Not entirely his fault.
Foreshadowing, in the top of the 1st:
Quote:
GARY: Fastball high, called a strike. Canha disagrees with Angel Hernandez.
RONNIE (quietly): Yeah, get used to that.
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Gary and Ronnie also note that every time they see Angel, he's with a different crew. I guess his fellow umps can't stand him, either.
Still, Canha singles, sending McNeil to 3rd and then Lindor narrowly misses a HR, with both McNeil and Joey Cora trying to lean it fair. (GARY: They look like a synchronized-swimming team.). Lindor scores McNeil with a sac fly (RBI 100 on the year) and Pete launches one, and the Mets lead 3-0.
DeGrom gets Tony Kemp on a grounder, gives up a sharp single to Machin, then runs afoul of Angel Hernandez, constantly getting squeezed on dubious calls. He "walks" Sean Murphy and Seth Brown, and then Dermis Garcia smacks a fly ball that McNeil (only in LF because Nimmo is resting that leg with the day game after a night game) appears to lose in the sun, and then falls on his ass trying to scramble back for it. Two runs, score, men at first and third.
Jake, backing up the plate on the play, tells Angel "those pitches weren't low". Hernandez tells Jake that if Jake gives him any more lip, he'll throw DeGrom out of the game. (He makes the "thumb" motion.). So nice to know Angel's learned how to take criticism. Not that he EVER deserves it.
A hard grounder by Connor Capel to 2B ties it up, and then Shea Langeliers hits a foul pop-up to 1st, but Pete isn't used to the enormous foul territory at the Coliseum (there so they can fit the football field in, even though the Traitors, er, Raiders are now in Las Vegas), and falls down, himself.
Langeliers then doubles to left, scoring Garcia, and it's 4-3 Oakland. So that's it for the "three runs or fewer" streak (one game too late to save the record for Death Valley Jim Scott's heirs…), but it was two legit hits, two cases of Angel being Angel, and both the Squirrel and the Polar Bear flopping around like Fish out of water. I wouldn't DFA him, yet.
In the top of the 2nd, Angel calls the low strike a strike with Guillorme at bat, getting a dirty look from Luis, but then Guillorme tags one to LF (caught) and Vientos puts his first MLB homer in the 2nd deck in right-center, so at least Jake's back even.
Bottom 2nd, three Mets (Escobar, Lindor, McNeil) have as much luck with the 3B foul territory as Pete did with the other side, but at least none of them fall over. Jake strikes out Kemp anyhow, gets Machin on a grounder, and retires Murphy, so hopefully order is restored.
I'm still on delay, though, so who knows?
Angel Bleeping Hernandez…
(Canha just got hit again. Well, he got hit 27 times as an Athletic last year, so he's used to that happening in this park.)
ETA: Okay, the Seth Brown HR was legit. (Although Nimmo might have had it; Canha isn't really a CF. Take one piece out of the defense and it all crumbles…) But that's not worrying me…it's the 2-out walk to Langeliers.
Those pitches weren't close.
Still, we're still in it.
ETAA: No, we weren't. Mets now 10-8 against the worst teams in baseball. "Easy Schedule", my acid stomach. Can't ask the Phoolies to save us every day, now.