The Mets are cosmically and comically cursed | Politi

Hand-foot-and-mouth disease? I mean, c’mon.

NEW YORK — Meet the Mets? Fair enough. But if you’re actually going to step right up and greet the Mets, you probably should wear latex gloves and shower with Purell when you’re done. 

The news on Sunday that starter Noah Syndergaard was headed to the 10-day disabled list with hand-foot-and-mouth disease felt like the kind of storyline you’d make up if you were writing the pilot for a bad sitcom about the Mets. But no. This is real life.

The Mets are that sitcom.

“It might be the first DL stint for hand-foot-and-mouth. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a record!” said first-year manager Mickey Callaway, who looks like he’d prefer an alien abduction over three more months in this dugout.

And, given the way the season has gone, don’t bet against it.  

You literally can’t make this &$*# up when it comes to this franchise. The Mets are cosmically and comically cursed, an almost unprecedented combination of bad karma, bad management and bad, uh, just bad bad. 

I was going to make a joke about Jacob deGrom getting leprosy next, but I’m afraid, you know, that he’ll actually get leprosy. Would it surprise you at this point? Would anything with this team?

The annual summit between the city’s two major league teams ended on Sunday, and to be clear, the Yankees are not without their problems. Their closer, Aroldis Chapman, forgot how to throw strikes for a night. The backend of their starting rotation is a hot mess, one that GM Brian Cashman cannot afford to ignore before the trading deadline. Their AL East nemesis, the Red Sox, never seem to lose anymore. 

But the Yankees must have looked into the visiting dugout during this Subway Series with sympathy and awe. I’ve covered a lot of bad teams over the years, but this is the first one that left me afraid that I’d leave the clubhouse with sores in my mouth and blisters on my hands. 

Adults aren’t supposed to get hand-foot-and-mouth disease, but somehow, Syndergaard did while attending a youth clinic during the All-Star break. That led to perhaps the single oddest preamble to a manager’s press conference question in years.

“Mickey, I know you’re not a pediatrician, but …”

This being the Mets, Syndergaard’s illness barely cracks the top-five ugly developments over the weekend. At least they know the diagnosis and expect him back in a few days, unlike the MIA outfielder that they handed a $110-million contract 20 months ago.  

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One day after returning from his own DL stint, Yoenis Cespedes told reporters on Friday that he needed surgery on both heels — a double heelsectomy? — and doubted that he would make it through the rest of the season. This came as quite a surprise to everyone, including the Mets.

Cespedes said the timetable after such a surgery is eight to 10 months, which means next season could be a washout as well (and what a missed opportunity it was that nobody prefaced a question to Callaway by pointing out that he’s not an orthopedic surgeon). 

Mets assistant general manager John Ricco tried to do some damage control before Sunday’s game, but you can guess how that went. Ricco called surgery “a last resort thing” and that Cespedes has “good days and bad days.” Still, if he couldn’t be the DH at Yankee Stadium, it’s safe to say that the Mets are staring into the abyss of a lot of bad days. 

“I feel like we go a really good job of communicating,” Callaway said, which is all the proof you need that he’s not a crisis management expert, either. 

The biggest issue with the Mets, of course, is the leadership vacuum. Even if Callaway was good at handling a crisis — and, holy heckfire, I think we have ample evidence to the contrary — he shouldn’t have been the only team official talking to the press after Cespedes dropped that bomb or, for that matter, when closer Jeurys Familia was traded to the A’s. 

It was terrible news that GM Sandy Alderson had to take a leave of absence to battle a recurrence of cancer. But the problem goes straight to the top, straight to Jeff Wilpon and the merry team of yes men around him. 

Remember, these wild medical problems and failures in media relations are not some new phenomena. They have dogged this team for years, and that isn’t going away until the Wilpons do. 

Spoiler alert: The Wilpons are not going away. The Mets’ ace pitcher might be the one with hand-foot-and-mouth disease, but the team’s fans are forgiven if they’re the ones feeling sick.  

Steve Politi may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.