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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 26 August 2026 1:05 pm Tuesday night at Citi Field was a game for icons. Dolly Parton’s music played to seemingly unanimous approval, one of those ballpark as public square moments that reminds a person that when something or somebody needs to be commemorated or celebrated — even if the subject isn’t baseball — a ballpark is the place to do it. Besides, anywhere Dolly’s voice pervades instantly turns into the Grand Ole Opry. The opening beats of “9 to 5” and why we were hearing them a few minutes before the Mets took on the Brewers moved me to the edge of tears. I probably would have let them flow, except I chose to collect myself given the iconic occasion that drew me to the ballpark.
The Prince-Chasin Game was Tuesday night. It’s the hardiest of perennials on our mutual calendar. Sixteen consecutive non-pandemic Augusts, always a Tuesday night. Stephanie and I join with Rob and Ryder Chasin, father and son, two Mets fans we know because the son invited us to his Bar Mitzvah at Citi Field in the ballpark’s first offseason. He read some words I wrote, and even though none of them meshed concision and evocation like “tumble outta bed/and I stumble to the kitchen/pour myself a cup of ambition,” they formed the basis for a recurring RSVP.
There was that festive Saturday afternoon in November 2009; these sixteen August Tuesday nights from 2010 forward; the Tuesday night in August 2020 when we did our best to replicate the annual get-together ritual via Zoom; and a couple of handfuls of occasions of brief proximity mixed in. These are people we’ve known for seventeen years but have spent not quite thirty days with. No wonder that Bar Mitzvah seems like it was barely a month ago. Ryder is no longer 13. He’s literally going on 30. Funny how the years yawn and stretch and ultimately come to life.
 Dolly’s critique of capitalism’s flaws wound down. “That’s a nice tribute,” Ryder said. If I tried to respond immediately, I would have incurred an ocular rain delay. I took my time before adding, “yes it is,” and awaited composure’s slight return.
The Prince-Chasin Game proceeded per precedent. Ryder and I caught up on baseball. Stephanie and Rob caught up on up all else. The Milwaukee Brewers didn’t catch up to what Zac Thornton was throwing, not enough to make a dent in the scorecard Ryder was keeping. The Mets similarly failed to move the pencil productively versus Kyle Harrison The early innings were mostly me yapping and Ryder being his usual ideal audience for it. I noticed the Mets leaving the bases loaded and a couple of double plays killing rallies on each side. The Brewers nosed ahead in the fourth on a two-out single. Well, I thought, they do have the best record in baseball.
But do they have an icon? In their lineup every day? ’Cause we do, even if we needed a few reminders his iconhood tends to hide in plain sight. The first reminder, and the first reason Ryder’s pencil had to do some jaunty scorekeeping, came in the bottom of the fifth with one out, when Francisco Lindor tied the game at one on his solo homer to left. The scoreboard noted Francisco had also just tied Dave Kingman for sixth-most on the all-time Mets home run chart. No. 6 may not be an iconic slot on such a list, but c’mon, this is Dave Kingman, the embodiment of Mets slugging for a generation. The fact that Sky King had been passed by five later-vintage Mets indicates his home run total (unlike the home runs that comprised it) wasn’t all that towering and his bifurcated Met tenure wasn’t all that lengthy. Parts of three seasons from 1975 to 1977. Three more seasons from 1981 to 1983, though his last few months of 1983 were limited to special guest at-bats once Keith Hernandez arrived to play first base and consign Kingman to both the bench and the past.
Nevertheless, Dave Kingman was home runs in a Mets uniform, and now his accumulation of 154 was matched by a Met who’s been here roughly as long and does so much more that it’s easy enough to forget that he’s also a premier slugger. He doesn’t look it, but his bat says different. The on-field similarities end there, what with Kingman having brought one awesome dimension and not much else to bear as a Met, and Lindor, at his best, deploying every tool you could ask for.
We’d ask for a couple more later.
In the sixth, Ryder and Rob got up to derive some use from their tickets’ built-in concessions credit. That’s the Mets’ concession that their product in the second half might need some added attractiveness. As Ryder noted when he and his dad explored the team store, “Nothing says ‘winning season’ like ‘new Mets clearance section.’” I was asked to “babysit the book” for an inning. I get approximately one inning a year with the short pencil. I’d almost forgotten what to do with it. Started filling in boxes from the inning before. No eraser, so just a crossout that made it look like a raccoon invaded the page. The top of the sixth gave me a DP to find a box for, which was fun, if inartful. The bottom of the sixth let me scrawl “HR” for Luis Robert, Jr. before I remembered there’s lines to be traced and diamonds to be darkened, even if there is go-ahead excitement to be expressed. Also, the Brewers had changed pitchers, something I forgot to write down for at least three batters. If this is how I babysit, don’t leave your kids with me.
Thornton went six, giving up only the one run. He will not be in the Mets’ clearance section anytime soon. Nate Lavender continued to beguile batters in the seventh and eighth. The 2-1 lead he protected figured to set up our closer Kodai Senga, except the only Kodai sighting we’d be treated to Tuesday came pregame when he took part in congratulating the Mets customer service award winners for the month (“please make some noise for the sales associate who changed the price tags on our stack of Freddy Peralta shirseys…”). Instead, the evening’s save opportunity was bestowed on Peter Principle, a reliever who’s reliable when it’s not the ninth inning and there’s not a one-run lead. Principle, wearing Austin Warren’s uniform, had command issues and gave up the lead. He was replaced by that avatar of placidity and stability, Jefry Yan. Yan has a new signature move: throwing the ball and hoping the team icon makes the play of the year once the ball is hit.
 Yan knows what he’s doing. The two-out bases-loaded liner he gave up to David Hamilton, so clearly ticketed for left field that it, too, had a concessions credit embedded in it, had the misfortune of meeting the glove attached to the diving shortstop, who could have been mistaken in the moment for Rey Ordoñez. Except we knew it wasn’t Ordoñez, because innings earlier, this shortstop had tied Dave Kingman for sixth place on the Mets’ all-time home run chart. Not many Mets who stuck around as long as Rey hit as few home runs as he did. Only six Mets have hit as many home runs as Francisco has. Hardly any Mets shortstop makes the kind of play Lindor did to save Yan’s and our respective bacon. There was Rey-O, now there was Fran-L. (Sorry if you didn’t see it on SNY.)
