Just Mets

One of the great baseball cliches is, “there’s a give and a take.”

On Saturday, Curtis Granderson undoubtedly gave the Mets some offense in what has become one of the most severe droughts this franchise has seen at the plate in years. He hit his 13th home run of the year in the third inning of Sunday’s suspended game.

The home run was his first opposite-field home run in four years.

Granderson now has a seven game hitting streak in which he’s hit five home runs and posted a 1.692 OPS during that span, unquestionably the best run he’s had during his tenure in Flushing.

He’s been wonderful over the last week with the bat. There’s no denying it whatsoever.

But then there was the take by Granderson, and it was a costly take seemingly moments before the Mets could have secured a rain-shortened 1-0 win and a series win over the Reds.

In the top of the fifth inning on Saturday, Matt Harvey induced a weak pop up to shallow right field off the bat of Tucker Barnhart. But Granderson took a weird, circular route towards the ball and was forced to make a sliding catch.

For a moment, all appeared to be well. Granderson initiated his slide, the ball was in his glove.

But, then it wasn’t.

The ball popped out of Granderson’s glove, and Barnhart found himself on second with his third double of the year, a gift at that which should be changed to an error on Granderson.

“I definitely should have had it,” Granderson said. “It hit me in the palm of the glove. I thought I had it, but it bounced out for whatever reason.”

Yes, he should have, but as Granderson always does, he owned up to the mistake candidly and honestly, and didn’t sugarcoat anything.

The problem is, Barnhart eventually came around to score on Brandon Phillips RBI double, costing the Mets a run, arguably forcing the suspended game and an undetermined outcome, which will be learned at some point on Sunday afternoon.

It’s just another in a long line of defensive miscues and lapses this team has had over the last month of baseball, and there’s no question it’s a huge contributor to the club’s uninspiring 10-14 record. Sure, the offense has been terrible, parts of the rotation have been up and down at times, and the bullpen has been somewhat inconsistent in the fragmented state it’s in.

That’s all part of the ebbs and flows of a season – the key is to be able to play with a buttoned up defense so to better navigate these tough times, finding ways to win rather than finding ways to lose.

Unfortunately, the latter has been more prevalent lately than the former, and the poor defense has been a huge contributor to that.