After another disappointing road trip that ended in an epic meltdown on Sunday, the Mets had an opportunity to start fresh at home against the Brewers on Monday. Unfortunately, it was more of the same story.
Justin Verlander pitched in and out of trouble all night but exited after five shutout innings. Drew Smith entered and immediately gave up a two-run homer. That’s all the Mets’ pitching staff would allow, though. So obviously, that means the offense was nowhere to be found in a 2-1 loss.
Is the season over yet? The answer is technically no, but it sure feels like the sky is falling. This latest loss is New York’s seven in its last nine games to drop to 35-43. The Braves won again, extending their lead over the Mets in the NL East to a whopping 16 games. Their standing in the NL Wild Card race is better, but not by a ton, as the Mets are staring at an 8.5-game deficit in that race, too.
Before New York even thinks about creeping back into postseason contention, they’ll need to focus on winning more often than not over a short period of time. But it’s obvious that Mets fans are quite flabbergasted and fed up with the kind of baseball they’ve been watching. After all, nobody expected this with a payroll north of $350 million.
One fan walked out of the stadium on Monday night and decided to start a “Fire Eppler!” chant before heading home. He probably thought the others outside Citi Field would join in, but it mostly sounds like nobody joined in. See (and hear) for yourself:
Fire Eppler! Fire Eppler! @StevenACohen2 pic.twitter.com/OreSOQ8pVY
— Joe Mets aka metfan behind enemy lines (@YaGotBlieve2022) June 27, 2023
I’m not crazy, right? My ears are getting older, but I couldn’t hear any other fans enthusiastically jump in, which is pretty surprising. The level of frustration is so high that you’d have to think fans would support just about any kind of personnel change at this point.
Who knows — maybe everyone was too sad and tired to join in. The message was received, though, as Steve Cohen was tagged in the above tweet. It’s not like he hasn’t gotten some variation of these messages for weeks now or anything.
You can reach Matt Musico at matt.musico@xlmedia.com. You can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.
