Little Left But Luck To Hope For

By Jaap Stijl
Posted Thursday, June 18, 2009

"Whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster."
--Edgar Allan Poe from The Raven

After losing 15-0 to the Yankees on Sunday, after inexplicably dropping defeat into the mouth of victory to the Yankees on Friday night, after blowing a lead on Thursday night to lose in the 10th inning to the Phillies, after blowing a lead on Wednesday night to lose in the 11th in to the Phillies, you might wonder if the Mets may almost finally be running out of disasters to overcome.

On the other hand, you could think about Gary Sheffield's impending MRI or Johan Santana's recently constant and precipitous drop in quality starts and you might realise this might still only be the tip of the iceberg for this Titanic of a season for the 2009 Mets.

I suppose it would be easy to throw up your hands in resignation. After all, you've probably been throwing up in your mouth for four out of the last five days already anyway so the act itself wouldn't seem terribly inconsistent with rooting for these enigmatic Mets.

8 out of 12 games this month have been losses. All of them, all of them losses in the ugliest fashion imaginable. Swept by the Pirates, battered by the Nats and those above-referenced losses to their biggest rivals; humiliating, repulsive, close-your-eyes-and-turn-your-head-away horrific. And as you look deeper into the June schedule you see there is little if no relief ahead. At this rate, the Mets could well be toast by the All Star game.

Yet the fact that this has been a resilient team all season - you need only to recall Saturday's convincing triumph after Friday's cataclysmic loss or taking two out of three in Fenway after that harrowing nightmare in Los Angeles, to find a shallow modicum of comfort. It is still possible that the Mets could salvage themselves before finally succumbing once and for all to what seems like their inevitable, disappointing conclusion.

Quite seriously, if you were told in the Spring that the Mets would lose Jose Reyes AND Carlos Delgado to the DL for extended stretches before mid-June, what chance would you have given them?

Granted, the holes in the batting order are still pronounced. Fernando Martinez has demonstrated only that he needs more seasoning in the minors and as a bat off the bench, let alone a consistent starter, he is simply not ready. Daniel Murphy, while certainly fielding less frighteningly at first than in left field, lost his stroke early on and is no longer a viable consideration for the team at any position. Neither Alex Cora nor Luis Castillo are viable lead-off hitters, not for long stretches anyway. Unless there is some miracle trade or some unexpected blossom from the minor leagues is ready to be plucked from the vine, these holes in the batting order are not going to go away.

This is disturbing when you consider the improbability of David Wright and Carlos Beltran being able to carry this team offensively on their backs for the course of the season. And more disturbing still to realise there is no cavalry on the way. This weakness, not the recent series of catastrophic setbacks are what ultimately may spell the end of the Mets season prematurely.

When circumstances require heroic performances night in and night out, the consistent pressure applied eventually weakens the very foundation and with these Mets, a loss like Sunday's demonstrates precisely that; the improbability of the Mets holding it together much longer before a complete collapse befalls them.

We may well struggle to find optimism in these Mets these days, especially when one of the last comforts we have remaining is in thinking well, weirder things have happened. I just can't recall the last time that kind of weirdness has benefited the Mets rather than them being the victims of it.

We can only hope, illogically now, that somehow, the Mets will find themselves, against the odds, the benefactors of some good luck for a change.