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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 Jason Fry on 4 October 2024 1:16 am
More than once this year, I’ve thought to myself that Pete Alonso would probably be more of a hitter if he were less of a teammate.
But Alonso isn’t capable of that. He cares about his teammates, about the only organization he’s ever known, and yes, about us lunatics in the stands. He wants to come through for all of us, so much that he puts too much on his shoulders. We’ve all seen the results: tentative ABs turning into overaggressive ones, or fly balls that are harmless because he tried to hit one to the moon when one three-millionth of that distance would have sufficed.
I’ve worried about that in the last few weeks, but I’ve also noticed some other things. I noticed that Alonso had become Francisco Lindor‘s best friend at first, scooping balls out of the dirt with Lindor’s compromised back affecting his throws. And I noticed that Alonso mostly wasn’t falling prey to those I ALONE CAN FIX IT ABs that ambush him from time to time. He was working good counts and refusing to fish for balls he couldn’t do anything with.
He wasn’t being rewarded with big hits, but I saw enough that I kept hoping.
And I hoped for something more: that maybe Alonso, in watching the heroics of Lindor and Jose Iglesias and Luisangel Acuna and so many other teammates, would internalize something he’s always known intellectually but never seemed to quite accept emotionally: that he is not in fact alone, that he is a critical piece but still part of a collective whole, that teammates will pick him up if he fails and trust him to do the same.
Sit with that a moment; we’ll come back to it.
Most of Thursday night’s winner-take-all showdown in Milwaukee was an agony of misfires. The Mets couldn’t scratch against Tobias Myers, whose four-seamer had the kind of movement that kept them just missing balls — I lost count of the number of balls that looked good off the bat only to die in outfielders’ gloves. Myers pitched five innings and all of two Mets reached base: Lindor doubled to lead off the game and later singled, and Milwaukee fan favorite Jesse Winker got hit with a pitch.
Fortunately, Jose Quintana equaled Myers. Quintana didn’t look great early, dealing with a lot of traffic, but as the game went on he saw that the Brewers were chasing more than they usually do, and so started tormenting them with changeups in the dirt and fastballs off the plate.
It was a gutty, canny performance, one I appreciated even more because Quintana’s 2024 taught me an important lesson: Don’t be so quick to write guys off. Back when things looked dire I disparaged Quintana (and some of his mound mates) as a feckless nibbler; when he went through a rough stretch in early August I would gladly have driven him to the airport myself if it meant we could be rid of him.
That wasn’t fair for any number of reasons, but two important ones are that I paid no heed to how much pride Quintana takes in his craft, or to how much work Jeremy Hefner and the Mets braintrust put into monitoring their pitchers, figuring out what’s working and what isn’t, and being patient as guys figure out adjustments. That’s been true of Quintana, of Sean Manaea, of David Peterson, of Tylor Megill, of Ryne Stanek — to say nothing of the nightly drama around Edwin Diaz, his mechanics and his psyche.
Quintana kept the Mets in it and handed the ball over to Jose Butto, who’s made strides as a pitcher but is still in the blurry space between roles: no longer a starter (at least for now) but not yet truly a reliever. Butto needs more time between appearances than a typical setup guy, and given the crazy rollercoaster ride of the last week more time hasn’t been available. He entered a scoreless game in the seventh and on two pitches put the Mets in a 2-0 hole: Jake Bauers clobbered a changeup sitting in the middle of the plate and Sal Frelick took a four-seamer over the fence.
Diaz got the Mets out of the inning without allowing anything else, though he didn’t exactly look crisp himself, and the Mets could do nothing against Freddy Peralta, pressed into service as a bridge to Devin Williams.
Had I given up when Williams took the mound? I hadn’t — partially out of stubbornness but also because this edition of the Mets had engineered crazier escapes. The key, I kept thinking to myself, was Lindor: He had to find a way to get on base. Fortunately, he was the player I trusted most to do it.
And after that? That’s where my belief got a lot shakier. But I knew Mark Vientos had power, and he’d seen his share of big moments. Hadn’t Brandon Nimmo hit a mammoth home run off Raisel Iglesias just a couple of Met fan heart attacks ago? And then there was Alonso, whom no ballpark can hold if he gets a hold of one.
I figured the most likely outcome was Lindor reaching first, or maybe second, and the season ending with a last shot of him disconsolate amid blue and yellow celebrants. But I also kept telling myself that wasn’t the only possible outcome.
Lindor’s leadoff AB against Williams a clinic from a player who knew exactly what had to be accomplished and was bending every ounce of his will to the task. Williams got to 1-2 using the formula that’s been so successful for him: that intimidating four-seam fastball up and that deadly changeup down, so a hitter has to be geared up to simultaneously cover the top and bottom of the strike zone and negotiate a 10 MPH difference in speed. Lindor refused to expand the strike zone, fighting back to 3-2, fought off a pair of four-seamers that had the plate, then looked at one outside for the walk.
That brought up Vientos, who had no chance against the four-seamer after being tantalized with a trio of changeups. (Hey, it happens — guys don’t roll to a 1.25 ERA by accident.) Williams tried the same program against Nimmo, but the third changeup got too much plate on 0-2 and Nimmo smacked it into right field for a single.
And so up came Pete.
The first pitch was a changeup down the middle, and it looked like Alonso’s knees sagged a bit. Don’t help him! I entreated the Polar Bear from 700-odd miles away. And Alonso didn’t — he spat on two four-seamers at the top of the zone as well as a changeup in on his hands. None of them was a pitch he could have done anything with — two pop-ups in waiting and a grounder. That was good; so was seeing Alonso have the kind of AB I’d kept noticing of late, albeit with little to show for it.
Maybe this time would be different. Ya gotta believe, right?
Don’t help him! I said again, unheard as always.
Williams threw another changeup, toward the outer edge of the plate but getting a fair bit of it, and Alonso connected.
This wasn’t one of those majestic shots pulled and headed for orbit. It was an opposite-field line drive. Did I think the ball was going out? Honestly, I was too disoriented and scared to be able to make a judgment like that. It was struck well and in flight, but Frelick was out there and I registered that the outfield fence had a little jog in it, and suddenly there were too many possibilities to catalog: into Frelick’s glove through a cruel quirk of the dimensions, over his glove and off the wall and what kind of jump did Lindor and Nimmo get …
… or, just maybe, over the fence.
Alonso made a chef’s kiss gesture and ran around the bases to be greeted by a conga line of happy Mets. Whatever Insurance It Is Field fell into a shocked hush; at the Citi Field watch party popcorn was flying and strangers were jumping and hugging; at the Playwright up in Midtown, the 7 Line was a screaming blizzard of orange and blue. And in a living room in Brooklyn Heights, I was jumping up and down like a maniac screaming and scaring the neighbors.
Here, for posterity, is Howie Rose’s call:
Here’s the pitch … swing and a fly ball to right field, pretty well hit. Frelick back, at the wall, he jumps — and it’s GONE! HE DID IT! HE DID IT! PETE ALONSO WITH THE MOST MEMORABLE HOME RUN OF HIS CAREER! PUMPS HIS FIST AS HE ROUNDS SECOND! IT’S A THREE-RUN HOMER! HE’S GIVEN THE METS A THREE TO TWO LEAD! THEY ALL POUR OUT OF THE DUGOUT! ALONSO ON HIS WAY TO HOME PLATE, THEY’RE WAITING FOR HIM! HE HITS THE PLATE, HE’S FIRST CONGRATULATED BY NIMMO! HUGGED BY LINDOR! THERE ARE A DOZEN METS WAITING FOR HIM OUTSIDE THE DUGOUT! PETE ALONSO KEEPS THIS FAIRY-TALE SEASON GOING WITH THE FAIRY-TALE SWING OF HIS CAREER! THREE TO TWO NEW YORK!
And then, almost immediately, I had a terrifying thought: Who’s going to close?
Fortunately, the Mets weren’t done. After Iglesias grounded out, Winker was hit by another pitch and then stole second, bad back and all. Williams went back to that pattern again against Starling Marte: three changeups, then a four-seamer. Marte spanked the four-seamer over first to bring in Winker, and that was it for Williams: He’d given up four runs, one more than he’d surrendered in the regular season. And an opposite-field homer? No one had ever hit one of those off Williams.
That extra run loomed large as Peterson (there’s your answer) immediately gave up a sharp single to Frelick. He struck out Joey Ortiz, but that brought up Brice Turang, the speed merchant who’s tortured the Mets for more than a week now.
