Mets' Season Defined

It's been a while since I posted anything about the Mets. The team currently sits in the midst of a 4-game losing streak after being swept out of LA by a red-hot Dodgers team. They are getting ready to play the Red Sox in Boston tonight. The Mets stand at 3-4 on the current 10-game road trip to San Fran, LA, and Boston.

The beginning of the trip saw the team take 3 games against the Giants with a lot of come from behind fights. The offense was still clicking at that point, so it kept everyone from noticing how our defense was still subpar, as it has been all season. Fans were very quick to compare this road trip to a similar trip to the west coast back in 2006, where we went 9-1 against some tough competition and that set the tone for the rest of the season. It was early June and we took 2 of 3 in LA, swept 4 games in Arizona, then came back east and swept 3 games in Philadelphia. That went on to be a dominant year for us, but we all remember how that ended.

This year is different, and that's why it was very premature to start declaring this current trip as 'season defining'. Sometimes I'm amazed at just how delusional Mets fans allow themselves to be. We have seen, during the past three years, just how hot and cold our offense has been. One week we'll score 40 runs and thrash our opposition, then the next week we'll be lucky to squeak out 15 runs. Our hitters have a history of getting hot or cold seemingly at the flip of a switch. Our starting rotation has been steadily improving, even with Oliver Perez on the DL with a broken brain, and the bullpen has weathered Sean "look at me, I'm Aaron Heilman!" Green. So, other than the offense's drastic inconsistency, our major problem hasn't been the pitching... it has been the defense. Only being behind the Nationals for the most errors in the NL is absolutely unacceptable! You don't win games where you hand the opposition 3 or 4 extra outs. Johan Santana has allowed 8 earned runs and 6 unearned runs!! That's absurd. The two losses he has on his record were both 1-0 games where he allowed 1 unearned run because of our slop-tastic defense.

The hitting and defense in the current road trip have been absolutely dreadful. The defense has been even worse than normal due to the fact that we're playing so many players out of position due to injuries. Why Jerry Manuel refused to play Murphy at first base (he's an infielder by trade not a left fielder), played Jeremy Reed at first base (an outfielder by trade) and Ramon Martinez at shortstop (he's just terrible all around) is beyond me. I know we can't help all the injuries that happen, but it wouldn't kill us to have some intelligent roster management.

So, if you were calling this road trip 'season defining' last weekend, you were right but for the wrong reasons... Sloppy defense and streaky offense have definitely defined our season so far, and it doesn't look like things will be getting any better as our players keep dropping like flies.

Another tough year as a Mets fan.... Let's hope we don't get squashed like bugs in Boston.