innings - he has now allowed 13 earned runs in nine innings over his last two starts
Austin Warren, Jonathan Pintaro, and Tobias Myers did combine to throw 5.2 innings of scoreless relief
Bo Bichette had three hits in the loss, and Marcus Semien hit his 4th home run of the season
The Mets are now 14 games out of first place in the NL East and 7.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot
Injury Updates 🏥
OF Juan Soto (illness) was dealing with a fever and was not in the line-up again on Monday
OF Tyrone Taylor was removed from Monday’s game with right hip pain
SS Francisco Lindor (Calf) has started running and doing baseball activities
OF Jared Young (Meniscus tear) could be activated from the IL today
LHP A.J. Minter (recovery from lat surgery) could be activated from the IL as early as today
IF Jorge Polanco (Achilles bursitis) went through a full workout yesterday and could begin a rehab assignment this week
RHP Kodai Senga (Lumbar spine inflammation) threw a bullpen yesterday and should make a rehab start on Thursday
C Francisco Álvarez (torn meniscus) has resumed baseball activities and could beat his original eight week timetable
Play of the Game 🙃
There really wasn’t a singular play in this one that stands out as overly impactful, as this game in its totality was really just a slow, pathetic death for the Mets.
For the sake of this exercise, let’s go with JJ Bleday’s solo home run in the third inning. After surrendering two runs in the 2nd, Nolan McLean retired the first two Reds in the 3rd and appeared on the brink of at least taking some momentum into the dugout. Bleday had other ideas.
Just Mets Podcast 🎙️
In the latest edition of the Just Mets Podcast, Andrew and Rich react to another lost week against the Nationals and Marlins, and take a renewed look on where things stand as May is coming to a close.
SUBSCRIBE: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Down on the Farm 🌾
Eric Wagaman (Triple-A) 2-for-4 2 RBI
Christian Arroyo (Triple-A) 2-for-4
BOX SCORES
Triple-A Syracuse
Today’s Game 🗓
Match-up: Mets (22-32) vs. Reds (28-25)
Where: Citi Field - Flushing, NY
Starters: RHP TBD vs. RHP Chase Burns (6-1, 1.83 ERA)
When: 7:10 PM EDT
Where to Watch: SNY
It’s coming down to nothing more than apathy ✍🏻
What a difference a week makes.
Last Monday, the Mets completed a 16-7 drubbing of the Nationals following a 5-1 homestand to win six out of seven for the first time all season. Unfortunately, they’ve now undone all of that momentum by dropping six of the following seven and now four in a row in meager fashion.
It’s the stereotypical one step forward, two steps backwards for these Mets, or more like one step forward and four steps backwards, who quite literally need to take behemoth leaps forward to dig out of the enormous hole they’ve put themselves into.
And if we’re being honest with ourselves, I’m not sure a single person reading this believes in their heart of hearts this group is capable of such a turnaround. There’s certainly no statistical evidence of it.
Sure, this team is missing a lot of key parts due to injury, but it’s not like any single Met was lighting the world on fire when they went on the shelf.
The problems this team has are endless, but not the least of which being they are insufferably boring and hard to watch. They gave us a brief spurt of entertainment, but just as quickly reverted back into the puddle of disappointment they’ve been for the first two months of the season. It was a short, two-week anomaly, it would seem. This is the norm - lifelessness, lethargy, lackadaisical play.
They’ve scored six runs in their last five games. Their at-bats look rushed, predictable, noncompetitive, and like the entire collective group is pressing.
And that’s the other thing.
Fans feed off of what is going on, and understandably, the boo birds were out in full force yesterday.
The fans are angry, but even worse, they’re getting apathetic.
Obviously, we all love the Mets, right? We want them to do well both for our own emotional and mental health and for the success of this platform that you all so graciously read every morning.
But it’s hard to argue that the current level of indifference among the paying customer is about as high as it’s ever been.
As I’ve talked about before, the problem David Stearns created this winter when he showed so many fan favorites the door is that if your new look vision for the team fails colossally, you don’t have pieces the fans are invested in to keep them engaged.
To put it bluntly, no Mets fan right now is rushing to their tv excited to watch an aging, over-the-hill Marcus Semien play defense at second base (but run prevention!). Nobody is rushing to watch Bo Bichette, who was signed as a short-timer anyway, to continue to flounder at the plate. I’m not even sure people are rushing to watch Juan Soto right now, who is a generationally good and fun to watch, and perhaps the only compelling piece of this catastrophic mess.
After watching Edwin Díaz strike hitters out at a video game-like pace, none of us are overly confident when the bullpen doors open and it’s Devin Williams running in instead.
Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr. didn’t even have a chance to ingratiate themselves to the Flushing faithful before predictably landing on the injured list. And Robert wasn’t exactly the stud he once was when the Mets decided to add him to their list of reclamation projects.
Perhaps the one bit of hope this club was offering was their big pitching prospect, Nolan McLean, every five days, but he has gotten a little lost in this firestorm as well. He is now worth -0.2 bWAR on the year, has a 4.40 ERA, and has been ineffective over his last two starts, allowing four home runs, 13 hits, and 13 earned runs in nine innings during that span.
It’s really depressing just how far things have fallen in such a short order. They are so bad at everything, not good at anything, and every day is generally the same, with the same lost looks on all of their faces, including the manager.
And they offer nothing more than the predictable platitudes before and after each of these robotic games.
Like I said earlier, anger is bad enough. Apathy is worse. And that’s where we’ve ended up.
Around the League 🚩
Tatsuya Imai and three Astros relievers combined to throw the 18th no-hitter in Houston franchise history in a 9-0 win in Texas
LHP Jesus Luzardo went six scoreless innings in the Phillies 3-0 road win in San Diego
Curtis Mead crushed two of the Nationals six home runs on the day as Washington blasted the Guardians 10-2
Anthony Volpe’s go ahead single in the 9th inning propelled the Yankees to a 4-3 win in Kansas City
Pete Alonso contributed three hits in the Baltimore’s wild 9-7 13 inning win over the Rays