The Fat Man Commeth

It takes more than another round of gout to keep the Fat Man down.

If the Mets were looking for something to blame for Monday night's tepid 5-1 loss to the Padres they needed look no further than the East-West coast trip they underwent collectively to get to San Diego in the first place.

Was it merely a dream sequence in the midst of somnambulism that brought the game to 2-1 after six innings?

And when violently shaken awake in the 7th by Joe Smith's perturbed two batter-two hit-one run sequence or worse still, Aaron Heilman's embittering three hit-two run pasting over 2/3 of the 8th inning which included a humiliating homer by former Met Mike Cameron, was this the latent sign of jet lag we were all hoping they could forstall until after the 9th inning when they were asleep in their hotel chambers?

Nontheless, Jo Sosa, like Oliver Perez before him, performed admirably in his return from the DL, tossing 6 reasonably quiet innings of two-run baseball before succumbing to fatigue demons in the 7th.

Lastings Milledge, moved cleverly into the #2 slot in the order, had as quiet a night as Carlos Beltran, both of whom were handcuffed through 8 at-bats collectively.

David Wright nearly made up for a rally-killer in the first when he was picked off of first, by finishing with 3 hits, a third of the Mets total collectively.

All in all, a snooze of a game in many respects, a hideous return to the mundane by the bullpen who had previously sparkled, a return to the nearly-scoreless depths of West Coast trips (including last night's game and those debacles in Los Angeles last month, the Mets have scored 3 runs over their last 27 innings on the West Coast) and yes, perhaps facing the league's best pitching staff on a jet-lagged night was a good enough excuse for now.

Let the Mets sleep this one off and hope they are awake again by Tuesday night.