In the bottom of the ninth, Lindor prepared to extend his iconography to manufacturing the winning run the way another icon of the Met shortstop pantheon, Jose Reyes, might have. Lindor beat out an infield hit. There were two out, but Bo Bichette was up, and he was certainly capable of the kind of hit that Francisco could score on, provided Francisco had a big enough lead. Sitting in Field Level in short right field, I could see what Francisco was thinking. Everybody could see what Francisco was thinking, including the Brewers. Trevor Megill picked Lindor off first.
Nobody ever suggested icons who aren’t Dolly Parton are perfect. Lindor’s been in the Met GOAT conversation when he’s been at his peak and he’s been many fans’ idea of a goat in the Bill Gallo sense when he’s flailed. When he’s going well, I’m in his amen corner, which generates a sound a lot like “My Girl”. When’s he’s not, I start to calculate how long a contract that runs through 2031 really is. I didn’t believe the scuttlebutt that he was a serious trade candidate this summer. But I didn’t rule it out as a concept. In a year when much has been put on remainder, it’s been hard to value what has remained mostly stellar — if not exactly steady — for six going on eleven seasons.
The Manfredian thing was Lindor didn’t have to get a lead off first in the ninth to get to second. He’d be on second to start the home tenth. After Jonathan Pintaro, a.k.a. the Jared Young of the bullpen, did his understated best to keep the game tied, Francisco indeed made it to second for Bichette’s next attempt to drive him in. Leading off, Bo flied out. Carson Benge, who rated three lines in three boxes for three hits on Ryder’s scorecard, was intentionally walked. Megill didn’t intend to do the same with Robert, but another base on balls materialized, and Luis took first, sending Lindor to third and Benge to second. The bases were loaded for Christopher Morel, whose entrance into the game I missed while Stephanie and i were using our own use-it-or-lose-it concessions credit in the eighth. The Citi Field lists OPS as its primary lineup stat. I glanced up and saw Morel’s might as well be Jorge Polanco’s. I winced. I winced again when Morel grounded to third. I stopped wincing when I realized contact is contact, and the ball that was being thrown home was sailing wide of the plate. The enduringly iconic Lindor scored the winning run of a most gratifying extra-inning Met victory over the team with the best record in baseball.
The four of us among the Princes and Chasins high-fived one another immediately. We don’t get to do that every August when a game ends. A few minutes later, we exchanged goodbye hugs. That we do every twelve months. Nine or ten innings with the Chasins always fills our emotional scorecard. And winning 3 to 2? What a way to leave the ballpark.
by Jason Fry on 26 August 2026 8:14 am An oddity as this odd Mets season winds down is that I have remind myself Andy Green‘s top priority isn’t winning games. That’s always welcome, but not job one — job one is to conduct a quasi-instructional camp, in which new guys and new situations get tried out to see what might work in some better, brighter future.
I get all that, but years of fan instinct have me otherwise wired. Isn’t this too big a spot for this guy? Is this the ideal matchup? Why pinch-hit here? Why not pinch-hit here? Oh yeah, that’s right — Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp is in session.
Much of Monday night’s game against the not so big but exceptionally bad Milwaukee Brewers — best team in baseball, don’tcha know — unfolded as a relatively taut duel, notable mostly for a surprising number of runners left on base by both sides. Zac Thornton looked good yet again, nicked for only an RBI single over six, and has earned not only a spot in the Mets’ starting rotation but also a baseball card without an h or a k tacked onto the end of his first name.
Thornton was in line for the win after the Mets twice ambushed an otherwise effective Kyle Harrison for solo home runs. Harrison is one of the many players transformed by a sprinkling of the mysterious Milwaukee pixie dust that we thought would arrive with David Stearns, only to find out Stearns isn’t the source of this magical confetti. (Rats!) The first came off the bat of Francisco Lindor; the second was struck by Luis Robert Jr., going over the Great Wall of Flushing despite Robert connecting essentially one-handed. To quote a long-ago spring-training broadcast, “a grown man hit that ball.”
The Mets got two more sparkling innings from Nate Lavender (including some yellow-light lefty-righty matchups, because Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp) and handed a 2-1 lead to Austin Warren for the save opportunity. But Warren didn’t have it — he’s coming back from arm woes and is still finding his sweeper — and coughed up the lead immediately, though he did strike out Luis Lara with second and third and nobody out.
The next exercise at Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp was seeing if the electric/erratic Jefry Yan could get his team out of trouble, and the answer was yes … with an asterisk. Yan got Garrett Mitchell on a called third strike with an ABS assist, walked Joey Ortiz, and gave up a liner to David Hamilton.
Lindor rushed a couple of steps to his right, lunged — and my Apple TV restarted. Black screen, white pinwheel, lots of bad words from the Fry couch, and an equal amount of uncertainty. Had Lindor snagged that ball? Had it ticked off the end of his glove to be retrieved by a teammate while Brewers wheeled around the bases merrily? I put the odds at 50-50 either way.
The answer was that Lindor had caught it. Whew.
The Mets tried to scratch out a conventional-nine win against Trevor Megill, but that’s a tall order: Megill gave up an infield hit to Lindor but picked him off to end the inning, though replays indicated he’d balked and the infraction had gone uncalled. Time for Calvinball Presented by Rob Manfred and His Team of MBAs Who Don’t Like Baseball, and new auditions in Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp, starting with Jonathan Pintaro trying to strand the Manfred Man at second.
Pintaro was up to the task, allowing only a walk to the formidable William Contreras, which led to Megill resuming his duties and an oddity of modern baseball. Lindor had been picked off while on first with a 1-1 count on Bo Bichette, so of course the tenth began with Lindor on second and Bichette at the plate with a fresh count. Eight-year-old me would have been amazed that such a thing was possible; 57-year-old me was mildly appalled though mostly numb.
Bichette popped out; Megill then intentionally walked Carson Benge and unintentionally walked Robert, bringing up Christopher Morel with the bases loaded. Morel looked overmatched, frankly, and rapped an 0-2 fastball to Hamilton at third. Hamilton had plenty of time: Lindor was going to be forced at home, with Morel possibly doubled up at first, and either way the game would grind on.
