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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 10 September 2026 11:21 am “The final score, Mets 15 Marlins 14. What a night in Miami. Steve, I understand you have our star of the game standing by.”
“That’s right, Gare. We’re here with Uni Corn. Uni, I should let you catch your breath, but I’ve gotta ask, you don’t make many appearances with us.”
“Um, is that a question?”
“Let me rephrase that. How come we don’t see you at the ends of Mets games more than we do?”
“Well, Steve, if you did, a Unicorn Score sighting wouldn’t be all that special, would it?”
“You make a good point, and it is always special when you grace us with your presence. Not as special as my ‘Let’s Be Frank’ interludes, perhaps, but still a pretty big deal.”
“Steve, are you just going to do self-referential shtick? Because, quite frankly…”
“‘Frankly,’ ha. I see what you did there.”
“No pun intended, I assure you. I don’t want to be rude, but I’m pretty exhausted right now.”
“As I imagine you would be. How does this compare to some of the other times you’ve shown up?”
“Uh, I don’t know. I don’t even remember the last time.”
“That was just last year, the end of August in 2025, when the Mets beat these very same Marlins at Citi Field, 19-9. You also came by in April of 2025 when the Mets topped the Nationals in DC, 19-5.”
“That recent? I tend to forget these things. Y’know, they happen, I appear, and then it’s like I was never here.”
 Someone you don’t see often. “Uni, you’ve made the Mets scene 23 times in all.”
“Technically, Steve, I’ve been on hand for every score the Mets have won by for the first time, so it’s a lot more than 23. Once my score repeats, or gets cloned, if you will, it comes off the board as a Unicorn Score.”
“Like the way the Mets first won a 16-7 game at Philadelphia in 2015, the night David Wright returned to the lineup with a bang, but then the Mets won another 16-7 game earlier this year in Washington over the now last-place Nationals.”
“Yeah, basically. I mean I was at the first game the Mets won, 3-2, and the first game they won, I don’t know, 6-4. Those were Unicorn Scores once, too. It’s just that I fade away when those scores become old hat.”
“And that horn in the middle of your forehead would make an ideal spot for the Mets batters to hang their hat tonight after scoring 15 runs off Marlin pitching.”
“Steve, do you mind? I was born with that horn.”
“Uni Corn a little combative in our postgame interview, understandable, given how hard the Mets had to fight to hold on, 15-14.”
“Nice save, Steve.”
“Tobias Myers had a nice save, too, but we’ll get to that later. Right now, I want to ask you what you were thinking as this game went along.”
“That’s a big go-to question for you guys, ‘What were you thinking?’ To tell you the truth, Steve, I wasn’t thinking all that much about this game for a while. I thought it was just another win in progress for the Mets.”
“The Mets have now won 21 of their last 33, so I can see where it might begin to feel like it’s old hat.”
“You’re not gonna make another horn crack, are you, Steve?”
“I won’t, I promise, but it looked that big branded sports drink cooler just got a crack in it after Christopher Morel and Luis Torrens dumped it over your head and came up against that horn of yours. That thing must be as hard as some of the stale buns I’ve had to bite into doing my popular ‘Let’s Be Frank’ segment.”
“Is it too late to get Michelle Margaux to fill in for you?”
“Speaking of filling in, what about the job Christopher Morel did tonight? Came in as a pinch-runner for Brett Baty in the second inning when Brett felt something in his knee and had an absolutely phenomenal game.”
“I tell you what, Steve. Morel is a player I can relate to. You don’t see him very often, yet when you do, he does something you almost never see.”
“That’s true, Uni. The same player who recently became the first Met to make an outfield debut AND a third base debut in the same game tonight became the first Met to enter a game as a pinch-runner and go on to collect three hits, knock in three runs, and score three runs, including that two-run homer in the third, his first as a Met.”
“No doubt Morel is one of the reasons I showed up tonight. Same for Torrens. If he doesn’t hit that little tapper in the eighth to make it 15-9, I don’t know what happens.”
“Luis with four RBIs tonight and doing just a phenomenal job sharing the catching duties with Francisco Alvarez this year. But I wanna know about your process on a night like tonight.”
“Well, Steve, like I said, it just looked like another Met win as it was going along. I guess there’s always a chance I have to get ready to come by if the Mets are going to score a lot of runs.”
“If the folks watching don’t know, all of your scores, the ones the Mets have won by only once in their 65-year history, have involved the Mets themselves scoring at least 13 runs.”
“Right. Still, when it’s 8-0, you’re not thinking that far ahead.”
“What about when the Marlins come back to tie it, 8-8? What’s a Uni Corn thinking about then?”
“Like any normal creature, or even one who is by common conception one of a kind, I’m not thinking of myself in the third person. But I will tell you when it was 8-8, I was thinking about the team, not myself. Remember, if the Mets lose, no matter what the score is, I don’t appear.”
“Soon, however, in the seventh, the Mets get it in gear again, taking advantage of a hit-by-pitch and a couple of walks, a few timely hits, then Francisco Lindor tops it off with a three-run homer to make it 14-8. When it’s 14-8, what’s going through your mind?”
“At 14-8, they’ve got my attention. At 14-8, I get an alert that the Mets have never won by 14-8. So, yeah, I have to be ready.”
“Of course, this game wasn’t going to stay 14-8 for long, as Joe Mack went deep off Daniel Duarte in the Marlin seventh to make it 14-9, a score I believe you know something about.”
“You talking about the Colorado incident?”
“I am, or should we say the Colorado incidents, plural?”
“Yeah, that was crazy. I come out to Coors Field one night in 2015 when the Mets win by 14-9 for the very first time, then what happens? They win by 14-9 the very next night, and it’s not a Unicorn Score anymore.”
“Is it hard to not take something like that personally?”
“Listen, I know the Mets are just trying to score as many runs as they can and allow as few as they can. Sometimes all I can do is hang back and find out if I’m going to gallop onto the scene or fade from view. Most nights I’m nowhere to be seen. That second night in Denver is just one of those things that happens.”
“Or two of those things.”
“Anything else, Steve? I really am tired.”
“All right, Uni, we get to the eighth, Luis Torrens’s infield dribbler makes it 15-9, and you know the Mets have never won by that score. But in the bottom of the inning, the Marlins plate two more runs, and it’s 15-11, and you’ve been there.”
“Well, the Mets have been. I was there for the first one in 1989. The second time was 2021.”
“At that point, you’ve gotta be wondering what your night is gonna look like when it’s all over.”
“I’m not gonna lie, Steve. I was getting nervous. If the Mets hold on, 15-11, well, I’m at most a point of reference in some lunatic’s game recap. But if the Mets give up a run or two or three, I’ve got to be right here talking to you. And I can’t even fathom what extra innings would have been like.”
“And, to reiterate, if the Marlins come all the way back…”
“Steve, had the Marlins come all the way back, let’s just say I was doing a search of Miami’s intricate network of causeways to figure out which one I could jump off of. Blow leads of 8-0 and 14-8, and it’s Biscayne Bay here I come.”
“Uni Corn, taking these Mets games very much to heart.”
“Like I said, Steve, I’ve been with this team every time it’s won by a specific score for the first time. I grow attached to the idea of a unique win. I don’t know if your notes say it there, but I was around for a 13-12 Mets win in 1963, and that still stands as a Unicorn Score to this day.”
“That must have been a wild game.”
“From my perspective, Steve, if I’m in play, they’re all wild.”
“I’ll bet they are, especially this one. Although the Mets never trailed, it felt very much like a back-and-forth game, surprising in that the Mets bullpen, as Gary said tonight, has been so ‘impeccable’ of late.”
“They looked pretty peckable to me.”
“Nonetheless, after some of the guys who’ve done so much to get the Mets on this roll, particularly Nate Lavender, had their troubles, Andy Green turned to Tobias Myers to slam the door, which he did, recording the final two outs to make the final score, 15-14, the most runs the Mets have ever scored or allowed when winning by a single run.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know it was over until it was over, to quote one of Green’s predecessors. I forget which one. After so many games, sometimes you lose track of these things.”
“But I imagine it was worth the wait.”
