Uninspiring Mets must earn back the buzz they have squandered
It was so much more exciting than this, what Mets higher-ups envisioned last winter as they courted free agent ace Justin Verlander. This was the team about to shoot a Super Bowl ad, a team adding brainpower to its front office and marketing operations, a team building a scoreboard the size of Rhode Island.
This was a franchise ready to take its next step in the treacherous journey from mom-and-pop to mainstream. Mets people loved the thought of the future Hall of Famer and his glamorous wife, model Kate Upton, lighting up the city. Fastballs popping at Citi Field and flashbulbs popping in Manhattan. Baseball and celebrity.
By the time Verlander, delayed by injury, finally made his home debut on Tuesday night, the Mets were two games under .500 and in danger of turning their fan base apathetic. His presence was not enough to spark a revival here, because the problems ran too deep.
When Verlander’s name was announced before the game, fans did muster as loud a cheer as they could, but entire sections in the upper deck were empty, as were whole rows in the lower bowl. You don’t lose 10-3 on Monday in Washington and return home to enthusiasm.
The season is far from over. The Mets are too talented to call it in May. But they have spent the first two months of this season giving back the intangible gains they made last summer, when Timmy Trumpet electrified the crowd, Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor played like stars, and Max Scherzer still looked mostly like his old self.
In December, the Mets added Verlander and Kodai Senga. In January, their Super Bowl ad ran. On the eve of the season, the New York Times ran a profile of Steve Cohen on A1.
The team had New York’s attention. And then they failed to hold it.
Tuesday’s 8-5 loss to Tampa Bay, in which Verlander allowed six runs in five innings, dropped them to three games under .500 for the first time in manager Buck Showalter’s managerial tenure.
“It does [surprise me],” Verlander said of the team’s performance. “I thought we could come out of the chute a little better than this. But at the same time, baseball is a long season -- I don’t want to give out all the cliches here, but in the past few years you’ve seen a lot of teams that struggled out of the gates find it and click and find a way to win the World Series.
“You look at the Nationals. You look at the Phillies last year. There are teams that click and the right time and find their mojo and go from there.”
Even on this dreary night, one could catch glimpses of that mojo, both on the field and in the seats. In the top of the third inning, Verlander threw a 1-1 fastball to Tampa Bay’s Brandon Lowe that popped in the glove like it came in at 99. The pitch had life. For a moment, so did the crowd.
Six pitches later, when Verlander struck out Lowe swinging on another fastball that echoed through the ballpark, the place came close to exploding.
The inning was nearly so dynamic for Verlander. After the first two batters reached base, he retired Lowe and Randy Arozarena and had Isaac Parades 3-2. Then he hung a curveball, Paredes banged it off the home-run part of the left field wall, and the Mets trailed 3-0.
When Alonso flied to center to end the fourth, a smattering of boos arose. Then Paredes homered again off Verlander in the fifth and heard full-throated jeers, as he did again at the end of the inning, his last of the night.
From there, the crowd was not totally disengaged. It allowed itself an eruption when rookie Brett Baty banged a long homer to right field in the fifth, before settling back into a space somewhere between disgust and disengagement. Alonso’s seventh-inning homer raised the energy again.
These people want so badly to be excited by the Mets. And this still new-ish Mets organization wants so badly to thrill its fans.
But for now, the team has lost its buzz -- and they’ve settled deep enough into the malaise that it won’t be fast or easy to bring it back, or progress again toward becoming the sort of attraction they aspire to be.
