C-Mac is on vacation so it was Al Cintron who got to bridge between a ranting Keith McPherson and our slate of drive time shows Wednesday, and needing a breather from the Yankees, Al decided to hit the other side of town…where, uh, the Mets had just as bad of a Tuesday night against Baltimore.
“I put both teams names in a hat and I said, which one am I gonna start with?” Al said before pulling out the Mets. “Someone find Jose Quintana, please! Can we find Jose Quintana, the one before his last four starts where he's been absolutely abysmal? He's been terrible, atrocious, any other word you can think of that describes bad in his last four starts, and the game was over before it even started.”
Anthony Santander greeted Quintana with a dinger, the 21st he had allowed (with No. 22, nearly a career high, to come later) and has now seen his ERA go up almost three-quarters of a run in an August where he’s allowed 19 earned runs in 20 2/3 innings over four starts.
“A 25-pitch first inning, then you had the unfortunate Nimmo play, but what are we gonna do with Jose Quintana?” Al asked. “When Alvarez came back, everything was good and he pitched well, but now it’s just gopher ball after gopher ball, and his ERA is now 4.57. He's just been bad, there’s no other way around it.”
Here’s the problem: the Mets decided not to sell any of their expiring starters at the deadline to try to make a run, but Kodai Senga is gone again, and the Mets may have nowhere to turn to replace Quintana, or any other struggling starter.
“Tylor Megill? We've seen that soap opera a million times and know how that episode ends,” Al said. “The Mets came into this home stand with Oakland and Miami, glorified Triple-A teams, and lose two out of three to Oakland and should have swept Miami but didn't get it done. Win the first game in dramatic fashion versus the Orioles, and then you crap the bed Game 2 – you’re 4-4 going into the finale with Baltimore, and if they lose, forget it, because the Padres continue to win, and Arizona is 25-9 since July 10 – and guess who the next two teams the Mets play are?”
Al had said over the weekend that this stretch of games will decide the Mets’ season, and, well, 4-4 with one game with the Orioles and then the Padres and D-Backs behind that is not where you wanted to be.
“I said I didn’t want 4-5 or 5-4, 6-3 was the mark for this home stand, and they’ve been all over the place this home stand. Do I have the confidence that they can go into San Diego and Arizona and get it done? I really don’t know,” Al asked. “One day they’re up, one day they’re down…is this who the Mets are? They’ve been good since June, but the season is 162 games, and they put themselves by the 8-ball by getting off to such a rotten start.
They’ve fought their way back in, but the Braves, with all their injuries, are 2.5 games up, and the teams the Mets are chasing is who they’re playing – so this stretch will decide their season, and I don't know what to feel right now with this team."
Listen to Al’s entire downtrodden Mets open above!