If there’s anything in baseball more depressing than watching a team that had been hanging around contending suddenly go into free fall and start losing all the time and playing listless baseball, it’s watching this happen for the fourth year in a row. The Mets, 68-60 on August 26, are now 3-14 since . . . they’re like the Bizarro Mets: Kaz Matsui’s hitting about .350 in that stretch, and the rest of the team is helpless. Ugh.
UPDATE: Numbers for the 17-game-and-counting swoon here and here. Matsui’s hitting .353/.529/.382, most likely ensuring himself the chance to compete with Anderson Hernandez for the starting job again next year, Beltran’s hitting .338/.492/.411, and Castro and Piazza are hitting a combined .260/.520/.356, and basically nobody else is hitting anything. On the pitching side, the big disaster (aside from Looper, which was entirely predictable) has been Benson, who’s been a batting practice pitcher for the past month.
SECOND UPDATE: My prediction (linked above) had been two games blown by Looper against NL East foes in September. Well, we’re only halfway through the month and he just blew #2, the first being the game in Atlanta on September 7 where he blew two leads, one in the 9th and one in the 10th, to go with two games (September 1 and 13) where he coughed up an insurance run in the 9th inning of a 2-run loss. This follows two losses and a blown save (in a game they’d led by 8 runs against the Nationals) in August. It’s time for Looper to leave town, now. (And Matsui, Ishii, Offerman, and Gerald Williams should be right behind him).
OF COURSE, elsewhere, it’s Benitez time.
5 thoughts on “Free Fallin’”
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Gerald Williams and Jose Offerman were each finished…in 2001. What are they doing in the majors?
He, I just asked the same question on my blog about Williams.
It’s one thing to lose, but it’s quite another to see a team that just looks so pathetic out there. They seem so listless, like they left eveything in Arizona.
Sigh. At least we can all have a life in October. Again.
And over here we have the White Sox who are stumbling quite well, only 4 1/2 games ahead of Cleveland. Lost 5 of their last 6 games. This one might be tight – down to the last week….
This post really does not belong here, but didn’t know where else to say this. Regarding Barry Bonds, I know the comments, which came from everyone including me, that he really took off to clear his system.
Now he is presumably steroid free, and he had to deal with a persistent infection taking (or so he says anyway) large doses of antibiotics. He is still huge. Flabbier, no question, but if he was really using like Giambi, then he would have looked more like the Giambino (sorry, and apologies to all who have to listen to John Sterling), or Pudge, or anyone else. So the question really is: did he just train harder tahn anyone really? He was just below the Ted and Stan line before, or really equal with Stan before the surge, so we are talking about a superduperstar to start with, so who knows?
Barry is now steroid free? He sure can still hit the crap out of the ball!!!
Wait… when was he on steroids? He tested positive???
Wait. No, he never did test positive. Hmm.
America does mean GUILTY before being proved innocent, right?
Wait. No, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
In any case… Mets suck… again. 3-14 since August 26? Yeah, that’s a GREAT way to get yourself that Wildcard.
Oh, how I long for a season of 108 wins.
Maybe again someday?
Ya Gotta Believe.