Untimely Suspension Just Another Frustration For The New York Mets

The Mets have earned 45 wins this season, so this won’t end up the worst season in franchise history, no matter how badly the rest of the schedule goes.

And while Steve Cohen spent about $300 million more on this year’s team than Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday did in constructing the 1992-93 disasters, the 2023 Mets seem to be made up of reasonably likable and accountable individuals who aren’t prone to doing things that would otherwise get them thrown in jail, like tossing firecrackers into a crowd or spraying people with bleach. So they aren’t even close to the most embarrassing team in franchise history.

But as the Mets were reminded yet again Friday night, this season has a pretty good chance of being the most exhausting and frustrating one ever endured by a team that’s worn the blue and orange in Queens.

A potentially cathartic offensive outburst was at least temporarily halted by torrential rains at Fenway Park with the Mets leading 4-3. Brandon Nimmo and Daniel Vogelbach each hit two-run homers while fellow struggling left-handed hitters Jeff McNeil and Brett Baty had the Mets’ other hits, a pair of doubles.

Nimmo entered Friday hitting just .208 since May 31, a span in which has average has sunk from .300 to .261. The round-tripper Friday was the first since June 27 for Vogelbach, a popular target for the boobirds at Citi Field and online who has just six homers and 13 extra-base hits this season.

In addition, McNeil entered Friday hitting .246 with an OPS+ of 81 after leading the majors in batting at .328 and compiling an OPS+ of 141 last season while Baty arrived in Boston hitting just .213 since May 6.

Perhaps the quartet will pick up where they left off when the suspended game resumes at 2:10 this afternoon (the Mets having four of their eight non-natural rivalry interleague series impacted by rain is an undeniably hilarious sign from the angry baseball goods). Or perhaps they will individually or collectively be swallowed up by a sinkhole that appeared in the soaked Fenway outfield.

At the very least, the Mets’ big night being interrupted is a standard Very Mets Thing to happen this season. The game against the Red Sox marked the start of a five-game road trip following a six-game homestand that managed to encapsulate all the frustrations and inconsistencies the Mets have endured.

After collecting just four hits while being outscored 11-1 in losing the first two games of last weekend’s series to the Dodgers, the Mets posted a 2-1, 10-inning victory on Sunday — their eighth win this year in which they scored three or fewer runs.

Then on Tuesday, the Mets recorded just the second 11-10 win in franchise history after staving off a furious comeback by the White Sox, who trailed by as many as seven runs.

An eight-inning gem by Justin Verlander in a 5-1 win Wednesday gave the Mets a chance at a sweep Thursday. But an encouraging debut for Jose Quintana (two runs in five innings) was vaporized when Drew Smith, envisioned as a cog in an Edwin Diaz-fueled late-inning relief corps, continued his evaporation by giving up four runs — only one of which was earned due to a Pete Alonso error — in the sixth inning of a 6-2 loss.

The team that hits when it doesn’t pitch and doesn’t pitch when it hits was beginning to do a little bit of both Friday — Kodai Senga gave up an unearned run in the first and a Yu Chang RBI double off the Green Monster-aided run in the second before retiring his final five batters prior to the suspension — before the elements stopped cooperating.

“Some people in the clubhouse said ‘Welcome to the big leagues,’” Senga told reporters regarding Chang’s only-at-Fenway double.

And welcome, once again, to the most frustrating and exhausting season in Mets history.