11
2012
Subway Series – Always A No-Win Situation For The Mets
An article by 
This weekend’s three game sweep at the hands of the hated New York Yankees resulted in a number of things. In the process, the Mets have now dropped six of their last seven games and fallen to a mere three games above .500 for the first time since May 24th. Their all-time record against their crosstown rivals..a disappointing 35-52. Worse yet, having had a chance to move into first place in the NL East as recently as Tuesday night, the team now stands a full 4.5 games back of the Washington Nationals. All of this is bad for the 2012 New York Mets, but when it comes to the Subway Series, is there really a way they can win?
Please understand that when I say “win” I don’t mean on a game-to-game basis. The reality of the Subway Series is that it means far more to the fans than it does to the players. At the end of the season, these most recent three games against the Yankees are equally as important as any other three games set the teams will play this year. However, from a fan’s standpoint these games are for bragging rights, for pride and for respect.
The issue remains that no matter the outcome of the Subway Series each year, Mets fans will always struggle to earn the respect of their Yankee counterparts regardless of whether that’s right or wrong. The three game sweep appears to be the Yankees beating down on their baby brother, but if the series had played out differently, Yankee fans would still rest their head on a history of championships. Its the lack of the same from a Met fan’s point of view that makes these games so important, but places the fan base and the team in a position where either nothing good will happen, such as this weekend, or a position where any good that does happen will be slighted.
The worst thing to come out of this weekend, in a series that shouldn’t really matter anymore than the next, is that Mets fans now view their team as being on the brink of collapse. Following the game, several fans took to twitter declaring this the “low point of the season”. Is it? Maybe. However, would it be had the sweep come at the hands of the Braves, the Giants, or even the Phillies? The Subway Series is the prime example of why interleague play remains in Major League Baseball. Fans flock to the ballpark to watch their team do battle for much more than wins in the standings. In our case, the Mets fan fights for a level of respect that they’ll simply never get from the opposition. For us, the Subway Series appears to be another opportunity to earn that shred of recognition, but unfortunately remains a no-win situation.
About the Author: Rob Patterson
Ultimately, I owe nearly thirty years of Mets related torture to my mother, who is the reason I became a fan. I was too young to remember the 86 run, but hope to see one I'll be able to recall much sooner than later. I enjoy writing about the team and welcome your feedback on my posts. Oh..and I am not with 28!
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fallen to a mere three games above .500 for the first time since May 24th”
What??? If i would’ve told YOU or anyone who saw this team back in spring training that we’d be 3 games OVER 500 in june 11 i’m sure you’d be either calling me crazy or telling me to put down the pipe, people, let’s not forget this team was pegged by analystm fans and pretty much everyone except alderson and fred wilpon to be in last place and even to lose 100 games by some (i had them at 93 losses). this team is playing WAY above their head, let’s not rush to judgement as of yet, they fought back. plus, it’s not like we got swept by the astros… Ohh, wait, we did, but this was the yankees, a team full of HOF’s and superstars, we could’ve at least taken one i agree, but hey, move on to the next series and hope for better results.
Holy Crap what have you done with Alex? Great post Alex! I agree, no where near time to panic. They could stink it up against the Rays and still be ahead of the pace even the optimist predicted. It’s still June.
Lol, I had some humble pie this morning… so it’s been a good day..
I find it odd that you missed all of this when I said pretty much the same thing in the Ike Davis thread!
When I posed the question…Holding us back from what?
From being the best team in the MLB? Is that what you thought this team SHOULD BE? Or merely what you WANTED it to be?
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and if you want to blame someone for us not being the best team in the league there are far worse problems than Ike Davis’ bad bat involved!
There was a reason we were predicted to finish under .500 and in the cellar this year.
Anything over that is gravy. I’m just going to enjoy what I’m watching while it lasts, for however long it lasts.
Which is why I don’t think this applies:
‘The worst thing to come out of this weekend, in a series that shouldn’t really matter anymore than the next, is that Mets fans now view their team as being on the brink of collapse.’
Collapse? In June? Bah….
Seriously, what are we collapsing? We played the Yankees in Yankee stadium with Johan not at his best and the two winnable games after that. I am more concerned about how they played in the previous series than the Yankee one.
Why would you be concerned about the Nats series where we started the first two games of the series with unproven pitchers who actually did quite well until the Pen took over?
We almost won the first game in the 10th if not for two errors on the SS…Make those plays and we take two of three from the Nats!
Vs the yanks Gee pitched a strong game, the bats were silent, (Parnell gave up one dinger that didn’t really matter) and Niese pitched a great game only to have Parnell give up the lead, Ike davis gets us back in it and Rauch gives up the walk off!
This is the same pen you have been defending the past 3 weeks!
If your concerned you really don’t seem concerned enough to put the blame where it clearly belongs!
I agree with you. After the game I tuned into the WFAN and Mets fans are on the brink o collapse. It’s kind of funny too. Hey, this is still a team that is over achieving and like you aid we could have won a couple of those games. Oh well, we didn’t. Onward and upward.