“Like I said, this game took it out of me, but inside, I’m jumping up and down like Jefry Yan.”
“Is it any sweeter because this 15-14 win completed a sweep of the Marlins, who were barely hanging on in the Wild Card race before this three-game series began and now are all but done as a playoff contender?”
“Oh, hell yes, Steve. When the Marlins started coming back, specifically when they were cutting the lead from 8-3 to 8-8 in the sixth, I asked myself how could it be that easy? The Mets fell behind, 4-0, in the fourth in this very ballpark on the last day last year and it was like they couldn’t be awakened or anything, and that was with a playoff spot on the line. So, yeah, the players won’t admit it, but I’ve got no problem saying out loud how much I love sticking it to the Marlins.”
“And with that highly distinctive pointed horn in the middle of your forehead, I imagine you could get a few good pokes in.”
“Jesus, Steve. Give it a rest.”
by Jason Fry on 9 September 2026 8:20 am Baseball is almost universally weird, but there’s weird by normal baseball standards and then there’s whatever happened to the Mets on Tuesday night in Miami.
Sandy Alcantara reported for duty with his sinker acting as a Mets sleeper agent. That was obvious from the very first pitch of the game, which Francisco Lindor smacked over the fence. The Mets tallied another first-inning run; in the second, with two on and one out, Alcantara threw Juan Soto a sinker that was doomed the moment it left his hand. The Mets were up 5-0, and out on the mound Alcantara had that look of resignation all pitchers find themselves wearing sometimes. He’d pitch into fifth with the disobedient sinker sent to go away and think about what it hadn’t done, a display of professionalism that was mostly stoicism: When the key piece of your arsenal is missing, there’s not a lot of adjustments to be made.
The Mets tattooing one of the Marlins’ best in a September game at Soilmaster Stadium? That was weird and wonderful. So, for a time, was what Sean Manaea was up to as Alcantara’s opposite.
It’s been a rough stretch for Manaea, and he looked like he need to match Alcantara in performative stoicism, as his first pitch to Heriberto Hernandez was a fastball that came in occupying way too much plate and got walloped. It wound up in A.J. Ewing‘s glove and Manaea went back to work with that oh boy look on his face we’ve seen far too often of late. But the next two Marlins were almost comically aggressive, letting Manaea walk off the mound after just four pitches with no harm done. (Sandy Alcantara, probably: That’s fine, three minutes to catch my breath is plenty, thanks fellas.) After that Manaea found his groove: Twenty-one to go, eighteen to go, fifteen to go, twelve to go. He had five perfect innings under his belt, a low pitch count and hey, why not dream a little?
And then it all came unraveled with startling speed in the sixth, as the Marlins recorded five hits in just nine pitches. Goodbye perfect game, goodbye shutout, goodbye comfortable lead. Manaea trudged off the mound looking dazed and the Mets had work to do to secure this one. Weird, and not wonderful in the least.
But hey, baseball. The Mets, it would turn out, were done scoring, having done all their damage against Alcantara and Momentary Met Tyler Zuber. The Marlins added a fourth run against Jonathan Pintaro in that disastrous sixth and stayed hyper-aggressive, but Nate Lavender wiggled out of trouble and Dedniel Nunez didn’t get into trouble in the first place, so the game came down to Kodai Senga seeking the save — which certainly would have seemed weird just a couple of weeks ago.
Senga, like Alcantara, quickly discovered he too had reported for duty missing something. His initial four-seamer sat in the middle of the plate and Griffin Conine whacked it deeper into center field than anyone would have liked for an ominous first out. Consecutive doubles then brought in a Marlin run and meant Owen Caissie and Kyle Stowers would bat as the tying run. (It didn’t wind up mattering, but I hope you registered the look Clayton McCullough shot Joe Mack‘s way after Mack swung on a 3-0 count with one out, nobody on and his team down three. I’d describe it as existential consternation, seeing how Mack missed a memo that was penned in the 1890s.)
With Senga in trouble, Justin Willard reported to the mound with the interpreter and a psychological profile of the night’s Marlins, which was that they were approaching any pitch to leave a pitcher’s hand the way a starved Doberman regards a steak being tossed around a kitchen. Senga took the lesson to heart, scrapping not just his wan secondary pitches (as he’s mostly accepted doing) but also everything except the ghost fork. Six to Caissie, four to Stowers, torment, tease, repeat. And it worked: Both wound up swinging over forks at the bottom of the strike zone, the tying run advancing no farther than Francisco Alvarez‘s glove. Mets win!
Mets win, and while it couldn’t be trumpeted 1969-style on the scoreboard: LOOK WHO’S NO. 4.
Yes, your 2026 New York Mets are no longer cellar dwellers, having passed the Nationals in the National League East standings.
Which doesn’t matter a whit, and could even be argued is a net negative what with draft picks and all, but still makes me happy. Not as happy as denting the Marlins’ admittedly faint playoff hopes in a bit of September turnabout is fair play, but happy nonetheless. Which is how these remade-on-the-fly, audition-time Mets have generally made me feel since inexplicably getting better by shedding the part of the team that hadn’t been a problem in the first place.
Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp has been a good time. I look forward to watching the Mets more often than not these days, despite the lack of glittering prizes at the end. Like I said, weird and wonderful.
by Greg Prince on 7 September 2026 5:27 pm Jonah Tong was 80% splendid Monday afternoon in Miami, throwing four sterling innings that weren’t undone by the lone dreadful frame that interrupted their flow. The order in which Tong’s five were delivered was, in fact, the best part. He wasn’t good in the second inning (allowing a single, a triple, a walk, a three-run homer), but he survived, and you know what they say about that which doesn’t kill you making you stronger. Jonah recovered from giving up four runs quickly. What’s more, he was supported lavishly. By the time Tong departed his big league first start since last September, the Mets led, 7-4. That’s not necessarily a sure thing of a score, but the Marlins were done crossing the plate.
The Mets weren’t. They went up, 9-4, with everybody in the lineup doing at least a little hitting and the bullpen allowing nothing in particular. Marlin fielding (a pair of errors) helped Met matters. Marlin baserunning, too, topped off by Austin Warren picking off Javier Sanoja and first baseman Brett Baty putting down the coup de grâs of a tag for the game’s final out.
 Kooz got a trophy after finishing second. Mets won’t get one if they finish fourth, but they should go for it, anyway. Having won their Labor Day matinee by five, the Mets rose to 19-12 since the trade deadline. I see 19-12 and I see Jerry Koosman’s 1968 record. Had Johnny Bench not been such auspicious hot stuff himself that season, 19-12 would have earned Kooz Rookie of the Year honors. As was, Jerry finished a smidge behind Johnny in the National League’s freshman balloting. The 19-12 the 2026 Mets have compiled dating to August 4 has them, after Monday’s Padre conquest of the Nationals, a percentage point out of fourth place. The BBWAA doesn’t give out awards for not finishing last, but considering where this team was for months on end, I’d take next-to-last and call it the Nobel Prize for baseball resilience.
by Greg Prince on 7 September 2026 2:03 am Sunday afternoon unfolding as it did at Citi Field indicated patience can be a baseball virtue. Christian Scott had to wait eight days for his next start. Tobias Myers had to wait nearly two months for his next major league appearance. Brett Baty had to wait until the eighth inning to enter Sunday’s game. Mets fans had to wait for Brett Baty to do something/anything in order to experience some semblance of offense. On the other hand, Bo Bichette was hurried to the plate one intentionally walked batter sooner than planned, and in retrospect, he couldn’t have arrived there soon enough.
This season, edging into its third-to-last week, wouldn’t seem to be an advertisement for patience, not this late. Yet we have alighted on that juncture when it might dawn on us that the whole shebang is winding down. New York Mets baseball, such as it’s been across the current campaign, inevitably gets missed when it is no longer available. If you were patient enough to hang with it, Sunday’s ballgame became the kind of contest a fan can look back on fondly when there are no Sundays with ballgames.
Ah, patience. We still have three weeks more of these Mets. Maybe we’ll get another game like we got this Sunday.
