The word of the night at Citi Field was “snowball.”
We’re getting that snowball feeling once again in Flushing, in what has become an annual tradition since the Mets opened their new ballpark.
It sure feels as if the Mets are on the sort of run that can snowball into yet another irrelevant season.
The National League East basement has a sole occupant, after the Mets suffered another brutal loss — their fifth straight, and their eighth in nine games — 5-4 to the terrible Phillies, with the tiebreaking run coming across in the top of the ninth inning.
“Losing sucks,” said David Wright, who homered, doubled, singled and drove in three runs — and made the last out, too.
The goodwill the Mets created in April is long gone. It’s far from too late to recapture that competence, but we know that for all of the lousy skills the Mets (16-19) have exhibited in the prior five seasons, none has been more glaring than the ability to stop the bleeding of a bad run.
On this night, nearly everyone deserved some blame: The offense, which went 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position. The bullpen, whose sole left-hander, Scott Rice, couldn’t protect a 4-3 lead in the seventh and whose closer, Kyle Farnsworth, allowed the game-losing run in the ninth. And manager Terry Collins, who made a few questionable game calls that backfired.
“Any time you have a losing streak, you’re not worried,” Collins said. “You’ve just got to battle out of it.”
Collins lifted starter Dillon Gee after six innings and just 81 pitches, his spoken thinking that, a) it was a stressful 81 pitches, as Gee pitched from behind or tied for all of it; and b) he struggled against the top of the Phillies’ lineup in Ben Revere, Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard. Not terrible reasoning. Except the Mets, as we know, have an often terrible bullpen, as exhibited both immediately and repeatedly on Saturday.
The generally diplomatic Gee, asked if he was surprised to be removed after throwing so few pitches, replied, “A little bit.”
In the bottom of the eighth, after Wright and Curtis Granderson led off with singles in the 4-4 tie, Collins had his number five hitter, Chris Young, bunt. Now, Young should have walked, if not for a questionable 3-and-0 strike call by home-plate umpire Tim Timmons. Nevertheless, by successfully moving over the runners, Young sacrificed a precious out, and neither rookie Eric Campbell (in his major league debut) nor pinch-hitter Bobby Abreu could deliver the RBI. Campbell struck out, and after Wilmer Flores walked to load the bases, Abreu hit an inning-ending comebacker to the Phillies’ Mike Adams.
“He’s been struggling the last few games,” Collins said of Young. “[I thought], ‘Hey, we’ll get somebody in scoring position.’ ”
Five of the losses in this horrible run have come by one run, which is both damning and encouraging. In their last nine games, the Mets have been outscored, 45-31. On average, when a team is outscored by that margin over eight games, it should go 3-5. That the Mets have underperformed by two wins reflects a mix of bad bullpen work, poor execution and just some plain dumb luck.
“We need to go out there and find a way,” Wright said. “It’s not like we’re just struggling overall. An inning here, an inning there is costing us multiple games in the last couple of weeks.”
He’s not altogether wrong. It’s just the Mets’ results that are altogether atrocious. If they can’t stop this snowball from rolling, given their ambitions when the season began, it’ll be their most painful dive into irrelevancy of all.