When his first season as New York Mets manager is complete and Mickey Callaway has time to reflect, he might look back on the second week in May as a painful-yet-necessary formative experience.
After the Mets went 0-6 on a homestand with Atlanta and Colorado, placed Todd Frazier and Jacob deGrom on the disabled list and made the difficult decision to designate Matt Harvey for assignment and trade him to Cincinnati, Callaway might have thought his team was due for a reprieve. Then, the self-inflicted portion of the program got underway: The Mets suffered a 2-1 loss to the Reds after blowing an opportunity to take an early lead because they batted out of order in the first inning.