PHILADELPHIA – The Weather Channel says there will be “plenty of sunshine” on Thursday, with a temperature of 66 degrees with an outside chance of marking 70. Is it raining? Only 6% chance. It will be one of those baseball afternoons that will make you want to channel Ernie Banks if you’re lucky enough to have a ticket:
“Let’s play two.”
If you’re more lucky, the Mets will play a little differently than they did in their final test out of town, a passionate 8-2 loss to the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon, or you could have some other familiar phraseology in the advice of your language.
“We try to overcome the traffic of the Lie,” is one that goes through our minds.
“Can’t anyone play this game here?” is another.
“BOOOOOOOOO !!!” it is an old reliable standby mode.
Okay, okay, okay. These are three games. It’s a series. There are a lot of ball games left, a lot of season, 159 games and more. The 1969 Mets started the season 2-5 and 3-7 and 6-11. The 1986 Mets began their 2-3 season. In early April is to work, set tone, set in season. To check. To check. To check. To check.
You still have to worry a bit about what you saw in those first three games. You still have to wait for the version of the Mets to have home stripes (maybe a black T-shirt back before too long) will start to look substantially different at about 1:10 on Thursday afternoon, when Taijuan Walker contemplates Corey Dickerson of the Marlins and Mets play in front of Citi Field witnesses for the first time in 18 months.
Because it hasn’t been pretty.
Where to start? Well, bullpen misadventures continued on Thursday. The Mets were already standing with their heels dragged down the cliff when Jacob Barnes trotted from David Peterson’s embossed feather. Barnes tried to sneak up quickly in front of JT Realmuto on his first pitch as Met and Realmuto hit one in the general direction of the William Penn building.
Peterson had an unforgettable start to his sophomore year, his ERA for the season sitting at 108.0 four batters in the game. Michael Conforto, supposedly on a contract to reach a nine-figure deal, ran aground nine runners, giving him 16 LOBs in the Mets ’first three games, an almost absurd total. Manager Luis Rojas sat Jeff McNeil down for no good reason.
Aaron Nola, Philly’s ace, asked the Mets to take him out one day when his “C” was barely working.
The Mets said, “No, thank you. We’re fine. “
It was an excavation full of misery and the crowd of 10,807 citizens at Citizens Bank Park were delighted. The Phillies looked like a rematch for most of the spring, they looked like one of the weirdest teams coming out north, but they went through the top of the house 5-1 against the Braves and Mets, the three-time champions. division and the presumed No. 1 challenger.
And don’t think the Phillies didn’t notice this disrespectful pecking order – they threw a double steal up to six runs in the sixth. It allowed them to score a Dellin Betances escape. Betances was the Mets ’sixth unloader of the season; all six races surrendered (Joey Lucchesi finally broke that horrible streak with two clean entries).
All this will accompany the house of the Mets.
At least we know with reasonable assurance that the weather will be pleasant. After a year in which the term “abundance of caution” has been a basic mantra for dealing with the daily role of coronavirus, “abundant sun” is certainly a welcome change of pace.
Now the Mets just have to go along with the script.
“You see resistance, you see guys fighting,” Rojas said, looking in the dark for nice things to say about his team (and really someone with the Mets should show him old Rich Kotite press wheel tapes; it seems like it’s getting into a lot of debt.That’s not good). “I see the guys do the same thing. They always push it.”
Trying is nice. The effort is commendable. But the Mets promised more than we’ve seen so far, in word and deed. Maybe it’s really the product of early April. Maybe they’ll be fine once they get to their routines. Until we see it, these will be questions that will continue to be asked. Out of great caution.