Magical Lineup Is A Dud, What Hope Remains?

Well, the magical lineup is no more.

The perfect summary to the season; rain and hands in your mouth

Jerry went to the well once more with the B-lineup and unlike the previous 6 times, it wasn't sufficient to get the Mets a victory. Instead they watched Jon Garland master them for a complete game victory and another loss dropping them deeper into the oblivion.

Is this misery at knowing his pitched like rubbish or that he's resembled Ollie in doing so?

Pelf pitched much like Ollie the night before; ineffectively, throwing well over 100 pitches in 5 innings of work and whilst not surrendering a ton of runs, the ineffectual, big pitch count outing led to the early appearance of the bullpen and not surprisingly, more runs.

Pelf made way for Sheffield and gave Jerry a hard fist pump in the dugout after he'd taken off his batting helmet to make way for Sheff, who ripped what seemed like an RBI single but ended up in the first baseman's glove to temper the rally.

The non-tag and non-foot-on-the-plate play that kept the game from being uglier

The bullpen, particularly Pat Misch, who disappeared for two weeks following his last unsuccesful outing against the Braves and Tim Redding, who the Mets could only gain from by making him disappear as well, just compounded the misery, both allowing a run, neither looking very much they belong on the roster and, given the silence of the Mets at the plate, sealed the 5-2 victory for the Diamondbacks and leaving the Mets looking at a split of their 4 game home series as a best case scenario.

Should we bother bashing David Wright for grounding into consecutive double plays after Castillo singles? It's hard to say with the entire performance of the team lost in a dreary uninspirational fog.

They had their big moment, or their chance at their big moment in the 5th when Francoeur led off with a homer, Sullivan followed with a triple and Cora with an RBI double, three straight extra base hits to lead off the inning and cut the D'back lead to 3-2 but thereafter, the momentum dribbled away from them, batter by batter and before they knew it the inning was over, their starter was gone and they were still losing. Thereafter, the experience of watching the remainder of the game was handicapped by the inevitability of losing.

And so they slip, further and further from a chance at the post-season, finally a September collapse subplanted by a season-long malaise they keeps even the most optimistic fan from ever hoping, from having their heart broken late in the season again.