The Great Met Collapse ‘08 Edition? Do I Hear Wild Card?

Agonizing.  Excruciating.  Tortuous.  Humiliating.  Ah, yes, sadly, its time to dust off my thesaurus once again this year to search for new words to describe what its like suffering through the Met collapse.  The moment they hit the mark of 17 games remaining in the season, the Mets were flooded with media comparisons to last year, when with 17 games left they blew a 7 game lead to the Phillies.  This year, the Amazins had a 3.5 game bulge over the Cheesesteaks with 17 to play, and the lead vanished even more quickly.  Despite a new manager, and the team’s insistence on change, it is really starting to resemble ‘07.  Just as it happened in 2007, what started with a painful string of blown leads and bullpen meltdowns has spread to the offense, which suddenly tightened up and now has gone into complete hibernation.

Tonight’s 1-0 loss to the Nationals was certainly tough to swallow.  And it had nothing to do with the much maligned Mets bullpen (Aaron Heilman was nowhere to be found, nor was Luis Ayala to blame).  Mike Pelfrey pitched great, only allowing one run, but the Nats Odalis Perez pitched that much better.  Shockingly, Perez and Jon Lannan last week at Shea started two games in which the Mets offense totaled 23 runs - last night Lannan allowed only one hit through seven (in a 7-2 Nat win), and tonight Perez stymies and shuts out the Mets through 7 1/3.

The hardest thing to watch was the tightness on the part of the Mets hitters, who were over-eager and out of control all game.  The 3-4-5 hitters (Wright, Beltran and Delgado) went 0-for-11 last night and 1-for-12 tonight.  Watching Wright get blown away by a Joel Hanrahan fastball and strike out to open the ninth was deflating.  Ryan Church had two big strikeouts, including in the eighth inning with a runner on third, a rare scoring opportunity.  To make matters worse, that eighth inning contained a couple of tough mistakes by Met subs.  Pinch hitter Ramon Martinez failed to make it to third on a hit-and-run play where pinch hitter Robinson Cancel singled…what is the point of putting in a fast runner and calling for the hit and run when he boneheadedly can’t make it to third?!?  Argh.  And on the very next at bat, Cancel failed to slide into second on Nat pitcher Mike Hinckley’s high and wild throw after scooping a Jose Reyes chopper.  A slide and he might have been safe.  I know we have like 50 guys on our team now with the expanded roster, but how does that help when we get burned by their inexperience and lack of poise?

Another cold Met hitter who is not helping matters is Jose Reyes.  His .216 average in September ‘08 is eerily similar to his .205 average from September ‘07.  As I’ve said before, Reyes succeeds when the attention is off him, and he feeds off the productivity of the rest of the team.  So don’t look to him to get things going.

And Delgado?  MVP?  Unless that award stands for Mostly Vomit Producing I don’t think he can win.  He can’t hit anything over the last few games.

To add injury to insult, I’ve just learned leftfielder and comeback hitting star Fernando Tatis is lost for the season to a separated shoulder.  But as tight as the veterans have been hitting, a little more Nick Evans and Daniel Murphy might actually be a good thing.

These two crushing losses in Washington were preceded by two incredibly [insert negative adjective here] losses at home to the Braves.  On Saturday, in game one of a doubleheader, the Mets lost 3-2 on some very bad bounces, and with a pronounced lack of offense.  A 2-0 lead that was earned by Johan Santana, who gutted out 7+ innings despite not having his best stuff, disappeared in a puff of smoke.  Scott Schoeneweis was brought in and got the ground ball he was looking for from Casey Kotchman, the one hitter he faced.  But wouldn’t you know it, it was a 27-hopper seeing-eye single that loaded the bases with none out.  In comes Brian Stokes, who successfully jams Jeff Francouer, but again his dribbler finds a hole up the middle, and two runs score.  The bad luck on these plays really emphasizes that the bullpen was not in fact to blame.  Again the Mets crappy hitting was much more to blame, just look at Damion Easley, who hit into a rally killing double play with no outs and the bases juiced in the sixth.

The second game of the doubleheader Saturday was a 5-0 Met victory on a great MLB debut from the rookie callup Jonathan Niese.  But on Sunday it was more degradation for the Mets, this time a legit bullpen meltdown capped by a Greg Norton pinch hit 3-run homer (off Ayala), which erased a 4-2 9th inning Met lead 

As I’m writing this, the Braves have severely disappointed me in their efforts to be an equal opportunity spoiler.  The Phillies have come back to an 8-7 victory on some Ryan Howard heroics.  While the Mets have looked totally lifeless and emotionally dead, the Phillies keep coming with more and more emotion, and it kills me to say that.

Jose Reyes, in a postgame segment, said the Mets have to “give credit” to Odalis Perez for his dominant performance tonight, and it was somewhat amusing to hear SNY’s Marc Malusis go totally balistic on hearing that soundbyte.   Perez after all had an ERA over 7 over his last seven starts!

The Mets now have to face the label of The Biggest Game of the Season every time out.  And to put even more pressure on the dormant offense, tommorow the Mets starting pitcher is [how funny is the faint praise of this introduction] Olympic Bronze medalist Brandon Knight. 

The one difference compared to last year is the wild card chase, which the Mets now actually lead.  Houston lost tonight 5-1 and have completely stopped hitting since Hurricane Ike blew into their lives.  And Milwaukee, who of course just fired their manager, are on the verge of losing for the first time this season in a CC Sabathia start.  Could the wild card chase represent a chance at Met redemption or just another disappointment?  Stay tuned as I research more adjectives to desribe the answer.

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