This is an I told you so that I wish I wasn't right on but to start the season, offensively this team is absolutely pathetic in pressure situations. For those who say it's early, that's true and they will have chances to turn things around.
This is not a new phenomenon, in fact they have been doing this since Sept. of 2007 except for when Jerry Manuel took over and all the expectations were lowered. Today was another perfect example of how this team beats themselves.
I don't think I've ever seen a team as a whole look this bad in scoring situations, the minute a runner was on second regardless of who was at bat they looked like a completely different hitter. David Wright who looked like he was praying for the ball to hit his bat hard, as he struck out and was a weak out three times in a row.
Carlos Delgado with bases loaded and one out not even getting a fly ball, instead giving up a double play to the pitcher. Fernando Tatis with no outs striking out on three pitches which was the same case for Ryan Church as a pinch hitter.
It almost seems mathamatically impossible for a team to have 12 hits which included two triples, and three doubles but only score two runs. Then you see that they were only 2-13 with RISP and Delgado, in the first inning was the only one able to drive in a run with two outs. Five different players left runners in scoring position with two outs and the Mets as a team left 10 on base.
With the line-up Jerry put on the field and Figgy pitching, if they lost I expected it to come from either poor defense or bad pitching but I never would have guessed the Mets being unable to come through in the clutch against Jeff Suppan or Coffey.
This isn't just one game, when is it ok to stop saying it's early and begin to say there's a problem here. I said all off-season that I was concerned with bringing back the same offense again because of how they preformed in clutch situations and all I heard was they scored the second most runs in the league, they're fine.
It certainly does look like the same offense and I'm certainly not confident they're getting the job done. Yesterday it took a perfect game to win and today they lost by two, the day before was a big offensive day when they scored five.
When they lost two of three to the Padres it was because the Pads were a hot team, this weekend they faced a Brewer team that had three wins and barely won the series.
This team is averaging eight runners left on base per game and while they are third best in the NL in both BA (.278) and OBP (.365) they are ninth with RISP (.247) and 11th in Slg pct. ( .401).
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