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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 7 April 2025 12:21 am Many Americans have pretended to have medical knowledge these past five years, so why shouldn’t a fan watching a baseball game on TV try to discern what’s wrong with a pitcher who doesn’t look physically right? My telehealth patient was David Peterson, who’d been rolling along through four-plus innings of grounding the Blue Jays Sunday afternoon at Citi Field until something appeared wrong with him. The most wrong thing was a pair of baserunners, unless he was hurting. And if he was hurting, what was he doing out there for more than the seconds it took Carlos Mendoza and a coterie of the concerned to gather around Peterson? All these questions. No quick answers.
And I pretend to call myself a doctor.
I wondered if Peterson — or “Petey,” as he is referred to internally, which I’m sure makes for absolutely no clubhouse confusion in Mr. Alonso’s Neighborhood — didn’t want to leave simply because he was one out away from qualifying for a win. A long journey from partial to final remained on the enormous scoreboard, but the Mets were ahead, 2-0, with two out in the fifth. Petey’s pitch count had risen to the point where he probably wasn’t going to throw in the sixth, anyway. Was he really that concerned about his personal stats while his…his something…was awry?
The questions continued as Mendoza left him in to make the inning dicier. First and third became bases loaded on a walk. A hit-by-pitch brought in a run. David’s gamer/trouper instincts were blowing up on him and us, and his…his something…clearly needed attention.
Mendy came out and got Petey. Mendy and Petey later averred it was nothing — NOTHING — physical. Not exactly nothing, depending on how you define physical. Nausea was the culprit. Overwhelmed our patient in a flash, apparently, just in time to disrupt the one thing a starting pitcher is conditioned to do every five days. The sensation was like being “punched in the stomach,” the southpaw said. He also mentioned vision that briefly blurred (don’t like the way that sounds, but I’m still not a doctor). The manager’s used his bullpen a lot in the early going. It would have been superb if his more-or-less ace could have finished the fifth. Any fewer pitches the relief corps throws in the fifth are that many more pitches reserved for use in future innings.
David tried. More stunningly, he was allowed to try. Caution usually carries the day in those situations. Tossing caution to the breeze, the bullpen gate remained closed for what felt like an eternity but was actually six pitches, six pitches that halved the lead but didn’t prove fatal to either the pitcher or the score. All the waiting to take out Peterson (the Mets managed to sneak in an extra mound visit between the injury visit and the visit to remove the starter) did buy Max Kranick some valuable warmup time. True, Max could have entered on the heels of “he might be hurt” and hence be permitted “all the time he needs” to get ready, but that rarely gets a pitcher ready right. Hey, listen, we’re all watching you and waiting for you and only you so we can get back to why we’re here, but you take all the time you need, really, no pressure.” Instead, Max properly prepared before trotting toward the center of the diamond, and Kranick responded by retiring the first batter he faced, the last out of the fifth, popping Alejandro Kirk to his catcher Hayden Senger.
In every season, there’s a moment when stories become players. Kranick the kid who grew up a Mets fan was a story. Senger the minor league lifer who hadn’t totally extricated himself from his offseason job at a Whole Foods was a story. It was fun to learn about their backgrounds during Spring Training. It was cause to smile when they each made the team. It brought about applause when they got their first chances to do their thing as honest-to-goodness Mets. I don’t know how much we expected from either gentleman. What’s that line in “Hey Jealousy” about fellas on the fringes of rosters? If you don’t expect too much from them, you might not be let down.
 I don’t know how much we expect from Kranick and Senger, but they’re now players rather than stories. Pretty good players to date. We don’t wriggle out of Peterson’s exit without Kranick coming through in the fifth like he’s come through every time he’s been presented a challenge. We were OK all weekend because Senger filled in capably behind Luis Torrens, who mostly sat in deference to a contusion, or what normal people identify as a bruise. We didn’t remain on the victory track in the sixth without Kranick continuing to set aside major league hitters. Maybe some other pitcher takes care of the Jays in that situation, but then depth gets tested. Kranick was the depth there. So was Senger, whose walk from the nine-hole commenced the Mets’ lone inning of scoring, the third. Hayden’s base on balls preceded his more famous teammates’ contributions to the cause. Juan Soto walked. Pete Alonso singled to score Senger and send Soto to third. Brandon Nimmo lifted a deep fly to score Soto.
Those were the two runs off Bowden Francis that put Peterson in position to be the winning pitcher, if not for his stomach issue. Those instead became the two runs that allowed Kranick to earn his first Met win, and the club its fourth in a row, including all three from Toronto. This one was a 2-1 decision that held up surprisingly well post-Petey. Kranick’s inning-and-a-third segued to one scoreless frame apiece from Reed Garrett, A.J. Minter, and Edwin Diaz. Diaz’s nickname is Sugar, but I’m petitioning to change it to Sloopy. Edwin hit two batters in the ninth, but dug down to hang on. He has a lot of ninth innings when “Hang On Sloopy” more accurately describes his vibe than “Narco”.
 If I may pivot from the McCoys back to Gin Blossoms, unfulfilled expectations can crush a fan. They crushed us (certainly me) in 2023. Conversely, watching a lack of expectations get surpassed in spades can have us floating on air. That was the case for us (me included) in 2024. If we don’t expect “too much” from this team in 2025, we rightly anticipate success. If we don’t get it, we will be let down. But we’re getting what we need while everybody who isn’t yet sorted out figures out what’s what. That’s my expert baseball diagnosis at the moment; it’s almost as detailed as my medical opinion. I’d like to see more runs from the offense and less queasiness from the starter and feel less queasiness from the closer. But we get a Kranick here, a Senger there, the occasional something from somebody like Jose Siri, and when the lineup turns over and we inevitably count on our MegaMets to deliver, at least one or two tend to come through at some inflection point in a given game. All we have is a small sample size that shows we’re 6-3, but it’s big enough for now.
