PHILADELPHIA – Weather Channel says it will be “abundant sun” on Thursday, the temperature reaching 66 degrees with external chances to tick 70. Rain? Just a 6% chance. It will be one of those baseball afternoons that will make you want to channel Ernie Banks if you’re lucky enough to have a ticket:
“Let’s play two.”
If you’re luckier, the Mets will play a little differently than they did in the last out-of-town try, an 8-2 loss to the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon or else you may have another familiar phraseology of your language.
“Let’s try to overcome the traffic on LIE”, is one that comes to mind.
“Can’t anyone play this game?” is another.
“BOOOOOOOOO !!!” is an old reliable standby.
OK OK OK. There are three games. It’s a single series. There are a lot of ball games left, a lot of season, 159 games and counting. The 1969 Mets started their season 2-5 and 3-7 and 6-11. The 1986 Mets started their 2-3 season. In early April is to work, to set the tone, to settle into the season. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out.
You still have to be a little worried about what you saw in the first three games. You still have to hope that the Mets version wearing rulers from home (maybe a black T-shirt before too long) will start to look substantially different until 1:10 or so on Thursday afternoon, when Taijuan Walker looks at Corey Dickerson and The Mets play Citi Field for the first time in 18 months.
Because it wasn’t beautiful.
Where to start? Well, the insults continued on Thursday. The Mets were already standing with their heels facing the rock as Jacob Barnes stepped from the pen in relief to David Peterson. Barnes tried to sneak over JT Realmuto in his first step while Met and Realmuto hit one in the general direction of the William Penn building.
Peterson had a forgettable start to his sophomore year, his ERA for the season, sitting at 108.0 four beats in the game. Michael Conforto, allegedly contracted to a nine-figure deal, blocked nine runners, giving him 16 LOBs in the first three Mets games, an almost absurd total. Manager Luis Rojas has replaced Jeff McNeil for no good reason.
Aaron Nola, Philly’s ace, asked the Mets to take him out on a day when he was barely doing his “C” thing.
The Mets said, “No, thank you. We are good. “
It was a complete drain of misery and the crowd of 10,807 from Citizens Bank Park was very excited. The Phillies seemed like an afterthought most of the spring, they seemed to be one of the weird teams coming out north, but they were quickly going through the opening stand 5-1 against the Braves and Mets, three-time division champions and presumed No. 1 provocative.
And don’t think that the Phillies didn’t notice this disrespectful collision order: they took out a double theft in six races in the sixth. It allowed them to score a run in the Dellin Betances. Betances was the sixth liberator of the Mets season; all six races handed over (Joey Lucchesi finally broke that terrible streak with two clean innings).
All of this will accompany the Mets home.
At least we know with reasonable certainty that the weather will be fine. After a year in which the term “abundance of caution” was a primary mantra to deal with the daily coronavirus film, “abundant sun” is certainly a welcome change of pace.
Now, the Mets just have to go along with the script.
“You see resistance, you see boys fighting,” Rojas said, looking in the dark for nice things to say about his team (and, indeed, someone with the Mets should show him old Rich Kotite press conference tapes; he seems to be big loans. That’s not a good thing). “I see the boys doing the same thing, always pushing him.”
The test is pleasant. The effort is commendable. But the Mets have promised more than we’ve seen so far, in word or deed. Maybe it’s just the product from the beginning of April. Maybe they’ll be fine after they get to their routine. Until we see it, these will be questions that will be asked further. Out of an abundance of caution.