As so often seems to happen over weekends in the summertime, when it came to the Mets, I missed all of this past weekend’s fun and had to settle for the scraps. And these were some very wind-blown scraps, let me tell you. Thanks to my deeply held religious convictions – no, I’m talking about the ones that don’t concern not walking the leadoff man, or stealing when behind more than a run in the late innings – I didn’t experience Friday night’s he-ROD-ics until early on Saturday morning, and only via a few columns of newsprint in the Times. The Mets did their best to make it up to me by staging an encore on Saturday (albeit via the understudy), but again, becuase the show went on before the stars came out, I had to settle for the official Mets post-game alert e-mail on Saturday night, followed by a quick visit to Mets.com for the highlight clips.
Mother’s Day is not a great day to try watching the Mets game, unless your wife is a baseball fan, I suppose. Mine is not, so I didn’t really expect to catch too much of the game. I was pleasantly surprised, then, when it looked like I was going to catch a good portion of yesterday’s game thanks to a late change in plans.
As you can imagine, I was not pleasantly surprised for long.
Oliver Perez appears to be getting worse, not better. With another guy out there, I might be willing to chalk some of his line up to the conditions, but I have a nagging suspicion that Opie’s line yesterday might not have been too different even if it was 72 and calm. Three innings, seven walks and a hit batter? Come on.
Also, Wright just has to be better. Four Ks?!?! A couple of years ago, this was a guy whose ABs did not start until there were two strikes. Now, once he gets behind in the count, you expect him to whiff. I don’t understand it. I was less baffled by the power outage last year than I am about the enormous strikeout rate.
Putting all that aside, there was certainly a good dose of silver lining yesterday. The team spit the bit against Lincecum in the first, and then fell behind 4-0 a few innings later. But instead of packing it in like they would have done last year, they stayed in the game and actually came all the way back. Yes, we all saw the help they got from the Giants and the weather, but it is what it is. No, Bay’s “2 for 4″ did not exactly inspire confidence, but as they say, those hits were line drives in the book. I am still not concerned about him. In fact, I’m convinced that when he finally breaks out, he is going to be scorching hot for an extended period. It’s the law of averages.
Hate to see Mejia suffer the loss there. No one on the planet – including Aaron Rowand – thought that ball was going out, especially as it was hit to right-center. He found the right spot in the wind tunnel at the right time. Unfortunately, it happens.
Here’s to a bounce-back win tonight, when yours truly will be in attendance thanks to the good folks at Veritext court reporting services.