If the season ended today, we’d be in the playoffs. The season’s not ending today. That — along with David Peterson lying down to pacify his stomach with cool thoughts — constitutes the most encouraging trend to take into the new week. We get to keep watching the Mets, and we get to have expectations.
by Jason Fry on 6 April 2025 12:16 am The City Connects were the perfect uniform for Saturday night’s Mets game, played in murky gray conditions with an inescapable wet chill, cascades of mist wafting through the air, and any ball that touched outfield grass leaving a spray of droplets to mark its progress.
A surprisingly big crowd showed up despite the obvious attractions of watching from a warm couch (my choice) or a friendly barstool instead. Now, no one who follows baseball makes it to their late teens without realizing that the sport is a lousy vehicle for restorative justice. Baseball doesn’t care that you’re one of the hearties sitting in the misty Promenade, that your commute to the ballpark was taxing and unpleasant, or that you’ve been having a rough go of it and would greatly appreciate a ringside seat for a win.
But sometimes you get a win, even when it looks like you won’t.
Former Met Chris Bassitt escaped harm from leadoff doubles in the first and second and then went to work, eviscerating the Mets with selections from his deep arsenal. I always liked Bassitt, who goes about his business looking vaguely pissed off and determined to blame hitters for it, and mourned his rather obvious lack of interest in further duty with the Mets after his lone season with us.
Griffin Canning wasn’t quite as good as Bassitt in his second Mets start, though he was still perfectly fine; he and Jose Butto were undone by an irritating fourth inning that saw Toronto find infield holes with three ground balls in sequence, good for a 1-0 Blue Jay lead. That lead became 2-0 in the sixth, as Butto surrendered back-to-back two-out doubles before Huascar Brazoban — pitching this year with better control and what looks like more conviction — calmed things down.
The Mets then arguably caught a break in the bottom of the seventh, when Toronto manager John Schneider removed Bassitt, who’d thrown 92 pitches and looked, at least to me, like he had plenty left. Yimi Garcia surrendered a single to Brett Baty and walked Jose Siri, but escaped when Starling Marte had a desultory at-bat as a pinch-hitter.
Brendon Little wasn’t so lucky in the eighth, however; with two on and two out Jesse Winker lashed a knuckle-curve that got too much plate to right-center. Winker thought it was out, and if hadn’t been a cold soggy night in April he would have been correct; as it was the ball just eluded George Springer, who was hurt on the play, and Winker wound up with his second triple of the chilly night and a tie game.
Edwin Diaz navigated a somewhat bumpy top of the ninth and the Mets went to work against Nick Sandlin, whom I remember carving them up as a Guardian last summer. With one out Siri walked for the second time, which is both admirable and a little startling. Luis Torrens, a late scratch called upon after Carlos Mendoza pinch-hit for Hayden Senger, spanked a single over the infield to bring in Jays closer Jeff Hoffman with Francisco Lindor at the plate.
Lindor wasted no time, a kind gesture as not even the Citi Field hearties had much stomach for free baseball on this night. Hoffman’s first pitch turned out to be the only one he’d throw: a slider that sat in the middle of the plate and which Lindor whacked to center field. It was one of those plays where you put your hands up instantly because everything is going to be just fine unless the runner leaving from third pulls a hamstring, there’s an earthquake, or the Rapture occurs.
None of those things came to pass: Siri trotted home unmolested, Lindor got showered in water and bored-ballplayer snacks, and all involved got to go home and warm up. It made for a grinding yet ultimately interesting game and a Mets win. Restorative justice? Nah — as we’ve covered, baseball doesn’t do that. But on a chilly April night it felt close enough.
by Greg Prince on 5 April 2025 2:31 am The fans who wait for their team to come off the road while the year is still young are rewarded for their patience with two Openers. There’s Opening Day, which is festive no matter that it’s taking place in another ballpark, and there’s a discrete Home Opener, which grants us a second helping of holiday spirit. As long as we get to unwrap a win somewhere along the way, the composite festiveness outdoes multiple Christmases.
Winning was indeed involved in the Mets’ 2025 Home Opener, which made the déjà vu quality of looking forward to starting all over again quite worthwhile. We may have gone through those “oh boy, baseball is back!” emotions eight days earlier when our team was breaking the season’s seal in Houston, but home is home, and getting to do essentially the same fun thing twice in such a short span can be a paean to righteous gluttony. Picture your favorite all-you-can-eat buffet. Your eyes were probably bigger than your stomach as you grabbed your first plate. In all honestly, you consumed what you really needed by the time you cleaned it. But, look — they’re bringing out a fresh tray of penne or spare ribs or whatever it was that lured you in this joint. Why, yes, you think you will take another trip up there.
The Mets’ second Opening Day no doubt left us feeling more sated than the first one. This one served up a victory that was convincing from every angle, a 5-0 shutout of the Toronto Blue Jays, a franchise that played the very first Spring Training game of its existence versus the New York Mets on March 11, 1977, but, historically speaking, was a stranger at a strange interval in Flushing on Friday. Interleague play is no longer novel, but Mets versus Jays for our Home Opener? Mets versus any AL interloper? In every Home Opener from 1969 through 1992, when the Mets were a member in good standing of a six-team division, the visitor to Shea was a National League East opponent. That never felt strange. I have a hard enough time accepting that we sometimes start our home slate versus the Diamondbacks or Brewers, but at least they’re situated in the same circuit as us.
Of course, once the pageantry is presented and ball begins to be played, it’s more or less just another baseball game…though not altogether. If it was truly Same Bit/Different Day, would nearly 44,000 make it their business to be at Citi Field? Would however many bazillions beyond that compose a robust viewing, listening, and sneaking-an-update audience while ignoring afternoon business they’ve decided was less pressing? The Mets had already played a handful of just-another-games. This wasn’t going to be one of those.
