Game recap June 27: There’s nothing left to say

I’m not one to really quote music too much in life, and especially not in my own works. It’s not that I feel I’m more poignant or poetic than most musicians, but I just like to find my own words for things and express thoughts my own way, if that makes any sense. Plus, it makes me feel all lame and weird like Lenny Dykstra. But there’s a song written by Imagine Dragons that feels a little too on-point right now not to use in some capacity. The song is called “Nothing Left To Say,” and here is how the chorus goes:

And that fits pefectly with the feeling around the Mets right now. There’s nothing left to say, and I’ve given up. At some point, you just run out of words. An explanation is not necessary. Analysis is not necessary. Words are not necessary. There’s truly just nothing left to say. And you definitely can’t say the result of last night’s game is surprising, that’s for sure. You can’t say a game that had good starting pitching, limited offense and a complete bullpen meltdown is unique for the 2018 Mets. Every game follows the same blueprint these days. You can only write and/or read so many recaps of the same game again and again.

This team is seriously bad. That’s it. There’s truly nothing else that needs to be said. There’s no point laboring it anymore. We might not know exactly how they got to this point, but it doesn’t matter anymore; they’re just not good. They’re one of the worst teams in baseball. And there’s absolutely no sign this precipitous fall won’t continue for three more months.

Last night, Zack Wheeler pitched a hell of a game, tossing seven shutout innings with seven punchouts. He allowed one walk and five hits. On the whole, he’s pitched like a perfectly fine mid-rotation stater for a month. His only bad start this month was a start in Atlanta, where he had taken a 2-1 lead into the sixth inning, but three of his runners scoring on an Ozzie Albies grand slam given up by Paul Sewald messed up his line.

Basically, the Mets have been getting good-to-great starting pitching from four of five spots in the rotation for about a month now, and they’ve only won four games in the month of June. It’s truly incredible.

Of course, Wheeler left the game with a 3-0 lead. The Pirates pushed a run across in the eighth off the overworked and suddenly-bad Robert Gsellman, but suddenly-good Tim Peterson came in to get out of the inning and hold the lead at 3-1. But then, instead of keeping Peterson, who had only thrown nine pitches, in the game for the ninth, Mickey Callaway turned to his closer Jeurys Familia — who threw 28 pitches in 1.2 innings on Tuesday night — for the save.

Familia did not record an out. Three straight singles and a walk to his first four hitters chased the closer from the game before he had even blown the lead. Anthony Swarzak came in with the bases loaded and nobody out, trying to protect what was now a 3-2 lead. He promptly gave up a two-run single to David Freese on his first pitch, and the game was pretty much over from there. The Pirates took a 4-3 lead and didn’t look back. They added one more in the inning, and the Mets predictably went down punchless in the ninth, sending the Pirates home with a 5-3 win.

The Mets have not won a series since May 18-20. There are no words.

WHAT’S NEXT:

Unfortunately not the apocalypse, though the Mets will go to Miami to battle the Marlins tomorrow, which sounds just as close to the end of the world as we’re going to get. Jacob deGrom squares off with Sandy Alcantara, who will be making his big-league debut, at 7:10 p.m.

Photo credit: Brad Penner – USA Today Sports