“Expletive Deleted Night” at Shea

The Mets are on life support after an emotionless and spirit-crushing loss at Shea to the Marlins last night, 6-1.  I have to credit SNY’s Ron Darling for his sense of humor in supplying the headline above as the camera crew showed yet another dismayed and disgruntled fan in the stands.  The Mets displayed bad hitting, bad pitching and bad defense last night, but other than those three areas played fine!  The fact that the spoiler Marlins came with a lot of emotion, aggressive and ready to play, while the Mets were lost and ineffective, was just appalling. 

Hanley Ramirez burst out of the gate with a single on the first pitch past a snoozing Carlos Delgado, who looked like he wanted to request a do-over.  By the second pitch, Ramirez had stolen second and by the fourth pitch he was trotting home on a Scott Baker single.  And the Marlins never looked back, getting all the runs they would need off Met starter Mike Pelfrey (who finishes 0-5 against Florida this season) in the first inning, after a Dan Uggla groundout made it 2-0. The Mets offense allowed chance after chance slip through their fingers.  They had runners on first and second with one out in the first, second and third innings, as Ryan Church, Jose Reyes and Daniel Murphy took turns failing to drive runners in.

And not that it ended up mattering, but Murphy also added some poor fielding to the mix.  In the seventh, Murphy, a converted infielder, failed to dive for a shallow bloop off the bat of Ramirez that he perhaps could have caught with maximum effort.  Instead Murphy chose to attempt to deke the runner on second, Brett Carroll, into thinking he would catch the ball easily, so that Carroll would freeze.  Only Murphy ended up booting the ball, and as it drifted past him, Carroll was able to cruise around third and score.  It was an  amateurish and poorly executed attempt at trickery.  This play made it 4-1 Marlins, and again, probably didn’t influence the outcome, but sure was some ugly symbolism of the Mets poor play.

I really like Jerry Manuel, but I can’t understand how the Amazins were not mentally ready to play last night, and I believe that last night clouds the managerial position in 2009.

As the Phillies and Brewers won easily, the Mets today have to pray for help.  Or rain, or something… And in a desperate move, the Mets move Johan Santana up to start today against the Marlins on short rest.

The Mets began the final weekend at Shea with some nice ceremonies to bid farewell to the old ballpark, including having Tom Seaver, Mike Piazza, Darryl Strawberry and others out on the field before the game.  There was a tribute to the best moment in the history of Shea, as voted by fans, which of course was the ball getting through Bill Buckner’s legs in the 1986 World Series.  I’m left wondering if the Mets are plagued by The Curse of Buckner, in which they sold their souls in exchange for that game-winning error, and thereby doomed themselves to never win the championship at Shea again.  Barring a miracle, it will be time to tear Shea down and hope that better memories can be created in the new ballpark.  But of course I still believe, after all, “ya gotta!”  So I’ll be back to report on said miracle soon.

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