We have seen too much of this in this city over the past 12 months: dead teams headed toward a sink hole to nowhere.
The 3-13 Giants and the 29-win Knicks taught us how to endure wasted seasons that were over before they began. Add the 5-11 Jets and the 28-win Nets and it doesn’t take a forensic pathologist to recognize the look of a team going nowhere. The 2018 Mets have that look.
Oh, they try to hide it. Manager Mickey Callaway actually said before the Mets’ 6-4 loss to the Pirates on Monday night that his team’s current woes — only six wins in its past 30 games — could actually be beneficial.
“Probably, the best learning experience for our team than any other stretch that we’re probably going to have,” he said with a straight face.
Of course, this was before the Mets committed three errors and allowed two more home runs in losing their seventh straight game. Comments like Callaway’s are what managers/coaches say out of desperation when there’s no other positive spin. He could have been honest and said the Mets are a mess and they don’t know how they’ll get out of it anytime soon. Instead, he offered, “We’ll be a better group of people and a better team because we went through this stretch.”
Yeah, right.
The Mets didn’t look much better Monday night than they did over the weekend when they were swept by the Dodgers in a three-game series. A three-run pinch-hit home run by Wilmer Flores in the seventh inning helped cut what had been a 5-0 Pittsburgh lead to 5-4. But the Mets couldn’t add the tying run and lost the 14th of their past 15 games at home.
Teams don’t get better from this kind of losing. They either survive or crumble. The Mets look headed for the latter.
This was a season where they were expected to contend for a postseason berth and an 11-1 start created unrealistic hope. Now July hasn’t arrived and the Mets are already entering dangerous territory somewhere between laughing stock and irrelevancy with no real plan to escape the slide.
Think about it. Across town, the Yankees are the talk of not only the city, but all of baseball, putting together an impressive season with a roster of young talent. Most of the discussion surrounding the team in pinstripes is positive, if not glowing. The Mets and Mets fans have to hear it every day.
If that’s not bad enough their NL East rivals, the Phillies and Braves, have figured it out. They’ve built themselves into formidable contenders that figure to challenge the Nationals for the division title.
Meanwhile, the storylines surrounding the Mets usually involve their daily disasters as they can’t seem to get out of their own way. Burdened by injuries, poor performances and questionable management decisions, they are now 14 games below .500.
This is how starved the Mets are for something positive. News that the X-rays on the pinkie of outfielder Brandon Nimmo were negative was cause for celebration for a team whose players seem attracted to the disabled list like a moth to flame.
General manager Sandy Alderson has said the next two weeks will determine whether the Mets will be buyers or sellers heading toward the July 31 non-waiver deadline. But if you watch the Mets you know the answer already. The only question is, “How bad is it going to get?”
The next two weeks could determine more than Alderson has planned. It could determine whether he and Callaway will be back to oversee a major rebuilding project if star pitchers Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard are traded. It’s difficult to look at the present and future of the Yankees, Phillies and Braves and continue to be patient while Alderson and the Mets can’t get it right.
Right now, the only direction the Mets appear headed is where no franchise wants to go.