Final Score: Padres 5, Mets 3

The story of last night was Colin Rea absolutely dominating a Mets lineup that just travelled across the country. Rea took a no hitter into the 7th and pitched into the 9th. Prior to the 9th inning, the Mets squared up on some balls, but they were laced right at Padres who were perfectly positioned due to defensive shifts. Luckily Yoenis Cespedes took advantage of the shift in the 7th inning by hitting a ball in a newly created hole at second base and broke up the no hit bid. The Padres also made some stellar plays in this game including Jon Jay robbing Curtis Granderson of an extra base hit early on. There’s nothing you can do but tip your cap to the pitcher and hope some solid hotel shut eye gets the Mets ready for tonight.

Make Baseball Fun Again: The Padres (like all teams at this point) used defensive shifts a bunch last night. I completely forgot that a few weeks ago Joe Girardi came out and said if he was the Commissioner he would fully ban defensive shifts. What an idiot. I can’t believe there are people in all facets of life that just take the “no change” stance.  When I saw Donald Trump’s “I love Hispanics” Facebook post yesterday, I imagined Goose Gossage shamelessly pandering to the “Make Baseball Fun Again” contingent by tweeting out of a photo of himself playing wiffle ball in his front yard with a bunch of Spanish guys flipping their bats after every home run. “There’s nothing like playing some ball with my best friends Pedro and Juan. They do the best home run celebrations. I love Mexican bat flips!”

Our Studs Weren’t Studly: Jacob deGrom was bleh tonight. His velocity sat at 93 MPH again. Harvey has been bleh. These guys are not performing at the level we’ve grown accustomed to seeing. Forget jet lag, this is obvious playoff lag. 

In the bottom of the first inning Wil Myers hit a solo dinger. In the bottom of the second, deGrom gave up an RBI single to Colin Rea the damn pitcher. In the bottom of the third, Alexei Ramirez hit a little BS dunker down the leftfield line with two men on base and it scored a run. Luckily moron Melvin Upton Jr. got caught in between 3rd base and home and Jacob deGrom got out of the jam with the score 3-0.

Terry pulled deGrom after 5 innings which I was fine with because overall he looked pretty crappy. He gave up 3 runs on 8 hits. Anyway, Logan Verrett came into the game and promptly had his first crummy appearance of the year. He gave up 2 runs in the 6th and every ball the Padres hit off of him was seemingly rocked. Wil Myers and Matt Kemp both crushed long fly outs that just stayed in play.

Two Dingers: Curtis Granderson got Rea out of the game in the 9th inning with a solo home run. Then David Wright walked and with one out Yoenis Cespedes launched a two run jack. But ultimately the power show was too little too late. Two home runs? Pathetic for team ding dong.

Rodney To The Rescue: In the 9th after the Grandy solo blast, the Padres pulled Rea. After the Cespedes home run, the Padres went to their closer Fernando Rodney who was able to finish the Mets off. I kind of forgot that he was still hanging around in the league at 39. I always lumped Rodney in that group of closers that love to dance and celebrate every save. So it reminded me of when the Mets brought in the super eccentric Jose Valverde a couple years ago for like a month. He really sucked.

Cubs Beat Nats: The Cubs took the opener of their series against the Nationals. I can’t believe the super computers were right and the Cubs are going to win like 100 billion games.

Today: The Mets play the Padres late again tonight. Hopefully Noah Syndergaard can right the ship in this west coast road trip kickoff mulligan.