Blogging Mets

Wednesday’s final game of the season may have also been Jose Reyes’s final game in a Mets uniform. The fans who showed up at Citi Field were likely planning on giving him a standing ovation every time he came to the plate in an effort to show their love and persuade him to stay. People watching on television were hoping to enjoy what could be his final Mets moments. We never even got a chance.

Reyes led off the bottom of the first with a bunt single, then suddenly jogged off the field and into the dugout (below). In stunning fashion his game was over, his season was over, perhaps his Mets career was over.

The hit raised his NL-leading average to .337, meaning Ryan Braun will have to go 3-3 or 3-4 tonight to top him for the batting crown. So Reyes will likely win the batting title, but in shameful fashion.

If it were anybody but a Mets player, I would be praying that Braun has the best  night of his career and snatches the crown. But of course I cannot.

I don’t know whose decision it was for him to come out of the game, Reyes or Terry Collins. I don’t know if Reyes’s tender hamstring felt a little funny and he was just protecting his career and impending free agency. Whatever the reason, I don’t like it. Stay on the field and play, and earn your batting title like a man.

Otherwise, it was a good final game. The Mets won 3-0 on a two-hit shutout by Miguel Batista. But the Reyes thing just left a bad taste in my mouth.

My greatest fear (well, not my greatest fear — cough cough, marriage) is that a Mets pitcher would throw a no-hitter on a Saturday when a Fox Game of the Week preempts the game here in sunny Los Angeles. It hasn’t happened yet obviously, but I had a bit of a panic attack that I would miss the Mets first-ever such feat on Saturday thanks to stupid Time Warner Cable.

I was peacefully watching the game on my Extra Innings package when the cable and Internet went out in the second inning. When they didn’t come back on, I called Time Warner and the friendly operator told me there was an outage in my area. Check back in a couple of hours. Thanks a lot.

I hung up and checked the score on my phone. R.A. Dickey had a no-hitter in the fifth inning! I monitored a hitless sixth, then I had a decision to make — wait for the cable to come back or Dickey to allow a hit, or brush my teeth (it was still morning, after all) and run out to my local sports bar. I chose the latter.

Of course by the time I got there in the top of the seventh and the bartender turned off a college football games and found the Mets game, Dickey had surrendered a hit and a run. I stuck around and sipped an orange juice (it was still morning, after all), and watched the Mets come back and beat the Phillies 2-1.

A Mets pitcher will throw a no-hitter one of these days. I don’t know about you, but that is a game I do not want to miss. It would be a shame if I missed it because of contractual obligations to Fox or because Time Warner cannot get its act together.

Explain to me again why D.J. Carrasco is anywhere near the pitchers mound during a regular season baseball game, let alone when the game is on the line? The awful seventh inning in which the Mets blew Tuesday night’s game to the Cardinals was not all his fault, but he delivered the pitch that broke the game open.

The Mets jumped out to an early 4-0 lead, determined to play the spoiler role to the hilt. But Mike Pelfrey wanted no part of that and in the bottom of the third promptly gave back the three runs the Mets scored in the top of the inning.

The Mets took a 5-3 lead in the fifth, but once again Pelfrey didn’t know what to do with the lead and allowed the Cardinals to tie the score in the bottom of the fifth. The Mets took a 6-5 lead in the seventh when Angel Pagan drew a bases loaded walk. David Wright could have done some damage but he followed with a strikeout to end the inning.

Now to the bottom of the seventh: Josh Stinson got the first two outs, but then gave up two singles and a walk to load the bases. Tim Byrdak, he of the new contract extension for 2012, came on and gave up a double that gave the Cards a 7-6 lead. An intentional walk loaded the bases, and then Terry Collins thought it was a good idea to bring in Carrasco (yeah, that’s him, left). Bad idea because he gave up a bases-clearing triple to pinch-hitting rookie Adron Chambers — doing what Wright could not do. Did I mention Chambers had all of three previous at bats in his major league career? Carrasco was allowed to pitch even more and of course he let up a single that scored Chambers. He did get the last out, but not before a 6-5 lead evaporated into an 11-6 deficit.

And that’s how it ended. As I said, the inning was not all his fault, but Carrasco is absolutely useless. Why he is still pitching in key situations is beyond me.

Maybe Terry Collins should have insulted his team sooner. A day after he said the Mets have “folded it up,” the team responded with an 11-run onslaught against the Braves, in the chamber of horrors called Turner Field, no less.

The Mets exploded for four runs in the first inning, two of them courtesy of a David Wright home run. After scoring two runs in the third the Mets added four more in the fourth — Wright again with the big blow, a three-run shot (below). They went on to win 12-2.

It came after Collins unleashed on his team  in his post-game news conference following the embarrassing 10-1 loss to the Nationals on Thursday, saying in part, “Perception is reality in our game and the perception I have right now is we’ve folded it up… You come and play the game right. I don’t care what the situation is. I don’t care about anything but playing the game correctly. That’s all I care about.”

