That Was Pretty Much The Worst Thing I Could Have Possibly Imagined
6 errors. 2 more if you count Cespedes booting the balls twice which somehow weren’t called errors. Almost every single one ended up resulting in runs. 3 of the most hard luck blown saves I’ve ever seen all in one series. 9th inning leads in 2 games. An 8th inning lead in another. The bats completely went to sleep. The pen was shaky.
And somehow the Mets led or were tied for 43 of the 53 innings.
They played the worst World Series baseball imaginable and were still right on the verge of winning every single game they played. There’s no denying the Royals were the better team this series, but that really isnt saying a fucking thing. Almost any baseball team on the planet would have been the better team going up against the Mets this past week. Arod said it best before game 1 – “If the Mets catch the ball, they win.” And that was really it. Thats all it came down to. You could have left the silent offense, the shitty relief pitching, and the questionable managing completely the same, and if they just made basic baseball plays they still win the World Series in about 5 games. I know, I know, go ahead, say it – “if my aunt had a dick she’d be my uncle.” But the thing is in this situation the “if” is not that big of a deal. I’m not saying if Murphy continued to play like Lou Gehrig. I’m not saying if Collins continued to manage perfectly. I’m not saying if Cespedes played like he did in August. Its just guys making routine outs. Catch the ball and throw the ball and the Mets seriously BREEZE through the World Series.
After the Clippard/Murphy combo blew game 4 I actually thought I was going to take solace in the fact that the reason the Mets lost this series was all the stuff we saw from this team in the regular season. Anybody who’s been watching this team knew that Murphy’s glove would eventually bite them in the ass and that the bullpen was the stuff heart attacks are made of. I thought it might somehow be better than if say the Mets played exactly how they did in the NLCS and somehow the Royals still won. Like I thought if that happened I’d feel like “How the fuck were we supposed to win this thing??” But no. I was wrong. This was infinitely worse. Its the first goddam World Series EVER where a team has won 3 games trailing in the 8th or later. EVER! In the history of the game. And baseball is like 800 years old. The opposition only needs to win 4 and you handed them 3. And I’m not gonna be one of those guys who says the Mets lost and the Royals didnt win because the Royals do deserve credit. Obviously Alex Gordon hitting a home run off Familia is not like an error or a mistake. He earned that one. It was just the only fucking home run the Royals hit in the entire series. As much of a fluke as a fluke can be. And the other two games were legit gifts wrapped up with a bow from the New York Mets to the Kansas City Royals.
If you wanna suck the Royals dick, go ahead. You can be next after Harold Reynolds is done. If I have to hear one more idiot say “fantastic base running by Eric Hosmer!” when he would have been out by about 8 feet with a decent throw, I’m gonna puke. We joke about the contact, but if you really wanna praise the Royals for hitting soft grounders and lazy fly balls, I guess thats your prerogative. I dont understand it. I’ve never seen a team get more praise and credit for the opposition’s errors. In the end, the balls in play and the baserunning and the Royals “grit” did not beat the Mets. They could have handled all of that every single game by playing basic baseball. They beat themselves with embarrassing errors. I call the Royals deserving champs, because the Mets most certainly didnt deserve it. But that was kind of by default the way the Mets played.
Ultimately you just cant have the bats go to sleep like they did. Not one extra base hit from their 3,4,5 hitters. Murphy went back to being Murphy, but honestly thats really ok. He carried the team there and nobody thought he could keep it up. I dont know if Cespedes is more injured than he’s letting on or if this truly just was the “Oh. I get it now.” performance from him, but either way you just cant have him go silent like that. Really the only guy that played anything close to consistent was Curtis Granderson, and thats just not gonna get the job done. Bases loaded no outs and you only score one last night was the perfect microcosm for this series. Harvey should have been on that mound in the 9th with like a 4 or 5 nothing lead. The bullpen stunk, not defending them, but they should have had a little more breathing room. Familia came in during IMPOSSIBLE situations because the offense only did its job once this series.
Bottom line is this World Series will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. You Cleveland fans and Cubs fans wanna cry poor about how you havent made it to the World Series in a bazillion years but the Mets pretty much just lost the worst one ever. Legit statistically has never been a more gut wrenching Fall Classic. The wounds from this one may never close. (Update – I forgot just how crushing the 1997 World Series was for the Tribe. We’re cool Indians fans. We can go sink together in the same boat of misery)