So of course, because baseball is nothing if not utterly perverse, Turang smacked a grounder right at Lindor, hard enough that not even Turang’s terrifyingly fast wheels could deliver him to first before the ball thudded into Alonso’s mitt for the back end of a game-ending double play.
Amazin’, one might say. Or even Oh My God.
Everything goes by so fast. Blink your eyes and Alonso and Lindor will have become visiting dignitaries, interviewed during sleepy midsummer innings by some future Steve Gelbs. You’ll marvel at the fact that they’ve grown gray and try not to think about your own journey along that road.
But these days will be remembered. Twice in a week, the Mets have delivered games that you’ll see revisited during innumerable rain delays, ones that you’ll find yourself smiling to recall at odd moments years and years from now.
These are the games that transmute heartbreak into giddy triumph, that keep us coming back for all the nights enemy closers don’t crumble and opposing outfielders leap a little higher. When you get one of these, you cradle it and give thanks for it. Because these are the games that keep that stubborn little ember of belief burning, awaiting the joyous ignition that’s the reward of being a fan.
by Greg Prince on 3 October 2024 1:37 am
I had the feeling I was seeing something I hadn’t witnessed before, so I ran through it in my head to confirm. Eleven postseasons. Twenty postseason rounds. Ninety-four postseason games. It took until the respective eleventh, twentieth and ninety-fourth of the above for the New York Mets to do something they’d never done before. Never before had the Mets been as few as six outs from clinching in a playoff situation without, in fact, clinching.
Not the history we were seeking Wednesday night in Milwaukee.
A Wild Card Series sweep was close enough to taste, distant enough that you couldn’t really get a grip on the fork you wished to use for the tasting. Yes, we were up a run with two defensive innings to go. No, it wasn’t a case of fait accompli interruptus. Six outs against a ballclub like the Brewers is simply too many to count down if you’re planning to drape plastic sheeting over the clubhouse stalls with confidence. The first three outs the Mets had to get ended up intertwined with three Brewer runs. There wouldn’t be anymore defensive outs after that.
Oh, that eighth inning. Oof. Honestly, though, you could say “oof” to a good bit of Game Two before Phil Maton gave up the two home runs that turned the tide for, one hopes, one night and not the entire series. “Oof” watching Sean Manaea struggle a little more than usual through five (though his bottom line of just two runs wasn’t too bad). “Oof” watching Pete Alonso tangle his feet in his bat as he sought to beat out a potential double play, which seemed possible on this particular first-inning, one-out grounder — with Mark Vientos on third — until Pete failed to appear in our picture. The Polar Bear hit the ball, dropped his lumber, tripped over it, and so much for dashing down the line in time for Vientos to score. The Mets had put one on the board. More right away would have been nice.
“Oof” repeated itself often, as the Mets singled eight times, only to leave nine runners on base while going 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position and producing nary a double, triple or homer. Pete plopping to the dirt notwithstanding, they actually looked pretty swift getting to first, second and/or third on several occasions. It was the not bringing any of those runners home after the second inning that doomed them.
That and Phil Maton, I suppose. Manaea did all he could across 86 pitches, and I was OK with limiting him to five innings. Reed Garrett and Ryne Stanek held the 3-2 fort in the sixth and seventh. Maton, the second-half godsend who didn’t have it in Atlanta, didn’t suddenly rediscover it in Milwaukee. Jackson Chourio, who led off the game with a homer, smoked Maton ASAP to knot the score at three. Phil gave up a single to Blake Perkins directly thereafter, but a crisp double play (we did execute some sweet defense) erased him. Howie Rose and Keith Raad were barely done confirming that, should it be relevant, ghost runners don’t materialize in extra innings in the postseason — I’d muted ESPN — when Willy Adames singled and Garrett Mitchell made the subject of extras moot. Mitchell’s two-run homer put the Brewers up, 5-3, and you sensed the Mets would not be upending Devin Williams’s apple cart in the ninth. They didn’t.
I resisted taking my own calculation of “six more outs” too seriously when we got through the seventh. I didn’t necessarily know Maton was gonna come in, but I didn’t have a good feeling about him. After riding the runaway train known as Edwin Diaz on Sunday and Monday, I didn’t have a good feeling about him for Wednesday, either. Against the runnin’ Brew Crew, I didn’t want to see Adam Ottavino. No starter was available to step in. Max Kranick’s on the roster, but this would have been quite a spot for a Met debut. Overall, I had no idea how the Mets were going to get the six outs that would have put them in the Division Series.
More runs would have been great. Some games yearn to be won with offense. Winning with offense got us into this postseason, you might recall. We pierced but didn’t bludgeon starter Frankie Montas, and nudged rather than bulldozed various Milwaukee relievers. We nursed a one-run lead when we should have building a much larger version. The construction materials were right there on base.
The good news — besides a brand new blank scoreboard greeting us for Game Three, and Jose Quintana being rested enough to conceivably fill it with zeroes — is there is a touch of precedent on our side to effect the ultimate desired outcome despite what occurred to ruin Game Two. We were eight outs from clinching the NLCS in 1973, when the Reds tied Game Four at Shea on Tony Perez’s seventh-inning home run off George Stone and went on to win after Pete Rose homered in the twelfth. Things worked out OK in decisive Game Five the next day behind, among others, Tom Seaver, Tug McGraw and Willie Mays (sometimes all it takes is a few immortals). And in 2015, the Mets had an opportunity to clinch the NLDS when they were up two games to one on the Dodgers, but didn’t take care of business against Clayton Kershaw at Citi Field. They never led or inspired much hope that they’d capture Game Four nine years ago. Instead, they saved their big finish for winner-take-all Game Five in L.A., where Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Jeurys Familia, Curtis Granderson, Travis d’Arnaud and, most of all, Daniel Murphy conjured a 3-2 win to secure the series.
None of those guys is on this team right now, but this team and the guys we do have have brought us further than any of us dared dream they could when the season was young…hell, when the season was middle-aged. One more night awaits, one that could unlock more. Let’s root for that, shall we?
by Jason Fry on 2 October 2024 6:57 am
It was the ninth inning against the Phillies, 10 days ago, and ESPN’s little win probability thing (a sop to gamblers, but that’s another post) was making me insane.
It said the Phillies had an 8% chance of coming back to beat the Mets, which was obviously wrong. Obviously and deliberately and nefariously wrong. I didn’t know the Phillies’ win probability — how would you even calculate that? — but I knew mischance and misfortune, and it seemed far more likely that the Phillies’ win probability was around 80%, with the only question the nature of the disaster waiting in ambush.
Instead the Mets won. I was no longer paying close attention but I assume the win probability thing ticked to 100% before being ushered out of view.
After the Mets claimed Game 1 of their Monday special against the Braves, punching their postseason ticket in what may well have been the best regular-season game in club history (now there’s an offseason post/series to look forward to), I took advantage of Game 2’s vacation from anxieties to pore over the game thread on Battery Power, the SB Nation blog that’s the Braves equivalent of our beloved Amazin’ Avenue. I wanted a real-time record of Braves fans being imperious before being brought low, and to see their assumption of doom for the Mets get forcibly and delightfully corrected.
But that wasn’t what I found. Instead, to my surprise, I found a hairball of angst, one that snarled up long before Tyrone Taylor Shawon’ed Spencer Schwellenbach out of the game: Matt Olson couldn’t hit, Marcell Ozuna would never hit again, Travis d’Arnaud only ever grounds out, Brian Snitker always leaves his starters in too long, Joe Jimenez is reliably terrible, and on and on and on.
Press a Met fan into service as a TV meteorologist and she’ll stand in front of the map with a dozen variations on black clouds and lightning bolts and maybe one wanly yellow little sun, which she’ll bashfully keep behind her back. That’s our reputation as a fanbase, and it’s one we haven’t exactly run from — if anything, we’ve run toward it when things have gone wrong or look like they might go wrong or we assume they’ll go wrong because things have gone wrong before.
But it turns out every team’s fanbase does this. (Twitter is now 1/3 conspiracy loons, 1/3 Bitcoin grifters and 1/3 Yankee fans calling for the head of Aaron Boone.) We all think our lineup is made up of ticking time bombs, our franchise is run by dimwits and/or saboteurs, and our win probability is actually around a tenth of whatever the gamblers are being told.
