The Mets have looked great this month. The starting pitching has been solid, the bullpen stellar, and their lineup has started to put runs on the scoreboard – even without Carlos Delgado, who will be out two more months. But Monday night’s loss to the Dodgers was so despicable it made me happy that the Mets are playing on the west coast (I was well asleep by the time of those confoundingly inexcusable 11th inning errors).

Now, I understand, no team is perfect. The Mets are going to lose games. They will even get blown out a couple of times. It’s a 162 game season, they’re bound to have poor nights every now and then. However, the mistakes made on Monday not only cost the Mets the game, but were errors that Little Leaguers don’t make. In the top of the 11th inning, Angel Pagan hit an extra base hit to right-center. Ryan Church, who was on first, came around third and looked like he scored the go-ahead run; but the Dodgers appealed the run. It turns out, Church failed to touch third as he rounded the base. Yeah, you read that right. I’ll give you a second to climb back in your chair.

I can understand how this error can happen every now and then. The thing that completely baffles me is that, after the thousands of times that Ryan Church has ran the bases, wouldn’t he have noticed that he missed the bag? He said he thought he nicked the bag, but this idiotic mistake ended the inning for the Mets. There’s an age-old saying in baseball that the first and the third outs of an inning should never be made on the basepaths. You can’t have a worse base running error than this to end an inning, especially in the top of the 11th…

On top of Church’s mistake, the Mets made 5 errors in the field. Ramon Martinez, who was filling in at shortstop for the injured Jose Reyes, made two errors. I will give Ramon the benefit of the doubt, though, because he was just called up to the Big Leagues (although he is a veteran) and arrived at Dodger Stadium literally minutes before game time. The errors made in the bottom of the 11th, however, were two more inexcusable mistakes.

First, with a man on, Xavier Paul hit a pop up to left-center field. Carlos Beltran ran over and called off left fielder Angel Pagan, but Pagan refused to bail on the play. The ball wasn’t caught and the Dodgers ended up having runners on second and third with no out. The Mets intentionally walked Juan Pierre to load the bases. Rafael Furcal then grounded to first baseman Jeremy Reed (filling in for Delgado) who fielded the ball on the infield grass and tried to get the force out at home, but made a flat-out horrendous throw. It wasn’t even close. The runner scored and the game ended. And I died a little inside.

I looked for some video of these errors, but I’m glad I couldn’t find anything to embed into this post. Like Jason Segal’s penis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, these plays should never be seen by human eyes. (If you are interested in projectile vomiting at the moment, though, ESPN has some highlights.) The worse part of the loss is that all of these bonehead plays are nothing new to the Mets this season. Whether it’s Jose Reyes letting a ball dribble through his legs, Beltran not sliding into home, David Wright being picked off of first base, or Daniel Murphy dropping routine fly balls; the Mets need to get back to playing smart baseball.