Except Hamilton couldn’t get the handle, made a terrible throw, or both — the ball was wide right, allowing Lindor to stamp on home plate uncontested. That gave the Mets a victory and, presumably, led to s’mores getting handed out at Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp. Good job, campers! Now let’s talk about what we learned! Nate, Austin, Jefry, Jonathan … who wants to go first?
by Jason Fry on 23 August 2026 9:20 pm I’ll grant you that we’re grading the post-deadline 2026 Mets on the curve, but still: Aside from the ending, that was a fine way to spend an afternoon.
You had Nolan McLean, with the movement on his pitches baffling the White Sox and sometimes McLean himself. I’m pretty sure what he did to Andrew Benintendi with the bases loaded in the third inning was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. You had the White Sox countering with three guys in shifting roles, the most impressive of whom was young Hagen Smith.
Both teams then turned to reliever roulette to settle a 0-0 deadlock; reliever roulette, like the ill-advised real thing, is a chancy affair full of surprises and perceived injustices. Dedniel Nunez kept hanging sliders but escaped unscathed; Daniel Duarte made one bad pitch but it was enough to leave him decidedly scathed and his team down 1-0. The pitch that drew blood was to Benintendi, because baseball has a keen eye for irony; Carson Benge almost threw Miguel Vargas out at the plate, but was undone by a tricky carom off the wall which forced him to rush, leading to a throw that was slightly off-line.
(By the way, Vargas is a helluva hitter. Glad not to see him again!)
The White Sox looked to close out the Mets with Grant Taylor, who’s been impressive but was mortal today, giving up a bloop single to Benge and walking revenge-tour Luis Robert Jr. before Jared Young got him for a game-tying single up the middle. Taylor was fighting his control but managed to get Francisco Alvarez and then dialed it in against A.J. Ewing, erasing him on a fastball at the top of the zone.
Enter newly minted closer Kodai Senga, whose promising experiment has yielded shaky results of late — which shouldn’t surprise us, honestly. Senga got the first out but then Tristan Peters connected for a drive to right-center that juuuuuuuuuust eluded Ewing’s glove (should that be “just eluuuuuuuded” or “juuuuuuuuust eluuuuuuuuded”), bouncing off the top of the wall and into the stands.
Another day, another Tristan Peters drive not quite secured. Which meant White Sox 2, Mets 1 and the second enemy walkoff in three days.
Ewing retrieved his cap, looking crestfallen; maybe it’s my imagination but I could see Senga thinking, “Huh, in this gig one bad pitch can end your day.”
I wasn’t too downcast, to be honest — it was barely a pinch, to quote Greg. Good game, crummy ending. Those happen. Focus on the former and try to shrug off the latter. Or hey, think of it this way: Crummy season, good ending?
by Greg Prince on 23 August 2026 1:29 pm I wasn’t wishing any ill will toward Huascar Brazobán when he came into Saturday night’s game to face his former team, beyond hoping his former team would rough him up gently.
It was the seventh inning of a game the Mets were leading, 7-5, an evening pervaded by the sense that this game could be going a lot better for us or a lot worse. The seven runs didn’t seem like enough. The five runs seemed too many. Carson Benge near-robbery of a Tristan Peters home run underpinned the evening to this point. I’m always put off by the idea that an outfielder almost made a great play. “Almost? You mean he didn’t catch it.” But Carson Benge almost made a great play, nearly robbing Tristan Peters of a home run. He leapt like he was Fernando Tatis, Jr., except his glove revealed nothing but air. There was deflection, which should be worth something, but close only counts in Carpenters songs on their way to the top of the charts.
Benge’s best effort — and the faceful of fence he absorbed — occurred leading off the home third in Chicago. The emptiness in his glove made the score Mets 4 White Sox 2. It would be 4-3 before the inning was out. Two Met homers that touched nobody’s glove, swatted by Bo Bichette and Luis Robert, Jr., had put the Mets ahead by three in the top of the third. But then we left two on, so a touch of uneasiness grew to at least a tap on the shoulder when the gap closed so quickly.
The Mets scored three more for Christian Scott (and themselves, one supposes) in the fifth, featuring a solo homer from Benge, whose continued presence and performance pronounced himself fit. In the middle of the mini-onslaught was Eric Wagaman coming out of exile and off the bench to drive home a run as a pinch-hitter for DH Brett Baty. The White Sox had recently changed pitchers, from righty starter Luis Castillo to lefty reliever Tyler Schweitzer, I presume, and Andy Green noticed. The designated hitter is a scam of a position, anyway. It’s a pinch-hitter dressed up as a regular four or more times per game. You should be allowed to PH for the DH with whoever you want, even if they’re not on the roster. Announce Abe Lincoln into the game; what the hell, you’re in Illinois.
The Mets moved up, 7-3, in that fifth inning, and all Scott had to do to slot himself in for his fifth win of more or less his first full season was get three outs without giving up four runs. The good news was he didn’t give up four runs. I don’t think he was trying to, either, but geez if he wasn’t determined to stretch out a tightrope and audition for the Wallendas.
Hit a guy with a pitch.
Walked a guy on a full count.
Struck a guy out on a full count.
Threw a wild pitch.
Walked another guy on a full count to load the bases.
Struck another guy out on a full count.
Walked the next guy on a full count to force in a run.
So much for the three outs. The Sox had pulled to within 7-4, they had bags full of themselves, and had Colson Montgomery — half of Chicago’s capital of Alabama contingent — up against new pitcher Jonathan Pintaro. Pintaro struck out C. Montgomery to strand three. Had that been the entirety of Jonathan’s involvement Saturday night, we’d have raised mimosas in his honor this Sunday morning. But Pintaro didn’t have it in the sixth, so please hold your glasses. The four batters he faced in the sixth produced three runners and a run to make it 7-5. Nervous sips became appropriate. Out went Pintaro. In came Austin Warren. Austin (speaking of state capitals) loaded the bases. But he left them that way, so hoist your brunch drinks high.