I was scowling at that win probability thing again Tuesday night, as the Mets came back to Milwaukee to take on the Brewers at the what the fuck is this shit time of 5:30 pm.
The Brewers who’d rather idly taken two out of three from a weirdly tight post-rainouts Mets team not very long ago.
The Brewers of Brice Turang and Jackson Chourio and Garrett Mitchell and other guys whose features I’m not familiar with because I’ve mostly only registered them as blurs stealing second and then zipping home.
The Brewers of Rhys Hoskins, because of course.
The Mets fell behind 2-0 against those Brewers in the bottom of the first, as some plays you’d like to see made weren’t and Luis Severino reported for duty missing his location and a reliable putaway pitch. It was 2-0, and clearly our win probability was 0.00000000%.
Except the Mets leapt off the mat in the top of the second: Mark Vientos singled (he had terrific ABs all night), Pete Alonso walked and up came Jesse Winker, who’d been mired in a deep slump and waylaid by back issues of his own. Winker saw eight pitches from Freddy Peralta, whistling the eighth into the right-field corner to tie the game and take himself to third with a triple, and if you had JESSE WINKER TWO-RUN TRIPLE on your bingo card, well, my cap is tipped. He came home on a sac fly from Starling Marte, another Met who quietly put together a night of solid ABs, and just like that the Mets led 3-2.
But once again, Severino didn’t look right. He worked through traffic in the second and third, then gave back the lead in the fourth, with the inevitable Turang front and center at the Brewer raceway. (Remember when Milwaukee lineups were made up of one scrawny infielder and eight dudes who looked like Daniel Vogelbach, including the actual Daniel Vogelbach for a time? I liked that better.) The Mets were down a run (win probability 0.0000000%) and Milwaukee’s Pat Mitchell decided that was enough from Peralta, dipping into his formidable bullpen and summoning Joel Payamps.
It didn’t work. Payamps got Marte when Chourio made a leaping grab at the fence, allowed a double to Taylor on a ball Chourio misplayed, retired Francisco Alvarez for the second out, but then lost Francisco Lindor on a walk. Up came Jose Iglesias, who smacked a ball left of first that Hoskins made a good play on, only to find Payamps a little tardy getting to first. Iglesias dove in head-first, one of the few times that play makes sense, just beating Payamps while the always-alert Taylor motored around third to tie the game.
In came Aaron Ashby, who allowed an infield single to Brandon Nimmo and then boom: a two-run single for Vientos, followed by another one from J.D. Martinez, pinch-hitting for Winker.
Just like that the Mets led 8-4, and the ballgame was over. No really, it pretty much was. Severino found a little tweak that corraled his fastball — or perhaps he started pitching like he had a four-run lead and eight guys behind him — and so set down Brewer after Brewer before passing the baton to Jose Butto, who in turn handed it to Ryne Stanek.
No Brewer reached base against the three of them, and no Met tallied a hit against Nick Mears or Aaron Civale. Four and a half innings ticked by in a stately procession of round trips between dugouts, with the lone baserunner accounted for by a walk to Alonso. An October playoff game became one of those sleepy late June affairs in which you pick up a magazine and it winds up as a tent over your face during a baseball nap.
Which, given the emotional toll of the last week and change, wasn’t unwelcome. Eventually Stanek struck out Turang, Alvarez didn’t allow a dropped third strike, it turns out there’s no heretofore-overlooked rule that allows Turang to circle the bases five times while Met catchers fail to throw him out, and so that was that.
Win probability 100%. Be not afraid.
by Greg Prince on 1 October 2024 4:35 am
Late on a Sunday night in 1975, I’m watching Sammy & Company on Channel 4 because I’m up, it’s on, and nothing else is. The Sammy in question is Sammy Davis, Jr. He’s done it all in show business and now he’s hosting this syndicated not quite talk show, not quite variety show. It’s got Sammy and he’s got company. That’s enough in the pre-cable days to keep a 12-year-old insomniac tuned in. On this episode I’m recalling, Sammy’s doing a number from a Broadway musical he was in a dozen years earlier, a show called Golden Boy. I’d never heard of Golden Boy until the moment he told us he was about to perform a song from it. The song, “This Is The Life,” makes an impression on me because one line grabs my attention:
Polaroid pictures, stereo sets, season box to see the Mets
Twenty-five years before I began keeping a file of Met mentions in the popular culture for my own edification and thirty-seven years before the first edition of Oscar’s Caps saw light, I made a mental note of that there’s a song in a show that starred Sammy Davis and it has the Mets in it.
That information settled in the recesses of my brain, of no consequence in my life until September 1999, when, with the Mets bearing down on a playoff spot, “season box to see the Mets” bubbled to the surface of my 36-year-old consciousness, and I decided I needed to hear this song and have this song. Nascent file sharing and the application of something called MP3s surpassed my understanding. If I wanted a song, I bought the CD. I worked not far from a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, a store whose soundtrack collection brimmed with the best of Broadway going back years. Yes, Golden Boy was there. Yes, I purchased it. Yes, I played “This Is The Life” quite often in the fall of 1999, a period when anything Metsian was welcome in my ears. I don’t think I gave the rest of the album more than a perfunctory listen.
In March of 2002, City Center’s Encores! series staged a concert version of Golden Boy. Hey, I more or less said to my wife, that’s the show with “season box to see the Mets” in it. We had seen and greatly enjoyed the very first Encores! production in 1994 (Fiorello!) but let our initial subscription wane. This seemed like a good excuse to return to the grand old theater on 55th Street. Alfonso Ribiero, Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, played Davis’s role. I was delighted to hear “This Is The Life” live and became aware of the rest of the soundtrack.
A couple of weeks later, the baseball season began, a season I was more in tune with than the Broadway season. The Mets’ first tour…I mean road trip took them to Atlanta. You know, Turner Field. This was April 2002. For five seasons the Mets had been visiting this facility and leaving it to scathing reviews. Actually, I suppose the Atlanta crowd applauded the Mets taking their bows there because it usually meant showstoppers from the Braves. Ever since September 1997, the Braves had been stopping the Mets’ show, crushing their hopes autumn after autumn. The Mets had never finished ahead of the Braves since Atlanta moved to the NL East. The Mets never definitively defeated the Braves when it absolutely mattered, especially in Georgia.
But this year, I told myself at 39, was going to be different. We’d just come through the offseason of Alomar and Vaughn, the reacquisitions of Cedeño and Burnitz. We were remade to finally get over that big, bad, Brave hump. On our first trip in, we took two out of three at the Ted, including one stunner when we scored nine in the ninth to not only break but smash a tie. We won that one, 11-2. A little over a week later, the Braves were up at Shea and jumped ahead, 6-1, by the third. Yet we scored five in the bottom of the seventh, forced extra innings, and, in the twelfth, my favorite position player ever, Edgardo Alfonzo, drove in Jay Payton with the winning run. Mets 7 Braves 6 on the scoreboard. Mets two-and-a-half-games ahead of the Braves in the standings. And resonating in my head, from the song I gained a new appreciation of at City Center during Spring Training, were lyrics I was convinced spoke to the moment at hand.
Well, you had your way
No more
Well, it ain’t your day
No more
Yes, I’m standin’ up
I ain’t on the floor
I ain’t bowin’ down
No more
This was my theme song for the 2002 I envisioned taking shape that April. It went on my stereo set and on my next compilation (or mix) tape and I played it clear to…
May, I guess. By June, the shape of 2002 had sagged. The Braves did what the Braves always did. They took over first place and won the division title. They didn’t break the Mets’ heart in September or October of 2002, because the 2002 Mets had no heart left come summer’s end. They finished last, 26½ games behind Atlanta.
So much for “No More”.
The season I was 43 was the first season since the season I was 27 that the Mets finished with a better record than the Braves. When I was 27, the Braves were in another division, and by the time I was 43, the Braves had been in the same division as the Mets since the season I was 31. The season I was 43 was 2006. The Mets had finally broken through to win the division. The Braves fell apart and ceased being the Mets’ primary rival. It was a stone groove to put the finishing touches on the destruction of the remnants of their NL East dynasty, but it was a sidebar at best. We enjoyed one year of absolute dominance over everybody in our immediate realm, then got entangled with the Phillies for a while. That tended not to end great. Soon, it was the Mets who fell apart while the Braves regrouped a little. By the time we briefly got it together again, the Braves were an absolute mess. By the time we came undone again, the Braves were on the upswing. From 2018 through 2023, it may as well have been 1995 through 2005 in the NL East, with the Braves winning every single year. Only once, in 2022, were we in their faces. That also didn’t end great.
