Well, we don’t know for sure that they did that, but it seemed kind of obvious that the infield dirt was overly moist and muddy last night as the Mets-Braves game got underway. The reasonable inference: that they did it to slow down Jose Reyes, who said that he had never seen infield dirt that wet, “not even close.”
Of course, it didn’t work: Reyes stole two bases anyway and reached three times. Given the struggles Jair Jurrjens had, maybe they should have slicked down the ball to help the movement on his pitches a bit.
As ineffective as the Braves’ bit of gamesmanship turned out to be, the Mets lodged a complaint with the league over the infield. Which I would have too, because such wet dirt could possibly be a safety issue, and is definitely a laundry issue, and neither one of those things is good for the game.