Differentiating it from just-anotherness were, in something approximating a particular order…
• Francisco Lindor, who led off the game with a hustle double that wouldn’t take single for an answer (score one for replay review);
• Pete Alonso, who went to the opposite field and kept going until he had a two-run homer;
• Tylor Megill, whose second consecutive sublime start here in his fifth season has me thinking he’s on a career trajectory resembling that traced by Bobby Jones circa 1997, the year the secondary pride of Fresno put it all together for a few months;
• Juan Soto, the new kid in (the good part of) town who lashed an RBI double that looked like one of those hits that had suitors lining up for his services that became ours, and threw in a nifty catch and heady stolen base for Steve Cohen’s money as well, no extra charge;
• and those inevitably unsung relievers who backed up Megill’s five-and-a-third nearly spotless frames with a spiffy three-and-two- thirds of their own. Hail Reed Garrett, A.J. Minter — abetted by cameras that corrected an umpire who didn’t understand the function of a foul pole — and Max Kranick, the Mets fan from Scranton who grew up to be the Mets closer on Friday.
Kevin Gausman was pretty beguiling between the Mets’ runs in the first and the sixth, but sometimes two bountiful innings is all it takes. Identities are in larval stages this early in a season, yet I’m coming to believe Mets baseball in 2025 might become synonymous with heating the iron, striking while it’s hot, and not letting it cool all the way off before striking again. Any lineup that circles back to Lindor, Soto, and Alonso isn’t going to go cold for long. A little more length would be welcome, and ought to materialize once Jeff McNeil and Francisco Alvarez return, but as long as we’re getting representative production from Nimmo, Vientos, and Winker/Marte, the offense shouldn’t go into sleep mode too often (never mind that it snoozed several nights on the road). Sean Manaea receiving a rousing ovation during the pregame introductions reminded us there will be more to the starting rotation eventually, yet what we’ve received to this point has been adequate-plus. We shall resist singing too many praises of the bullpen, because we don’t really know how to feel confident in Met relievers, but, you know, so far, so good.
Maybe it’s the holiday atmosphere attendant to a Home Opener talking, but it definitely wasn’t just another game, and maybe this isn’t looming as just another year.
by Greg Prince on 3 April 2025 2:55 pm It might stretch credulity if I declared, yup, I knew Pete Alonso was gonna launch a three-run homer to tie the Mets-Marlins game at four in the eighth inning on Wednesday. The Mets had played ragged ball across the first seven and they weren’t too many outs away from a tails-between-their-legs flight home for a Citi Field opener that would necessarily lose a little luster if its purpose was to hail a 2-4 team. Yeah, everybody would stand and cheer the welcome of what Howie Rose unfailingly refers to perennially as the National League season in New York, but discordant notes would infiltrate the runup to introductions and ceremonial first pitches, and who wants that?
Nobody who cares about the Mets. Not you. Not me. Not Pete Alonso, who cares about the Mets as much as anybody, given that he’s carried them intermittently for six going on seven years. In the good Met years, he’s had help. In his less good personal years, he’s insisted, no, he’s got this. The couch isn’t that heavy and the flights of stairs aren’t that steep.
You sure you got this, Pete?
If I wasn’t sure specifically that a tide-turning dinger wasn’t en route, I certainly maintained confidence in Pete as he stood in against Calvin Faucher. Two singles had been bracketed by two outs. Francisco Lindor was on second. Juan Soto was on first. Lindor achieving anything beyond fatherhood in late March and early April is already a victory. Soto’s contribution was a tapper toward first that became a fielder’s choice that nailed Luis Torrens trying to come home from third. Not the worst intermediate outcome, for if Torrens hadn’t dared to attempt to score, you have him on third and Francisco on second, and an open base to put Pete possibly. I don’t know Clayton McCullough’s managerial tendencies yet, even if the rookie skipper already wears that familiar “I’ve been managing the Marlins too long” look every time an SNY camera spots him.
Pete is up, and Pete is working Faucher, and it’s not unlike two nights earlier when the Miami pitcher is Cal Quantrill. The bases were loaded then, one of them also occupied by Soto. Soto, even when he’s not slugging, is getting on base. What few big innings the Mets have cobbled together seem to feature Juan somewhere. The result Monday was Pete’s grand slam, which loosened up the drumtight Met offense once and for all…or so we thought Soon, most Met bats went back into storage. From the seventh inning in the first game of the Marlin series through the seventh inning of third and final game, nineteen innings in all, the Mets had scored three runs. The Marlins weren’t making them look bad. They were doing it to themselves.
But Pete is still up in the eighth on Wednesday. He’d driven in one of the Mets’ three runs from their dry period, way back in the first inning on a double that brought home Soto. The A&S Boys doing their thing, stocking and unstocking bases. High-end retailing has never been so luxurious. Yet a second Alonso double, of the leadoff variety, went to waste in the fourth. By then, the Fish led, 2-1, Clay Holmes had been little more than adequate, and our fielding was showing itself allergic to smoothness. It was easier to imagine the Mets going 2-4 on their first road trip than deciding another Arctic blast was about to descend on South Florida.
Still, I felt good about Alonso as his at-bat versus Faucher preceded. It was a long one. How long is a long at-bat? It should have multiple balls. It should have multiple fouls. It should have a batter who’s done this before. Pete did this on Monday, turning Quantrill’s seventh pitch into his four-run four-bagger. You might remember Pete doing something similar one evening last October versus Devin Williams, then of the Brewers. The process yielded a three-run homer and effectively clinched a postseason series. He needed five pitches that night. Funny, it seemed like more.
The point is that when Pete Alonso gets a count going deep, the count goes in his favor. Other hitters, too, but this is Pete we’re talking about. Anticipation builds around Alonso. He’s been known to anticipate too much from himself and not let the count (let alone the drama) build. Yet you are so taken by the examples that counter that tendency that sometimes you will yourself to expect exceedingly positive resolution.
