Luke Weaver wasn’t the pitcher the Mets needed to temporarily halt their misery on Thursday, but he could be just the right amateur wizard to help his teammates get through the tough times.
Weaver served up an eighth-run home run that turned a one-run lead into a 5-4 loss to the Nationals at Citi Field.
He hadn’t allowed a run in four straight games, so his pending change to C.J. Abrams was particularly poorly timed as the Mets fell for the 17th time in their last 20 games.
“This striving for perfection is just a pressured failure mentality,” said Weaver, the main target of the interns’ boos. “I think everyone wants to be the champion because we care and we want to win so badly. And I don’t think success lives in this field. The freedom that we play with day in and day out is kind of suffocating a little bit.”
Not all blown saves are created equal. Weaver admitted that the disappointment is “extremely” worse when the Mets (MLB’s worst team 10-21) are in such a slide.
“Of course I sit there and feel the weight of the world and feel like I let the team down,” Weaver said, “but at the end of the day, I feel like I’m in a good place. We sit there and tell you guys, ‘He’s going to come, this is the game, this is the law of averages’ and all that stuff. But those words don’t carry the same weight when you keep going day in and day out.”
Mark Vientos’ RBI double in the bottom of the sixth inning put the Mets in a perfect position with their top three relievers available to close out the series win.
Brooks Raleigh homered in the seventh inning and Devin Williams scored in the scoreless ninth.
“You don’t usually see an entire collegiate group not playing their best baseball at the same time,” Weaver said. “It’s like there’s a little bit of culture that I’ve inadvertently adapted to. That’s the way winning and losing works.”
OK.
“We lose sleep, the mind wanders, and you get into a state of fixation that you don’t really need to be in,” Weaver added. “The answer is kind of in those words — it simplifies the process, maybe you do less repetitions, and maybe it’s just about enjoying why you do it for a living and trying to find your inner child and the joy that it brings to you to play the game.”