This takes us to September of 2024, the season I’m 61, still caring about the thing I was caring about in 1975, the season I was 12, when “season box to see the Mets” and Golden Boy lodged themselves in my head, leading to September of 1999 and the CD and that fabulous fall when the Mets almost but not quite toppled the Braves and I was 36, leading to April of 2002 and “No More” scoring our ascent above Atlanta, except the ascent was aborted before I turned 40. Now I’m past 60, and the one thread, however frayed, I find myself clinging to for more than two decades is my reawakened desire to raise the volume on this song at the moment it is genuinely appropriate, when they’re no longer having their way, when it ain’t their day, when we ain’t on the floor no more.
Tuesday afternoon, September 24. The Mets are starting a three-game series at Truist Park. The Mets’ magic number to clinch a playoff spot is four. Two wins at Atlanta will do it. That’s the prize that deserves the eyes, but I’m also overwhelmed in the hours before game time at the possibility of us not only beating the Braves for our own benefit, but for the thrill of knocking them out of the playoff picture altogether. I don’t just want us in. I want them done.
This, I know, is a mistake. One of the tenets of my rooting is root for, not against. There are caveats and exceptions, as with all tenets, but I try to stay nominally pro, not anti, as a fan. Root for your own joy, not others’ suffering. Should they suffer because you achieved joy, that’s collateral damage. I can’t help it if others didn’t decide to root for the Mets when they were six years old as I did and then keep at it. I may need your team to lose to advance my cause, yet I shouldn’t go out of my way to wish you ill other than on as-needed basis.
Why not? Because I’m such a good soul? No. Because it never fucking works. Karma hates it, therefore I should avoid it. That’s why I knew it was a mistake to be carried away by my disdain for the Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Braves fans and everything the Atlanta Braves have done to us since 1997, the first year we rose up to challenge for the recently implemented Wild Card, only to have the Braves smoke us that September. It happened again in September 1998, when we were closer and they annihilated us later; and in September 1999, when they grabbed back the division from us just as we were set to wrap our mitts around it and, in the process, sent us spiraling almost out of reach of the Wild Card; and in October 1999, when we forged one Amazin’ comeback after another only to have Kenny Rogers pitching to Andruw Jones with the bases loaded in the tenth inning of a game we trailed 5-0, trailed 7-3, led 8-7 and led 9-8; and in September 2000, when what I just said about the 1999 divisional title applied essentially just the same, except we had a decent Wild Card cushion (the one year we got to the World Series, St. Louis took care of Atlanta for us); and in September 2001, specifically in the second Brian Jordan Game, which assured for eternity that Mike Piazza belting that First Game in New York After 9/11 home run would be viewed as an isolated swing rather than part of a larger baseball miracle.
All of that informs why I ached to wail No More in April of 2002. All of that, along with that series sweep at the close of September and dawn of October 2022, is why I hauled my Golden Boy CD out of its drawer and added it to my iTunes (I’m not that modern) and played the relevant portion repeatedly prior to the first Mets-Braves game in Atlanta in September 2024.
And you saw how that worked. The Mets lost and looked lost. Then it rained and rained and games were postponed and it was off to Milwaukee, where the Mets continued to lose and look lost. But then they won Sunday and found themselves tied with the Braves in the standings heading into the Monday doubleheader that was tacked onto the schedule after all that rain, and both teams needed to win at least one game. Whoever won the first game in Atlanta didn’t have to worry about the second game all that much. There’d be seeding and travel and whatever, but if you won the first game, you were golden, boy.
But if we won the first game and the second game, we’d be in and we’d knock the Braves all the way out of contention once and for all, or at least once and for all in 2024, while we moved on. Ooh, I really wanted both of those situations to become reality. Folks in Arizona probably didn’t care who won what game of the doubleheader as long as nobody won both. Folks in Arizona weren’t my problem.
The folks in Braves uniforms were. One in particular.
I went to a Mets-Braves game at Citi Field in late July. Starting for the Braves was some dude I’d never heard of named Spencer Schwellenbach. My first instinct was to ask “who?” My second instinct, a product of my earliest exposure to baseball, was to think “what an odd name for a baseball player, as the best baseball players have punchy names like Willie Mays or Johnny Bench or Tom Seaver, and whoever heard of somebody named Spencer Schwellenbach being any good?” My final instinct was to conclude I had just doomed the Mets that July day, because what the fuck does somebody’s name have to do with how good he is? Final score of the game where I learned who Spencer Schwellenbach was featured several runs for the Braves and none for the Mets. A rough approximation of that score recurred in Atlanta the night after the afternoon I played “No More” with too much gusto.
Would ya look at who was pitching for the Braves against the Mets in Game 161, the one with everything on the line? Yeah, I know that name all too well, Spencer Schwellenbach. Unsurprisingly, the pitcher I implicitly mocked for not having a baseball-worthy name shoved the baseball right past Met batters from the get-go. One silly little infield hit from Tyrone Taylor was the sum total of the Met offense for three innings. For two innings, Schwellenbach was matched zero-for-zero where it counted by Tylor Megill. Tylor wasn’t nearly perfect. He rarely is. But he’s been hanging in there since the June night in 2021 when he made his Met debut and I was at a ballgame for the first time since September of 2019. My last game before the pandemic was against the Braves, so long ago now that it’s jarring to remember Jerry Blevins pitched for them. My first game after the pandemic coincided with Megill’s entry into the bigs. I knew as much about him going in to that outing as I knew about Schwellenbach in July. Megill was facing the Braves, then, too. He didn’t personally beat them but he, you know, hung in there: 92 pitches, four-and-a-third innings. The Mets won in a pre-pitch clock slog of 3:42. We’d take that as an outcome in Monday’s opener.
Except Megill hanging in there usually means Megill has to negotiate trouble, and trouble doesn’t always wish to negotiate. Sometimes trouble insists on a display of brute force. A first-inning walk was quelled. Two singles in the second were released on their own recognizance. But a hit allowed to Michael Harris II (you mean there are II of him?) was followed by Ozzie Albies lining a home run over the left field wall, and oy, it’s 2-0 Braves, with Spencer Schwellenbach on the mound, and why must every game in Atlanta be like this?
No, I tell myself, don’t be like that. Even as Matt Olson singles with one out and Ramon Laureano singles with two out and Francisco Alvarez chases a passed ball with Travis d’Arnaud up, and really? Travis d’Arnaud? What did we do to deserve this? Besides give up on Travis d’Arnaud five minutes after he recovered from surgery?
The most vengeful of all the Old Friends™ is the last Brave you want to see up right now (unless it’s Albies or Olson or the second Harris, I suppose). Before a worst-case scenario could materialize, Tylor struck out Travis.
On a team where everybody’s done something to get us to the cusp of the playoffs, sometimes it takes a Megillage.
Megill settled down in the fourth and fifth. Schwellenbach was reached for a couple of singles in the fifth, but to no avail. His sixth couldn’t have been cleaner, either: seven pitches, three outs. The bottom of the sixth saw Megill ground out Jorge Soler for the first out. The next out, however, was of the park, as in out of Truist Park and into the Battery. Maybe what Laureano hit didn’t fly that far, but it was far enough to extend Atlanta’s lead to 3-0. Megill got two more batters, one more out, and a pat on the back for hanging in there. In the middle of the season, it would be a most admirable effort. With everything on the line, it wasn’t enough.
Huascar Brazoban finished Megill’s sixth by stranding Tylor’s baserunner. The Braves had left nine runners on base to this point. They could have had a much bigger lead than they’d built, but didn’t. That’s the essence of hanging in there. Would it matter if the Mets couldn’t get to the all-too-familiar Spencer Schwellenbach? That’s one rhetorical question right there. In the top of the seventh, ol’ Spence expended himself for nine pitches resulting in another three quick outs. Three-nothing didn’t look like it was gonna need much padding. Adam Ottavino’s participation in low-leverage competition seemed to have done him some good, as he kept the Braves from doing any upholstering of their advantage in the bottom of the seventh.
The eighth began with Schwellenbach working a one-and-two count to Taylor on his 84th through 86th pitch of the day. There was no reason to believe an out wasn’t imminent and that the eighth wouldn’t roll by as swiftly as most every Met inning had. Except Tyrone made himself sticky. He stuck around the batter’s box for a spell. More than a spell. Maybe Taylor was inspired by the Truist Park organist accompanying his stroll to the plate with the theme from The Andy Griffith Show. Uh-huh, just moseying, like Sheriff Andy Taylor did through Mayberry, especially on TBS all those years following Braves baseball on the superstation. Say, isn’t that Andy and Opie heading down to the fishin’ hole?
