BOO WHO? YEAH, YOU
DEPENDING on how you look at things, the small pictures often block the larger ones. Thus, Javy Baez thinks it’s all about him, only about him.
He’s wrong, way off. The booing he has heard, and earned, is only partially about him. But it fully reflects the recent history of a club that promises milk and honey by procuring high-priced saviors — Yoenis Cespedes, Robinson Cano and rental Baez — who were often plainly observed to not give a damn.
Recent history also includes the unforced departures of players who next serve other clubs’ successes. Those include Justin Turner, Zack Wheeler and Steven Matz. Some would start with Nolan Ryan.
Even the Mets’ expensive acquisitions for this new-era, can’t-miss season — Francisco Lindor and catcher James McCann, players who try hard — have had miserable seasons at the plate, when not on the IL.
So to watch Baez strike out five times in one game — all by swinging at bad pitches thrown by itinerant Marlins pitchers, and appearing uninterested in laying off pitches well out of the strike zone — can’t be easy for paying customers to suffer in sympathetic silence.
Further, these fans are now regularly treated by Rob Manfred to 6 ¹/2- or 7-inning two-admission doubleheaders.
In the case of Baez’s Sunday thumbs-down home run incident — scoring without dislodging his large, sparkling diamond earring — the Nationals generously provided that opportunity.
Having gone 0-for-4 with three whiffs the game before, Baez, in his first and third at-bat of Sunday’s game, had struck out on pitches low and far outside, hardly new for a talented fellow who demonstrates littleto-no batting discipline.
So though it behooved starter Erick Fedde not to throw anything near the plate during Baez’s second at-bat, he threw one over the plate. Baez had no recourse but to hit it over the fence, his thumbs-down demonstration followed.
Tuesday, when Baez slid home run with the game-ending run in a wild, five-run ninth — yes, with so many human moving parts in frantic motion at once its was still reported as “a walkoff” — the Marlins needlessly provided the opportunity.
Despite two relievers having pitched well, Don Mattingly, another adherent to the illogical “The Game Has Changed Handbook,” removed both in search of at least one who would lose a four-run lead and the game in the ninth. Where none were needed, he found three.
So Baez, benched by two previous Cubs managers for failure to run to first base — he conspicuously failed to play hard in playoff games — doesn’t like being booed for being the latest Met who plays as if he has something better to do with his time. Imagine that.
Reader Arnold Mazur has the solution: “I suggest Mets fans give Baez a standing ovation before every at-bat and after every ball he handles, regardless of outcome. Overwhelm him with contemptuous applause.”