For every monday home game the last two years, the Mets have worn their “digital camouflage” alternate jerseys on all mondays. The two exceptions were Opening Day of both last year and this year, during which the Mets sported their pinstripes, which they always do during the home opener. Yesterday, however, the Mets came up to the plate with their blue hats and their whites with blue pinstripes. While I have no complaints and prefer seeing the Mets in their traditional color scheme, everyone was wondering why they weren’t worn yesterday.

Rich MacLeod of MLB.com and JustMets.mlblogs.com tweeted this out, in response to numerous inquiries by fans as to why the camo wasn’t worn:

It appears the Mets aren’t going to be wearing it as much. Which is ironic, considering that they’ve only worn their camo alternates twice this season. The last time the Mets announced that they would “tone down” wearing something was in 2012 when they said they would only wear the black jerseys on the road with limited usage. Strangely enough, the Mets never wore them on road, instead, they wore them at home twice, both times during a promotion that involved something to do with the late 90s or the early 2000s, like” Edgardo Alfonso Bobblehead Day” on July 21st 2012, which was the last day the Mets ever wore black uniforms.

Now, here we are in 2015, and the Mets are telling us they are going to “tone down” wearing the camo. I suspect this will be a slower process, as getting rid of uniforms that celebrate the military will be considerably harder to get rid of.

I highly doubt that the Mets will wear camouflage next year. We will probably wear it once more this year, and then dispose of them. If this is the case, then the Mets would have four uniforms, which to me is fairly reasonable.

Despite being up 1.5 games entering play yesterday, this was an important game for the Mets. They had dropped two tough games in a row and they needed to re-bound quick. Niese pitched three great innings, people were hoping that he would throw a complete game.

Then Niese had his bad inning.

First pitch single.

Two run Home run.

Line drive single.

Then, Dan Warthen came out and Niese buckled down, his fastball velocity increased after Warthen’s visit, and he got a slow ground-ball double play. The call was overturned at first, but Niese wasn’t thrown off, he quickly got two outs and got out of the inning. Niese then completed three more fine innings. Seven innings and two earned runs, a quality start, and more importantly, he kept his team in the game, and stopped the bleeding in his “meltdown” inning, that he has on a regular basis.

Jon’s future with the Mets is currently un-known. Going into 2016, the Mets rotation should be Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard, Matz and Wheeler. That’s five. Niese doesn’t fit into the equation, he’s the odd man out; yet, Niese isn’t a #6 starter. There are over 5 teams in MLB that would consider Jon the “ace” of their staff. If Jon is impressive moving forward, we should get a very good return.