Our Taylor wasn’t much for fishing. He took a ball, kept himself alive with a couple of fouls, took another ball, fouled off three more and, on the eleventh pitch of the only stressful at-bat of Spencer Schwellenbach’s afternoon, lined a double into the left-center field gap. Spencer’s pitch count had risen all at once to 94, which set off alarm bell back at the courthouse. Sheriff Brian Snitker believed this was the time to take action. He apprehended the baseball from the right hand of the man who’d been spinning a gem and sent him for his own stroll.
Thanks, Snit — I thought this guy would never leave, and if he never left, we’d never score and we wouldn’t win Game One, and Game Two was also scheduled to take place in Atlanta, like most every horrible September/October game has been scheduled to take place in (or near) Atlanta since 1997. While I’m not to be mistaken for the supreme Met optimist, I’m thinking this can’t be real, can it? We’re not always going to lose like this in this place like we did in the previous place? Are we? I didn’t believe that coming into this doubleheader, just as I didn’t believe it six days before, just as I deep down didn’t believe it was loss accompli in 2022 or 2001 or whenever. But the evidence was mounting as long as Spencer Schwellenbach stayed on the hill.
He was removed from it. Joe Jimenez replaced him and, two pitches in, surrendered an RBI double to Alvarez. Shutout over. Invincibility punctured. An actual competitive ballgame loomed. Starling Marte pinch-hit for the offensively stunted Harrison Bader and singled, putting runners on the corners. Francisco Lindor comes up and resumes his bid for Comeback Player of the Year Within a Year. Lindor was out of the lineup for a couple of handfuls of games, but his absence felt endless, even when the Mets were winning. He’d come back in one piece on Sunday and helped engineer Sunday’s must win in Milwaukee. He didn’t make the All-Star team. He’s not gonna get MVP. Let’s give the man something.
Instead, Francisco gave us something: a single up the middle to score the other Francisco from third, and it was 3-2. This really was a competitive ballgame, in fact as much as theory. Jimenez, mandated by Manfred to throw to three batters, had done the absolute minimum. Snitker moved on from him to Raisel Iglesias, the Braves’ dynamite closer the Mets never hit. It’s not just us. He’s very good. Except on Monday, in the eighth, it was us. It was Jose Iglesias lining home Marte to tie the game at three; and it was Mark Vientos lofting a fly to center to bring home Lindor and provide the Mets a one-run lead; and it was Iglesias stealing second; and it was Brandon Nimmo blasting to right the most dramatic home run any Met has ever struck late in a game when the Mets were on the verge of clinching a playoff berth.
As of that moment, anyway.
Oh, it was glorious. Nimmo frigging knew it was gone, and with it, the Braves’ chances were going, going…OK, everybody wants to get ahead of the Braves, but nobody wants to get ahead of themselves. Still, shouting and screaming (two distinct vocal expressions), wasn’t enough for me as the Mets led the Braves, 6-3 and Snit went to make another pitching change. Me, I dashed over to where my iPad was plugged into the wall, opened yet another new tab — I had probably 150 active — and called up the lyrics to my song. This was it. This was the day they were going to be undeniably relevant to not only our cause but the pending conclusion. We’d just hung six on the almighty Braves, we had only six outs to nail down and…I don’t know. I had to have the exact lyrics ready to copy and paste and post and tell the world, we had done it.
Then I sat back down, watched the Mets not score any further in the top of the eighth, tried not to believe I had just acted rashly by getting ahead of myself, and welcomed Phil Maton to the mound. He pitched Sunday, didn’t he? Does he usually pitch that often? Oh, he’s a pro and this, today, is what Carlos Mendoza charmingly calls big boy time. He’s gonna be fine.
He’s gonna hit Eli White, a defensive replacement to the lead off the bottom of the eighth. That’s what he’s gonna do. And after getting one out, he’s gonna give up kind of a lucky hit to d’Arnaud (lucky for d’Arnaud, unlucky for us). Here comes Mendy. Maybe it was pushing it to ask Maton to pitch a second day in a row. Good thing Carlos has a contingency plan, no doubt one of our well-rested relievers who’s gonna steer us through the eighth.
Mendoza brought in Edwin Diaz, and I believe my reaction was “NO FUCKING WAY” or words to that effect, but definitely with “FUCKING” one of the words, and definitely not said as one might say when being presented with an item one had missed and assumed gone, but NO FUCKING WAY, it’s still here, thank you so much!
No, that’s not how I meant it. I did not want to see Edwin Diaz in the eighth inning. I was ready to see Edwin Diaz in the ninth inning. That seemed like plenty. It seemed appropriate. Closer closes. I’m by no means opposed to the closer getting a jump on the ninth in the eighth when circumstances dictate or suggest it’s the right course of action. After he pitched Sunday and struggled just enough for antsiness to attain three outs with a five-run lead, I doubted it was the right course of action. Mendoza knows his Mets better than I do (I don’t actually know them personally at all), but I’ve watched too many ballgames from Atlanta to not develop an opinion the manager didn’t ask for.
Edwin Diaz’s entire Met career flashes before my eyes every time the bullpen gate swings open these days. The promise of the great Mariner closer becoming ours at a contract-controllable stage of his burgeoning career, and all we had to give up of substance was our top minor league prospect; the absolute nightmare of his volunteering to pitch Home Run Derby in 2019, and I don’t mean at the All-Star festivities; the gradual construction of trust in the succeeding two seasons; the explosion of Sugarmania in 2022, which came with his own musician; the fucking WBC in 2023; all the mishegas this year that alternated with all the returning to form he had done when he wasn’t reminding us of 2019. Edwin’s better than a mixed bag, but you might want to open it up and inspect the contents before signing for what he’s about to deliver.
Too late for instant recriminations. We could have those later.
Diaz comes on and gets his first batter for the inning’s second out. What on earth was I stressing about? Relax, relax. I see Snitker is going to his bench for a pinch-hitter. Who’s up?
Jarred Kelenic. Say, you know that top minor league prospect we gave up to get Diaz? That’s him. You knew that, but here was a reminder in the flesh. We lived for a while with the simmering anxiety that Kelenic was going to grow up and become Mike Trout. That hasn’t happened, but it would be enough at this very moment for Kelenic to pull a d’Arnaud and Old Friend™ us to death. Technically, since Kelenic never played for the Mets, he’s not eligible for the Old Friend™ designation, but he can sure as hell do something to cause us regret.
Sure enough, he lines a ball past first base. It’s ticketed to scoot down the right field line, except Pete Alonso, our homegrown star, dives and snags it. Atta Bear, Pete! That’s a big-time defensive play and an inning-saver. Yessir, all Alonso has to do now is straighten up and toss to Diaz, covering at first.
Um, where the fuck is Diaz? Not in our picture, and SNY is pretty good at showing everybody who’s in a given play. Alas, Edwin is not present. Another camera reveals Diaz is standing on the mound as Kelenic crosses first base and White zips to third and d’Arnaud himself scores to trim the Mets’ lead to 6-4. Honestly, Edwin could be out in center field picking dandelions. Error of omission, Tim McCarver was fond of calling nonmoves like this.
Let’s all settle down. Edwin is pointing to his chest, the universal symbol for “my bad”. He knows he erred. His head is still in the game (mighty nice of it to join us). There’s still two out, we’re still up by two.
That’s not going to last. Whit Merrrifield, pinch-running for Kelenic, who I didn’t know is considered slow because I never got a chance to get to know him as a Met, steals second, because Diaz apparently studied holding runners on at the feet of Ottavino. It’s second and third with Harris II up. Harris could hit one here, couldn’t he? He doesn’t. He walks. It doesn’t feel like a victory. This loads the bases for Albies. Albies unloads the bases with a double past Nimmo in left. If you’re keeping a scorecard, it’s Braves 7 Mets 6.
I should be mad at Diaz for torching the eighth. I should be mad at Mendoza for bringing him in. I’m mad at myself for calling up those lyrics to “No More” when there was still more baseball to be played. I didn’t share them with anyone, just myself. That was a bridge too far. Karma noticed my hubristic preparations and let me know about it. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but karma’s a bitch.