Sunday we got Christian Scott, who had extra rest built into his routine in deference to his completing his first almost full season after Tommy John surgery. He did not look worse for the idling. Perfect for the first three innings. A little unlucky in the fourth, when Jung Hoo Lee blooped in two runs for San Francisco. Removed in the fifth with two out, two on (second and third), and incandescent Rafael Devers up. Christian had thrown eighty pitches. Devers, up for a third time, would be a challenge. Andy Green opted to remove his starter, despite the starter having struck out the superstar twice. Switching in Nate Lavender was the right call in the moment. Lavender hazed Devers into a called strike three.
The Mets trailed, 2-0, and continued to trail, 2-0. Pitching and defense could do only so much, but it did what it could. Carson Benge made a superb diving catch on a sinking liner to get Lee cursing his luck and make sure Jonathan Pintaro could notch a scoreless sixth. Jonathan matched it without extraordinary glovework behind him in the seventh. A modest home team threat went nowhere in the bottom of that inning. Myers came on for the eighth. The erstwhile Brewer we were advised was going to be the icing on the Freddy Peralta cake had some ups as soon as he became a Met, then an onslaught of downs, culminating in demotion down to Syracuse. His first Met outing since July 11 indicated Tobias may have gotten his groove back. True, he did give up a hit to Devers, but it wasn’t a home run and it wasn’t with any Giant on base. Myers took care of everybody else to keep the score, 2-0.
Considering the zero belonged to the Mets entering the bottom of the eighth, it wasn’t an optimal ratio, but interim managers in particular understand no score is permanent until it goes final. There’s always a move to make in the eighth inning. In this eighth inning, it was sending up pinch-hitter Brett Baty to lead off against reliever Carson Seymour. Andy, we like the way you moved your pieces here. Brett homered to left, just beyond the spot where he just missed homering the day before. This was more effective. This got the Mets on the board.
Would this wake up all the lumber that had been daydreaming in the first base dugout’s bat rack? A.J. Ewing’s bat sure looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. The rookie, who himself had sat for a night following an off day following a terribly off month, singled to left. First a homer, now a hint of a rally. Sunday was just getting going. Luis Torrens, of whom Shawn Colvin once noted every little thing he does is magic, sacrificed A.J. to second. Francisco Lindor had the bad fortune to get him ensnared in Jung Hoo Lee’s luck vortex. Lee had a hit fall in, then a hit robbed. In the eighth, he robbed Lindor. At least the play pushed Ewing to third for Juan Soto.
Tony Vitello preferred Juan Soto be pushed to first ASAP. That’s what the four fingers are for. That’s also what Bo Bichette batting behind Soto is for. Vitello figured Bo was an easier out for Seymour. Bo had to be thinking it sure is something to be considered so soft a touch that the opposing manager would sanction the placing of the go-ahead run on base in order to pitch to me in this late-and-close situation. Or words to that effect.
Juan Soto is pretty good. But, it turns out, so is Bo Bichette. Like Baty, he hit one deep to left. Very deep. Too deep for any Giant to do anything about it. The score was now Mets 4 Giants 2. Ewing touched home. Soto touched home. Bichette, after a well-earned glance into the third base dugout, touched home. The Mets were awake, alive, and ahead. If the Giants had a ghost of a chance, they’d have to do something with Kodai Senga’s ghost fork in the ninth. They did not.
Bo Bichette led the Mets to an exciting come-from-behind win in September. Tobias Myers got the decision. Tell us that last March, and we’d ask what else about the offseason had worked so brilliantly. The recriminations of 2026 are old news at this point. Myers, like Scott and maybe Baty, has earned a little more consideration to show something for the future in the next three weeks. The future where Bichette is concerned is more up to him than the ballclub whose uniform he chose to wear this year for sure and the next two years perhaps. His contract contains annual opt-outs. Why anybody would opt out of a guaranteed $42 million per annum evades understanding, but players love to bet on themselves. This player bet coming to New York would be a good fit for him. It wasn’t for a while. These days he looks comfortable here. Bichette has played a solid third base, shown uncommon durability, and has been a steady performer at the plate since June. At those prices, you’d like April and May thrown in as well. If there is an April and May with baseball in 2027 and it has Bo Bichette still wearing Mets threads, it’s reasonable to assume there won’t be a ramp-up period devoted to getting settled in.
There was lots that was reasonable to assume coming into 2026. Assumptions went asunder. Baseball can be like that. Still, I’d take my chances with Bichette a Met in whichever year next includes baseball. I don’t have the patience to break in another make-or-break import. I look at a lineup that starts Lindor, Soto, Bichette, Benge, and I’m thinking this isn’t such a bad way to start a game, especially if it’s a game started by Scott, McLean, Thornton, and maybe Tong. We’ll get another glimpse of Jonah when he takes on a whale of an opportunity versus the Marlins. He’s had to be patient this season, too.
In that perfect world Huey Lewis knows there’s no living in, our four young/youngish arms would lead the way into 2027 and the years beyond. It is not intended to spoil a dream scenario to say that even if it works out in the short term, long-range forecasts are necessarily murky. Let’s get these kids through this season on as much rest as they need to progress and stay healthy. Next years are different kettles of fish, especially for pitchers.
Myers picking up Sunday’s victory made it 24 different Mets pitchers posting wins in 2026. “Wow, with that many winning pitchers as of September 6, the Mets must be doing REALLY great!” It was mentioned on the way out of the telecast that two-dozen Mets getting at least one win is a franchise record. The staff has certainly spread what wealth there is to share, with only Nolan McLean having more than five wins thus far. We don’t really stress too much about relievers notching or not notching wins. Managers and the executives to whom they answer care less and less about it where their starters are concerned. As we saw with Scott on Sunday, preservation for the entire schedule rather than perseverance for a couple more innings (or one more batter) is paramount.
If somehow you could guarantee Nolan McLean, Christian Scott, Zac Thornton, and Jonah Tong could stick around for a decade, presumably excelling as they endure, you would. Establishing that kind of rotation is unusual, especially in the modern era. Keeping it spinning under the Mets umbrella is where the scenario is too dreamy to be real. Player movement being what it is, wishing upon a Met probably shouldn’t be done en masse for more than a season or two at a time.
And a quartet of Met starters lasting across a period spanning ten years as starters? Even if they’re not Met starters for each of those ten years? How likely is that to happen?
Choosing our parameters carefully — 10 starts by four Mets pitchers in the same year, then 10 starts by those pitchers nine years after — we can say it’s happened only twice. Surprisingly, none of it involves the fearsome foursome of Seaver, Koosman, Ryan, and Matlack, for they never started 10 games apiece on the same Met staff. If the Mets had kept Ryan, or Matlack gotten more of shot sooner, we might have three examples. Instead we’ll go with the two we have.
In 1987, the Mets, en route to winning 92 games, assigned 10 or more starts to seven different pitchers. In 1996, four of them — Dwight Gooden (25 starts for the 1987 Mets), Sid Fernandez (27), David Cone (13), and Rick Aguilera (17) — also made 10 or more starts. None of them for the Mets, mind you. Even if they were no longer Amazins nine years later, it’s pretty amazing they got to the end of this arbitrary decade doing what they’d been doing when it began. Gooden, 32, was suspended from baseball from the middle of 1994 through the entirety of 1995. He wound up with some team for whom he threw a no-hitter in 1996, making 29 starts in all. Cone, Gooden’s teammate again, missed four months of ’96 recovering from the removal of an aneurysm. Before and after his malady, he made 11 starts at age 33. Fernandez, also 33, was handed the ball to begin games for the Phillies 11 times that year. The wild card in this hand is 34-year-old Aguilera, who took a sabbatical from what had become his closer role since leaving the Mets to make 19 starts as a Twin in 1996. He’d return to relieving exclusively for the rest of his career.
