PHILADELPHIA – The Weather Channel says there will be “abundant sunshine” on Thursday, and the temperature is 66 degrees with an outside chance of getting 70. Rain? Just a 6 percent chance. It’s going to 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 lucky, the Mets will play a little differently than in their last trial out of town, a listless 8-2 defeat to the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon, or else you might have another familiar phraseology on the point. of your tongue.
‘Let’s try to beat the traffic on the LOVE’, is the one that comes to mind.
“Can’t anyone here play this game?” is another.
“BOOOOOOOOO !!!” is a reliable old assistant.
OK, OK, OK. These are three games. This is a series. There is still a lot of ball game left, a lot of season, 159 games and counting. The 1969 Mets started their season 2-5 and 3-7 and 6-11. The 1986 Mets started their season 2-3. Early April is to work out, to set the tone, to set the season. Cheque. Cheque. Cheque. Cheque.
You still have to worry a bit about what you saw in the first three games. You still have to hope that the version of the Mets with home stripes (maybe a black jersey top before long too long) will look significantly different when it starts Thursday afternoon at 1:10, when Taijuan Walker stares at the Marlins’ Corey Dickerson the Mets play for the first time in 18 months in front of Citi Field witnesses.
Because it was not pretty yet.
Where to start? Well, the ominous casualties continued Thursday. The Mets were already standing with their heels to the cliff when Jacob Barnes jogged out of the pin to relieve David Peterson. Barnes tried to sneak a fast ball past JT Realmuto in his first pitch when a Met and Realmuto hit one in the general direction of the William Penn building.
Peterson had an unforgettable start to his second year, and his ERA for the season hit a neat mark of 108.0. Michael Conforto, allegedly in a contract to pursue a nine-figure deal, stranded nine runners and gave him 16 LOBs in the Mets’ first three games, an almost ridiculous total. Manager Luis Rojas sacked Jeff McNeil for no good reason.
Aaron Nola, the ace of Philly, almost begged the Mets to take him out on a day when he barely had his “C” stuff.
The Mets said, ‘No, thank you. We’re fine. ”
It was a full dive of misery and the crowd of 10,807 at Citizens Bank Park created great joy. The Phillies seemed like an afterthought for most of the spring, it looks like one of the weird teams coming north, but they are blasting through their first home win 5-1 against the Braves and the Mets, the three-time champion in the section and the assumed no. 1 challenger.
And don’t think the Phillies noticed this disrespectful pick order: they pulled off a double steal of six runs in the sixth. This enabled them to score a run from Dellin Betances. Betances was the sixth Mets reliever of the season; all six runs surrendered (Joey Lucchesi finally cut that grim line with two clean innings).
All this goes to the Mets home.
We know at least with a fair degree of certainty that the weather will be nice. After a year in which the term “abundance of caution” was a good mantra to deal with the daily foil of coronavirus, “abundant sunshine” is definitely a welcome change.
Now the Mets just have to go along with the writing.
“You see resilience, you see guys struggle,” Rojas said, searching in the dark for nice things to say about his team (and really, someone with the Mets should show old ties to Rich Kotite press conferences; it looks like he borrowing heavily. This is not a good thing). “I see the guys do the same, and always push it.”
Trying is fun. Effort is commendable. But the Mets have promised more than we have seen so far, in word and deed. Maybe it’s simply the product from early April. Maybe it will go well with them if they achieve their routine. Until we see it, it will be questions that will keep asking. Out of an abundance of caution.