With Raisel Iglesias having closed himself out of closing, Snitker turns to Pierce Johnson for the three outs that will clinch the Braves a playoff spot and leave the Mets needing to not get swept in Atlanta. I know as much about Pierce Johnson as I did Spencer Schwellenbach in July, but I make no judgments about his unusual first name for a baseball player. I have no time for that. Alvarez pops out on Johnson’s second pitch, and my only recourse now is to get up, rush to the still-charging iPad and close that tab with the lyrics. It’s probably too late to undo the damage I have done, but I’ve gotta try.
Except at the very instant within Marte’s plate appearance when I have one leg in the air and the other ready to follow, Starling singles to left, and I can’t get up now. I settle into the chair because maybe, just maybe, it has base hits in it. To move from it at this juncture would be folly. Karma’s giving me a second chance. Never mind the lyrics from Golden Boy. Our golden boy is coming up next.
I’m sitting probably in a shape approximating a pretzel at this point. I don’t want to move. Or, more accurately, I don’t want to move the wrong way and therefore screw with Francisco Lindor’s chances against Pierce Johnson. My arms are sort of over my face for a moment. I realize this is no way to watch Lindor bat because it keeps me from seeing. I also realize I am 61 years old, this is a Monday afternoon, and I’m worried about how I’m sitting in front of a television for how it could affect a baseball game many hundreds of miles away.
Isn’t being a baseball fan great? I spent the entire pregame portion of the day — what regular people would call morning — utterly absorbed by what could possibly go right or wrong in Atlanta and I never stopped to question my priorities. Is there anything else out there that makes you feel like this? I mean before it happens. Before it happens, it consumes you. While it’s happening, it threatens to eat you alive. Yet you sit there in whatever shape you’ve assumed and dare it to open wide and take a bite.
Yes, being a fan is great. And awful. But great. In any event, I wasn’t going to screw with Francisco Lindor’s chances against Pierce Johnson, because Pierce Johnson had no chance against Francisco Lindor. This is Francisco Lindor we’re talking about. We have learned in 2024, particularly in the healthy-ish parts of his September, that Francisco Lindor is to be spoken of in awe and hushed tones, the way Carl Yasztremski or George Brett or (forgive me) Chipper Jones were and are for what they did for their teams down stretches in their signature Septembers, months of clutch performances that catapulted them to the Hall of Fame.
I feel quite comfortable invoking some of the all-time greats here because Francisco Lindor blasted to center the most dramatic home run any Met has ever struck late in a game when the Mets were on the verge of clinching a playoff berth.
For all time.
Braves 7 Mets 6 transformed to Mets 8 Braves 7. The screaming competed with the shouting, each of which had to withstand the hooting and the hollering. Oh My God, and you don’t abbreviate it when it comes to Francisco Lindor in the ninth inning in Atlanta with everything on the line.
Yet would have a little insurance been to much to ask for after Lindor’s two-run homer of a lifetime? I mean, c’mon, this is Atlanta (Cobb County, but still), the same city or ADI where the Mets grabbed an 8-7 lead in the sixth game of the 1999 NLCS, only to…you know, Kenny Rogers. Turns out, despite all the GEICO and Progressive and Allstate commercials to which we’re subject throughout the season, a little insurance was too much to ask for. Mendoza would be turning a tenuous one-run lead over to…
You’re kidding. Diaz is going out there for the ninth. He threw, I’m estimating, a million pitches in the eighth. His psyche has to be scarred like he just saw the ghost of Kurt Suzuki. And he didn’t get off the mound when that was paramount. Diaz? Cripes, just get Benitez loose. They showed Ryne Stanek warming up in the bullpen. I can’t say I would trust my baseball life with Ryne Stanek and a one-run lead in the ninth inning in Atlanta with everything on the line, but I can tell you I wasn’t using my one phone call to keep Edwin Diaz in the game.
Which may be why they don’t give me access to the bullpen phone.
It was ride or die with Diaz. Is that too much hyperbole or not enough? There was little opportunity to mull the question during Matt Olson’s leadoff at-bat, because it was over in one pitch — one effective pitch that Olson popped to Lindor for the first out. OK, maybe this wasn’t a disaster in the making. White singled, then stole second. OK, maybe this is a disaster in the making. Laureano, with three hits on the day, struck out. Two outs, leaving it all up to d’Arnaud.
I was 70% leaning toward doom, 30% thinking it was too obvious. And it was. The latter, that is. Old Friend™ Travis did the right neighborly thing and grounded to Lindor, who threw to Alonso for the third out, and Oh My God, the New York Mets defeated the Atlanta Braves in Atlanta in September to make the playoffs. We were in. They were not. One game remained to determine their fate. It was now their must win. We didn’t know whether they’d win it or lose it (they won it; sorry, Arizona), but on this Monday, that was bookkeeping. Let Joey Lucchesi chruve as best he could, let Pete Alonso set foot in his 162nd game, and let the Champagne chill a little longer. It would be on ice waiting for our Mets to celebrate their myriad accomplishments, right after completing the greatest 2-4 road trip in human history.
They had done what they had to do, doing it where it seemed they’d never do anything like it. The 2024 Mets, who’d been charging uphill since the end of May, now and then slipping and sliding but always persevering and never giving up, were now atop the mountain they needed to scale. They made the playoffs for the eleventh time in their history. They did so from what could have been construed as hopelessly behind twice. Down 3-0, before rallying to lead, 6-3. Down 7-6, before winning, 8-7. After starting 22-33, they finished 89-73 and shattered the notion that destiny will deny them at every turn.
They beat the fucking Braves in fucking Atlanta when it fucking mattered most. So how do I celebrate after the shouting and screaming and hooting and hollering? I pick up my iPad, I go to the tab with my lyrics, I copy them, and…
…and every one of my tabs disappears. Every newspapers.com article I’d found since June but hadn’t had a chance to make use of. Every Baseball-Reference page I cued up for the purpose of delving in further. Every site that caught my fancy between pitches or games. They all just went poof.
Served me right for having gotten ahead of myself in the eighth. Karma, I hear ya, loud and clear.
Like the Mets from June on, I did a quick restart and moved forward. They’re going to Milwaukee for the Wild Card Series. I’ll join them spiritually eventually. Hours after we clinched, I’ve had Georgia on my mind the whole night through.
by Greg Prince on 30 September 2024 4:31 pm
by Greg Prince on 29 September 2024 8:04 pm
The Mets live. You didn’t necessarily see that coming, did ya?
Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Hope for the best, expect the Mets is my credo. I expected the Mets to do their best on Sunday in Milwaukee. Whether that and concurrent events in Atlanta and Arizona would be enough to survive and then some for one more day was what I didn’t know.
It was. We won, beating the beastly Brewers, 5-0. David Peterson pitched the game of his and most people’s lives, going seven scoreless, striking out nine and allowing only an infield hit and three walks that proved harmless. Francisco Lindor played like a healthy version of himself. He was real and he was spectacular, homering, stealing twice, driving in two runs and moving like a frontline shortstop in the field. Neither his back nor that of Francisco Alvarez (2 RBIs) appeared to be an issue in the short term. And J.D. Martinez rose from the dead as well, notching two base hits and avoiding the ignominy of tying or passing Rey Ordoñez for longest ohfer in franchise history. Ordoñez was in there for his glove. Martinez has “hitter” inscribed in his job description, so him actually hitting is indeed a welcome sight.
The Mets flying to Atlanta to complete their series from last week with, oh, everything on the line is also something we should embrace. There’s no time to fear the Braves, their starting pitchers or the demonesque qualities of where they play. We’re 88-72. They’re 88-72. The Diamondbacks are 89-73. Tiebreakers being what they are, whoever wins Game One of Monday afternoon’s doubleheader is in the postseason. If that same team wins Game Two, Arizona is also in. A twinbill split sends the Snakes slithering off into the desert. A twinbill sweep buries the swept. All that really matters is the Mets post one W in this matinee. Two would be ideal for the fun of knocking out the Braves, but I’m trying to stay focused on the Mets punching their own ticket. I’m trying to forget issues like who might be rested enough to pitch any game beyond Monday and what kind of toll a surfeit of flying might entail on a team possibly pinging about the continent on no rest.
