Swept Away By Mariners, West Coast Misery Ends In Another Loss

Adding to what could grow to become a Brobdingnagian catalogue of a season-long accumulation of excuses, the Mets could point out that the Mariners beat the second place Philadelphia Phillies two games out of three just prior to sweeping the Mets and that hey, the Mariners are a team on the way up, waving to the Mets who are free falling like an elevator off its snapped cables.

Yeah, the mighty Seattle Mariners, 28-36 prior to sweeping the Mets.

After days of twisting hankies in our fists in frustration over one weak-kneed hitting performance after another, the Mets finally awoke, albeit vaguely, out of their collective batting coma, only to be bested by the Mariners, who had a season-high 17 hits.

8 of those hits and 6 earned runs came courtesy of Tom Glavine's two and a third innings and 47 pitches worth of bowel-clenching work in his most egregious performance to date, lowering the hideous standard he set back in early May against the Phillies when he let in 8 runs on 93 pitches.

Mike DeJean joined Glavine in ignominy, or perhaps even bested him by letting four runs score in a mere 18 pitches to destroy any semblance of hope the Mets could foster after crawling back to 6-5 in the top of the 6th.

Curiously, it was the beleaguered DeJean who put the loss in his own perspective when he noted:

"If anything, we've got guys with their foot too hard on the pedal who need to back it off a little and have some fun. It's a game, and we're acting like it is life or death."

If it were life or death, metaphorically speaking of course, DeJean would be the first body in the shallow grave.

The bottom four in Seattle's order — 21-year-old infielder Jose Lopez and rookies Jeremy Reed, Mike Morse and Rene Rivera — combined to go 8 for 18 against six Mets pitchers. They had five runs batted in.

Richie Sexson, who was tossed out of the game a day ago in the first inning, cracked an opposite-field homer in the first inning yesterday with Ichiro aboard and the Mariners never trailed thereafter, winning with authority, 11-5 to sweep the series and send the Mets home having lost 5 of 6 on this West Coast trip against the two worst teams in the AL West.

And no, in case you were wondering, this isn't funny anymore. While the Yankees were busy going on another hot streak, the likes of which the corpse-cold Mets haven't seen in months, our lads were still practicing their fire in the butts" speeches - yes, Cliff Floyd actually said that fire-in-the-butts bit completely contradicting DeJean who would prefer to remind us that despite toying with the hopes of millions with indifferent performances, it's still "only a game".

As though they'd all just been goofing around these last few weeks, Floyd threatened:

"We can't come out flat again in Philadelphia. We have to come out with fire in our butts. Or we're going to get smoked."

Gonna get smoked? Whattaya call losing 5 of 6 to the dregs of the AL West, Cliffy? They weren't just smoked, they were ground into the ashtray afterwards, butts and all.

But for all these miseries piling on, we might point out that for a game anyway, the weird unfamiliarity with the bats ended whilst the Mets pounded out a whole 10 hits in one game! Piazza, who bobbled a throw to homeplate in the 2nd inning to allow a run to score had three hits, none of which drove in any runs of course, and Jose Reyes, getting acclimated to his new number two slot in the batting order, had a pair of hits as everyone with the exception of Daubach (now hitting .091 when we called him up to replace the weak-hitting Mientkiewicz, haha) and David Wright (who managed three walks anyway) had at least a hit.

So this ghastly inability continues and the Mets have now fallen to a full seven games from the first-place Nats, comfortable in the basement of the NL East looking as though they might decide to stay there all season.

Better still, now that the "soft" portion of the schedule is over, the Mets will spend the rest of June facing the Phillies and Yankees. The Phillies had their own difficulties against these same miserable AL West teams, losing two of three to both the Mariners and the A's.