In 2017, the Mets, en route to losing 92 games, assigned 10 or more starts to seven different pitchers. In 2026, this very year, four of them — Jacob deGrom (31 starts for the 2017 Mets), Zack Wheeler (17), Steven Matz (13), and Seth Lugo (18) — have also made 10 or more starts. None of them for the Mets, as you may have noticed. Even if they are no longer Amazins nine years later, four starting pitchers who’ve navigated time’s flight and stayed aloft probably deserve some sort of cap tip for their longevity. Lugo, at 36, is kind of the Aguilera of this iteration. We remember him more as a reliever, but he always had a starter inside him, and this season he’s made 29 starts for the Royals. Matz, 35, is back in the bullpen for the Rays, but this season wasn’t 60 games old before Steven logged 11 starts for Tampa Bay. You likely weren’t seeking a reminder of the stalwart nature of 36-year-old Wheeler, but he’s 24 starts deep into his 2026 with Philadelphia, and he’ll probably be busy in October. DeGrom, who’s managed to stay mostly healthy in the season he blew out 38 candles, is up to 27 starts. Like Wheeler, there’s a decent chance we’ll see him before the season is over.
In 2027, it would be marvelous to project double-digit starts for the four youthful pitchers we wish to lean on. To project further down the road on their behalf is the stuff of a dream scenario. Dream away if so inclined. Maybe first let’s see what Tong does in Miami.
by Jason Fry on 5 September 2026 10:35 pm Saturday afternoon’s game was, essentially, a mirror image of Friday night’s. This time it was the Giants hitting home runs all over the place, a Mets starter who got clubbed early, and the Mets who looked plucky in coming back but were more an annoyance than a threat.
Zac Thornton had one of those games, surrendering two home runs apiece to Rafael Devers (from whom enough already) and Christian Koss, with Jefry Yan and Justin Hagenman also surrendering homers as part of the San Francisco barrage.
I listened to the game while on the train up to Bridgeport and then on a bus (ugh) from Bridgeport to Waterbury, and it was a slog aside from a strawberry spring after A.J. Ewing gave the Mets a brief-lived 2-1 lead. (The MLB Audio feed went out for Koss’s first home run, leaving me very confused for a while.) Oh, and Tony Vitello got tossed again, which is one drama I’m heartily glad isn’t my business to dissect.
I could go on, but does anyone want that? Mirror image of Friday’s game, with everything reversed. Honestly I liked Friday’s better.
by Jason Fry on 5 September 2026 11:16 am “Clash of the titans!” my pal Pete texted from San Francisco, previewing Friday night’s Mets-Giants game.
My response? “Shitty baseball can be fun!”
Hey, sometimes I’m a prophet.
I feel a little bad for Pete, an on-again, off-again fan who chose this year to get more interested in the Giants. Oops — the Mets are bad (news flash) but the Giants are horrible, with problems from their GM on down to the on-field product. I also feel bad for telling Pete he’d love Harrison Bader, having no idea that Bader would be responsible for more HR drama than on-field heroics. Seriously: Tug McGraw and Ron Swoboda faking a slip on the ice to cover up a toboggan mishap was one thing, but good luck explaining being drunk on a scooter and having a fire truck run over your foot.
While I watched side by side with my mom, the Mets had their way early with the delightfully monikered Tugboat Wilkinson, known formally though disappointingly as Matt: Mark Vientos connected for a three-run homer in the first, with the second bringing a Francisco Alvarez solo shot and a Bo Bichette two-run drive. (Alvarez and Francisco Lindor would later homer against mop-up man Yunior Marte.)
Meanwhile, Nolan McLean wasn’t at his best and looked like his night’s work would be a five and dive, but he then came out for the sixth and added a 1-2-3 inning to his tally. I’m not sure how Andy Green would fare as manager in a non-interim role, should one be offered to him, but I love how he’s balanced managing escalating innings for the Mets’ young starters with pushing them to break through the next barriers in their development.
The Giants fought back against McLean, Jefry Yan and then Austin Warren. Though look at the pitch from Warren that Rafael Devers hit out — it would have resulted in a strikeout or a grounder 95% of the time. Warren looked perplexed, and with reason. There’s no answer beyond the fact that Devers is a beast. The Giants wouldn’t quite go away, requiring Kodai Senga to come in for a save chance — which he handled with aplomb. And thank goodness: A baseball circus is entertaining until the weariness sets in, and by then everyone was exhausted. Or at least Mom and I were.
(Before we go, though: The fans Steve Gelbs lured away from the U.S. Open for an entertaining albeit very “we’re 12 games under .500 in September” bit? They were a delight.)
Shitty baseball? Check. Was it fun. Also check.
by Greg Prince on 3 September 2026 10:16 am The Mets have used a franchise record-tying 64 players thus far this year. The proliferation of personnel has won them 63 games, or approximately one win per player. This ratio doesn’t exactly scream efficient allocation of resources, but that panoply of participants can sure make things exciting. Granted, the churn has backfired 77 times, but the intermittent successes, especially of late, have been surprisingly sweet. Wednesday night was the Mets’ way of saying we’re gonna keep doing it the way we’re doing it ’til we get it right on a more regular basis.
If the Mets’ 63rd win of 2026 can be said to belong to any of the 64 Mets who’ve tried their darnedest since March to avoid those pesky 77 losses that have nonetheless piled up, naming rights have to go to Nick Morabito. Nick Morabito is everything a fan with an affinity for the underdog can’t help but adore.
He is a September callup, looking to make his major league mark.
He had been an ohfer-toter from his previous audition, still looking for that one hit that would put Lake Morabito on the statistical map.
He was asked to be an understudy to an understudy, a pinch-runner for a pinch-hitter; he wouldn’t even get in the game unless the manager made at least two moves, one of them dependent on the productivity of somebody else.
 Gotta root for the kid! He’s a kid! Just a kid! Nick Morabito is 23 and looks 13. How can ya not root for a 13-year-old kid getting his chance with the Mets? One of my all-time favorite baseball movies is The Kid from Left Field, from 1953, in which a 9-year-old manages a perpetually hapless big league team called the Bisons. I root for that kid every time I see it. I’m also partial to an occasionally hapless big league team that’s on television most every night for six months.
In real life, young Nick stepped on the Tropicana Field turf in the top of the sixth inning. To that point, the game belonged broadly to the Mets, with specific key contributions having come from Jared Young, Marcus Semien, and Brett Baty on the offense and starting pitcher Justin Hagenman — Met No. 64 on the season — on the mound. Hagenman, back from a long stay on the IL and a short slate of rehab outings, bedeviled the Rays for two innings, then withstood them for another frame. He left on the happy side of a 6-1 score. Pitching wasn’t quite the same gentle breeze for his immediate successor, Chris Devenski, who gave up three runs in the fourth. Carson Benge threw a ball that hit a bat, yet Carson wasn’t pitching. It was that kind of outing for Chris, that kind of inning for the Mets. The first-place Rays had pulled to within two runs. Dedniel Nuñez finished off the home fourth without incident, but you that trademark first-place Rays hot breath could be felt on the necks of the last-place Mets.
The 6-4 lead might as well have been on Ozempic. It looked a little too skinny too quickly. No wonder Andy Green prioritized putting some meat on its bones. Left fielder Baty, who’d cleared the bases with a three-run double off righty starter Griffin Jax in the third, was due up to lead off the visitors’ sixth. It had been his night, as much as it had been Young’s (Jared’s first-inning single plated two runs, with a Rays error greasing those skids a bit), Semien’s (Marcus’s double scored Young), Hagenman’s, and most recently Nuñez’s (adding a scoreless fifth to his clean third of the fourth). Green just wanted to make sure it wouldn’t become the Rays’ night. Lefty Cam Booser was on. Righty Mark Vientos was called on to pinch-hit. Swaggy V made like Le Grand Orange and came through in a pinch, lining a single to right. Like Rusty Staub, Mark Vientos is more truck horse than race horse. Like Rusty Staub, Mark Vientos is capable of keeping pinch-runners on their toes. What’s the sense of having 28 players in September if someone on the bench isn’t faster than Mark Vientos?
Enter Nick Morabito. As a pinch-runner, he got no further than second base. But his insertion was hardly for naught, because he could indirectly replace Baty in left via Vientos. Baty’s no left fielder, not really. Vientos certainly isn’t. Morabito may never have been inside the Trop before this week, but he’s comfortable in an outfield. Plus he knows those other guys out there, A.J. Ewing in center and Benge in right. They each appear 13. Combined, it’s hard to believe they add up to 40.
