The Typical Citi Field

Yesterday, a day after Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal published this article, Citi Field continued to mock the home team, silencing them in a 4-0 loss to the Nationals on our opening day. There may have been many factors contributing to the loss: the crazy turnaround from playing a night game in Florida before a day game in New York, the fact MLB allowed for a 3rd party drug test administrator that kept them delayed an hour because Dominic Smith didn't need to pee right away, or maybe just a dominant pitcher in Stephen Strasburg...still, if you're going to be facing the best, you would rather do it at YOUR best and the Mets were not set up to present the best fight against one of the best in the game.  Even with Noah Syndergaard sent ahead to not have to worry about all those other factors, he still could not hold down a Nationals team without Trea Turner, who is out for 4-6 weeks with a broken finger.

Photo via COED

Citi Field, however, may also be a major factor. The Mets have the worst home record there since 2012 and even their exit velocity goes down. The ballpark shouldn't be a factor in the latter, unless you factor in the psychological aspect of it, where it is constantly in the heads of the home team that they have to change their approach, which may lead to greater insecurity. We fans have criticized the place since it opened up for a variety of reasons, but 10 years later, we're still feeling the affects of the Wilpons overall lack of oversight, or just poor oversight all around, or "Hubris" as Greg Prince said in my Mets fan documentary...whatever you want to call it, no additions or fixing or what have you can change the fact that Citi Field was poorly thought out, poorly designed and poorly executed.

Whether the Wilpons own the team for all of our entire lives, or the life of the franchise overall, their circus-like organizational influence will never be lifted off of the Metsian experience, and it is just an absolute shame. I hope the team can consistently perform better as time marches on within the confines of how the owners like to do business, but it just saddens me, like much in this world, that they've left such a negative legacy on our favorite baseball team.

As my dad would say, "Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

Although, now I'm wondering how the Lincoln family feels about that...


Anyway, here's last night's A Metsian Podcast with Stephen Keane joining us.

LAUGH. IT. OFF. GUYS.

LET'S. GO. METS.