This is how we got Huascar being on for the Sox to start the seventh, and me feeling bad when I saw his stats on the South Side were not nearly as gleaming as they’d been in Flushing. I don’t like the idea of fans in other places deciding they received a stiff from the Mets. Brazobán was one of our steadiest hands this year and pretty decent the past two years. Why our reputation with American League strangers should matter to me, I don’t know. Put an American League team in front of me, I want to impress anybody who’s watching. I also wanted the Mets to increase their two-run lead.
One out in, we cashed in on my desire, via Luis Robert, Jr.’s second home run of the night. Now this was a twist! We’re convinced we’re always done in by the vengeful bat of an Old Friend™ (see “d’Arnaud, Travis: shudders caused by mere appearance”). It rarely occurs to us it can work the other way, especially when it’s somebody else’s Old Friend™ facing one of ours on the mound for them. Got those pronouns straight? Robert — who I’m more comfortable referring to by full name, junior included, probably because I don’t believe I’ve gotten to know him much as a Met — had been booed consistently if not unmercifully in the first two game of this series at Not Quite Comiskey Park. I don’t know what the Sox fans’ Vienna Beef is with him, exactly, other than he missed a lot of time while he was one of theirs and now, for this weekend at least, he’s healthy and playing. I try not to meddle in other fans’ affairs, especially in the other league, but I’d advise easing up on Luis. You’re in first place without him.
But you weren’t extending your first-place lead with him belting his second home run of the night against you, which is to say for us. Luis Robert, Jr., put the Mets ahead, 8-5, which felt really good, if not quite good enough. It was the kind of game that you weren’t sure wasn’t being played under Family Feud rules. I half-expected Steve Harvey to step out to home plate and tell the White Sox they now had a chance to steal all the runs on the board.
Baseball doesn’t work that way. This baseball game worked in such a way that after Warren and Dedniel Nuñez handled the seventh and eighth, respectively, without incident, Green had another chance to do some managing. The grand master of exceeded expectations Jared Young was on third after doubling and advancing on a wild pitch. One man was out. An extra run was going to be delightful if attained. The DH position — again, a total scam — was up. Andy pinch-hit Luis Torrens for Wagaman. It wasn’t a righty-lefty thing, as the White Sox were pitching Trevor Richards a righty, and that’s the side from which Torrens bats. It was a conviction that if you need a fly ball, you put in Luis Torrens.
And if you’d like a fly ball that keeps going, you sit back and watch Luis Torrens go deep. He does it basically every other at-bat, and he did it here. The Mets were up, 10-5. You could have almost sharpened the pencil you use for putting it in the books right there, except Green opted to deploy his closer to protect a five-run lead in the ninth. I don’t care that the closer is Kodai Senga, and he’s been a closer for about two weeks. No closer responds flawlessly to a non-save opportunity. It zips inside their frigging DNA as soon as somebody hangs the “closer” label on them. Naturally, Senga walked his first batter and gave up a hit to his second. A little less naturally but far more pleasingly, Kodai got his next three men and protected the 10-5 lead with no damage, save for his Sunday availability, but that’s Andy Green’s problem…and maybe ours if there’s a lead nine innings from now.
Definitely one of those games in which the Mets’ edge never felt safe, even after it went final. That’s why they put erasers on pencils, Bob Murphy said. Doesn’t mean you always have to use them.
by Greg Prince on 22 August 2026 11:37 am For most of my life, my relationship to needles has been a matter of bracing for the absolute worst and reacting to them as if they definitely are. Once in a while, if a medical professional is coming at my anatomy in a spot where I’m not used to it, I will still yelp and yowl in horror. The standard pokes, however, I’ve come to cope with. I think the turning point was a blood sample I had to submit to when I was in my fifties but might as well have been five. I yelped. I yowled. I said to the nurse something to the effect of, “I guess you get a lot of this.” Unamused, she retorted, “No, you’re the only one.”
These days, when they tell me, “It’ll only pinch for a second,” I believe them. I still brace. I still grimace (and not the gleefully evocative kind from 2024). I may even let out a sound roughly approximating an official scorer who’s seen too much bad fielding — “EEEEE!!!!!” — but I go into the transaction convinced I’ll survive, and I survive.
Welcome to the sensation of a walkoff loss late in a season when nothing is on the line. It only pinches a bit. Then I’m over it. So it was at Not Exactly Comiskey Park on Friday night, where the Mets were playing, for some oddball reason, the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox need every win to maintain their surprising hold on first place in a division that’s none of our business, yet we play everybody in it. The Mets should have no role in determining who wins the AL Central. Yet here we are, getting involved. We recently swept the Cleveland Guardians, you know.
The fun and frisky Mets of August have been nobody’s ideal opponent, and through the middle of the sixth inning, this game was as fun and frisky as any we’ve enjoyed of late. Ex-White Sock Marcus Semien drove in a run. Ex-White Sock Luis Robert, Jr., was awarded a gift double, courtesy of an heir to his center field throne, ex-Rockie Brenton Doyle, losing his fly ball in the lights, and an official scorer who apparently didn’t want to write down, “E!” Brett Baty stirred with a two-run double behind Luis. Bo Bichette continued to erase our memories of April and May with a home run. Sean Manaea was absolutely cruising with a 4-0 lead.
Then the White Sox absolutely crushed Manaea with three consecutive longballs, the first of them with a runner on base, hence bingo-bango-bongo, it was 4-4. What an illustrative game this was being: we had seen why the Mets have been a recent revelation; we were reminded that it’s still the season in which they got themselves buried early and decisively; and we got a hint of what a contender that came out of nowhere can do. The last time the Mets visited Not Quite Comiskey, the White Sox’ primary opponent was the legacy of our 1962 club. The Original Mets lost 120 games. The 2024 White Sox were en route to losing 121. And they weren’t tons better in 2025. Now they’re leading the middle sector of the junior circuit. Kind of gives hope to last-place teams everywhere.
Our last-place team remained tied with their first-place team into the bottom of the ninth. Following effective relief outings from Nate Lavender and Daniel Duarte, Jefry Yan took the ball. Whoever was following the action could have said, “this is gonna be good” from any angle and had a chance of being right. Jefry’s tendencies are already legend. He is a pitcher who relishes the strikes he throws, perhaps because he doesn’t throw enough of them. When he gathers three in the same at-bat, he’s ecstatic. When he thinks he’s thrown the third, he’s on the Partridge Family bus, his instincts imploring him, come on, get happy.
