Mets 11, Padres 5

Again, I seriously wonder about the suits scheduling these games. Game in Milwaukee on Sunday, game the next day in San Diego the following day following a cross country flight. The Mets only had to travel in from L.A. Who really has the road game here?

All scheduling woes aside, we stunk up the joint, just in time for the fans and our home opener. Blake Snell was Blake Smell again: 4 IP, 7 H, 5 R, plus 3 BB. Of course, he threw 95 pitches, put our fielders and fans to sleep while also using up five innings of mop-up time from the bullpen. His initials are BS, which is what his outing was. In the first inning, he gave up a three spot, walked three batters and handed the game to Carlos Carrasco on a silver platter. Again, we're only 55 games in and still looking good. This was the first crappy performance by one of our starting pitchers since...well, probably Snell's last start. There is no doubt he is the weak link on this staff. We can still run him out there every sixth day and continue to be a drain on our resources, or we can trade him to a club that can sort him out, most likely the team he misses, the Rays. Either way, I can't think of a more useless player on this team.

The hitting continues to show signs of improvement. Profar had three hits from the leadoff spot. Luke Voit hit another one of his garbage time dingers, a three-run shot in the bottom of the eighth. We also did not execute fundamentally. In the first inning, Profar had a lead-off double, followed by a Cronenworth strikeout. We are not going to beat the Brewers, Cardinals, Mets, or Dodgers by hacking away, but by playing sound fundamental baseball. Runner on second, no outs? Cron, move him over. Profar being stranded gave Carrasco a huge lift, as if he needed it. Later, it was Mop Up City: three innings from Wilson, two combined by Stammen and Hill, who both got hit hard. 

This is another tent game, in that there are many New York transplants in the crowd. New Yorkers, of course, are not shy about rooting for their team, which tends to alienate the locals. I have an idea for that: play better, guys. One of their guys, Eduardo Escobar, hit for the cycle. Remember what I said about the Padres and no-hitters? I'll see you that and raise you: it took our franchise 7,444 games to hit for a cycle until Matt Kemp finally pulled it off in 2015. Are you counting? That's 46 seasons! 46 seasons without a cycle or a no-hitter. Big wow. For a long time, the Padres jokes wrote themselves. All you needed to do was look at the box scores.  

We have Darvish going for us this evening, and we'll need a big game from him. We showed we can play with the best from the Central, now we need to show up against the Mets.