Last night’s loss will reverberate with this team for a long time.
It may just have been the most demoralizing loss of the season. It was clearly a maddening display of poor execution at the plate and a lack of pure baseball instincts and intellect.
David Wright swinging wildly at ball four in the ninth inning with the winning run only 90 feet away is an image I won’t soon forget. With the Mets tied, and young Daniel Murphy lashing a leadoff triple I expected more. I expected to win. It’s not that David Wright was solely responsible for what happened, but in that one swing, Wright clearly showed his youth and inexperience. All that was needed was either a bloop over a drawn in infield, or even hitting a grounder to the right side of the infield. As a three hitter, Wright needed to exhibit some patience and a keen eye. Rather than swinging for the fences, he simply needed to make contact.
What followed was the last thing Mets fans wanted to see as two hot bats, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado are intentionally walked to load the bases, only to bring up a slumping Ryan Church and Ramon Castro.
That one half-inning was just one of the many crushing blows we were forced to endure last night.
Rather then torturing myself (and you) by recalling everything that went wrong in this heart-wrenching loss, I needed to vent on what I thought was the biggest wasted opportunity of the night. It wasn’t the only wasted opportunity, but it clearly was the most devastating one.
More on this loss later…
