No-dai
Morning Dose: Thursday, August 21
☀️ GOOD MORNING:
Just when you think things are starting to turn in the right direction, they take a detour.
Facing a last-place team on an August, mid-week night is supposed to be when teams like the Mets rack up wins without anyone really noticing. Instead, their supposed best pitcher put them in a four-run hole.
Kodai Senga has always been the X-factor for this ballclub. He has the ability to be an ace, the kind of stopper they desperately need. When life was good in April and May, so was Senga. He started the season 7–3 with a sparkling 1.47 ERA, completing five innings in 12 of his 13 starts. The Mets had a 5.5-game lead on the Phillies when he went on the IL in mid June.
Since returning from the IL, he has been a different pitcher. The flashback in his last outing to his earlier-season self turning into an outlier. After giving up four more earned runs last night, Senga has a 6.00 ERA over his last six starts, and the Mets have lost the last three of those games. Rather than lifting his teammates up, the opposite is happening. Once again the defense compounded Senga’s issues on the mound.
All could have been forgiven had Cedric Mullins delivered with the bases loaded after the Mets had pulled within a run in the sixth. But the key offensive upgrade from the trade deadline weakly flied out, failing to hit the ball far enough to bring the tying run home from third with less than two outs. Luis Torrens, who was partly responsible for the Nats’ taking an early lead due to catcher’s interference, couldn’t pick Mullins up with a two-out hit, something the Mets have been strangely good at over the past week.
📉 WHERE IT LEAVES US: The brief moment when maybe the Phillies would fall back to the Mets has passed. They completed one of their most dominating sweeps in franchise history over the Mariners, recording their most hits in a series in more than 25 years and their most strikeouts by their pitching staff since at least 1900 (per MLB). Luckily, the Reds lost for the first time in 10 games against an American League opponent to keep them one game back in the wild-card race.
☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
📺 STREAMING WARS
I hate myself for talking about ESPN on the day it launches its new direct-to-consumer streaming service since the last thing they need is more publicity and free marketing, but since it’s consequential to the way fans will consume baseball (and sports at large) going forward, I think it’s important to talk about.
🗞️ THE BIG NEWS: ESPN is reportedly set to acquire MLB.TV for a “boatload of money” to offer out-of-market baseball games to subscribers as part of its new streaming platform.
WHAT THIS MEANS: We know the way of the future is streaming. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many of you who live outside of the New York metro area benefit from a broadcast landscape that allows you to watch your favorite team from any location.
The problem has always been for in-market viewers. Because of archaic and anti-fan blackout rules, the majority of viewers are stuck purchasing cable packages for the right to see the Mets on SNY, or else pay a hefty sum to cobble together individual streaming services to get the specific channels they want as part of a streaming portfolio.
A NEW LANDSCAPE: Details are scant on how ESPN’s new deal with MLB might look, but we can take some educated guesses based on the company’s strategy of pivoting from a broad-based cable-subscriber-fee business model into a streaming distributor.
