Mets having nightmarish campaign
The New York Mets have played 118 of 162 regular-season games in the 2016 Major League Baseball season. They might as well skip the last 44, because the cause is lost.
New York went to the World Series last year in one of the more memorable seasons Gotham has seen on the Flushing side. The Mets were supposed to be anything but a legitimate contender in July, when they could barely score a run at Citi Field. Then general manager Sandy Alderson traded for left fielder Yoenis Cespedes, and the Amazins’ took off and won the National League pennant.
Going into this season, the Mets had potential oozing from every pore. New York is a team loaded with pitching from Noah Syndergaard, Bartolo Colon and Matt Harvey to Steven Matz and Jacob deGrom. With a rotation like that, losing to anybody would be a feat.
Now, New York is sitting at 59-59. The Mets are only three games behind the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins for the second and last NL Wild Card spot, but the deficit feels like a million. With injuries to Cespedes, Harvey, David Wright, Lucas Duda and Zack Wheeler, the Mets are a ship with five holes and no corks.
After losing to the rancid and pathetic Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday, New York has nowhere to go but up. The question is whether or not it can actually pick itself up off the mat for the next month and a half. Frankly, it seems like a longshot for the Mets to play good baseball for even a week.
Should the season continue this way, New York has been nothing but a wild disappointment. The Mets could have competed for a second straight World Series appearance, taking on the Washington Nationals, San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers in October. Instead, they will likely be home for the fall and winter, wondering where everything went wrong.
Some will blame manager Terry Collins, but that would be placing blame in the wrong direction. Alderson built a club without any offense not named Cespedes. The trade for Jay Bruce was great, but anything but enough. Without another quality bat – something Curtis Granderson was supposed to be – New York can’t win unless the pitching is at its best on a nightly basis.
In third place of the NL East, New York is hopelessly trailing Washington for the divisional crown. The only hope is catching both St. Louis and Miami, then taking on the Dodgers at Chavez Revine in a one-game, winner-take-all showdown. At this point, anybody supporting the blue and orange would be more than thrilled to take that proposition.