His instincts need to clean whichever window he’s peering through, or at least meet him halfway on the highway to reality. They’re not all strikes, Jefry. They’re really not. Despite two instances of premature jocularity in celebration of pitches called balls, Yan walked leadoff batter Colson Montgomery, who was replaced on the basepaths by Braden Montgomery, the first instance I can summon of one player whose last name is a state capital being run for by another player whose last name is a state capital…though I may be forgetting that time Sammy Sacramento pinch-ran for his brother Cecil.
The second Montgomery was bunted to second base by Doyle, mastering at least one fundie for the evening after that dropped fly ball. Yan then grounded out Old Friend™ Luisangel Acuña, an old friend to us if not Yan; Met roster churn can really take a bite out of a dependable cliché. The grounder also fulfilled the “this is gonna be good” prophecy from all perspectives. For the Mets, it got them closer to escaping the ninth. For the White Sox, it pushed the winning run ninety feet closer to home, as B. Montgomery, running for C. Montgomery, moved to third.
Jake Rogers, whose name rang a vague trade deadline bell, stepped up. Oh, that’s right — the White Sox got Rogers from the Red Sox, who got him from the Orioles, who got him from the Tigers, who were selling off everybody, then hung around the Wild Card race, where they and almost everybody in the American League still lingers if they’re not already in first place. Those deals all happened over a span of about two weeks, indicating Rogers was either a hot commodity or a hot potato. It happened in the American League, so it’s really none of my business. My business was Yan getting out Rogers, who was batting .171, more potato than commodity on the hotness scale.
More like tater in the baseball lexicon, alas, as Jake lofted a very high fly ball off Jeffry. A.J. Ewing went to the wall and gave it his best jump, but the only Met capable of leaping to catch it was the pitcher who threw it. The White Sox landed hard on the Mets’ heads with a walkoff home run, taking us down, 6-4, and completing the kind of comeback I was beginning to think was the sole province of my team. Who knew other people’s teams gather momentum?
This probably isn’t as rare as the pinch-running exchange between the state capital of Alabama boys (Colson was born in Indiana, Braden was born in Iowa, and they both currently pursue their profession in Illinois), but the Mets have now lost by walkoff to different opponents in the same walkable city in the same season. In April, we got nipped by the Cubs at Wrigley. Took ten innings. Extended our losing streak to eleven, deepening the already dull pain you’d go to a doctor and ask that something be done about it, even if it involves an injection that makes you yelp and yowl in horror. This one, four months later, when the season’s shortcomings seem less chronic than something maybe we’ll get over with a change of the calendar — a prescription that worked wonders for the White Sox — didn’t really hurt at all. It only pinched for a second.
by Greg Prince on 20 August 2026 2:07 pm Let’s go live to the internal dialogue I’ve developed in the wake of the august Mets play of August 2026, right up through their 4-2 victory over the Padres at Citi Field on Wednesday afternoon.
The Mets are winning some baseball games lately.
Yeah, I know. I can read a scoreboard.
No, I mean REAL baseball games.
“No shift, Sherlock.”
No shift?
I’m polite, so I thought I’d crib from the section of the MLB rule book pertaining to defensive alignments.
Fair enough, but let me go on.
You usually do.
Me and I can have some contentious conversations.
When I say the Mets are winning some “baseball games,” I’m thinking about the substance and execution of those games. The Mets are proving themselves capable and opportunistic They look like they know what they’re doing, then they go and do it. The scores of the five wins on their just-completed six-date homestand say something in that regard.
4-1
5-4
4-3
2-1
4-2
Those are baseball scores. I enjoy being on the right side of a Met blowout or a Met slugfest as much as the next fan — and nobody relishes the Mets winning by a Unicorn Score as much as I do — but there is comfort to be had in knowing your team can take the field, play a reasonably standard baseball game, and emerge triumphant consistently.
This team is indeed winning some baseball games. This team is getting enough power, taking enough bases, making enough plays, and throwing enough effective pitches to get them from the first inning to the last in the finest of fettle. A Mets fan could get used to this. In fact, this Mets fan is beginning to believe this is who these Mets are.
NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST
SINCE TRADE DEADLINE DAY
New York 11-4
Philadelphia 10-5
Atlanta 7-8
Washington 6-8
Miami 6-9
That’s all the sample size I need. Tell the earlier, larger chunk of the standings to go back where it came from.
The Mets of right now are all the Mets I need. These are…
• the Mets of legitimate Rookie of the Year contender Carson Benge’s fourth-inning homer Wednesday, his fifteenth of the season (it was a two-run job that I’d love to say Benged around the foul pole, but was fair by several feet, which just as well, as you don’t want to leave these things to replay review);
• the Mets of building one run bit by bit (in the eighth, while trying to increase their 2-1 lead, A.J. Ewing walks, A.J. Ewing steals, Francisco Lindor singles, Bo Bichette delivers a fielder’s choice grounder to score Ewing);
• the Mets of taking advantage when advantage begs to be taken (Bichette’s grounder is thrown away, so Lindor rushes to third and Bo goes to second);
• the Mets of insuring their lead with additional timely offense (Jared Young singling home Bichette right after Benge couldn’t do the same with Lindor);
• the Mets of no starter automatically imploding (Robert Stock stood stern for four-and-a-third before allowing a Padre run, which, let’s face it, is more than you’d have dreamed of getting from Robert Stock when you first heard he was back in town);
• the Mets of this bullpen that makes you forget that most of the dealing they did at the deadline decimated one of their few strengths, middle relief (Jonathan Pintaro unjammed what Stock left in his wake, while Nate Lavender, reactivated Austin Warren, and Daniel Duarte built a bridge as sturdy as any Robert Moses ever constructed);
• and the Mets of a go-to closer who had never been a reliever of renown at any time in his professional career, yet is 4-for-4 in his four shots at filling that role (Kodai Senga’s last save prior to this month was in Japan, a dozen years ago).
