Mets Game 149: Loss to Phillies
Phillies 16 Mets 1
Can a blog be speechless?
Mets Game Notes
Frightening: I wrote that opening line BEFORE the ninth inning.
I’ve heard the saying, “the game was over before it started,” but this is the first time it could have been taken literally. The Phillies collected 9 singles, a walk, a hit batter, and 8 runs in the top half of the first frame. Heck, Chase Utley was 2-for-2 with 2 RBI before the third out of the game was recorded.
By the time it was all over, the Phillies battered Mets pitching for 21 hits, including 19 singles. They scored 8 runs in the first and 7 runs in the ninth. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before, except against my high school team in my sophomore year, when we were 4-20.
That reminded me of something: in these blowouts, and especially in those long, awful innings, the player on the field you need to “feel for” the most is the catcher. Catching is tough under normal conditions, but I can assure you that a marathon inning is one of the most brutal duties a catcher has to endure as a baseball player — mentally, emotionally, and physically. If you don’t believe me, rewind the DVR and watch the first inning again, sitting in a squat.
Prior to the game, I read or heard somewhere that Terry Collins announced that Collin McHugh would be ready to enter the game early in chase Jeremy Hefner ran into trouble. I thought, “gee, how could you say that publicly? Not exactly a vote of confidence for your starter.” Clearly, though, Collins knew something we didn’t. Or, maybe it was a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. Either way, it still didn’t make the announcement right. It’s fine if that’s the plan, but keep it to yourself.
In the ninth inning, Domonic Brown showed courtesy and class by sliding very short of second base on a potential DP grounder; the intention was to make certain there was no contact made with the person making the turn. Unbelievably, Ronny Cedeno and Jordany Valdespin not only didn’t turn the DP, but they very nearly blew the force-out — even with Brown finishing his slide a good three feet short of the bag! Cedeno made a terrible flip to Valdespin, who dropped it like a hot potato and then couldn’t pick it up; I thought he might have to step on the ball to make sure it was dead before picking it up. Brown actually had time to get up from his slide and crawl to second, but he seemed to be doing it mercifully slowly so as not to completely embarrass the middle infielders.
That play, along with so many others, made me wonder, “is this what Mets games looked like in 1962?”
After being given an eight-run lead to start the game, Phillies starter Tyler Cloyd walked leadoff batter Fred Lewis. Really? If I were his pitching coach or manager, I might have made a visit to the mound and strangled Cloyd.
However, Cloyd settled down after that and dominated a completely passionless, resigned, and impotent Mets offense. He cruised through eight innings, allowing just three hits and expending a paltry 88 pitches. Charlie Manuel sent in the ball boy for the ninth just to be nice.
The Mets used ten (10) pitchers. TEN!
One of those ten was Josh Edgin, who allowed a grand slam to Ryan Howard in the ninth — the second night in the row he allowed a homer in the ninth to Howard. I hope the Mets backpedal from their decision to make that his last outing of the season; not a great way to finish. Can you imagine the nightmares he’ll have all winter?
By the way, anyone out there still excited about Jeremy Hefner? Anyone still thinking about putting up Terry Collins for Manager of the Year?
I thought there was a point a few weeks back when the Mets hit rock bottom. Obviously I was wrong. Now I’m wondering if there are still depths to fall.
Hapless? Helpless? Hopeless? Which is the best one-word description for this game?
Though we saw dogs on the field in this game, “Bark in the Park” isn’t until Saturday. It’s sold out, by the way.
Speaking of dogs, and in all seriousness, my 12-year-old blind Italian Greyhound is currently recovering from major liver surgery. Please think good thoughts for her. Thank you.
Next Mets Game
The floundering Fish fly into Flushing on Friday for a three-game weekend series. Game one begins at 7:10 p.m. and will see Jonathon Niese facing Jacob Turner.
Bay and a real decent minor leaguer for Al Soriano.
Kind of does make some sense.
You may have not seen this reported in China Daily: “In a surprising development, the New York Mets have decided to play all their home games on the road next year. CitiField will be used as a market for fleas, including one stall featuring the “gently used” bats of the 2012 Mets. The fire in Terry Collins’ eyes will also be put up for sale.”
Good pickup on the China Daily piece. I must have glazed over that story — was it in the financial section or the obituaries? 😉
Best wishes for the pooch. By all means keep her away from Citifield. MLB posted paid attendance last night of 20,010, but it looked more like only family and friends actually attended. Why would anyone in their right mind, no matter how devoted, pay to attend a home game. We can blame the Wilpons, Alderson, Collins, the moon, but paying fans deserve some blame as well. I will never tell anyone how to spend their money, but spending at Citifield makes someone part of the problem.
Yeah I can’t believe the Mets released that attendance number. There couldn’t have been more than 8,000 to 10,000 people there, maybe less.
I do not get the Mets on TV, but I was watching Gameday on mets.com and I watched Familia pitch. I am not sure what to make of what I saw. He throws a fastball in the high 90s. I could not really tell if there was much movement on it. But I noticed it was almost always located low and inside to a right handed batter. Gameday shows the pitches for the entire at bat and I was surprised how many pitches were bunched in the same place. My thinking is that if everyone knows where the pitch will be, they can adjust, step back, and hit it. This seems to be what happened. Is this a problem of command, or is it a pitcher with no real understanding, or even a catcher with the same problem? Familia seems to have promise, but he needs to vary the location more. I realized this was less than an inning (yes, I know, VERY small sample size), so it might just be a bad day, but it is the only time I have really seen Familia. Is there hope here? To be fair, I also noticed the umpire’s strike zone seemed to be off and seemed to vary greatly. Low inside pitches were getting strike calls, but the zone was really small on anything pas the middle of the plate towards the outside. As the inning went on, the low inside pitch stopped getting the strike call.
In the ninth inning of a 10-1 — and then 16-1 — game, I don’t expect to see consistency from the umpire. To me he seemed desperate to call anything close a strike, for the most part.
Familia’s main pitch — and the one with which he seems to have the most confidence — is the sinker. Specifically, a “down and in” sinker, which is what you saw last night. His mechanics are not the best, and as a result his control in the minors has been inconsistent. My guess is that he, Dan Warthen, and Kelly Shoppach just wanted strikes thrown at that point in the game, and chose to go with the one pitch they felt he had the most chance of getting strikes with.
His secondary pitches are OK but he does not have consistent command of them. In fact, he doesn’t have true command of his fastball, either. He’s young, and still a work in progress. His main issue to overcome is finding a more efficient (and safer) delivery, and repeating it.
It looks like the team is now trying to replicate ’62, 50 years later. 7 more years and they can try to recreate ’69, we would hope.
As for the seven-year plan — yeah, that sounds about right.