STEP ONE TOWARDS ANNUAL COLLAPSE?
Ok, I don't really believe a single home loss to the Phillies last night is
necessarily a harbinger of doom.
Why can't I be Bretty Myers?
Brett Myers, after all, continues to defy logic with his recent spell
of dominant pitching (four starts, 4-0 with a 0.58 ERA with 35 strikeouts in
31 innings) and the Mets went down swinging time after time. Pelfrey
was almost as effective but a miraculous grab by Fat Boy at
first robbing Reyes of at least a certain double, as well as
Murph missing a game-tying homer by inches in the bottom of the 6th.
Even if he'd caught this, the Mets would still have lost 1-0.
Another few inches might have helped Ryan Church catch Gregg Dobb's
two-run shot in the bottom of the 7th. Church also had us all jumping up in
our seats in the bottom of the 9th but alas, he didn't hit the ball quite
hard enough and the game ended drearily, 3-0.
The Mets were impatient at the plate and the number of Ks evidenced that.
Is that from the pressure, artificial or otherwise not to repeat a September
collapse? Will we be more grateful if it is a team-wide choke job rather
than a crappy bullpen that sees a September swoon?
Stay tuned, kiddies. They'll have another chance to snuff these Phils again
this afternoon.
My bet is the Mets have shown all season they're made of stronger stuff than
another miserable collapse.
necessarily a harbinger of doom.
Why can't I be Bretty Myers?
Brett Myers, after all, continues to defy logic with his recent spell
of dominant pitching (four starts, 4-0 with a 0.58 ERA with 35 strikeouts in
31 innings) and the Mets went down swinging time after time. Pelfrey
was almost as effective but a miraculous grab by Fat Boy at
first robbing Reyes of at least a certain double, as well as
Murph missing a game-tying homer by inches in the bottom of the 6th.
Even if he'd caught this, the Mets would still have lost 1-0.
Another few inches might have helped Ryan Church catch Gregg Dobb's
two-run shot in the bottom of the 7th. Church also had us all jumping up in
our seats in the bottom of the 9th but alas, he didn't hit the ball quite
hard enough and the game ended drearily, 3-0.
The Mets were impatient at the plate and the number of Ks evidenced that.
Is that from the pressure, artificial or otherwise not to repeat a September
collapse? Will we be more grateful if it is a team-wide choke job rather
than a crappy bullpen that sees a September swoon?
Stay tuned, kiddies. They'll have another chance to snuff these Phils again
this afternoon.
My bet is the Mets have shown all season they're made of stronger stuff than
another miserable collapse.
Comments
The thing that concerns me is that last night's loss was not as terribly, horribly, gruesomely, painful as usual - it was more like a normal loss. So that is a change in our usual pattern. I hope that doesn't mean we're going to be swept.
Is it harder than winning any two games in a row?
Because if you have two evenly matched teams playing against each other, in general, Team 1 would have a 25% chance of winning two games in a row, Team 2 would have a 25% chance of winning both games, and there would be a 50% chance of a split. It's like Mendelian genetics.
But maybe there is some factor specific to doubleheaders that makes it even harder.
Did you know there have been only 8 doubleheaders in MLB so far this year? The Mets were in 2 of them.
There were 4 splits and 4 sweeps overall. The Mets split one and were swept in one.
So that is exactly what you'd expect if the wins and losses were occurring by chance. But it is a small sample size.