The game briefly belonged to Nate Lavender. Most games belong to Nate Lavender as long as he’s in them. He held the team aspiring to move from St. Pete to Tampa at bay in bottom of the sixth. The Mets were still advised to add some weight to their lead. Their chances looked voluptuous in the seventh. Bo Bichette led off with a double. Benge followed with a single that put Bo on third. Then their chances grew thin. A safety squeeze attempt from Young squeezed Bichette off the basepaths. Semien conveniently took one for the team, loading the bases. Ewing, however, took strike three for the second out. Morabito stepped up in what had been Baty’s, then fleetingly Vientos’s spot. Morabito’s previous fourteen plate appearances had yielded no hits and nine strikeouts.
 He’s 13 — look at him! Yet you know what they say about the fifteenth time being the charm. Nick laced a double inside the left field line. Everybody who was on base crossed the plate. With one swing, Morabito increased the Mets’ edge from 6-4 to 9-4. He also raised his batting average from nothing to something.
Was that enough to give him title to The Nick Morabito Game? Once he dove to rob Victor Mesa of an extra-base hit to close out the eighth, hell yeah! By driving in three runs, then making the highlight reel catch, the kid had pulled off what one veteran observer who bears an uncanny resemblance to me refers to as a Reverse Gary Rajsich. In 1982, Rajsich, also a heretofore struggling rookie (albeit 27), inspired gasps with a right field grab reminiscent of Ron Swoboda’s from 1969, then more awe by belting his first-ever homer, a three-run job over the right-center field fence at Shea to certify him, at least for one evening, a multi-tool player. Different ends of the outfield, same general idea. The Mets beat the Reds that May night, 7-1, indicating they might have done fine without Gary Rajsich having the game of his life, but Gary Rajsich had the game of his life, and it therefore became The Gary Rajsich Game.
 Ain’t nothing like the first time, baby. We’ve cited a procession of Mets who put it to the Rays on Wednesday. We’ll throw in a couple more. Daniel Duarte followed Lavender and retired all four batters he faced. Juan Soto made home run contact so loud in St. Petersburg in the eighth that it might have been set off car alarms in Clearwater. That raised the score to 10-4, an advantage easily protected by Jonathan Pintaro in the ninth. When it went final, it was absolutely The Nick Morabito Game, punctuated by the outfield embrace effected by young Nick, young A.J., and young Carson, the three youngest Mets on the active roster. The kids played and the Mets won. That at least whispers market efficiency.
by Jason Fry on 2 September 2026 7:37 am In a lost season, the least the Mets could do was not get beaten by Freddy Fucking Peralta.
That wasn’t quite the only thing I wanted from the dregs of 2026, but it was pretty close to it: Sure, lose eleventy billion games while playing dull, uninspired baseball. Just don’t get beaten by the failed Met acquisition whom I’d come to loathe with a mildly worrisome intensity.
And hey, for a few minutes things looked promising. Francisco Lindor led off the game with a home run. Three of the first four Mets to face Peralta tallied hits, a familiar sight that left me cackling on my couch in rainy Brooklyn.
But I recall a warning about laughing last. Those three first-inning hits were all the Mets would get for the night. (Yes, seriously.) Peralta settled in, allowing a number of drives to the warning track but nothing beyond it. Meanwhile, an increasingly disconsolate Sean Manaea was throwing decreasingly effective pitches to the Rays. The game was tied and then the Mets were behind by a little and then they were behind by a lot and I’d gone from fuming to numb.
Numb, but not shocked. Because I’d known the Mets would get beaten by Freddy Fucking Peralta. In fact, I’d had this series circled on the calendar as certain to deliver that humiliation. The starting rotations would wind up just so, Peralta would be far more effective than he’d been in orange and blue (or orange and blue and black, or creosote and purple), and the Mets would lose.
(Still left on the calendar: Pete Alonso storming into town like the wrath of God and clubbing luckless Met pitchers like seals. Though — key difference — there’s no animus there. I’d prefer the Polar Bear not do terrible things to us, but it won’t feel like a personal affront when he does.)
The lone bright spot of the night was Dylan Ross escaping ectoplasm. Ross was briefly on the Mets’ roster in 2025 but never got into a game, joining the ranks of the Met Ghosts — and with the asterisk of never having played in a big-league game. There are now five of these doubly unlucky Mets among our 17 spectres: Billy Cotton, Terrel Hansen, Connor Grey, Dan Hammer and Bryce Conley. On Tuesday Ross evaded that fate and became a real boy, earning his place in The Holy Books with a 1-2-3 inning — and on his birthday, no less.
That was nice, even if nothing else was — well, unless you count my opportunity to relearn a lesson I thought I’d already known. Don’t look to baseball for justice — its taste runs more to maddening ironies.
by Greg Prince on 1 September 2026 11:25 am The 2026 Mets are nobody’s genie, but they are on occasion capable of granting relatively small baseball wishes. Sometimes it takes them a while. When July was becoming August, and almost everybody you heard might be traded was getting traded, you might have wished “almost” could be upgraded to “everybody”. Specifically, Luis Robert, Jr., began getting mentioned as someone who could potentially bring back a living, breathing prospect. Robert had just resumed playing after nearly three months on the injured list. I didn’t exactly wish Luis would go away. It just seemed it would be best for all involved if he — like every veteran nursing an expiring contract — was gone.
Luis Robert, Jr., had no takers, so he played for the Mets almost of all August and played pretty well. On the final day of the month, that weeks-old wish for a clean sweep/fresh start was granted when the Orioles noticed our superfluous power-hitting outfielder just sitting on the waiver wire, as players on non-contenders tend to do this time of year. Baltimore snatched him and his salary up. In exchange, the Mets got the chance not to pay him, which isn’t the same as a prospect, but you’ll take what you can get when you’re out of the race. The Polar Birds are bidding for the third American League Wild Card. Several in the AL are. Perhaps the addition of Robert will let them flutter above the pack. We’ll see how it works out for Baltimore when the O’s come into Citi Field in a couple of weeks. I doubt Luis gets the same welcome-back video Pete Alonso can look forward to, but a nice hand wouldn’t be out of line.
We wish our Old Friends™ no ill will, just strikeouts when they bat against us and at least a walk when they pitch against us. I generally wish to see what they’re up to when we get together with their new team. Tonight we’ll see Freddy Peralta from sixty feet, six inches away. Monday night in St. Petersburg, we reacquainted with Cedric Mulllns, last season’s solution to center field. Mullin worked out so well for the Mets, that we ran out and traded for Luis Robert, Jr., to take his place pronto. Luis Robert, Jr., worked out so well that giving him away before September rates as an accomplishment. Yet Luis Robert, Jr., as a Met worked out far better than Cedric Mullins did. Mullins’s stats are nowhere near as bright as the rebuilt Tropicana Field roof, but he is the starting center fielder for a first-place team all but assured of October one year after he helped drag the Mets from playoff certainty to spectator. There’s a joke here somewhere and it’s on us.
The Mets also crossed paths with Steven Matz at the Trop. Our erstwhile lefty, an ex-Met for so long now that no current Met is a former Flushing teammate of his (but once an Old Friend™, always an Old Friend™), pitched the ninth. When East Setauket Steve burst upon our scene in 2015, we considered him comparable to the farm-to-table aces who preceded him in our rotation. By the time we gave up on him, he was Jon Niese with a better sense of local direction. It would have been nice had he given up a run Monday night. He did not.
That’s OK. We had other niceness, better wishes fulfilled. Those of us who came home from Sunday’s game explicitly wishing Robert Stock not be saddled with the record for most starts ever by a Met without notching a win for the Mets need wish no more. Stock made three starts for us in 2021 to no avail (I was at one of them). He wound his way back to us five years later, and the avail was still mostly lacking. But not on Monday. In his ninth-ever start as a Met, his sixth in 2026, he pitched into the sixth inning, giving up no runs. Even with Justin Hagenman getting promoted and the specter of Jonah Tong hovering as September dawns, there’s no reason to think Robert won’t continue to be handed the ball. The righty was assisted in cementing his starting role by some unlikely defense, with Christopher Morel — Mr. OF-3B/Kitty Kat Guy — making a Leapin’ Lizards! grab in left with two out and the bases loaded. That snag of Jonathan Aranda’s rising liner represented some world-class exercitation, bringing to mind what Manny Machado had to say earlier this year regarding FIP, or fielding independent pitching:
“Why would you have that stat? It takes a team to win a ballgame, and not just one person. One person could be that guy. One person could carry a team, but this is a team sport. You don’t win a championship by just one player. It takes a whole goddamn village to do it.”
