This is Baseball?

"Sunday you could trust your eyes as you saw the Mets total four hits over nine innings, which made for one more Met hit than the sum of Met errors. Andy Ibañez, the 193rd third baseman in New York Mets history, committed two of them. Andy Ibañez's shortcomings as third baseman were a surprise, given that we'd seen him only try the outfield to date. But the man did play third (and second) on a going basis for Texas, Detroit and West Sacramento, so why not try him at the hot corner?"

"On Sunday in Phoenix what went wrong was obvious enough. The Mets didn't make a couple of plays and they got only a couple of hits. Call off the coroner, we know the cause of death, a.k.a. the 5-1 loss to the Diamondbacks. If you wish to refer to the nine-game road trip they just completed as successful, the math won't dispute you, as the wins (5) outnumbered the losses (4). If you watched this team against the one opponent among the three faced that wasn't as dreggy as the Mets, you wouldn't claim much momentum."

"The Mets won two of three from Los Angeles of the American League, then two of three from Colorado, then withstood a drowse-off until the tenth inning of their opener versus Arizona. That 5-2 stretch, even in those pockets bereft of clutch hitting, indicated something of a revival might be underway. At the very least, the Angels and the Rockies seemed worse than the Mets. After the weekend in the desert was complete, nobody in either league was worse than the Mets. There are standings to prove it."

The Mets’ games lacked excitement, so attention shifted to what went wrong after play. In Phoenix on Sunday, the Mets lost 5-1 to the Diamondbacks, with the cause of defeat described as missed plays and only a couple of hits. The team had completed a nine-game road trip with five wins and four losses, including two of three against Los Angeles and two of three against Colorado, and a competitive opener that reached the tenth inning. Despite that stretch, the Mets were portrayed as worse than few opponents, and standings supported that view. In the Sunday loss, the Mets totaled four hits over nine innings, and the number of hits was only one more than the total errors. Andy Ibañez committed two errors at third base, surprising given his prior use in the outfield.

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