The Subway Series is a no-win situation in the eyes of the fans. Yes that’s true. It means more to the fans than the players, true again. If the Yankees sweep us or win the series, their fans will dance happily and brag when it’s over. If the Mets win the series they still dance happily and brag when it’s over. I wish they would get rid of the damned Subway Series.
Analytically speaking the Mets losses to the Yanks can be attributed to:
1. Guys on the disabled list.
2. A LOUSY bullpen.
3. To many sub 200 hitters in lineup.
4. And a manager that lacks the mental capacity to manage a game in strategic situations in the 7th, 8th and 9th innings.
For the Mets to be an above 500 team at this time in the season is Simply Amazin’.
Are we going to pretend that Terry Collins didn’t play a huge part in the Mets getting swept? Game 1 – Johan Santana is rusty from not having pitched in a week. That was all Collins doing.
Game 2 – Pinch hitting for Hairston with Valdespin with game on the line? Really? Parnell still being brought in to pitch late and close?
Game 3 – Bay and Torres 1-2 in lineup? They went 0-8! Our middle of the order had plenty hits, no RBIs! And Bobby Parnell again!!!!
Hey Hodges at the time Parnell went into those games…Which Bullpen arm had the lowest ERA of all of them?
Miguel Batista… 2.77.
He’s a long reliever…Can’t use him when you got guys like Hefner and Young starting games for you!
If you use him who comes in for long relief during those games?
If Pelfrey hadn’t gotten hurt then the story might be different but we have a rookie who averages 5 IPPG and Young who is on a strict 80+ Pitch count…
He’s not an option and if Terry decided to use him you would all crucify him when long relief was needed and he had no one to turn to!
That isn’t what you ask.
You know full well what I was asking…Your just running from a truth you don’t want to accept!
Parnell is getting his chances because Ramirez (now Hurt) Rauch and Francisco all are even worse than he is!
They are saving Francisco for the closing role…
That leaves little to turn to…Evebn Byrdack who everyone loves has a higher ERA than Parnell!
yet Parnell is slammed like hell and ramirez, Rauch are given runs worth of leeway and even Byrdack who was good to start is dismissed when he does it.
Not Parnell though!
Guy has 12 Holds, 1 Win, 1 Loss 3 Blown Saves and of those three:
May 30 – Gives up only 1 run plus inherited runner Hung a curveball for a HR.
Jun 5 – (a game where Francisco blows the save and gives up the lead) Gives up 1 UNEARNED RUN on two errors by the shortstop
Jun 10 – Yesterday’s bad outing….
His one loss (May 28), he came in tied gave up a single, groundout, walk, FO (runner tag) and a single (RBI) then K to allow one run.
Parnell is one of the better Bullpen arms we have!
But thats says more about the rest of them than anything to do with Parnell!
i agree that we all should be happy to stay above .500 . no one could expect that the mets will get 10-13 games over , come on guys, we all knew that in the best case this team will NOT end dead last and maybe gets 81 wins this year , ill take that , if we stay above .500 till early september, we are probably one little streak away from a wild card , so enjoy the ride and not judge this team like it where a contender or something. LETS GO METS
Well, I think the point is that since we’ve defied expectations for two and a half months, we’d like to keep it up.
C’mon, let’s get our mojo back against TB. Winning this series would be amazin’!
Well they are not really defying my expectations….
I always contended this team was good enough to win…
A point many have tried to twist into a negative because all I have ever really said is Sandy made this team worse than it could have been had he managed to keep Reyes and either of K-Rod or Beltran.
In fact the only one playing above my expectations is Murphy and Santana, I thought Murphy would cost us more games than he has and didn’t expect Santana to be quite as good as he has been but I always thought he would pitch well enough to keep us in games.
Duda started slow but is starting to play up to what I expected and Ike has been the only real disappointment so far.
If we had reyes getting on base and K-Rod closing games we would have a lot more wins than we do right now. Francisco would be fine then as the setup guy.
I won’t even go into what our record might be with Beltran in the fold. We got something good for him true but we still could have made an offer for him.
If you look back I have been none of the more positive guys about this team since Omar got canned!
I said we had a great team and plenty of kids to fill in and was argued with at every turn by those who said this team was just awful and had to have the slate wiped and started over!
Yet now I’m called the negative guy….
A whole lot of Bull!
RZ just to be clear I wasn’t accusing you of calling me negative….Others are quite guilty of it though…
The allure of the subway series has faded away many years ago. This is nothing but a cash cow for the Yankees and Mets who usually pay the price in the standings. When thee expanded it to sic games that was the worst decision and mostly unfair to the Mets where on many years they lost a chance to go to the postseason by one game. I hate this.
TC got out managed in this series and not so as apparent when the Q hit instead of bunting to get Ike over but Girardi had Yanks fake the wheel and TC and Mets didn’t adapt but the big thing was Ike made it to 3b and was called out, what a poor series for Mets and Collins.