On Wednesday morning, the Mets arrived at their hotels in Toronto at around 3:30 AM after defeating the Blue Jays 3-2 just about six hours earlier in New York.
The sleepy Mets showed up to Rogers Centre in the early part of the afternoon, seemingly ready to play against a Toronto offense they had successfully stalled in the previous two nights. They had held a team which had scored 8.8 runs per game during their immediately concluded 11-game winning streak to just seven runs combined in two games at Citi Field.
However, things didn’t go quite the same way when the Mets switched from their pinstripes to road grays.
In the bandbox north of the border, the Mets were outscored 15-1 by the Blue Jays, and were completely outplayed in the process. They were out-hit, out-pitched, their defense was terrible, and they looked rather lethargic, lazy and slow in the process.
“We’re playing a little sluggishly right now. We need to find some energy,” Terry Collins said after Thursday’s loss. “We just need to pick up the pace, pick up the energy level a little bit.”
They need to do more than that, because this happens a lot on the road. In 31 games away from Citi Field, their run differential is -41 on the road and they’re scoring just 3.06 runs per game while allowing 4.39 runs per game on the road.
In other words, the New York Mets get blown out a lot and do not score very much on the road.
That’s just not acceptable, but somehow, their schizophrenic personalities are enough for first place in the National League East.
“It’s pretty basic. We are not hitting on the road, and I don’t have an answer for that,” Collins said late Thursday.
The Mets aren’t unique when they arrive to a city at 3:30 AM. They arrived to Atlanta at 3 or 4 in the morning today and will be faced with a similar scenario this afternoon when they show up at Turner Field, only the temperature will be warmer.
That’s just the nature of the business, and it doesn’t happen all the time, so it doesn’t explain the overall body of work on the road.
Lately anyway, the club has played a lot of emotional games and a lot of games consecutively at that. They were no-hit, had two dramatic come-from-behind wins earlier this week, and lost a game needing just the 27th out all in a span of ten games. Their bullpen has been overused, overexposed and broken some more during that span as well. In fairness, that can suck the energy away.
That’s not an excuse, however, and they all know that. Aside from a no-hitter, every team goes through long stretches of games which include drama and disappointment. That’s part of the 162-game process and it’s up to everyone in the room – including the manager and coaches – to find a way to cope with that and make the necessary adjustments to get through the wall teams often hit like this during a baseball season.
The task doesn’t get any easier this weekend, either, as they’re playing in a building in which poor play and losing often haunts them.
At some point, they’re going to have to find a way to be more consistent on the road and manage the process better. Aside from the many other problems the team has (the defense being one of them, which plays a part in their road woes) which will not sustain success, playing .323 ball away from Citi Field and being outscored in the manner they have will not allow them to pass go and collect $200 after game 162.
Just Mets 