Blame The Bullpen, Terry, Sandy, EVERYBODY

I can’t decide what is more embarrassing: 1) The overall level of talent in the Mets bullpen. 2) Terry Collins’ inability to manage a bullpen. 3) Sandy Alderson’s belief that this team had an acceptable amount of pitching depth.

All three of those things are partially responsible for last night’s pathetic loss to the San Diego Padres (the worst team in the league other than us I guess).

The Calm Before The Storm: The Mets had a 5-1 lead after 4 innings. The lead was partially due to the fact that Padres starter Jarred Cosart was hit by a comebacker, fell apart physically, and then walked the ball park before departing in the third inning. But the Mets still capitalized with RBI hits from Wilmer Flores and Curtis Granderson in the third inning. Michael Conforto also added an RBI hit in the 4th inning. Even Robert Gsellman had a nice game. I joked in yesterday’s post that he never gives us a quality start, and then he spit my face. He went 6 innings and gave up 3 runs on 6 hits. But once Gsellman was yanked from the game everything crumbled.

Terrible Bullpen: It’s so pathetic that our front office had the balls to say they were “all in” prior to the start of the season, and then they continue to rely on scrap heap players like Neil Ramirez and Tommy Milone. Fernando Salas came in the game for Gsellman and pitched like crap. He retired the first two hitters, but then gave up a single and walked two straight hitters. Then new scrub Ramirez came in to face arguably the Padres best hitter Wil Myers, and he nearly lit him up for a grand slam. He hit a ball off the top of the wall and two runs scored to tie the game at 5-5. Then Josh Smoker came in to pitch the 8th inning and gave up a moonshot home run to make it 6-5. That was the final. Also it’s worth noting that Josh Smoker (who has an ERA of 8.00 out of the bullpen and has a surgically repaired arm) is currently being stretched out as a starter so the Mets have someone to replace Tommy Milone this weekend.

Terrible Manager: Terry Collins is an absolutely horrendous manager. The fans have been clamoring for his head for many years now. Fire him. Terry used Jerry Blevins, Paul Sewald, and Fernando Salas in a blowout game on Tuesday and when he needed them last night they were either unavailable (Blevins, Sewald) or ineffective (Salas). He pulled Gsellman when he had under 90 pitches because he wanted him to leave “feeling good.” Are you kidding me? And I really don’t care how tired the other relievers were, there is no way you bring in Neil Ramirez to face Wil Myers. No way. Terry is the absolute worst.

Terrible GM: Sandy Alderson never blames the Wilpons. In fact he claims he has all the resources in the world. If that’s the case then Sandy is a moron. The lack of bullpen depth was known, and it was obvious. The starting pitching depth was always questionable. Sandy didn’t add any arms in the offseason, and now we are relying on scrubs. That is entirely Alderson’s fault.

Bases Juiced: Despite the pathetic bullpen display the Mets still had an incredible chance to win this game against the lowly Padres. They loaded the goddamn bases in the 9th with NOBODY OUT, and they STILL FAILED. Grandy, Rene Rivera and Juan Lagares all were retired in truly pathetic fashion. So Mets.

Today: If we don’t find a way to take 2 out of 3 from the worst team in the league, at home, with our ace on the mound today, then we should officially be crowned the worst team in the league. Can you believe we are still doing the crown celebration thing? Instead of placing a crown on the best player’s head after every win, somebody should dump a bucket of horse crap on all of the relievers after every loss.

It’s Time To Add Terry To The Hall Of Managerial Faces

terry hall of faces

Final Score: Giants 8, Mets 1

Here is the bottom line. The Mets players deserve blame for this train wreck of a season. Sandy Alderson deserves blame for this train wreck of a season. Terry Collins is a crappy in-game manager and deserves blame for this train wreck of a season. When your team enters a season surrounded by high expectations and the squad underachieves all year, the manager gets the blame first. That’s all there is to it. It’s simple. This team hasn’t shown any signs of life in months, and Terry should be canned. It’s time. Everyone keeps saying he’ll make it to the end of the season. Why? Why should he? Are we giving him an extra month because he went to the World Series last year? Are we worried he’ll sue the Wilpons over some ageism lawsuit? I honestly don’t get it. Dump this guy and let’s move on. The Mets are 5.5 out in the Wild Card standing. They are 2 games under .500. The season has long been over, and quite frankly it’s embarrassing that Terry and his staff are still here.

Lugo Proved Me Wrong: I was obviously pessimistic about the Mets chances before the game with Seth Lugo facing Johnny Cueto. But Seth proved me wrong. He went 6.2 innings and gave up 3 runs on 7 hits. He was extremely efficient. Definitely a bright spot in another horrendous game. Terry yanked him in the 7th with two outs after an Eduardo Nunez double and a Joe Panik intentional walk. Jerry Blevins promptly gave up back to back RBI singles to make it 3-1 Giants and the game was over.

Blunder: Seth Lugo and Jose Reyes were on first and second in the fifth inning with two outs. Kelly Johnson came up and hit a single directly at the right fielder. For some reason, Seth Lugo strolled right through Tim Teufel’s stop sign and headed home. This led to an embarrassing run down, and he was eventually tagged out at home. At the time the game was tied at 1. So this blunder definitely eliminated a big opportunity for the Mets with Jay Bruce coming up. Oh well.

How Many Hits?: The Mets had their lineup essentially back at full strength (minus Neil Walker) with the return of Yoenis Cespedes. But it seems people conveniently forgot all those months where we had Yo in the lineup and this team still underachieved. It’s nice to have him back, but it won’t matter. 11 hits last night and one run to show for it. Nothing but a Curtis Granderson solo shot on the Mets scoreboard. Plenty of opportunities.

Blunder 2.0: In the 8th inning the Giants piled runs on thanks to a bunch of hits off of Josh Smoker, Jeurys Familia and a big homer off of Erik Goeddel. Asdrubal Cabrera also made a horrendous throwing error. It went from 3-1 to 8-1 in a finger snap.

Let’s Talk About Bruce: The real reason the Mets didn’t score last night is because Jay Bruce and Yo basically didn’t do anything. They combined to go 1 for 8. I’m sure that will change in the coming weeks, and all of a sudden nobody else will hit. But regarding Bruce, I’m actually kind of embarrassed as a fan. I realize he’s undoubtedly going to catch METS disease and become terrible, and we’re all feeling pessimistic etc. But I’m already seeing fans and beat writers comparing him to Jason Bay. Are you kidding me? The guy came here 3 weeks ago. It’s almost disrespectful to Jason Bay to compare Bruce’s brief Mets career to Bay’s Mets career. Jason Bay is basically the number one example of a METS disease victim that we have on record. He epitomizes everything that METS disease is. He inexplicably lost all of his skills at 30 years old the second he put on a Mets uniform, and then went on to have three awful seasons. He just became worse and worse. And fans have the balls to already compare Jay Bruce to Bay after three weeks? Bruce has to earn his METS disease crown. This could just be a rough stretch. How dare y’all compare him to a METS disease legend. Let’s give him at least another month before we start crowning him.

Today: The Mets aren’t in the Wild Card race anymore. 5.5 games isn’t actually close. The Giants are burying us, and then St. Louis will finish us. Bartolo Colon pitches today. I wonder if he’ll be here next season. He’s the only arm in our rotation that I trust to give us 200 innings.