When your team is leading the small sample size standings, that’s your team. Senga the closer. Stock the starter. Pintaro and Duarte and the lefty who leaves you in a Lavender haze. You still miss Alonso, but you appreciate the value in Young. Benge, you’ve decided, is verging on the stardom that was talked up for him before you ever laid eyes on him. Bichette, you’ve decided, wasn’t a bad signing, whatever the ridiculous price. You’re not looking to relitigate what went wrong. You’re living in the now and you’re delighted to be here.
If you have a heart, you’re sorry to see Jorge Polanco is too hurt to persevere, even if his perseverance wasn’t getting any of us anywhere. You kind of figured out he never really recovered from injury before it was announced he is done for the season, his left ankle bursitis slating him to surgery. “He seems like a decent guy” is one of those things you don’t lead with when you can cite flattering statistics. Polanco’s OPS in his first Met campaign was .431, roughly what the SAT folks give you for signing your name on a Saturday morning. Still, he seems like a decent guy. I can remember Jorge chipping in a couple of key hits. There weren’t so many Jorge Polanco hits to sort through that you can’t recall each of them if you try.
Your loyalty now is to the Mets of now, the conglomeration of bright futures, first-half underachievers, beating-the-bushes relievers, and whoever suddenly just kind of finds themselves here. Christopher Morel — the journeyman whose two stripes of eyeblack on either side of his face approximate cat whiskers, meaning he earned my affection when he was a nominally hated opponent — joined the Mets this week, so I will invest fondness in Christopher Morel until I find cause to disavow it. That’s how it goes when your team is on a roll. You’re into Benge and Ewing and McLean, but you’re also on board with Christopher Morel, Cristian Pache, and Chyace McDermott.
Gabriel Arias and his flowing dyed blond locks were briefly in on the rising, in their way. Gabriel was a Met while the Mets blazed, claimed the other week from the discard pile of the Guardians, the team we’d just swept. Yet the entirety of his Met experience amounted to participation in a pair of rare Met losses, both by shutout. Arias was DFA’d to make room for Morel, then scooped up by one of the Chicago teams once we jetted off to play the other. His designation for assignment occurred the day after the Mets swept the Nats, the same day the Mets took their team picture. One assumes Gabriel had cleared out ASAP, sparing the photographer from instructing the assembled baseball players, “Everybody say CHEESE…except for Number 25 with the great hair.”
 “Quick, snap it before Gabriel finishes signing for that shipment from Revlon!” A definite The Replacements air informs one’s current consumption of this Mets team. The Replacements, the 2000 film based loosely on the games the NFL foisted on fans when the real players were out on strike in 1987, isn’t very good nor does it send a wholly constructive message about labor relations, but a sports movie doesn’t have to be high art as long as it can gin up some inspiration. Gene Hackman as Coach Jimmy McGinty surely brought that with the voiceover he provides during the movie’s denouement.
“There was no ticker tape parade, no endorsement deals for sneakers or soda pop or breakfast cereal. Just a locker to be cleaned out, and a ride home to catch. But what they didn’t know was that their lives had been changed forever because they had been part of something great. And greatness, no matter how brief, stays with a man. Every athlete dreams of a second chance. These men lived it.”
Honestly, that speech crossed my mind earlier this season, when our replacements were the likes of Austin Slater and Andy Ibañez and Guillo Zuñiga, and their respective tenures didn’t augur many happy endings. Who knows why some clusters of Mets blend while others blur? Some years — 2013, for example — it’s not working with Collin Cowgll and Collin McHugh and one player after another who might as well be Colin Quinn (tough crowd), then suddenly it’s not so abysmal when you’ve brought in Zach Lutz and Josh Satin and the alphabetical opposite of Guillo Zuñiga, David Aardsma. You can only hope the best of the replacements become permanents and the small sample size grows big and bountiful.
Until then, I’ll take the winning of baseball games, one at time. Beats the hell out of the alternative to which we became so sadly accustomed.
by Jason Fry on 19 August 2026 7:55 am It was Fernando Tatis Jr. vs. the New York Mets, and it was no contest.
Zac Thornton‘s first pitch of the game was met with about as perfect a swing as I’ve seen from a baseball player, and the ball came down on the moon.
In the bottom of the second, the Mets scratched and clawed against Robbie Ray, who spent the whole night looking like he was on the verge of getting chased from the game. With the bases loaded and two out, Francisco Lindor connected, sending a ball just over the fence in the right-field corner — a ball Tatis jumped for but seemed to miss, only to come down on his feet, wait a perfectly timed beat and then flash the pearl he’d found. It only mildly galls me to admit it looked extremely cool.
In the fifth, Tatis connected against Thornton again — this time for a conventional-distance homer to right-center, with a man on.
So that’s one player responsible for a seven-run swing, which was enough to snap the Mets’ losing streak and their newly acquired air of invulnerability. Had more been required from Tatis to single-handedly vanquish the Mets, I’ve no doubt he would have been equal to the task.
Further analysis would be the stuff of shrugs; regarding the rest, we were watching in a hotel restaurant without sound, which unfortunately turned both the Howie Rose-Gary Cohen booth reunion and Steve Gelbs’ visit with returning hero Jose Iglesias into pantomimes.
Some nights aren’t going to go your way. You’re the Washington Generals, the hapless foil, the designated opponent, the straight man. The other guy is Fernando Tatis Jr., and you’re not.
by Jason Fry on 18 August 2026 8:54 am Some recaps go for analysis, others go for trying to capture what it was like to be in the moment. And we’ll do a little of that. But sometimes you just want to record what happened and be amazed.
So: Combine the top of the first and the top of the second of Monday night’s Mets-Padres game, and you saw the Padres put seven consecutive men on base against Nolan McLean.
Single. Single. Single. Single. Walk. HBP. Walk. Yes, that checks out. Seven!
That sequence somehow yielded zero runs, but ended with the Padres having the bases loaded and nobody out. Yipes! Which was followed by a fielder’s choice, a sac fly and another single. That sequence yielded exactly one run, and another inning over.
