The Mets took a good, old-fashioned pounding on Monday afternoon, giving up 10 runs to the Brewers after having allowed only eight runs in the first four games of the season, combined, while taking three out of four in Miami. What’s worse, they disappointed Chrystal and Colleen, who made the trip to Cream City to see that mess.
Maybe the Mets felt weird being in Wisconsin. After all, I’ve said on multiple podcasts now that Milwaukee feels like a later-in-the-year trip for the boys in orange and blue.
Turns out, that’s right. It’s been a long time since the Mets were in Milwaukee in April. Here’s when they’ve gone over the last several years.
2022: September
2021: September
2020: No trip
2019: May
2018: May
2017: May
2016: June
2015: June
2014: July
2013: July
2012: September
2011: June
2010: May
2009: June/July
2008: September
2007: July/August
2006: May
2005: May
2004: August
2003: May
2002: August
2001: April
It’s been 22 years since the Mets were in Milwaukee this early in the year, and even longer since they actually won a game in Milwaukee in the first month of the baseball calendar. The 2001 Mets, on their first trip to Miller Park, lost 6-4, 7-2, and 12-8 to what wound up being a 94-loss Brewers team.
The Mets’ last win in Milwaukee in April was at County Stadium, on April 12, 1998, as Turk Wendell coughed up a lead for Brian Bohanon, and wound up vulturing the win thanks to John Olerud’s tiebreaking two-run homer in the seventh inning.
All time, the Mets are now 2-9 in Milwaukee in April, with both wins coming during that 1998 series. The other win was the day before the last one, with Rey Ordoñez driving in Butch Huskey with the winning run on a ninth-inning single after Bob Wickman intentionally walked Matt Franco.
The Mets lost the opener of that series, which at the time continued a nearly 35-year losing streak in Milwaukee during April. The Mets had one previous trip there so early, the second series of the 1963 season… and got swept in four games by the Braves, including a walk-off two-run homer by Lee Maye off Tracy Stallard in the finale that helped set the tone for the Mets’ decades of misery on whatever rare occasions they have to go to cheese country in April.
We Can Pod It Out 82: I'm Only Sleeping