 Leapin’ lizards — the Kitty Kat Guy came through! Machado, battling a massive slump, was mostly taking his frustrations out on all the acronyms glaring at him from the Petco Park scoreboard, but when viewed through an anecdotal prism, he had a point. We’ve seen pitchers pitch and deserve to win, yet not win. We’ve seen it because their hitters didn’t hit for them. We’ve seen it because their fielders didn’t field for them. In 2018, we saw Steven Matz’s pal Jacob deGrom be the best pitcher in the world (ERA: 1.70; FIP: 1.98) and wind up with a won-lost record of 10-9. This year deGrom, who had a whale of a game Monday night versus the Nowheresville Athletics, is still good, if not the great he was eight years ago (ERA: 4.00; FIP: 3.07). His won-lost record is 10-9. Of course 10-9 wasn’t what Cy Young voters looked at when they all but unanimously elected Jake their award winner.
Robert Stock would appear to be the last pitcher to tell your advanced statistics to shut up, but the smile on his face when Kodai Senga saved his first big league win since 2019 said more than any abbreviation beyond “W” ever could. Humans seek validation. Pitchers, even the most analytically savvy, embrace wins. “I’m not going to get too hung up on thinking that I’m the world’s worst pitcher last week,” Stock told reporters postgame, “and the world’s best one this week.” For one night in one indoor ballpark, he was as 2018 deGrom as he needed to be.
He had help. Of course he did. Didn’t you hear Machado? It takes a whole goddamn village to do it. It takes Morel, not a defense-first guy (if he was, he probably wouldn’t be directed to so many different positions) making not only that catch with Stock on the mound in the fifth, but a splendid hustle & heave to nail Chandler Simpson at second behind Dedniel Nuñez in the sixth. It takes Cristian Pache, one of those reserves whose scant playing time will likely be reduced as Nick Morabito joins the roster for September. Pache pinch-ran for Morel in the seventh. Used his speed to set up an insurance run driven in by the perhaps awakening bat of Francisco Alvarez. Stayed in for defense, never mind he was replacing the guy who’d made the plays of the game. Almost ran into A.J. Ewing while making a catch in the eighth (it was Ewing’s ball), but when you’re not in games much, you probably get a little overanxious. Recorded a base hit in the ninth, giving him as many hits on the year as Stock has wins. No player wishes to remain on any schneid.
For the Mets to build their lead, it took Mark Vientos going deep when he led off the seventh with a laser off Ian Seymour, the Rays starter who had one of those “deserves better” nights (10 Ks, no walks), but instead got tagged with the loss. Vientos deserves something for the slog his last couple of years turned into. He came back to the Mets hot, having slugged three home runs rehabbing with Syracuse on Sunday, and kept it going. He missed most of our August fun while on the IL. When your team is doing well with whoever is on it, you tend to forget about who’s sidelined. The Love the Mets You’re With contingent we swooned for after the deadline seemed just fine as it was. I didn’t miss Mark Vientos. I didn’t miss Juan Soto, for that matter, though I knew Soto was coming back sometime in the next thirteen years. Vientos’s status is less grounded. So was his ball over the wall.
Most every small Met wish came true Monday night, certainly the ones that needed to come true. The only one that went by the wayside was the wish Soto, pinch-hitting with two on and two out, put the game out of reach when he faced Matz in the top of the ninth. Instead, Steven struck him out. Perhaps that was delayed gratification for a wish I made between 2018 and 2020.
A little dear life needed to be hung onto in the bottom of the ninth. Senga the lifetime starter doesn’t really wish to be a closer, but he is. Like all closers clinging to one-run leads, Kodai inspires mainly wishes that nothing go wrong here. The leadoff walk he issued couldn’t help the shine on your nearest genie bottle keep its luster, what with all the rubbing one might have been doing. Or perhaps you squeezed the feeling out of your favorite rabbit’s foot. Whatever your totem of choice, wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ was in order if you were emotionally invested in Stock’s win portfolio. These were the Rays. They’re the American League’s lone all-around powerhouse. Normally, I wouldn’t wish to disturb their AL East lead, considering who’s in second, but Interleague makes less for strange bedfellows than provisional couch shoves. With not much to play for from the end of August to the end of September, I wished for the Mets to transition between months on as high a note as a last-place team could.
Senga got a groundout to Marcus Semien, a flyout to Carson Benge, and a strikeout of Yandy Diaz caught by Luis Torrens and called by Austin Jones. Stock got a 3-2 win. The whole goddamn Mets village got it done.
by Greg Prince on 31 August 2026 12:00 pm At one end of the rickety Passarelle Boardwalk, the US Open was just getting going. I shared my LIRR train from Woodside with people who were far too clean, fit, and stylish to be going to the other end of those dubious planks. Not exactly a slobs versus snobs scenario, but our differences were palpable. Still, I wished them love, set, and match as their tournament got down to business. I noticed an official program for the Open costs $30. Business must be pretty good over there.
Ends of boardwalks, ends of months, ends of seasons. Tennis drawing crowds to Flushing Meadows is a sure sign that baseball’s season will soon be drawing to a close. Our baseball team sometimes keeps its facility open into October. They will not this year. We figured that out before April was over.
Yet they play on. For a couple of weeks in August, they played on with the kind of joy and verve and poetry that baseball movies slip in between long stretches of competitive indifference. You can be certain only in retrospect when the highest praise an Annie Savoy can muster has diminished to “You have to respect a ballplayer who’s just trying to finish the season.” The Mets just completed their third consecutive series in which they offered earnest if mostly futile opposition to a first-place team. In each case, they lost two out of three. The wins were pretty invigorating, suggesting the joy and verve and poetry have not wholly evaporated from the Met repertoire, but such performances have turned to aberrations. That spurt we relished coming out of the trade deadline overlapped with the inevitable becoming a reality. The 2026 Mets are just trying to finish the season.
On Sunday, in my periodic guise of working press, I decided to keep them company for their oddball start time of 3:10 PM, brought to you in living color by the National Broadcasting Company. The game presumably would have started at 1:40 like every Sunday afternoon Mets home game had NBC not decided ages ago it would make a fine prime time showcase. The game would have started at 7:10 had NBC not eventually judged the Mets must-avoid TV and flexed the hell out of showing it to a larger audience. We were, instead, the warmup act for the Cubs and Reds. Rain delayed the start of festivities at Wrigley. It also got wet for a while at the neighboring Open’s evening sessions, meaning had NBC stuck with the Mets in their original preferred time slot, that would have also been an episode of tarps on.
Mother Nature, like most of us when our team is involved, hates Sunday Night Baseball.
But we on our end of the boardwalk did OK with the weather when it was our oddball time to gather. We didn’t do so hot with the Astros, one of those first-place teams recently benefiting from a Mets-sized cushion in their schedule. They didn’t have to face Nolan McLean, a fact that apparently cheered them immensely and immediately. Three pitches in, their leadoff hitter, Jeremy Peña homered. During his pregame media session, Andy Green said Zac Thornton is regularly “on the attack”. Peña must have heard and attacked Zac.
Thornton’s teammates saw what Peña did and attacked back. Francisco Lindor led off with his own home run, passing Dave Kingman for sixth place on the all-time Met power chart in the process. Juan Soto followed directly behind Lindor and opted to do the same (save for the Kingman part). The first two Mets hit it out of the park! An announcement in the press box alerted us that this was the fifth time that had happened in Mets history. I clearly remembered the first. The announcement clued us into the fourth, or most recent. I watched Bo Bichette single, then spent the next few batters divining, via Stathead, the other two, which I only vaguely remembered.
For the record:
July 12, 2007: Jose Reyes and Ruben Gotay, en route to a Mets win over the Reds at Shea.