On Friday Collins clarified his statement, saying it is all about execution, not about effort.

“I watch them work on the field. So it’s not the effort side. We just haven’t been executing at all… They were as frustrated as I was. Make no mistake about it, these guys are proud. And nobody likes to play as bad as we played certainly in the last homestand.”

The Mets finally showed some pride, pounding out 20 hits against Braves pitching. Lucas Duda had four hits. Jose Reyes had three hits, raising his league-leading average to .334 to give him a four point lead over Ryan Braun. Wright, Nick Evans and Josh Thole also had three hits each.

So the six-game losing streak is over. Let’s hope this impressive win sparks a nice run to end the season on a positive note.

Last year the Mets lost a four-game series to the Marlins in Florida that I said was the worst series the Mets had ever played. Well, on Thursday the Nationals completed a four-game sweep of the Mets at soggy Citi Field, perhaps their worst home series ever.

They lost by scores of 3-2, 3-2, 2-0 and 10-1. That’s five runs in four games for you math majors. Aside from Tuesday’s 11-hit explosion (most of them left on base), the Mets manged just three, four and seven hits in the other games. And they didn’t even have to face Stephen Strasburg!

David Wright committed 37 errors in the four games. Actually, he’s had eight in his last ten games.

It could have been the worst homestand ever had the Mets not taken one game from the Cubs. Otherwise it was an awful 1-8 visit to spacious Citi Field, ending on a six-game losing streak.

Gone are the dreams of finishing .500. Now all we can hope is that they can stay out of the cellar. The Nationals have already overtaken them for third place in the NL East, and now the Mets sit just three and a half games ahead of the last place Marlins. No way the Marlins leapfrog them.

Right?

I hate to say this, but the Mets goal of reaching .500 this season will remain elusive. With the Mets dropping Monday’s game to the Nationals 3-2, they would have to go 10-5 the rest of the way to reach mediocrity. Is there anyone out there who thinks they can do that, considering how poorly they’ve been playing lately?

Once again R.A. Dickey was done in by poor offensive support, as well as some shoddy defense. The Mets did score two runs, but they managed just three hits. An error by David Wright (above, his fourth in the past three games) led to the first run. The other two were earned as Dickey’s ERA dropped to a fine 3.43 despite a poor 8-12 record.

*****

Gary Cohen was in rare form on Monday, lambasting Major League Baseball for not allowing the Mets to wear FDNY, NYPD and other hats in honor of first responders on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Cohen, who rarely gives his opinions during games, correctly pointed out that MLB’s quest for consistency throughout the league should be thrown out because New York’s experience on 9/11 was like no other city in the country.

He was also critical of MLB suits for forcing Joe Torre to issue the edict, saying Torre is a lifelong New Yorker who “knows better” than to ban the caps. He called this “shameful.”

Well said, Gary.

*****

Speaking of the hats, Dickey revealed that MLB had the nerve to confiscate them from the Mets to make sure they didn’t wear them. Dickey tweeted:

For all those upset that we didn’t wear the hats, I understand your anger. However, they physically took them from us after the ceremony.

Writing to a user who said Wright was spotted in the dugout during the game wearing one, Dickey said:

not after the 4th inning when they came in the dugout and took it.

He also said there was a plot to disobey the idiotic MLB rule:

We had conspired to wear them but we got found out and MLB got involved.

Bud Selig is a jerk, plain and simple.

So who’s to blame for Saturday’s 5-4 loss to the Cubs? Jose Reyes? Bobby Parnell? Ryota Igarashi? Terry Collins? I’m going to go with Collins on this one. I’ll explain in a moment.

But first, let’s take a look at the other suspects. The Cubs scored their first two runs courtesy of errors by Jose Reyes. In the first Reyes could not handle a liner and an unearned run scored. In the fifth he bobbled a potential double play ball that would have gotten the Mets out of the inning. Instead a run scored. The run was ultimately earned, however had Reyes cleaned the ball cleanly they might have turned the double play.

Reyes made up for the errors with a run-scoring double in the eighth, one of four runs the Mets scored in the inning as they took a 4-3 lead. So while Reyes made early mistakes, he is not responsible for the loss and what happened later.

It’s easy and obvious to blame Parnell. He came on in the ninth to protect a one-run lead and once again he failed to do so. The leadoff batter reached first on an error by David Wright (his second error of the game. Another suspect?). Parnell then allowed a double to make it second and third. Parnell got the next two batters out, but then Aramis Ramirez singled to score the tying and eventual winning run. So while certainly Parnell can be blamed, the error helped do him in.

No, I’m going to go back to the top of the eighth to assign blame here, when Terry Collins thought it was a good idea to bring Igarashi into the game with the Mets trailing 2-0. Igarashi got the first two outs, but then allowed back-to-back doubles as the Cubs made it 3-0. Of course he did — he is horrible.