You already know the missing elements. The first inning turned — or rather, didn’t turn — on Carson Benge throwing out runners at home on consecutive plays. Jake Cronenworth was the first victim, thrown out by a good 15 feet trying to score on a blooper by Ty France. Cronenworth tried to go up and over Francisco Alvarez‘s tag and ended up on his face beyond home plate. So third-base coach Bob Henley tried it again four pitches later on a Jackson Merrill single — and watched as Benge unleashed a 103 mph one-hop strike to Alvarez to nail Manny Machado. Per the the Athletic, which has a fun deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the Mets’ outfield defense (it’s free, you’re welcome), it was first time an outfielder threw out runners at home on consecutive plays in 22 years. It was also the first time a Met outfielder had ever nabbed two guys at home in the same inning.
 Arrr, what be happenin’ in this here Mets game? The Mets tallied a couple of runs in the bottom of the first on a Bo Bichette single that just trickled between two plus defenders in Cronenworth and France and a sac fly from Luis Robert Jr. that capped a solid grind of an AB. That left San Diego’s Walker Buehler fuming and gesticulating in the dugout. I think Buehler’s objection was to the injustice of the cosmos and not a specific teammate’s sins, but who knows.
McLean, though, was out of sorts in the second, his mechanics awry and his location amiss. Two walks sandwiched around an HBP left the Mets in the soup, but Luis Rengifo tapped back to McLean, who threw high to Alvarez, eliminating any chance for a 1-2-3 double play but allowing the Mets to force Luis Campusano at home. Fernando Tatis Jr. just missed a grand slam, with a Padre finally reaching home safely to cut the lead to 2-1. Cronenworth then singled, wisely not to Benge this time but to A.J. Ewing in left — who threw out Xander Bogaerts at the plate to end the inning.
So at this point the Padres had made six outs, four of them at home. No Met had touched a live ball except McLean, Alvarez, Benge and Ewing. (OK, I think Jared Young had been involved in a pickoff attempt, but don’t be pedantic.) The Padres were 3 for 4 with runners in scoring position and had tallied one run. Got all that?
(We watched these unlikely events unfold in a restaurant in Boothbay, propping up my phone to show SNY silently and in miniature, and kept getting confused about what was a replay and what was a new plate appearance. Can you blame us?)
Baseball being baseball, of course nothing much happened after that. McLean settled down and the make-it-up-as-you-go Mets bullpen held serve, sparing poor Henley further object lessons in not running on Met outfielders.
The lone bit of analysis I’ll add is to give Alvarez credit above and beyond simply being at the center of a cavalcade of unlikeliness. Plays at home aren’t as easy as we think, even when outfielders’ throws are on target: Catchers have to receive those throws cleanly, know where they are in relation to the plate, spin themselves accordingly, anticipate the runner’s lane without blocking the plate too early, and deal with a large opponent sliding or barreling into their vicinity. A lot can go wrong, particularly when you’re trying to do all that in a hurry, but Alvarez handled it all flawlessly.
As for the rest, well, you can’t outguess baseball. Sometimes crazy things happen and all you can do is hang on for the ride.
by Jason Fry on 17 August 2026 8:34 am The 2025 Mets were lousy, basically without interruption, from June until they expired in Miami, with the date on the carton confirming that sour-milk taste you’d been trying to convince yourself wasn’t there really had been. It’s hard to single out games that stuck in the craw when pretty much all of them did, but I do remember the last two home games at Citi Field, and I bet you do too. Daylen Lile, Jacob Young, Cedric Mullins … my God it was dispiriting.
So sweeping the Nats at Citi Field nearly a year later felt … well, hmm. To quote True Grit, I’d have to weigh that. When you’re this far under .500, inspiring is a word you’ve pretty much put on the shelf until next season. Is there an opposite of dispiriting? Spiriting, perhaps? Did that form once exist only to be wind up unpaired, a la kempt and ept?
Whatever it is, I’d like more of it as the 2026 season cools — and this time, the Mets didn’t even have to wait for the Nationals’ bullpen to self-combust.
With Christian Scott on the mound, the Mets fell behind by 1-0 and 2-0, but neither enemy tally elicited more than a shrug from me. The first came on a little Keibert Ruiz parachute over the infield after Scott had nearly found his way through first and second and none out, which was nice work; the second was a solo shot by the wonderfully named, annoyingly powerful Abimelec Ortiz. (To opposite field, no less — an oppo taco, to quote an MLB Audio spot now so threadbare that it elicits groans and amazed laughter when the Bernstein-Frys hear it yet again.)
Scott kept the roof caving in, pitching into the seventh, and the Mets ambushed Jake Irvin in the fourth — Jared Young single, Brett Baty double, Jorge Polanco RBI groundout, Luis Torrens three-run homer — before tacking on another run in the fifth. I was listening on MLB Audio as we doofed around in Portland (ahead of the first soccer game I’ve watched live that didn’t involve inept children), and besides enjoying the Mets being spiriting, I also found myself enjoying Howie Rose.
Over the years Howie’s baseline has drifted to settle on “mildly cranky,” and I roll my eyes when some aspect of modernity makes him crankier than usual. But he remains a master of play by play, not just with big moments (like his justifiably immortal Pete Alonso call) but with little ones too, and I don’t think listeners appreciate how hard it is to maintain that standard. Next time you listen to Howie, take note how he subtly steps up the pace as a game situation evolves from “mildly interesting” to “action immiment” to “break point.” The play by play becomes sharper and more distinct and the bits of color more surgical and staccato, carrying listeners along for the ride without noticing they’re atop Howie’s shoulders.
I can always tell from Howie’s cadences if I’ve arrived during an interesting juncture or a languid stretch, and I love that. I also love that while he stays on the proper side of homerism, he narrates with his heart on his sleeve. Howie’s always been one of us and unapologetically so: joyful when the Mets are good and tortured when they are not. I genuinely like Keith Raad and Pat McCarthy, whose interplay gets better and better and comes with just the right amount of goofiness, but Howie’s shoes are essentially unfillable. Keith and Pat will be his successors, and I think they’ll be able ones, but they’ll never be his replacements — just as it was with Howie and Bob Murphy.
While I listened in Portland, Howie kept stepping back to dissect the 2026 season, and I found myself nodding along with his point that even in a lost year, developing two dependable outfielders (A.J. Ewing and Carson Benge) and three young starting pitchers (Scott, Nolan McLean and Zac Thornton) is something you can build around.