Five pitches in Milwaukee. Seven pitches on Monday. Wednesday, the balls and the fouls got Pete to a ninth pitch. That was the one that flew out of whatitsName Park to tie the game, 4-4. The Mets were no longer sleepwalking their way to Flushing. The tie signaled a win was at hand. It took eleven innings. It required seven of the eight relief pitchers Carlos Mendoza employs. It especially required the tagging and throwing wizardry of Torrens, who backed up Alonso’s raucous offense with no-joke defense. It ended with a 6-5 Mets victory and a respectable enough 3-3 start to the season (at .500, tails may be removed from between legs and move freely about the cabin). The last time the Mets won a 6-5 decision, it was the end of last June’s trip to London, highlighted by Luis behind the plate stepping on the dish with the bases loaded and then throwing to Alonso for one of the damnedest double plays anybody had ever seen, especially directly prior to a flight home. Back in the present, I had a feeling Luis (who himself was on in relief of Hayden Senger) would come through, too. One of his tags required replay review. “They’re gonna overturn the safe call,” I thought, and they did, much as “he’s gonna come through here” rang true as Pete took Faucher deep in the count and deeper over the center field wall.
A little Pete, a little Luis, a little confidence. Welcome home, men. No notes needed.
by Jason Fry on 2 April 2025 7:51 am Another sign the new season isn’t quite so new? You find yourself struggling to accentuate the positive when things don’t go well.
Things didn’t go well Tuesday night in Miami: Kodai Senga was shaky early, the Mets’ hitting resurgence turned out to be a one-day affair, and Francisco Lindor made not one but two errors at shortstop. The first was just an annoyance, forcing Senga to throw all of one extra pitch, but the second led to disaster, as someone named Graham Pauley doubled two runs home, providing the margin the Marlins would need to beat the Mets behind Sandy Alcantara and his second audition for a new summer employer.
OK, there were some positives. Senga’s ghost fork was effective, which was reassuring after a spring training in which Senga didn’t quite look like himself and you heard mild but real rumblings of discontent around him. Max Kranick contributed three innings of flawless pitching. Luisangel Acuna looked good whether equipped with bat or glove. And new father Lindor did collect his first hit and RBI.
But that didn’t wind up feeling like much in light of that 4-2 verdict, which grates a little more because it was the Marlins at Soilmaster Stadium. (Though it sounded more like Citi Field South.) Once again the Mets looked set up for a storybook finish that fizzled. Once again the bats slumbered. Once again things felt off-kilter and out of sorts.
So far the Mets are a team that was predicted to mash but has done so for exactly one night, and a team that has had superb starting pitching when that was supposed to be their biggest question mark. Don’t try to make sense of it; that so far ought to be the tipoff that we’re attending Small Sample Size Theater, which is reliably surreal, and of course baseball is nothing if not a serial confounder of expectations.
A relatively recent addition to baseball discussions is the concept of error bars — how actual performance can deviate from baseline expectations, both for better and for worse. The Mets’ error bars are a little arsy versy right now in multiple ways, with the starting pitchers bunched up where we thought we’d find the hitters and the hitters occupying the space where we thought we’d find the starters. That’s part of baseball too; it’ll either work itself out or we’ll tell stories about why it didn’t, and eventually those stories will come to make sense. But right now nothing much does. It’s too early to say what this incarnation of the Mets will turn out to be, but we can all hope it involves a lot fewer games like Tuesday’s.
by Greg Prince on 1 April 2025 11:43 am On Monday, I was excited to receive in the mail an advance copy of a great new book called More Amazing Mets Trivia, put together by my dear friend Ken Samelson and his co-author David Russell. I’m delighted to reveal that I did a little reconnaissance on the manuscript last summer, as Ken knew I know a few things about Mets trivia.
Who am I kidding? I know more Mets trivia than could possibly fit in one volume, which is why I’m sharing some bonus questions and answers that might work well in any revised edition Ken and David are planning. Test your knowledge below and see if you’re as much of a stickler for Met facts as I am.
 This book is the real deal. Where did Pedro Alfonso get his very familiar nickname?
Pedro, whose fifth-inning grand slam to right-center field at leavemealoneDope Park effectively rescued the Mets’ floundering campaign on Monday night, was already given the benefit of the doubt by Mets fans due to his being the nephew of beloved infielder Edgardo Alfonso, the most chronically misspelled Met Hall of Famer in franchise history. It would have been easy to refer to Pedro as Potsie — the way fans labeled his uncle — but in Spring Training of his rookie year, family-friendly manager Nicky Caraway Seed suggested Alfonso played his original position, third base, like “he’s [bleeping] naked on a [bleeping] horse,” and thus the nickname “Polo Bare” stuck, and all resulting Polo Power emanated from across the diamond. Alfonso now sits 25 strawberries away from the all-time Met record for most individual pieces of fruit consumed in the state of Florida.
With what celebrity did starting pitcher Pete Daverdson “trade” spouses?
Daverdson gave the 2-2 Mets six innings of two-run ball, the club’s first qualitative start of the young, crumbling season. The southpaw was no doubt energized by the presence of his temporary lifemate Scarlett Johannson, obtained in a cash considerations swap with his good friend, SNY sideline reporter Fritz Gelbs. Longtime observers will remember the last time such a controversial transaction rocked baseball was in 1976, when commissioner Bowie Kuhn vetoed Oakland owner Charlie Finley’s sale of Rollie Fingers to Mrs. Mike Kekich (this was before the reserve clause was completely eliminated).
What stands as Louie Torrent’s signature moment as a Met?
The Mets’ backup catcher contributed a two-run home run to the team’s desperately needed 10-4 victory in Miami, ensuring Louie won’t be known merely for that one time he “made it rain,” bringing a torrent of dollar-bill showers on a notable swing through the Midwest’s most high-end gentlemen’s clubs. Interestingly, the Mets were in London that week, but, as Torrent likes to say through a translator, “the Lou wants what the Lou wants, so you better bring a [bleeping] umbrella, fella. Besides, whaddaya think our meal money is for — dinner?” Torrent will continue to fill in as the Mets’ starting catcher until primary backstop Alvy Franklin leaves the unable list and resumes proving that the 2020s are indeed “the Alvy Franklin decade”.
