Blame Mets Loss on the Rain

Rain delay wakes up Padres in 11-5 Mets loss

There are nights when you really wonder why the rainout is something that's so frowned upon in Major League Baseball.

Thursday night at Citi Field was just one of those nights. The weather was miserable all day, rain was pouring as the Mets started their game with the Padres and it came down hard enough to force a 68-minute delay after two innings.

The Padres are in town for the next three days, ample time to schedule a doubleheader, and the Mets offered everyone in the crowd free tickets on Friday night (the rare benefit to attendance issues), so there wasn't really a majorly pressing need to play under adverse conditions. If there was a rainout, perhaps the Mets would have been able to win the makeup game instead of swallowing an 11-5 loss on Thursday.

Jeremy Hefner, making his first major league start, did just fine in the two innings before the delay as he retired the Padres without allowing a run both times. The time off didn't agree with him, though, and Hefner allowed four hits to the first five Padres he faced and the game quickly got out of hand.

It's always questionable to come back with the same pitcher after a long delay, although the Padres made the same choice and got a strong effort from Eric Stults. It's hard to fault Collins too much, though, because the Mets aren't exactly loaded with relief options capable of doing heavy lifting and because the normally light-hitting Padres only come to life when you get them wet.

Not much you can do under the circumstances but shrug your shoulders and try to focus on the positives. As has been the case all season, David Wright is at the top of that list.

Wright was a triple short of a cycle and hit a two-run homer that briefly made it seem like this would turn into a competitive game. He enters Memorial Day weekend hitting .405 as a result, teasing quite a summer to come for the third baseman.

In the Mets' dreams, Wright's run would have Ike Davis riding shotgun and they reaffirmed their faith in Davis on Thursday by saying he won't go to the minors. Their faith wasn't strong enough to actually start Davis on Thursday night, but he did get to pinch hit and delivered with a two-run single late in the rainy blowout.

If Davis can get his average up and Wright can keep his astronomical, this soggy night won't matter a bit in the big picture. Not that it will matter if they don't, but nothing much will matter in that case because the Mets season won't be going anywhere particularly interesting.

Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.

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