If this game represented a nine-inning referendum on what direction the Mets’ hierarchy should take at the deadline, it turned into a Requiem for the Season.
Yes, of course, there are still 71 games to go overall, and even 14 remaining before MLB’s Aug. 1 trade deadline strikes, but the 6-0 loss to the Dodgers at Citi Field on Friday night seemed for all intents and purposes to end the charade that the Mets might be buyers.
Who could buy that after such a lethargic performance? Both individual players and the collective squad were booed off the field as Brandon Nimmo’s leadoff double stood as the Mets’ only hit while the pitchers issued nine bases on balls, six courtesy of a befuddled (and booed) Justin Verlander.
“Inexcusable,” said Verlander, who walked as many as six in a game for only the third time in a career consisting of 495 starts. “You can’t walk six guys and win a ballgame or give your guys a chance.
“This was not good baseball in any facet.”
The Mets have not played consistent good baseball in many facets (or is that any?) for most of this season, which went wrong even before play began. The image of Edwin Diaz crumpling to the ground near the mound after his postgame celebration of Puerto Rico’s victory over the Dominican Republic in the WBC has covered the season like a shroud.
A year ago, trumpets formed the soundtrack of the Mets’ summer. This year, there are sounds of silence interspersed with cries of discontent. Do you honestly think there is magic lurking around the corner the way there was in 1969 with Donn Clendenon or in 2015 with Yoenis Cespedes?
The Mets, losers of three straight bridging the All-Star break after a six-game winning streak sparked hope in their beating hearts, are barely on the periphery of the wild-card race at 42-49, eight games out of a playoff berth with five teams to hurdle in order to get there.
Verlander walked three in the first three innings, then walked the bases loaded with one out in the fifth. He had not allowed a hit up until that point. But Mookie Betts followed with a run-scoring single, Freddie Freeman drove in two more with a double and the 3-0 score might as well have been mistaken for “30,” the traditional journalistic indication for the end of the story.
Because that is all they wrote, other than the three more runs tacked on by the Dodgers and three more free passes issued by Mets relief pitchers. This was a 2:48 exercise in tedium. This was Peoples’ Exhibit A in why owner Steve Cohen and general manager Billy Eppler need to divest and begin laying a platform for 2024 rather than hoping for bolts of lightning to strike the way they did during the six-game winning streak.
“You don’t look at a week. Honor what’s happened recently, but you look at the season as a whole,” Eppler said in a pregame press briefing. “Look at the track record and what the projections were and look to see if those projections been updated.”
(He also said, “It’s nice to see us play well, but we have more work to do,” but again, that was before the game.)
It is a very long and very forgiving season. We all know that. The Phillies came from nowhere to win the NL pennant last year (after replacing manager Joe Girardi with Rob Thomson). The Braves came from miles outside the southern border to win the World Series two years ago.
You’d better believe there were the Mets of 1973 and before that, the Mets of 1969, who were a full 10 games out of first place on Aug. 13. There were the Giants of 1951 who eschewed the use of trash cans and instead settled on a sign-stealing relay system that originated from the center-field clubhouse.
But these are the exceptions. And one comes away with the idea that Cohen did not make his fortune hoping for miracles.
Friday night: Jeff McNeill, 0-for-3, down to .251 after he led the NL with a .326 batting average a year ago; Starling Marte, 0-for-2; Pete Alonso, 0-for-3 and now 11-for-78 (.141) with four homers and 12 RBIs in 21 games since returning from his wrist injury on June 18; Francisco Lindor, 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and booed Friday.
The players seem to understand the lay of the land. They are being realistic about it when asked about the onrushing deadline. They say, appropriately, it is not their call and their job is to play.
But the way they have played — and are playing — is making the call easy for the decision-makers. The Mets must go into the market dedicated to getting as much as they possibly can for their assets, including David Robertson, Adam Ottavino, Brooks Raley, Marte, Mark Canha, Tommy Pham and perhaps even Verlander and Max Scherzer, if there is interest in 40-year-old and soon-to-be 39-year-old starting pitchers.
The baseball season consists of 162 games. The one Friday seemed like it counted as more than just one of them.