Igarashi with fellow dog D.J. Carrasco (right). That’s Josh Stinton on the left. He can actually pitch.

Why is Igarashi still pitching for the Mets? He has proven he is utterly useless. Plus, his contract runs out after this season so he will not be on the team next year. So why bother with him, especially now that the Mets are carrying ten relievers? Nothing can be gained by using him. I sort of understand using D.J. Carrasco — he is signed for next year and it would be nice to rehabilitate him so he could contribute (I would just release him now and eat the money, but that’s me).

But Igarashi has no business being in the mound. For that I blame Collins. Who knows what would have happened, but if it were 4-2 in the ninth instead of 4-3, maybe Parnell would have been a bit more relaxed. Even if he still let up the two runs, that would have made it 4-4 and perhaps they’d still be playing. It’s impossible to say, but what is not impossible to say is that Igarashi should never have been in the game, and you can only blame Collins for that.

The Mets beat the Cubs 5-4 with a run in the bottom of the ninth Friday night. But the big question emerging from the game — has Manny Acosta taken over the closer role from Bobby Parnell?

Early on it looked like it was going to be another of those Mike Pelfrey nights. He walked two to load the bases in the first inning but managed to get out of it. Then he left gave up a towering two-run homer in the third to Carlos Pena and another run in the fourth to dig a 3-0 hole. But he settled down from there, allowing just the three runs through 6.2 innings.

The Mets tied the game in the bottom of the fourth — two runs scored on ground outs, the other on a Jason Bay double, his second of the game. The suddenly rejuvenated Bay has an eight-game hitting streak, during which time he raised his average from .230 to .244.

They took the 4-3 lead in the following inning when Justin Turner doubled to shallow right.

Now to the bullpen drama. Parnell, who has struggled as the closer, was called upon to get the final out of the eighth inning. He did so, but not before walking a batter. Instead of allowing him to go for the four-out save, Terry Collins brought in Acosta in the ninth. Acosta got his first save of the season on Wednesday, a day after Parnell blew the save opportunity in that 12 inning game against the Marlins. I just wonder if Collins has more faith in Acosta than Parnell at this point.

However, it didn’t work. Acosta gave up a walk and two hits as the Cubs tied the game at four.

But then in the bottom of the ninth, Jason Pridie (pinch running for Nick Evans who singled to lead off the inning) on second, two outs, the Cub elected to walk Jose Reyes to face Turner. It was the right move, but it backfired as Turner launched a ball to the warning track in center. Turner was credited with a single as Pridie scampered around to score. Mets win 5-4.

But who’s the closer?

Well, that was a waste of seven hours — the Mets dropped a doubleheader to the Braves on Thursday. On the plus side, it looks like Jason Bay may have remembered how to hit.

Game one saw the major league debut of Chris Schwinden. It was not one to remember. He allowed three runs in his first inning and five overall in five innings of work.

The Mets actually took the lead in the bottom of the first when Bay hit a grand slam (below). He went three-for-seven with five RBIs in the two games. He has three homers and nine RBIs in his last seven games.

However Schwinden gave the lead back in the third and the Mets would eventually lose 6-5.

Dillon Gee took the mound for the Mets in game two. He pitched reasonably well despite suffering the 5-1 loss — six innings, three runs (two earned) and six strikeouts. Gee has struggled of late; hopefully he can close out his rookie season on a strong note.

Offensively, not much to talk about. Jose Reyes had a hit in each game (in the first game as a pinch-hitter), so his average sits at .335, five points ahead of Ryan Braun for the National League lead. It would be really nice for Reyes to win the batting title — the only win of the season for the Mets!

So the Mets are now 70-73. They host the Cubs next. I predict they will be at .500 when the weekend is over. It’s not that the Mets are that good — the Cubs are that terrible.

How do you think R.A. Dickey felt coming out of Wednesday’s game against the Marlins, turning a 1-0 game over to the Mets porous bullpen? Pretty nervous. But fortunately Bobby Parnell was nowhere in sight.

Dickey and his knuckler dazzled through seven shutout innings, allowing just four hits. I really thought he would finish the game himself, however Terry Collins lifted him after the seventh.

Instead of the Isringhausen-Parnell combo which has not been the most reliable of late, Collins called on newcomer Josh Stinson and Manny Acosta to close out the game. In his fourth appearance Stinson was excellent once again, then Acosta pitched a perfect ninth for his first save of the season (below).

Lucas Duda provided all of the necessary offense with an RBI double in the first inning.

Now the Mets go home to face the Braves in a doubleheader on Thursday that are make-up games from the ones washed out by Hurricane Irene. Then they play a weekend set with the lousy Cubs. Hopefully the 70-71 Mets will come out of the weekend as a .500 team or better. Didn’t I saw that about last weekend?