It’s not Bobby Bonilla Day yet, but it’s never too early for the Mets to get into the national spotlight for doing something stupid and foolish that only the Mets seem capable of doing and whom the sports media loves to point out their screw ups.  So when the Mets manage to screw up something as simple as batting lineups, and give away a free out because they submit an incorrect batting lineup card to the umpires and opposing team, and subsequently lose the game, it’s newsworthy.

At this point, I’ve watched thousands of baseball games in my life.  I’ve never once seen an instance where a team has managed to bat out of order in a game before.  I mean, I’ve seen blunders on double switches and managers accidentally burn a pinch-hitter or a relief pitcher in critical situations before.  I’ve seen a guy walk on three balls instead of four balls because absolutely nobody from the umpires, players and both teams were paying attention.  But never before have I ever seen a game where a batter went up and took an at-bat out of the predetermined order, and then get caught for it.

I’d say that this is something that only the Mets would seem capable of doing, but seeing as how absolutely everything baseball is recorded, naturally, there’s citation of when this happened last time, and apparently it really wasn’t that long ago when this happened, back in 2016.  But because nobody gives a shit about the Milwaukee Brewers, nobody seems to have noticed when they did it, but because the Mets are notorious for screwing up just about everything there is to screw up in the game of baseball, and the media loves to point out when it does, it becomes news worth talking about.

Seriously though, what stupid shit for the Mets to fall for, and despite the fact that he was kind of a colossal fuck up in Washington, good on Reds manager Jim Riggleman for knowing exactly how to play the situation, and waiting for the precise moment when the Mets were building up some momentum to reveal the blunder, and completely wipe out any positive juju that they were beginning to feel with a runner on second with only one out.  Naturally, the Mets would have to, and did lose the game, in extra innings no less, where had their blunder not occurred, might not have even been on the table.  Who would ever know how things would have played out had the Mets not been so perpetually boneheaded?

Nobody will ever know, but because it’s the Mets, they’d probably find a different way to mess things up and lose, because that’s simply what the franchise seems to do best.