Ace’s night proof of team’s sore situation
ARLINGTON, Texas — The picture was a poignant one, a reminder that these games are contested between human beings with feelings, with nervous systems, with flesh and blood. Jacob deGrom had just finished one of the worst worknights of his professional life. He was near tears, if not fully there.
Terry Collins, his manager, his boss, came over to comfort him. All of it captured nicely by television lenses belonging to SNY.
On another night, perhaps that could warm you heart.
On this night, one more lost night in the epic fail that has become the Mets’ 2017 season, it was simply another reminder that even the things the Mets thought they could count on this year aren’t even remotely trustworthy any longer.
“You score eight runs with Jacob deGrom on the mound,” Terry Collins would say, “you expect to win that game.”
Three times the Mets gave deGrom a lead Tuesday night: 1-0 after one inning, 2-1 after two, 4-3 after three.
Three times he gave those leads back, and in his fourth inning allowed the game to slide beyond the realm of competition. The final score: Rangers 10, Mets 8, thanks to some too-little, too-late hammering of Matt Bush in the ninth. DeGrom’s final line: Four innings pitched, 10 hits, eight runs, two strikeouts, two home runs.
“I feel fine, I feel good,” deGrom said. “I just don’t know where the ball is going right now.” How bad was it? He was outpitched by old friend Dillon Gee — who wasn’t exactly 1968 Denny McLain out there, either. His velocity didn’t seem to be an issue, and he wasn’t as wild as he’s been in some of his starts. But his location was off against almost every batter. By the fourth inning, he was serving up batting practice. “Lots of balls right down the middle,” he said. These are the nights when you realize just how profound the task ahead for the Mets really is already, nights when they get absolutely pulverized by a mediocre team that looks like the ’27 Yankees against the ’17 Mets.
DeGrom, remember, is the Mets’ most accomplished pitcher. He’s the one with the Rookie of the Year trophy. He’s the one who became a breakout star in the 2015 playoffs, pitching some of the most memorable games in Mets playoff history. If Noah Syndergaard was the one who could take your breath away with 100-mph stuff, deGrom was the one who knew how to get you out, no matter what level of stuff he brought to the mound that day.
It’s a terrible time to be an elite pitcher stripped bare of confidence, as deGrom is, because the Mets needed him to be a classic stopper in the worst way, and because the Mets gave him those three separate leads, and because the Mets keep slipping closer to the edge of the abyss. They’re eight under .500 now. Sea level is starting to look like more and more of a pipe dream, let alone a playoff race.
Yes. They needed a stopper Monday night in the thick humidity of Texas.
Instead there he was, on the bench, in the dugout, broken. Needing a hug. Mets fans know the feeling. “We’ve got to come up with an answer,” Collins said. He was referring specifically to deGrom. He could have been talking generally about his team, which scored eight runs and still managed to leave 13 men on base, who were hammering Gee, their old teammate, yet couldn’t put him away for good.
Maybe that wouldn’t have mattered the way deGrom was pitching. But when you are a scuffling team, you need to leave as little to chance as possible. You need to step on necks when they’re there to be stepped on. Instead one more night dissolved into a blur of ugly baseball.
Even the ninth inning rally left everybody wanting, when, with three runs already in, the tying runs on base and nobody out, they couldn’t advance any farther. Miracles only happen to good teams. And the Mets don’t qualify right now. Even the things they used to count on are a 50-50 proposition these days. Not a good way to be.