Brendan Nebbish is the senior Met in terms of service time. When was his first game?
The Mets’ first-round draft choice in 1965, Brendan made his debut on April 10, 1968, Gil Hodges’s maiden outing as Mets manager. It was the first rung on a very long ladder Nebbish needed to scale to achieve his current level of renown. Just one year later, as the Mets cruised to an easy win over the Astros at Shea Stadium, Hodges made a point of marching out to left field to remove young Brendan for “growing facial scruff that indicates a lack of character”. The skipper feared kids in what was then called the Midget Mets program would look to Nebbish as a role model and resist shaving. “Next thing you know,” Gil elaborated to reporters, “youngsters will take a pass on personal grooming products and he’ll be messing with my Vitalis checks.” Properly chastened, Nebbish returned to the minors until the following April. His sixth-inning home run Monday night, which came as the Mets nurtured a precarious seven-run lead, was the first of his fifty-eighth major league season.
Marty Sterling batted leadoff Monday night in place of which Met mainstay?
Marty, scion of the silver-tongued Sterling family, found himself in an unfamiliar lineup position, thanks to Francoeur Lindor’s better half Frenchy giving birth to the couple’s third child and first son, Homer. Homer was conceived in the aftermath of last season’s delirious clubhouse celebration when Mr. Lindor went deep in Atlanta. With the Mets’ usual leadoff batter otherwise occupied, Sterling put the heretofore doomed Mets on the board in the third inning with a homer of his own. When he returned to the dugout, he warned the Lindors not to name their next child after what he’d just hit. Francoeur, who has never recorded a base hit in any calendar year prior to Mother’s Day, reportedly looked at his teammate in confusion and asked, “what the [bleep] is going on today?”
Hope you got ’em all right! But don’t fret if you don’t have as much clearly accurate Mets knowledge at your disposal as I’m obviously packing. The important thing is the Mets won, and Ken and David have a real fun book you should definitely check out.
by Jason Fry on 30 March 2025 11:59 am The first week of baseball is seductive and also a little dangerous: You’re so glad to have baseball back and to resume the rhythms of fandom that you can shrug off the disappointment that comes with every game having a winner and a loser. The first week really does offer participant trophies, and each season you need to relearn that you don’t keep those.
So it was with the third game of the Mets’ 2025 season, an odd little game that gets put in the books as a 2-1 loss to the Astros. (Strangely, there’s no meme of Howie Rose putting his headset down on the console in resignation and sighing, “put it in the books.”) I suppose I could raise my descriptive game a bit and try to bill this one as taut, tense or one of the other common pitchers’ duel adjectives, but mostly I found it annoying.
The Mets had one hit — one! — courtesy of Juan Soto in the first, a double over Jose Altuve‘s head, which you probably remember is closer to the ground than most of his MLB peers. That was it — if you arrived in the bottom of the first because you had an errand to run, or thought Saturday night’s game started at the same time as Friday night’s, you missed the entirety of the non-walk portion of the Mets’ offense.
The Mets’ best bid for a second hit came on the very last play of the game, and served as the final judgment from the baseball gods that this wasn’t our day. Once more facing Josh Hader, Soto led off the ninth by working out a walk. Pete Alonso popped up on the first pitch, his first anxious-looking AB of the new season, and Brandon Nimmo grounded to second, which moved Soto into scoring position and made Mark Vientos the last hope. Hader left a sinker in the middle of the strike zone and Vientos scorched it on a line — one that happened to intersect with the glove of shortstop Jeremy Pena.
/place headset on console
/sigh
[quietly] put it in the books
Good things did happen Sunday, starting with Griffin Canning looking awfully good in his Mets’ debut. Canning is 6’2″ but looks about 5’6″ on the mound, an impression I attribute to his even, almost elegant proportions — he doesn’t have a classic power pitcher’s big rear and thick legs — and to his pitching motion, which is admirably compact and fluid. None of that would have been worthy of note if Canning had pitched like he did in an Angels uniform last year, but the Mets have reinvented him and at least for a day it worked. Canning used his slider far more than he had in the past and it was a decidedly effective weapon against Houston’s lineup — a lineup, we should note, made up of guys who were pretty familiar with him. He gave up a solo shot to Pena (which I missed during a brief couch nap but apparently still counts) and a RBI double to Yordan Alvarez, a solid day’s work but, as it turned out, not enough.
Backing up Canning, Jose Butto looked sharp for an inning and a third and less sharp after that, which led to Max Kranick‘s Mets debut. Kranick, a Mets fan before growing up to become a briefly tenured Pittsburgh Pirate, was on the active roster for the wild-card series against the Brewers but never called upon, meaning he spent the offseason as a Mets ghost. He had to be champing at the bit to make his debut; he probably didn’t envision arriving with the bases loaded, one out and Alvarez looming at the plate. No matter: Kranick coaxed a foul pop-up from Alvarez, which Vientos made a nifty grab to snag over the camera well, and Christian Walker grounded out. Welcome to the ranks of the corporeal, Max!
Alas, Canning & Co. were just a touch less effective than Spencer Arrighetti and the Houston relievers who followed him. The Mets’ lone run was conjured out of thin air by Jose Siri, who lived up to his reputation as a maddening yet exciting chaos agent. Siri struck out aggressively in his first AB, and if you don’t think that’s an apt description, well, watch Jose Siri play baseball. But he then walked leading off the sixth, stole second easily and scurried over to third on a Francisco Lindor flyout to center. Up came Soto, who spanked Arrighetti’s first pitch back to him. Arrighetti stared down Siri, then turned to retire Soto at first, which is the way you do it. But the second Arrighetti turned his back Siri came flying down the line, arriving just ahead of Walker’s heave home. I’m not sure whether to applaud a hustle play that worked or suggest Siri have more faith in Alonso; I suspect Siri will give us more exhibits useful for arguing the point.
Baseball being baseball, Siri was also part of the play that turned the game decisively against the Mets, bobbling Alvarez’s drive off the wall before securing it for the throw back to the infield. It was a little thing — just as Arrighetti’s timing on Soto’s grounder was a little thing — but it ate up just enough time for Isaac Paredes to slide safely home instead of possibly being out at the plate.
Little things, whether momentary bobbles or balls scorched along unfortunate trajectories, decide baseball games all the time. That’s another thing you have to relearn in the opening week.
by Jason Fry on 29 March 2025 9:00 am Friday night’s game ended with the sweetest of words. Am I referring to “Mets win” or to “put it in the books?” To quote the tyke from the Internet meme, “Why not both?”
On Thursday the Mets did a lot of things right — hitters refused to expand the strike zone and heretofore suspect relievers pitched with conviction — with the nagging exception of winning the game, as some mean-spirited person ripped out the storybook ending and replaced it with a picture of a sad trombone and a blatted note.
On Friday they once again did a lot of things right, and this time it worked out. The hitters were selective again — Pete Alonso in particular has kept his aggression channeled, avoiding the panicky, I ALONE CAN FIX IT ABs he too often falls prey to. Juan Soto looks, well, Sotoesque, which is wonderful to see up close on a nightly basis. I love the way his plate appearances become these odd running conversations in which he seems to be workshopping his approach with the umpire, the catcher and the hitting coach in his head — and I was predictably overjoyed when Soto hit his first Mets home run, an easy-power line drive off the facing of the right-field deck. That extended a 2-0 Mets lead built with the help of some Houston infield slapstick to 3-0, which didn’t feel like enough but was obviously better than looking uphill all Thursday evening.
On the pitching side, at least for one night Tylor Megill looked like the Tylor Megill that the sabermetrically inclined keep insisting is in there somewhere. Megill trusted his stuff and went after the Astros lineup, keeping his pitch count manageable. It looked like the wheels might come off in the fourth, when Jose Altuve and Isaac Paredes singled to bring up Yordan Alvarez with nobody out. But Megill got Alvarez to fly out to center (a sac fly but nothing more), then struck out Christian Walker and Yainer Diaz with sliders at the bottom of the zone.
That was the kind of inning I was used to seeing get away from Megill — too much nibbling, too little conviction, a mounting pitch count, a ball with too much plate, a dejected trudge off the mound. Not this time — and Megill then navigated the fifth with minimal fuss and deserved better in the sixth. He fanned Jake Meyers to start the inning but watched Meyers scamper to first when the ball kicked off Luis Torrens‘ glove, then got a ground ball from Altuve only to see it elude Francisco Lindor. A little better luck and Megill might have been looking at completing six; instead he had to watch from the dugout as Reed Garrett took over with the game hanging the balance.
Garrett was up to the task, bedeviling the Astros with sinkers, sliders and sweepers to keep the lead at two. “REED FUCKING GARRETT!” I yelled as Garrett marched off the mound, looking like he was yelling something similar.
The Apple TV+ broadcasts aren’t my favorite — the churning probabilities are witless clutter, the fonts all feel too small, and the general feeling is that you’re trapped in some sort of baseball-adjacent app instead of a broadcast. But I do marvel at the fact that you can sync up the picture with either team’s radio feed. That’s a genuine kindness offered to fans, and it actually works — which I mean not in the sense of “the world is so terrible that I’m amazed something functions” but in the sense of “syncing feeds like that sounds super-difficult and the result is flawless, how did they do that?”
Howie Rose and Keith Raad were particularly welcome company because the torpor of spring training had tricked me into forgetting how stressful this all is. First I was barking at Garrett, then I was barking at A.J. Minter (who will probably look out of uniform until late May), then I was barking at Ryne Stanek, and then I was encouraging Edwin Diaz with dread perilously close to the surface, which is a fancy way of saying I was barking at him too. At several points during the barkfest I thought to myself, “My God, it isn’t even April yet.” Like the ad says, ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for Mets.
An eye doctor might have been useful too, as the kindest thing one can say about Rob Drake’s strike zone is that it was equitably random. Anything on the outer edge or the bottom border of the strike zone was a coin flip, sometimes not even consistent within at at-bat, but roughly equal numbers of guys in Mets uniforms and Astros uniforms wound up rolling their eyes or huffing in disbelief, so it was more farce than tragedy.
Speaking of uniforms, I hate the Mets’ new road togs. The Mets’ away uniform was both iconic and had a lengthy history; the replacement looks like a knockoff you’d find on Canal Street. The little racing stripes are unnecessary and half-hearted, calling to mind the elusive glories of the de Roulet era, and NEW YORK looks floaty and adrift without the yoke of piping to anchor it. There was no reason to futz with something that worked so beautifully, which I’d thought was something the current regime understood.
Still, win enough games in the new grays and I’ll forgive the unnecessary tinkering. The Mets did that — Diaz was even refreshingly non-terrifying in working a 1-2-3 ninth — and that’s something I could get used to.
by Greg Prince on 28 March 2025 12:14 pm The Mets played to five ties in Spring Training. You can’t do that in the regular season, eight long-ago curfew/rain-related exceptions to the rule notwithstanding,. Therefore, Opening Day 2025 was going to be either a win or a loss, meaning we were bound to process it, in very basic terms, as good or bad.
Loss equals bad, so there ya go. But if you like nuance, it wasn’t that bad. True, a 3-1 loss in the Mets’ first road Opener in an American League park since 2016 — Kansas City, also a loss — isn’t good. Oh-and-one as a record isn’t good. Anticipation resulting in regret isn’t good. Hard to fill the glass to half-full when you’re pouring all factors considered.
But we almost won. That sounds like something you say on behalf of a team that didn’t sign Juan Soto to a record-breaking contract, but the top of the ninth, when one more wave of anticipation built, veered toward pretty good for March 27. The Mets’ offense taking on Framber Valdez was mostly dead all day, if not as dead as on Opening Day from a year earlier (we were one-hit at home). We loaded the bases in the eighth and scored nothing, and that was pretty much our biggest threat to that point.
The ninth, though, felt like the Mets team we loved last September and October, the one we looked forward to through Spring. Versus the accomplished Josh Hader, Starling Marte leads off with a single and Tyrone Taylor follows with the same. Second baseman Luisangel Acuña is up. Acuña as the Opening Day second baseman was a bit of a surprise, as 24 hours earlier it wasn’t clear he’d make the roster. Then again, the alternative, Brett Baty, wasn’t a second baseman a year ago, so either way, it’s not quite how things were being drawn up in Metsopotamian heads. Also, Acuña stood out in the course of the game as the fielder who threw a double play ball past the reach of Pete Alonso for one of the Astros’ three runs. It wasn’t exactly the differencemaker — the Mets had scored none — but it wasn’t inspiring.
What was inspiring was the plate appearance Luisangel proceeded to have against Hader: a dozen pitches, six foul-offs, and, ultimately, four balls. The kid looked like he did when he was brought up to fill in down the stretch last year. He looked like he belonged.
This is where the glass began to approach the half-full mark in earnest. Clay Holmes did not constitute a great advertisement for reliever conversion (he lasted four-and-two-thirds), and there had been a certain crispness lacking all day, but here we were. Bases loaded, nobody out, and any of the next three batters could write a storybook next sentence.
The first didn’t seem likely, but did it seem likely that Hayden Senger would be playing on Opening Day in the major leagues? This is the guy who’s been in the Met system since 2018 and has never exactly hit for much. He was in because Carlos Mendoza opted to shoot his shot pinch-hitting for Luis Torrens with Jesse Winker to lead off the eighth (which didn’t work). All the bench had left was Baty and Jose Siri, neither of them a catcher and, to be fair, neither of them Rusty Staub. Senger versus Hader? As long as he doesn’t hit into a double play, you’ll take your chances.
Senger struck out. Not totally unexpected, and not the worst outcome, because the lineup turns over, and it’s the non-Ohtani MVP of the National League up, Francisco Lindor. Hand Francisco the pen. Any next sentence that includes Lindor is promising.
Sure enough, Francisco drives one to center. Francisco driving one to center has meant some marvelous turns of events in recent memory. A drive to center effectively clinched a playoff berth in Atlanta. Another, a little to right-center, more or less won a playoff series at Citi Field. This drive to center was a flyout, good enough only to push Marte home and Taylor to third. That meant one run, but two outs.
That also meant Juan Soto was coming up with two men on. Soto’s Met debut thus far had been fruitful if not impactful. One single. Two walks. No runs facilitated, but you could say that about every Met batter prior to the ninth. This was a pivot point, however. Not for fifteen years. Just for Opening Day.
Hader had been on the ropes through five batters and twenty-nine pitches. Even Senger didn’t make it very easy on the Astro closer. He seemed gettable, and who better to do the getting than Soto? Sure enough, Juan worked a two-and-oh count, which ascended to three-and-two. What were the odds Hader could sneak something past Soto and end the game?
I imagine one of those gambling apps would have told me in advance. I wouldn’t have bet against Juan, though if I had, I would have collected. Hader threw a slider that tailed away from the plate. Juan guessed wrong on it and swung in desperation. No go. Strike three. Ballgame. Ouch.
Only so much ouch. It was just one game. True, it was the only game we’ve had all year, so the 0-1 record didn’t sit well as I attempted to digest it and dinner. But Juan will get more cracks and probably prevail plenty in comparably deep at-bats. And Holmes wasn’t so out of his element that I don’t believe he’s miscast as a starting pitcher. And hey, how about Huascar Brazoban coming in and shutting down the Astros for two-and-a-third? He wasn’t guaranteed a spot in the bullpen, yet he, along with Danny Young, kept the game viable post-Holmes. And that Acuña time up really was a sight to behold.
Mix in the reasonable conclusion that the Mets won’t post an ohfer with runners in scoring position into perpetuity nor leave ten runners on base for every one they score, and you have to be almost satisfied that the Mets almost came back. And did we mention it’s baseball season again? And that the new road togs looked sharp? It is and they did.
The glass came ever so close to topping the half-full line. Another chance awaits to fill it to brimming.
by Greg Prince on 27 March 2025 1:53 pm It was 34 degrees this morning in New York because it’s March 27, and on March 27, about a week beyond winter, you’re as likely as not to get a very chilly morning. Days with mornings with that low a temperature don’t exactly scream baseball weather.
But the Mets were in Florida for a month-and-a-half (where they compiled an identical number of wins and losses, which seems to be the proper way to handle Spring Training) and now are in Houston, where there’s a retractable roof. So play ball on March 27. And March 28. And so on and so on until the weather is uniformly chilly again, sometime in the heart of fall.
Welcome to the dawn of a new season, even if new seasons oughta start in April. A lot of traditional baseball oughtas get flattened by progress’s army of steamrollers and erased like a blackboard. Houston used to be in the National League, and maybe still oughta. We didn’t used to open seasons let alone play in the regular season versus American League teams, and probably still shouldn’t oughta. No need coming back to the pox on strategy that remains the designated hitter, a quasi-position that spread to the NL for good in 2022 and isn’t going away. “Baseball has marked the time,” Terence Mann declared in Field of Dreams. The time is March 27.
Too soon? Probably. Glad to greet it today? Absolutely.
March 27 marks the 32nd birthday of the Mets’ Opening Day starting pitcher, Clay Holmes. Clay Holmes is starting on Opening Day? I used to get hung up on who takes the ball on Opening Day because Tom Seaver takes the ball on Opening Day, and if you don’t have him, Dwight Gooden takes the ball on Opening Day. This Opening Day, the hill is manned by the former closer of a team from another league, someone who’s never been a Met or an ace before. Blasphemy? The Mets’ rotation isn’t deep enough for standing on ceremony. Holmes looked good in Spring and was deployed so his birthday would be his throw day and, besides, starting pitchers don’t go that deep most days, so what the hell? Have a happy birthday, Clay Holmes. Give us five or six innings we can celebrate.
It is also Brandon Nimmo’s 32nd birthday. As soon as Brandon steps into the box score, he reaches the baseline qualification for Hall of Fame consideration. This season is Nimmo’s tenth in the big leagues. That should rate more of a “wow!” than I’m willing to give it. I feel we’ve watched Brandon age in real time, which is to say for a while he was a very young player, then he was a player who was still young but had gained experience, and now he’s a solid veteran in the solid prime of his solid career. We are predisposed to love a lifetime Met. That’s what Brandon has been and will hopefully remain without pause.
Prior to David Wright, Eddie Kranepool was our primary example of a lifetime Met. Came up with us. Stayed with us. Never played for anybody but us. Plus he was Eddie Kranepool. We lost Eddie last September. Given his eighteen seasons — which included an Opening Day start in right field at the age of 18 on April 9, 1963, at the Polo Grounds, along with six more at first base spanning 1965 to 1977 — our memories of the Krane should and will live on without much prompting. A sleeve patch affixed to our jerseys will underscore for us Eddie’s eternal Met presence in 2025. A check of Baseball-Reference reminds us Eddie was usually ready for the season to start every season, whether he was starting or not. Mr. Kranepool, from the year he was a veritable kid to the last year he played as a grizzled vet, in 1979, batted .295 in April, his best month hitting. He didn’t have any at-bats in March. Baseball didn’t commence so early back then.
 Since last summer, which was winding down when we said goodbye to Ed — having already bid adieu in 2024 to Bud Harrelson, Jim McAndrew, Pat Zachry, Jerry Grote, and Willie Mays — too many other Mets have passed away. They won’t get patches, because sleeve space is limited, but let’s remember them for a moment.
Wayne Graham, our infielder from 1964 who went on to a long and distinguished college coaching career at Rice University (one of his charges was eventual Met Phil Humber);
Ron Locke, who pitched for us in 1964, something I learned when I picked up his 1965 baseball card in 1975 at the first baseball card show I ever attended;
Jack DiLauro, whose contribution to the 1969 Mets I wouldn’t have known about from the front of the 1970 baseball card I pulled from a pack as a kid because he’d been traded over the winter and his cap was blank (I had to flip it over to grasp he’d been one of ours);
Bob Gallagher, the 1975 Met outfielder who we received in exchange for another Miracle man, Ken Boswell;
Lenny Randle, one of the few Met reasons to have felt good about 1977;
Mark Bradley, the toolsy 1983 Mets outfielder who holds the distinction of being the first Met I ever photographed with my own camera, on a rainy Saturday afternoon in St. Petersburg (the game was cancelled, but I know I have the picture somewhere);
Rickey Henderson, the leadoff man of leadoff men who requires no reintroduction from his eventful days with us in 1999 and 2000 (the A’s, wherever they play now, will wear a patch in his honor);
Felix Mantilla, who lasted all of 1962 as an Original Met and ninety years in all;
Tommie Reynolds, an infielder-outfielder who crouched behind the plate in a classic and absurd emergency catcher situation in 1967;
Mike Cubbage, a Met player for one season, in 1981 (he homered for us in his final MLB AB), a Met coach under five different dugout administrations, and about as interim as an interim manager could be, steering the ship home for the final week of 1991 before returning to assisting;
and Jeff Torborg, a well-regarded baseball man whose best work probably wasn’t as Met manager in 1992 and 1993, but when he passed, I read nothing but kind words from those who knew him, so maybe it just wasn’t the right fit here.
Going back prior to last summer, in May, Bill Murphy, referred to in his playing days as Billy, passed on. Murphy was a Rule 5 player who stuck through 1966 in order for the Mets to hold on to him. I began to research his story and found some fascinating threads, but never got around to weaving them together. I hope to give Bill his due before long.
For now, thanks to all the Mets who’ve come before, a sum that measured 1,252 overall (Ashburn to Acuña) through 2024. The all-time quantity can increase by as many as seven while the Mets are in Houston, as the first 26-man roster of 2025 includes Holmes; similarly reoptimized starter Griffin Canning; backup catcher/Whole Foods utilityman Hayden Senger; childhood Mets fan who grew up to relieve for his favorite team Max Kranick; defensive whiz and pun waiting to be run into the ground Jose Siri; former division rival A.J. Minter; and somebody named Juan Soto. More will emerge, but these are the half-dozen poised to make their Met debuts late this March, and I look forward to welcoming them. Especially that Soto fellow.
Fitting enough we’re packing seven potential first-time Mets in Houston as this is the first Opening Day that has pitted the Mets versus the Astros. One Shea Home Opener (2005, this blog’s first April and that ballpark’s fourth-from-last), but nothing that led off a season. We each began life as expansion franchises in the same April, but not only have we never been until now each other’s first opponent, we’ve competed against one another in a season’s first week only six times, no such series more recent than 1994. In 1968, in our fifth game of the year, we and they did play 24 innings. The Astros scored once, the Mets not at all; the 1968 Mets lacked the equivalent of Lindor, Soto, Alonso, Nimmo, and Vientos to get things going on the offensive foot. Drop that crew into 1968, and it might not have become known as The Year of the Pitcher…at least in theory.
 All that has been theoretical about this club leading into 2025 is about to turn actual. All the excitement a lot of us have been feeling is about to be put on the line. I’ve been up for other seasons to start — all of them, really — but this one has a legit April-in-March sense to it. Like it really couldn’t wait another day. Good thing it’s arriving when it is.
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