The Mets have to win a baseball game to keep playing baseball. Baseball like it oughta be, I’m tempted to say. We’ll see. We sure as hell will, won’t we?
by Greg Prince on 29 September 2024 11:54 am
C’mon, Francisco. C’mon, Jose. C’mon, Mark. C’mon, the whole bunch of you, one through nine. It was no use. I called to them through the TV with encouragement by first name or nickname and, save for a single in the first and a double in the fifth, the personal touch was of no use. Nor was the Met lineup. It was useless against…how many Brewers pitchers? Six? Milwaukee used six pitchers, the essence of a team tuning up and staying sharp for the playoffs, a half-dozen different arms getting their work in, and the Mets managed two hits and didn’t put anybody on base between that double in the fifth and a walk in the ninth.
C’mon, Brandon. C’mon, Pete. C’mon, Starling. I didn’t think I had to seek each individual Met’s attention to convince the batting order’s components of the gravity of the situation facing them and, by extension, us. “Gravity of the situation” sounds rather geopolitical for our pastoral pastime, but c’mon f’reals. Two playoff spots. Three teams. Ours is one of them — and one of the two allegedly in control of its/our own destiny. The standings and tiebreakers say so. There is no elite. Just take your place in the driver’s seat. Win a game and things will start to be fine. They didn’t listen Tuesday. They didn’t listen Friday. They didn’t listen Saturday, and thus has resulted the world’s longest rain-interrupted three-game losing streak.
Francisco Lindor can’t pick up a ground ball without squeezing one of those flexible grabber sticks, the kind we got my mother when she couldn’t move well enough to get out of bed. Francisco Alvarez contracted back spasms between second base and third. Jose Iglesias, who gave us this summer’s dance floor smash, has been spotted limping. On the night the contemporary White Sox can be said to have “surpassed” the Original Mets, creaky DH J.D. Martinez extended his hitless streak to 0-for-35, worsting the longtime club record Don Zimmer set in 1962 when he went 0-for-34 before getting a hit and then traded to Cincinnati. Rey Ordoñez holds the franchise ohfer record with an 0-for-37 in 1997. Unlike J.D., he carried a glove and used it to great effect. I don’t mean to pick on any given stiff or slumping Met, however. Twenty-eight Joe Hardys are reverting to twenty-eight Joe Boyds right before our eyes. Yet, somehow, this team is still said to have its hands firmly on the wheel.
C’mon, Luis. C’mon, Harrison. C’mon, Luisangel. C’mon, Tyrone, who I could swear always comes through off the bench. C’mon Alvy, now that you’ve been deemed fit to pinch-hit. Pick up your feet. You got to move to the trick of the beat. More sniffing out opportunities. Less eliciting tears. You’re facing the Brewers in their already-clinched majesty, the nothing-to-play-for Brewers, other than spite and, maybe, galaxy-brained playoff planning. If Milwaukee can keep beating the Mets, then perhaps they can arrange to have the Mets stick around Milwaukee for a couple of more beatings in the Wild Card round. The joke could be on the Brewers, though. Should the Diamondbacks ever find their footing, the Mets might not be available to anybody, let alone Ramon De Jesus’s beloved Brew Crew, for additional beatings after Monday.
Yeesh, the most likely prize — should we snap out of our monumental malaise — is another set of ballgames at the Wisconsin ballpark where the Mets have won one series in the past ten years. A decade ago, Brandon Nimmo was ascending to Binghamton and Luisangel Acuña was presumably the best shortstop in his middle school. The invocation of years past contains limited application. But recent history suggests Milwaukee does seem like a less than ideal locale to seek Met wins.
Too bad. It’s where we are. There and Atlanta on Monday afternoon, possibly, but never mind contingency makeup doubleheaders in other horror houses. Focus on the game in front of you, whoever’s in the lineup Sunday. And focus on getting out the batter at the plate, David. I’ve attempted to urge along the starting pitchers and their reliever successors with the same one-to-one attention I’ve devoted to our offense these last three games. But have Sevy or Sean or Q (I’m on a first-initial basis with Quintana) listened? Not well. No starter has handed so much as a tie to a reliever since last Sunday night’s spine-tingling victory over Philadelphia, which I’m pretty sure happened a month ago. Some relief outings have gone better than others since we left Citi Field. None of them has been particularly impactful.
To all of the aforementioned Mets and your teammates, ya gotta remember whatever you did to get us here. I don’t mean slipping further into a hole here, but with a fingernail’s grasp of an honest-to-god playoff berth on the final scheduled day of 2024 here. I gave up on you countless times in April and May and, if we’re telling truths, beyond. You proved me wrong over and over. I grew determined to stick with you. I brushed off Tuesday at Truist as just one game when those tweeting around me were certain it was the second coming of 2022’s sputter to the finish line. No, no, I told myself and anybody who would listen. This team isn’t that team. This team isn’t the team that harpooned hope two months into the current campaign, either. This team is the team that rose from its own demise to thrill and delight us and pass every wanna-be Wild Card contender until it got close enough to one of the playoff spots that it could confidently place it in the Bagging Area at the CVS self-checkout. I scanned my Extra Care card. I followed the instructions on the PIN pad. I have no idea why I keep being told to wait for assistance.
Help came from the San Diego Padres Saturday night. We’d already lost, 6-0. Travis d’Arnaud and the Atlanta Braves had already…whaddaya think they did? If not for the Padres pasting a five-spot on the board in the top of the ninth at Chase Field, and Arizona producing exactly as many as hits as the Mets did, things would feel a lot worse heading into the final Sunday. They already feel abysmal.
Forget our feelings. Look at the standings. The Padres are in. The Braves are poised. The Diamondbacks’ winning percentage is .5465838. The Mets’ is .5471698. Arizona has one game left. We and Atlanta have one game apiece today and, in theory, two games against each other tomorrow. We defeated the Diamondbacks on August 29 to take the season series from them, which not only sparked a nine-game winning streak and set the stage for a (until very recently) superb September, but ensured no tiebreakers would fall in the Phoenicians’ favor. Yet the Snakes can still sneak past us if they remember how to win and we don’t.
So let’s remember how to win and then do that and then keep doing that for however long we have Mets baseball in 2024. OMG, after 159 games, I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you fellas.
by Jason Fry on 28 September 2024 12:35 am
Yes, Ramon De Jesus’s umpire scorecard is going to be a thing to behold. (It’ll show up here if you want to torture yourself.) The most egregious missed call was, rather obviously, the ball four on Francisco Alvarez that was called strike three, turning a bases-loaded situation for the Mets into the end of an inning. But there were others — and Adrian Johnson got into the act at first base as well, punching out Mark Vientos on a checked swing that was on the check side of swing.
It was a total ump show, and yet another exhibit in the case for taking balls and strikes away from the umpires as soon as possible, because their mistakes turn the course of games all the time, sometimes in high-profile situations that everyone squawks about but more often in smaller but real ways you have to be a student of the game to note.
But that’s been true for a long time; the missed call against Alvarez isn’t any kind of tipping point. Meanwhile, it wasn’t De Jesus who robbed Sean Manaea‘s stuff of its bite, or who threw a 2-2 meatball to Rhys Hoskins (of course it was fucking Hoskins), or who let the Brewers run wild on the bases, or who let Brice Turang score a free run on a wild pitch, or who left a sinker in the middle of the plate where momentary Met Gary Sanchez could hit it halfway across Lake Michigan.
No, various Mets did all of those things — for the second game in a row (separated by two nights of MLB nonsense), they came out flat and were thoroughly outclassed by the opposition. And there were other problems, such as Francisco Lindor returning but looking like he couldn’t get much on throws to first, or Alvarez being felled by back spasms, or Jose Iglesias — one of the few Mets who’s kept hitting — taking a ball off his ankle.
(The Padres beat the Diamondbacks, so at least that’s something.)
The vagaries of the wild-card chase mean the Mets can’t be eliminated until Monday. But the way they’re playing right now, getting to play Monday is starting to feel like a poisoned chalice. Things can change, but they need to change in a hell of a hurry.
by Greg Prince on 26 September 2024 3:43 pm
It’s the time of year when someone asks you how you are, and you tell them the Mets have been rained out not only today but tomorrow, and they have to get out of Atlanta, which is about to be hit by a hurricane, which you care about in the abstract as a human being, but all you’re really thinking about is it was known the hurricane was coming, and neither the Braves nor MLB activated any kind of contingency rescheduling or relocating, thus once the Mets get to Milwaukee, assuming they get to Milwaukee, they will still have three games against the NL Central champion Brewers who swept them at the very beginning of this season, and then they have to fly back to (hopefully intact) Atlanta to play a Monday afternoon doubleheader to decide everything, unless some combination of wins and losses among the Mets, the Braves, and the Diamondbacks over the weekend makes the doubleheader moot in terms of playoff qualification, though playoff seeding is a whole other packet of seeds, in which case the commissioner gets involved, assuming someone wakes him, and you’ve got to think about the pitching you’d have to use and how much effort is worth exerting in advance of a trip to maybe San Diego or back to Milwaukee, and that’s already assuming too much, because…
I mean, fine. I’m fine. How are you?
