West L.A. Fadeaway

Game 40 - Mets

Dodgers 2, Mets 1
Record: 21-19

I'm getting sick from the Mets. Not sick of them -- I am coming down with illness because of this road trip. I am staying up night after night until 1 or 2 in the AM to watch our lads. There was something about watching them beat up on the SFO-mo's for three nights that staved off the repercussions of sleep deprivation. Now that the Mets are dropping game upon game, I'm falling prey. Sore throat, makings of a cold, perpetual headache . . . all on the eve of a holiday weekend. Swell.

Jose Reyes. Hurt again. When he gets dinged, you can cue up The Cranberries. If this calf problem does indeed linger, that coupled with the Hipster's issues may just make this team a .500 ballclub. The rotation was never slated to be top-notch beyond Santana. With the roster down two of its four core guys, the prognosis is not . . . well, it's not good.

Poor Ramon Martinez. Pressed into action because of roster limitations (hi, Omar!), he looks for all the world like he's swinging with the wrong end of the bat. 0-for-12 now, and it may be worse than his stats would indicate.

On the plus side: Daniel Murphy played a stellar first base last night. We'll take that. I mean, he's never looked more lost at the plate, but anything Kong/Piazza-like at fielding the position might've been more than we could stomach at this point. The next Keith? We'll hold off on that label. But in last night's small sample size, he looked like a 1B-2 at least, up from the LF-4 he'd been posting for weeks. Baby steps, light-hitting glove man at 1B. We'll take it.

Timely hitting . . . p'shaw. Who needs it? Timeliness is next to godliness, and the Mets have displayed an ungodly amount of untimely hitting. They strand so many damn people, I've taken to calling Met games "three-hour tours."

So . . . three craptacular outings in L.A. I can't stand that city, anyway. Like Rob might say, bite me, Randy Newman. After a much-needed day of rest, the Mets head up to Fenway for the aforementioned MLC showdown. The Mets are sharpening their Bowie knife for this gunfight as we speak.