How bad is the blood between Mets players and their fans? The ball club can’t even get some loyalty love when they win and a few of the newly employed are lashing out.
Cubs transplant Javier Báez along with Francisco Lindor and Kevin Pillar, flashed thumbs down to their faithless followers in response to the bounty of boos they’ve received for the majority of the season.
Afterward, Báez explained that the thumbs-down signal was the Mets’ way of booing their own fans.
“When we don’t get success, we’re going to get booed,” Báez said. “So they’re going to get booed when we get success.”
I get the fans discontent. It’s been a brutal five months of disappointing baseball – one of the all time lows for the franchise who’ve lost 12 ½ games in the standings during the first 27 days in August.
Throwing more fuel into the ire of the fans is the Mets inability to move the needle in the National League East due to the Braves ability to bounce back after a demoralizing loss to the Giants the day before.
Beating the down and out of it Nationals two out of three is nothing to throw a ticker tape parade over, but the Mets showed some fighting spirit that we haven’t seen in consecutive games in quite a while.
A go-ahead, stay-ahead clutch three-run homer from the resurging Michael Conforto on Saturday sparked an outpour of offense on Sunday
Jonathan Villar was one hit shy of the cycle, Javier Báez blasted a two-run shot to the upper deck, Francisco Lindor laced a two-RBI double to deep left, Pete Alonso was 3-4, adding some insurance in the fifth, and Dominic Smith gave the Mets a two-run cushion with an RBI single in the sixth.
After the game, the much-maligned manager, Luis Rojas, wanting to stay out of the fray, “The focus of this team should be on playing baseball and getting better every day. We’ve played two really good games the last two days. The offense has come around as we want it to. I think that’s something that we, at this point, should be proud of.”
With 11 games on the docket between the bottom of the division-dwelling Marlins and the second to last place Nats, the Mets may be able to gain some respect from disgruntled fans if they do some damage, but gaining ground on the unbeatable Braves may be a much taller order.