Who are we kidding? This is how we are. This transcends fine. This also brings to mind Marsellus Wallace’s response to boxer Butch in the denouement to the pawn shop scene in Pulp Fiction when asked if he is OK: “Naw, man. I’m pretty fuckin’ far from OK.” Ultimately, however, this is how we want to be when it’s this time of year.
We left New York with a two-game lead on Sunday night, and it’s Thursday afternoon, and we have a one-game lead, but it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple in the final week of September when leads and deficits regarding something everybody wants are this slim. If your team isn’t involved, it’s fun to sit back and observe the chaos. Fifty-two weeks ago, the Mets and Marlins played to the essence of inconclusiveness — the Marlins took a lead over the Mets in the top of the ninth right before the rains drenched Citi Field — and it remained unknown for days on end whether the Marlins, in a playoff race (no, really), would have to wing their way back to New York to finish a game that meant nothing of consequence to the Mets, who were about to fire their manager and had all but packed it in, anyway. No skin off our nose as fans whatever happened. Let the if-necessary chaos commence! It wasn’t and it didn’t, but generally if you have nothing to root for, you tend to root for whatever’s most interesting.
This season’s last lap is interesting enough. Holding off the Braves is challenge enough without inserting meteorology and Milwaukee into the middle of our series with them. Then again, if ever a team on a roll looked like it could use a quick reset after a single game, it might have been the Mets following Tuesday night’s loss to the Braves, when the Mets lived down to every fear we lug around in our backpack of anxieties. It was just one game versus the hundred or so that have seen them rise from the dead and to within a couple of steps of the postseason, but it happened where it happened, and that gets everybody antsy with a capital “A” presented in a font that’s given us nightmares since the capital of Georgia was Chipper City.
Ancient history, of course, but go tell that to your backpack of anxieties. Better yet, as George Clooney advised in Up in the Air, set that backpack on fire. It ain’t 1999 or 2022 — swell seasons except for the Atlanta angle — if we don’t want it to be. My historical precedent of choice this final week has to be 1973. Also ancient history, but when we remember everything, we oughta remember everything. The connective tissue is multiple rainouts messing with a pennant race and a rejiggered schedule extended out to the Monday after was supposed to be all she wrote on Sunday. The first-place Mets hung around soggy Chicago through an off day Thursday and postponements Friday and Saturday and didn’t make it to Wrigley to play until they were saddled with back-to-back doubleheaders. They split one on Sunday and, with their magic number down to one, took the opener on Monday, compelling “wet grounds” to be declared for the nightcap. Chaos was on the verge of reigning then, too — Pittsburgh was playing and losing its own makeup contest to the Padres at Three Rivers that Monday — but everything was deemed official once the Mets won the 161st game of their season. The similarity to 2024 is nobody saw the Mets coming in the summer of 1973, either. The difference, beyond the existence of Wild Cards, is when the Mets finished the regular season on a Monday fifty-one years ago, their first playoff game would be the following Saturday. A reasonably rested Tom Seaver beat the Cubs on October 1 and then faced the Reds on October 6.
Major League Baseball planned for exactly one off day between the end of this regular season and the beginning of this postseason. The Mets and Braves project to be busy Monday. Or not. Clinchings. Eliminations. Seedings. Weekend unknowns. We’ll see. We’ll sweat some of it, probably shouldn’t stress over some of the rest of it, including the time squeeze. In ’99, the Mets finished up with Pittsburgh at Shea on a Sunday afternoon, had no idea what Monday held when they jetted to Cincinnati on a hunch Sunday night (the Reds wound up winning their rain-delayed finale late), won a suddenly necessary play-in game Monday night, sprayed champagne, then flew off to Arizona to begin their first-ever NLDS by withstanding Randy Johnson and winning Game One Tuesday night. It can be done. The 1999 Mets had three Western road trips spanning mid-August to mid-September. They were travel-hardened. So are the 2024 Mets, who you’ll recall spent this August touching down in and taking off from cities all over the continent. They bonded on their June trip to London and came out better for it. I’m not worried about a kooky schedule getting the best of them.
I don’t worry about Milwaukee getting the best of them. That’s a good team, and Miller Park/Whatever It’s Called Now has been a low-key deathtrap for them when little is on the line, but we did clinch our ’22 berth there. I don’t put any stock in “the Brewers will have nothing to play for” in terms of playoff positioning, because that rarely seems to matter; the Mets will have something to play for, and it’s up to them to play well. I don’t even worry about the mythic curse Atlanta and neighboring Cobb County have on the Mets. We swallowed our one dose of bad mojo Tuesday and now, as a result of the rains, we are cleansed. The Mets have flown safely to Wisconsin. They will play. They will compete. I can’t definitively say they will win, but I’m not yammering on with nervous energy as a symptom of not thinking they will. And if they have to return to Atlanta, weather permitting, I anticipate an adrenaline rush like no other.
Yes, that’s how I am.
by Jason Fry on 24 September 2024 10:36 pm
Fair warning that you’re not getting much of a recap. But then you didn’t get much of a game.
You’re not getting much of a recap because I want this game out of my brain as quickly as possible, and sulking about the outcome for an hour or three or six will neither help with that process nor make me feel any better.
The Mets? Luis Severino looked a little flat, the defense was sloppy at the wrong time, and the hitters did nothing early against Spencer Schwellenbach and then had not so much as an iota of luck against Schwellenbach, Joe Jimenez or Raisel Iglesias late. Meanwhile, the Braves took extra bases, made some eye-popping defensive plays and got some breaks. Seriously, Ramon Laureano had a ball glance off the barrel of his bat toward the hands before making slightly better contact further down, a double-tap that gave it just enough kinetic energy to clear the infield for an RBI single. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before, or that I ever want to see it again.
When something like that happens you get the feeling it’s not your night — and there were other unwelcome portents, such as Jose Iglesias starting off the game by getting hit by his own batted ball in fair territory. The Mets looked tight after months of playing loose and joyous ball — maybe the off-day wasn’t a good thing for them, though the fanbase certainly needed it after the emotional Ragnarok of Sunday night.
Until the Mets play again — and more on that in a moment — we will now endure an extended remix of Horrible Things Happening to the Mets in Atlanta in September. SNY gave that ball of sticky suck a push by showing us (in gloriously grainy standard definition) Jay Payton trying to advance to third against Andruw Jones with Mike Piazza on deck back in 1998, a reminder that the Mets’ unhappy history in Atlanta now covers two different millennia. You shouldn’t have, fellas — no really, you shouldn’t have.
I’m sad and annoyed and yes, I’m anxious — those are the Braves, after all, so hard to kill and now just a skinny game behind us. But for Chrissakes, let’s not human-centipede our ancient fan traumas into the players’ bloodstreams. Jay Payton is 51 years old; the majority of Tuesday night’s starting infield wasn’t even born when he slunk back to the dugout that night trying to think of a place to hide from Bobby Valentine.
2022 is a lot more recent, of course, and current Mets bear the scars of that one. But — and maybe this is just me bargaining with myself, the baseball gods and any other entity that’s listening — at the moment it feels different.
2022’s balloon got popped when Starling Marte got hit in the hand in Pittsburgh, and the washout against the Braves felt like the last sad sigh of escaping air. This year’s incarnation of the Mets has already been through hell and somehow survived. They’ve taken plenty of punches but popped back up after every one, smiling imperturbably like one of those blow-up bop clowns.
And now we get the added complication of the weather: Barring some meteorological miracle, no one is going to be playing baseball in Atlanta on Thursday. And the most optimistic way to describe Wednesday’s forecast is “not as bad as Thursday’s.” Why MLB isn’t packing both these teams onto a charter plane for Dallas or Cincinnati or some neutral site is beyond me, but then a lot of things MLB does these days are beyond me.
Anyway, the Mets got punched. But I get the feeling they’ll pop back up.
Hey, ya gotta believe, right?
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