General

#This game wasn’t normal, and that was a good thing for Mets

#This game wasn’t normal, and that was a good thing for Mets

July 18, 2020 | 11:52pm

The Mets got good and hammered Saturday night at Citi Field, the Yankees handing them a 9-3 loss thanks in large part to a ninth inning that looked an awful lot like the fever dreams that haunted their fans most of last year.

It was exactly the kind of game we’ve seen at Citi Field the past 12 years, and at Shea Stadium for so many years before it, that would elicit the overpowering woe-is-me and woe-are-us reactions that have come to be as essential a part of the franchise soundtrack as “Meet the Mets.”

Only a funny thing happened.

Nobody booed. The veil of dread that sits in storage alongside the batting cages and the tarpaulin wasn’t unwrapped. There was nobody to boo. There was nobody to drag the doom around. And suddenly, we may have discovered the true upside for the Mets — and, sure, the Yankees, whose own fans can get a little ornery with little provocation — that will exist all across this odd, strange, surreal season.

There is no dread to be had.

This is a good thing for a number of people. Rick Porcello, for instance, who was actually quite effective across five innings of work but hung a slider to Clint Frazier that the Yankees’ Masked Marauder clobbered into the second deck. On a normal Saturday night the moment Frazier’s missile landed in the seats to give the Yankees a lead, that would’ve been the start of the growling and the griping. Maybe Porcello thinks Fenway Park was a rough room; he has no idea.

Pete Alonso and the Mets played in front of cardboard cutout fans, but that may have been a break for them after Saturday night's ugly exhibition loss to the Yankees.
Pete Alonso and the Mets played in front of cardboard cutout fans, but that may have been a break for them after Saturday night’s ugly exhibition loss to the Yankees.N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg

And he still has no idea.

“Once I got locked into the game,” Porcello said, “it was pretty normal.”

That’s so adorable because there was nothing normal about it. The ninth inning was a perfect example of that. One of the most important aspects of the Mets’ fortunes this year will be how the bullpen performs, because there is the chance that group could be as good and as deep as any in the league. But as we learned time and again last year, a lot can impact that, not always bad pitching.

Jeurys Familia pitched well but allowed a run thanks mostly to a temporary third baseman named Max Moroff who seemed determined to decapitate one of the cardboard cutout fans behind first base. Dellin Betances pitched a clean inning but was helped by a nice defensive play by Pete Alonso after a wild pickoff throw, and allowed a few hard-hit balls. Both of those things would have normally turned the anxiety level at She’s to red levels.

Then there was Edwin Diaz. We tend to forget that, though Diaz wasn’t very good for long stretches of last year and saw a preposterous number of the fly balls he allowed leave the fence (27 percent, to be exact), he also pitched in a lot of bad luck. For one, he was throwing a ball that was clearly juiced. For another, he had an inordinate number of dinks and dunks that helped set him up for one failure after another.

Diaz had a ninth inning that looked an awful lot like one from July 2019: a soft grounder that was booted by Luis Guillorme. A soft fly ball that fell amid a gaggle of Mets. And a strikeout, that led to Luis Rojas coming to get him. It was only after he left that Daniel Zamora let the floodgates opened, but that wall of shame back to the dugout would’ve been some kind of ugly, and of course Zamora would’ve had to enter witness protection before he ever reached the dugout.

In normal times.

But these are not normal times.

These are times that will allow the illusion of patience; for a full year (or at least 60 games worth) the Mets (and the Yankees, if they have a similarly folly-filled night ahead) will find out what it’s like to play in St. Louis or Kansas City, hyper-polite fan bases who would sooner wear a New York cap at the ballpark than ever boo one of their favored sons. Assuming the players stay off talk radio and steer clear of the occasional newspaper screed, they might actually experience the most neighborly season they’ve played since the Cape Cod League.

It’s almost too weird to believe.

But then, what isn’t these days? Everything is weird. Everything is strange. Everything is a different kind of experience. The Mets walked off the feel after getting shellacked by their crosstown rivals and that’s supposed to invite a chorus of sadness and scorn they can hear out by the Montauk lighthouse. Not now. Not this year. Better luck next time, boys! Go get ’em!

Now who wants to go to Carvel?

If you want to read more Sports News articles, you can visit our General category.

if you want to watch Movies or Tv Shows go to Dizi.BuradaBiliyorum.Com for forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com

Source

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button
Close

Please allow ads on our site

Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker!