The Kinds of Losses that Doom Playoff Runs

So yesterday was pretty unbearable, but provided there's nothing wrong with Johan Santana, that's not the game from this past week that we're going to remember.

Games like yesterday happen. Sometimes you get blown out, sometimes you blow the other guys out. What matters is what you do with the swing games, and this past week the Mets pissed away three of them.

What more can you say about Friday night's debacle that hasn't already been said? I'm not going to kill Luis Castillo for it. It's a play he should have made (god knows) and it's a game we should have won, but, you know, it happened. In making himself available to the media Luis did everything right (after the play that is) on his end, and the team responded nicely on Saturday.

I had mostly moved on from Friday after we won that middle game 6-2, but as I watched yesterday I couldn't help but recall that this shouldn't have been a rubber game, that we should have had our two wins in the bag already.

From there I couldn't help but recall the game in LA where Church missed third or the game in St. Louis where Beltran didn't slide or the game in Pittsburgh we were leading 5-1. Those three games and Friday's are four losses we'll never get back. Right now we're 32-29, 3 games over .500 and 4 games out of first. If we'd won those four games like we should have, we'd be 36-25, 11 games over .500 and tied for first.

It's a dramatic difference. It's the difference between a middling season and an inspiring one. And those were just the gimme games I could think of off the top of my head. You want to throw at least one of those Phillies losses in there (i.e., Beltran's missed catch, Wright's defensive error) and then were' 13 games over and in first place.

We're not good enough to give wins away. I remember 2006 when Billy Wagner came in with a 4-0 lead against the Yankees at Shea and proceeded to completely melt down. We came out the next day and we were back on track; that charmed team could get away with the occasional crippling loss.

Not this team. We're just not good enough on the whole, so we need to be better on the margins. Unfortunately, that's exactly where we've struggled.

If we're going to make the playoffs, we can't keep giving games away. Simple as that.

- A.F.O.M.G.