August 26, 2016: Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera, en route to a Mets win over the Phillies at Citi.
June 6, 2019: Amed Rosario and Dom Smith, en route to a Mets win over the Giants at Citi.
October 4, 2022: Brandon Nimmo, Lindor, AND Jeff McNeil, en route to a Mets win over the Nationals at Citi.
Ya had to like the back-to-back-to-win precedent Lindor and Soto brought to bear for August 30, 2026. The Astros, though, didn’t. They tied the game in the second and more or less stopped giving up base hits to the Mets, who built one more run the rest of the day on a walk, a steal, an error, another walk, and a double play grounder in the fifth. That hitless wonder of rally gave the Mets a 3-2 lead. Maybe McLean could have made that stand up. Thornton didn’t have the chance, exiting after five innings and 97 pitches, all his attacking taking a toll. Jonathan Pintaro, usually the Jared Young of middle relief, wasn’t up to task at hand, allowing a two-out double, then a two-run homer to LaMonte Wade, Jr. A messy top of the seventh (featuring Jared Young not exactly being the Keith Hernandez of first base defense) increased the Astros’ edge from 4-3 to 6-3. So it stayed.
The main course wasn’t much, but I can always sate myself with side dishes of Metsoterica.
• I’d been waiting for Chris Devenski to get into a game, and he did, making the righty reliever the 64th Recidivist Met overall. The last time Chris pitched for us was last September 19. The Mets were in a playoff race then. He went to Pittsburgh in the offseason, only to boomerang back. “I am so ready to pitch for the Mets in another playoff race,” he might have thought had he not checked the standings these past eleven months.
• It didn’t happen Sunday, but something I totally missed while happily yammering away with Jason on Wednesday night merits mention in my mind and maybe out loud: Christopher Morel entered the middle game against the Brewers in the top of the fifth after Bichette fouled a ball off his foot in the bottom of the fourth. Bichette was playing third and Brett Baty was playing left. Baty’s a third baseman by trade, so he moved over there. Morel came into play left, not for the first time in his career, but for the first time as a Met. Then, as the Brewers pulled away, Green made more changes in the top of the seventh, among them resting Lindor. Baty shifted to shortstop, and Morel came in to play third. That, too, was not a career first for the versatile Christopher, but a Met first. Had I recognized what was going on in the moment, I might have let out a geek shriek. Anytime the Mets add to their all-time third base roster, I get unreasonably excited. We are now up to 195 Mets third basemen since Don Zimmer got the ball rolling in a not altogether satisfying manner on Opening Night 1962. But what Morel did was its own kind of Amazin’. Among the 195 Mets third basemen, 87 have also played in the outfield for the club, some of that a product of super utility, à la the first Mets 3B-OF Rod Kanehl, some out of front office conviction that this outfielder we have here is sure to solve our longstanding third base problem, the one that started Zip Zimmer went 0-for-34, didn’t make up for it with his glove, and got shipped to Cincinnati for outfielder-third baseman Cliff Cook. Occasionally, it’s been a third baseman nominated to fill an outfield hole (à la Baty once in a while). What made Christopher Morel’s Met left field and third base debuts remarkable is they happened in the same game, a Met first. Such temporal proximity represented a veritable Hot Rod Equinox. Even Kanehl, who Casey Stengel deployed almost everywhere, waited eight days between his Met third base and outfield debuts. Less remarkable was Morel popping up on the second pitch he saw from Josh Hader when he pinch-hit to lead off the ninth on Sunday.
• In Sunday’s game notes — that helpful sheath of stats and info one picks up in the press box as a dilettantish media member — Robert Stock was listed as Monday’s starting pitcher at Tampa Bay for the opener of the Mets’ next series versus a first-place team. Jason and I agreed last week that we’d likely seen the last of Robert Stock (the 63rd Recidivist Met) as one of our starters. Likely isn’t the same as definite, and for Morel’s on third/no, he’s in left reasons, I’m…I was gonna say delighted, but I’ll go with content, 7.40 ERA notwithstanding. Stock is currently tied with Bob Moorhead for most starts made by a Mets pitcher without posting a win. Not long ago, Christian Scott had surpassed Moorhead for this shall we say distinction, but Scott possessed a Met future and you figured he’d eventually go five innings, leave with a lead, and see his reWard. Christian currently has four Met wins to his credit. Good health willing, he will make myriad Met starts in the seasons ahead. For Stock, tonight may very well be it. Yeah, we said that last Wednesday, but the rosters are expanding, Jonah Tong is looking ready, and did we mention that 7.40 ERA attached to a journeyman right arm that was on nobody’s rotation radar before late July? I’d like Robert to not hold the record for most Met starts without a win. I’d like nobody to hold the record for most Met starts without a win, but I think the late Bob Moorhead can handle it. Moorhead made 47 appearances in all as a Met in 1962 and 1965, including 40 in relief. Never posted a win, and held that record until Tylor Bashlor came along in 2018 and 2019 and went winless in 48 appearances out of the Met bullpen. I never noted Bashlor’s drifting past Moorhead when it happened, because I didn’t realize it had happened until I was moved to look up all things related to Robert Stock’s Met winlessness seven years after Bashlor threw his last Met pitch. I must have been happily yammering away with Jason in 2019.
I’m just assuming Tong will be here soon, soon being September, which, per Annie (not Savoy) when she sang her heart out on Broadway, is only a day away. Tong’s been mowing down batters at Syracuse. There will be two extra roster spots. One generally goes to a pitcher. Andy Green didn’t mention any names when, in sportswriter mode, I asked him on Sunday about managing a slightly expanded roster. Having watched certain players recede into the bench and bullpen shadows during his interim tenure, I wondered how much priority he’ll give to keeping 28 players involved down not so much the stretch but approaching the end of the season.
“When you expand the roster to 28,” he told the room, “you ensure there are multiple people who get the short end of the stick from an opportunity standpoint. It’s already that way with 26. Keeping guys in a consistent rhythm is hard with thirteen position players, and the bullpen is often dictated by how long the starters pitch. So you end up in a world where a lot of guys don’t get the opportunity they would love to have happen. That’s pretty typical in September, and we’re definitely not gonna do it like Little League, mandatory couple of innings play situation, but I would suspect everybody gets some measure of opportunity.”
Mind you, Green was a player who lived on the big league bubble; that was his status when I first spoke to him, loudly and ostentatiously from Promenade seventeen Augusts ago, as Jerry Manuel also mostly eschewed the aforementioned Little League rule. (even the 2009 Mets were technically big league). Yet it used to be, when teams could expand rosters from 25 to a conceivable 40, that opportunities arose a little more for final-month callups, if not every final-month callup. “It was a different world when they could expand like that,” Andy recalled when one of my colleagues for the day followed up on the topic. “I was often a September callup at that point in time, and I was really good at sitting and watching for most of that month, so I know what that feels like. Honestly, I know what it feels like to make an Opening Day roster and sit for thirty days before you have your first start of the season. Those things are not pleasant, those are tough challenges.”
I’m also really good at sitting and watching, in any month. Not a challenge at all, reasonably pleasant. One of the traditional reasons to sit and watch in September is to ring the New Met bell. You know, “Ding-ding! They’re ACTUALLY putting Mike Glavine in!” Fewer callups and even fewer chances for debuts and cameos means those of who revel in tracking Metsoterica will get the short end of the stick from an opportunity standpoint. Tong’s been here before. A rehabbing Mark Vientos coming back won’t be new news. Devin Williams, Green said, is working his tail off to pitch again before we run out of season. I already wrote his name down in March. It’s possible we’ve seen our final wholly new Met of 2026 already. Then again, people like me have been treated to a season that has encompassed the fifth one-two leadoff home run punch in franchise history, Chris Devenski becoming the 64th Recidivist Met, Christopher Morel becoming the 87th Mets outfielder-third baseman practically all at once, and Robert Stock striving to shake free of the ghost of Bob Moorhead all in a week’s time. I don’t know how much more Metsoteric excitement I could take.
