The now 27-30 New York Mets are regularly finding entertaining new ways to be bad, and they showed off a couple of those in a 2-0 loss to the Chicago Cubs Sunday. The game was scoreless heading into the top of the seventh, with starter Steven Matz still in the game for the Mets, and Cubs’ infielder Javier Baez (who made 11 defensive positional changes in this one) started off the inning with a single on a ground ball to center field. Catcher Willson Contreras then singled on a liner to center, sending Baez to third. And Matz then threw over to first to try and hold Contreras on, leading to Baez taking off and stealing home and Contreras taking second as the Mets threw to the plate:
Ian Happ then struck out, but Kyle Schwarber singled on a ground ball to second baseman Luis Guillorme, which led to Contreras taking third. And then Ben Zobrist hit a blooper that Guillorme backpedaled for and awkwardly took himself instead of letting right fielder Jay Bruce catch it. That meant Guillorme wasn’t ready to throw home, so Contreras scored on a sac fly to the second baseman, as seen in the photo at top and the clip below:
https://twitter.com/MichaelMontanti/status/1003349293141516288
That only went 203 feet, not your usual scoring play. And to add insult to injury, the not-so-fleet-of-foot Schwarber then swiped second:
https://twitter.com/lindseyadler/status/1003349019568033792
As Adler noted, that’s part of a larger problem with this team:
https://twitter.com/lindseyadler/status/1003350411036815360
And Twitter was unimpressed with the Mets’ overall Metsing:
https://twitter.com/matt_barone/status/1003349876929978369
Indeed, this is bringing up memories of the great Jimmy Breslin book with that Stengel quotation as its title, about the woeful expansion Mets back in 1962. 56 years later, it’s still pretty applicable. In fact, Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic Chicago noted that a local cabbie tried to dissuade him from a trip to Citi Field Sunday:
Even New York’s Sports Pope was not impressed with the overall Metsing on display Sunday:
And neither were the children:
If we need further insight into the state of this franchise, the tweets SNY Mets’ analyst Keith Hernandez sent before yesterday’s loss are quite something:
Should we point out that the Mets somehow lost 7-1 in 14 innings last night? And that they weren’t even able to get a promotion right this weekend?
Nah. That would be piling on.
[MLB.com]