Unhappy Recap: Cubs 9 Mets 6

Of all the hard losses, and all the monumental disasters and all the unhappy recaps, this has got to be the worst.

And I don't want to hear one thing about Luis Ayala, or even Oliver Perez. The Mets offense is completely to blame for this loss.

Five guys made outs with a man on third and fewer than 2 outs and none were able to hit a deep fly ball to get a run in. That's disgraceful.

First it was Daniel Murphy in the 7th who hit the ball hard but lined into a double play. That was bad luck.
In the 8th inning Ryan Church struck out (make contact, please) and Ramon Castro hit a weak grounder to third.
And in the 9th it was David Wright striking out (how many times have I written that?) and Ryan Church again with a weak grounder.

But let's be fair here, there is plenty of blame to go around. Oliver Perez sucked. I'm not ready to give up on him as a big game pitcher (and I hope this is not his last start as a Met, I don't want him going out in infamy like Tom Glavine) but he did allow 11 base runners in 4 1/3 innnings. You can only walk the tightrope for so long.

And Luis Ayala did give up three runs, but the hit to Lee was an opposite field dunker and it was in his second inning of work, on his third straight day of pitching.

Daniel Murphy's triple was an attempt to atone for an earlier mistake when he misplayed a single to allow the tying run to score. But another hit did come after that, meaning the run would have scored anyway.

I love Ramon Castro but not only did he ground out with 2nd and 3rd and one out in the 8th, he struck out with the bases loaded in the 9th. He's batting .150 in his last 40 at bats, which covers all of August and September.

And let's not leave the coaching staff out of this, they need to be more aggressive. Reyes should have been running in the 7th. Even if Murphy's line drive were still caught, it probably wouldn't have been a double play if Reyes had already been on second base.

And Luis Aguayo needs to be a little more aggressive also. We've seen it several times this year, he holds a runner with no outs, assuming the Mets could get him home, but they can't.

The Mets blew a golden opportunity here to regain control of their destiny. Now they are almost definitely out of the division race, and in a tie with Brewers and fighting for their lives to fend off a second collapse.

But as we've seen so many times before this team always has a little bit left to reel you in again, usually just so they can break your heart one more time.

It saddens me that I wrote this entire post and didn't even think about mentioning Delgado's grand slam, which at the time it was hit, may have been the biggest moment of the season.