The no cheering in the press box rule isn’t a hard one to abide by, especially when once Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto have finished circling the bases, there isn’t a ton of reason to cheer. My self-control was tested instead during a between-innings trivia segment during which one of Citi Field’s preternaturally upbeat emcees appeared on the big screen with one of Sunday’s 25,000 or so attendees to ask two questions related to the afternoon’s opponent. The first multiple-choice question regarded which Met manager got the long end of the opportunity stick from the 1994 Astros. Had I been up in Promenade, I would have bellowed out whichever letter was attached to Terry Collins’s name. The average fan on CitiVision chose Jeff Torborg. I muffled my scream of disgust. But the guy, probably too young to remember Torborg or 1994, got a second chance when he was asked to identify which of three former Mets accumulated 500+ hits as a Houston Astro. The correct choice was Rusty Staub. The answer the guy gave was Jeff Kent. I bit down on my game notes so as to not shatter decorum.
I didn’t really show up at Citi to tear some kid standing next to a truck with a microphone in his face a new tailpipe; the past is a foreign country when it’s not your native land. I didn’t even come to gather further evidence of Christopher Morel’s versatility. A couple of Queens-based filmmakers had gotten in touch to let us know they are working on a documentary examining the life of Bill Shea, whose signature stadium was one that probably mostly predated the 0-for-2 trivia-trying youth. Shea’s been gone since 2008. Bill himself left us in 1991. His legacy lives on every time one of us boards a train for Mets-Willets Point with no intention of consuming tennis, or pays an exorbitant amount to park on asphalt that used to hold Shea Stadium. I guess they’re building something else there now. Yet you can’t pave over what Bill Shea did, no matter how ritzy the coming neighborhood casino aspires to be. He was as responsible as anybody for making sure New York’s National League town tendencies remained properly tended. Mets fans of a certain age are intimately familiar with Shea Stadium. Fewer and fewer people know about the man for whom it was named. That’s why these guys I was meeting up with Sunday want to make their documentary. When they asked for a little Faith and Fear perspective on the subject, I was absolutely delighted to contribute.
Since I had to dress like an objective media member on Sunday, I couldn’t be in full fan regalia without doing multiple wardrobe changes between acts. I could, however, wear under my respectable blue button-down a t-shirt some thoughtful entrepreneur sent me the first year of Citi Field. It reads I’M CALLING IT SHEA. I don’t really call Citi Field Shea Stadium, but I appreciate the sentiment. I’m not the only one. Ambling over to Citi on the boardwalk, before I had buttoned up my button-down, another gameday commuter stopped me: “Excuse me, I just have to say I LOVE your shirt.” I’ve been hearing it since 2009.
The gentleman who was filming me (himself loyal to his deGROM 48 jersey) also loved my shirt when I showed him I had it on behind the buttons. After he got through with his questions on what Bill Shea meant and still means to New York baseball, he asked me to do a Superman-style reveal. I’d unbutton my shirt, and the shirt’s words would emerge. This, I told him, was the first time anybody outside my doctor’s examining room had expressed a desire to see my chest.
Shortly thereafter, I slipped back into my identity as a mild-mannered Mets reporter, heading back to the press box, properly buttoned up and exercising neutrality. Yet as I made my way along the Excelsior level, who do I see but a woman wearing the EXACT same shirt I had underneath. “Excuse me,” I said as I began to unbutton a couple of buttons as uncreepily as I could, “we’re wearing the same shirt.” She gave me a “YEAH!” and an air fist bump before getting away from me ASAP.
The wearing of Shea and the speaking of Shea must have had an effect on the atmosphere. Maybe not at Citi, where miracles are on hold as September approaches, but maybe in Toronto. On Sunday, Max Scherzer rose from his state of dormancy to pitch seven innings of one-hit ball, striking out ten Mariners for the Blue Jays. Max Scherzer was a Met for parts of two interesting seasons at Citi Field, but of greater relevance to my Sunday, he remains the last active major leaguer to have played at Shea Stadium, making it to our ancestral mound in 2008. Time was knowing a player played at Shea was an everyday occurrence. For as little as Andy Green played when he was a Diamondback, he made it into three games for Arizona at Shea Stadium. I was at the first of them, on a Friday night in 2004. I remember it less for his being double-switched into the lineup than I do for the postgame fireworks show that occurred as a result of some vintage chicken tenders. Some night’s Shea’s food made a Mets fan green.
Scherzer’s usually injured or not lasting long when he does pitch. Like that sculpture in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, he’s 42. But he’s lasted long enough to be, in his own way, the last avatar of Shea. For that, I silently applauded his effort Sunday. For that, I forgave his passing Jerry Koosman on the all-time major league wins list. Koosman had 222. Scherzer now has 223. Both are well ahead of Bob Moorhead.
Moorhead had an intriguing trajectory as a Met. Besides the never notching a win, I mean. He was the first Met to make his major league debut as a Met, in the very first Mets game, the same one in which Don Zimmer touched off the third base countdown. He was the last Met from that first game to still be playing for the Mets three-plus years later, yet he couldn’t rightfully be called The Dean (longest-running Met, à la Ed Kranepool forever and Francisco Lindor these days), because while he never pitched for another big league team, he did sorta/kinda wander into the Milwaukee Braves organization for a spell. He was, upon further review, the very first Met Once Removed, a branch of the Recidivist Met tree that grows separately from the Stocks and Devenskis of our world. And, for the purposes of Sunday at Citi, I am intrigued that Bob Moorhead’s first 1965 Met appearance, on August 16, came in a game in which Tug McGraw also pitched.
Tug was exactly two weeks from turning 21 years old, or half a Scherzer, that Monday night at Candlestick Park. I know what his age had to be because I read Screwball for book reports in sixth grade and eighth grade and tenth grade before losing the paperback I’d also read for the fun of it who knows how many times. Tug was born on August 30, 1944. I knew that because of the who knows how many times I’d read it in Screwball. Some stuff, like Shea Stadium’s chicken tenders, leave you quickly and violently. Some other stuff connected to Shea stays with you.
“If you tried to pin that down in history,” Tug wrote alongside collaborator Joe Durso, “it was about eleven weeks after the invasion of Europe in World War II. Gil Hodges was slogging it out on an island in the Pacific somewhere, Ted Williams was flying a marine airplane, Henry Aaron was a ten-year-old kid in Mobile, and Casey Stengel was a fifty-four-year-old manager with Milwaukee in the American Association.” Scrolling one social media app or another during a lull Sunday, I saw that it was Ted Williams’s birthday. I put August 30 and August 30 together, and I realized it was Tug McGraw’s birthday. Ted probably wasn’t much in the mood to celebrate turning 26 the day Tug was born, given his military assignment. But on Sunday, my Met mood, already pretty good despite the 6-3 loss in progress, amped up knowing Max Scherzer, the last Shea survivor, had chosen (or had been chosen by fate) to turn back the clock on Tug McGraw’s birthday, which I was spending next door to where Tug used to pitch, a place I had just spent a bunch of minutes discussing for a movie being made about the man that place had been named for.
To top it off, when I was at Woodside awaiting my train home, I saw an older couple I usually spot on Sundays. They get on where I usually get on and wait to return where I inevitably wind up. The husband inevitably wears a Mets shirt that gets my attention. This Sunday he wore a jersey, No. 45. Not for Christian Scott. Not for Zack Wheeler, who also won on Sunday. Not for international baseball icon Pedro Martinez or local baseball icon John Franco or Silent Generation Met Michael Wacha, who won on Friday. (Wacha, Wheeler and Scherzer are three of the six active major league pitchers with at least 100 career wins who used to be Mets; Jacob deGrom, Jose Quintana, and Justin Verlander are the others, with Carlos Carrasco now pitching in Korea.) This guy’s 45 was for McGRAW, which was stitched onto the back of his top above the number. We’ll overlook for the moment that the font wasn’t regulation and that when Tug was a Met, there were no player names displayed. It was the thought that counted here, and I couldn’t resist going over to him and asking, “Excuse me, sir, but are you wearing Tug McGraw’s jersey today because it’s Tug’s birthday?” The man had no idea of the significance of August 30 vis-à-vis the name and number on his back.
“I’m wearing it because You Gotta Believe.” I agreed, even at the end of a Met August that was just trying to finish the season.
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