Scott definitely deserves those plaudits — I was particularly impressed with his fifth inning, when he defended the lead that had been handed to him by blitzing through the heart of the Nats’ order — and it shouldn’t be forgotten that he’s put together a fine season while learning his way around elbow 2.0. I also like how Andy Green has handled him, challenging him both privately and publicly to be better.
On that same subject, I didn’t miss that Luis Robert Jr. was playing left, signaling without making a big deal out of it that center field now belongs to Ewing. (Though Ewing looks like he could use a day to clear his head.) Or that your Mets closer is now … Kodai Senga. Regarding Senga as closer, I’ve gone in probably too rapid succession from “well nothing else has fuckin’ worked” to “this may not actually be so crazy” to “HELL YES KODAI SENGA!!!”
On Sunday Senga flat out bullied the Nats while defending a one-run lead: easy groundout, two erasures via ghost fork. He didn’t muck around with any of the secondary stuff that kept betraying him as a starter, sticking to the fastball and the forkball, with short outings giving the fastball an additional tick or two and thus making the ghost fork even tougher to combat. And he looked (OK, he sounded) like he’d embraced the assignment, working quickly and unfussily.
So: Hell yes Kodai Senga.
That change of roles — shear away less reliable pitches, pound the strike zone, it’s one inning so don’t think too much — has worked for plenty of pitchers on plenty of teams, so I don’t know why I’m so surprised that the early returns have been this good for Senga and the Mets. I suppose it’s that little black cloud of Mets fandom, the one we get accustomed to seeing, to the point that we look askance at a patch of blue sky. Howie knows what I’m talking about — and he could tell you that sometimes it really is sunny.
by Greg Prince on 16 August 2026 1:03 pm Tie it in the eighth, win it in the twelfth. Blow a lead, get it back. Take as long as you need for more runs than them, provided you prevail. Break a deadlock and hold your ground. Romp from jump.
As long as nobody gets hurt, there are no bad ways to win a ballgame. But the best way, I have decided after experiencing the Mets doing it for the first time in more than two years, is go into the bottom of the ninth trailing, and leave the bottom of the ninth having won. No free runners placed on second. No straining bullpen resources to the point where the Syracuse shuttle is idling at LaGuardia. All the muss right away. All the fuss carrying the day. Defeat shoved from your dugout to theirs. Victory is ours, thanks for playing.
On Saturday, the Mets trailed after eight innings, an echo of that stat that blanketed 2025 and their first swath of 2026. “The Mets are oh-and-a-thousand in their last thousand games when trailing after eight innings.” They rid themselves of that unwanted distinction in May when Tyrone Taylor had one of his The Tyrone Taylor Games by belting a game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth against some local pickup squad, setting the stage for the Mets to win in ten. The proper response was euphoria, and I was euphoric, yet not fully sated. Same as a few days earlier, when the Mets tied the Tigers in the seventh and went on to win in the tenth.
Productive? Check.
Uplifting? Check.
The best version of a walkoff there is? Check back.
MLB has ruined extra innings to such an extent that I stop just shy of being grateful the Mets survive to make it to a tenth. Saturday, I would have accepted life post-ninth, but I wanted the game to be over immediately, and I wanted its path to the loss column diverted to the one titled win. I wanted it now and I wanted it more than I knew.
On June 13, 2024, with the Mets trailing the Marlins, 2-1, J.D. Martinez stepped up to face Tanner Scott in the bottom of the ninth at Citi Field. Francisco Lindor was on second. Momentarily, Francisco Lindor was at home plate, joined by his teammates as they all congratulated Martinez on hitting the homer that had just won the Mets the game, 3-2. This was one night after Grimace threw out his legendary first pitch, so we weren’t yet giddy as a matter of course the way we would become later in 2024. And despite having had our difficulties getting going that season, J.D.’s walkoff blast marked the fourth instance of those Mets coming from behind in the home ninth. That’s how we got our first win of the year, when we began the arduous process of going from oh-and-five to OMG.
Then, for all the ecstasy to follow, including some memorable top-of-the-ninth comebacks on the road to get us into and keep us inside the playoffs, the 2024 Mets never did quite that again. They’d break ties in the bottom of the ninth. They’d forge ties in the bottom of the eighth and break them in the bottom of the tenth. They’d do enough nutty koo-koo things to keep Paul Shaffer in his bliss. But they wouldn’t come from behind in the bottom of the ninth to win a game in the bottom of the ninth. I missed that.
The Mets missed that altogether in 2025. They missed the playoffs altogether in 2025. They’ll miss the playoffs in 2026, but there’s missing the playoffs and there’s missing the playoffs. Last year was a miss, especially when one remembers, as I was compelled to on Saturday, how the team on the other side of the field had been the impediment to the 2025 Mets’ last, best chance to effect the kind of win I’d been missing since June of ’24.
Daylen Lile hit an inside-the-park home run on the last home Saturday last year. The Mets lost in eleven. Jacob Young made two circus catches on the last home Sunday last year. The Mets lost by one. I don’t walk around steamed at the Nationals every day of the week, but put them at Citi Field, particularly on a weekend like this one, and it all comes rushing back to me, not only their rising to the occasion, but the Mets’ failure to meet it. The Mets tied that Saturday game in the ninth, then left the bases loaded. By act of Manfredity, they had the tying run on in the bottom of the eleventh. The Sunday game was one Young leap from being tied in the ninth. Either way, those two games were part of the oh-and-a-thousand.
The frisky August 2026 Mets seem worlds removed from the drudgery of September 2025. They seem only vaguely related to the wayward Mets of July 2026, who are no more intrinsic to the current New York narrative than the Montreal Expos are to that of the Washington Nationals. You know one led to the other, but nobody’s speaking French now. In the Mets’ case, we aren’t the mopes we recently were. Not the players, not the fans.
I flipped to the Red Sox-Pirates game later Saturday night. Saw some skinny dude pitching for Pittsburgh. It took me more than a second to realize I was looking at Luke Weaver. Luke Weaver was a wonderful Met, but that was when the Mets weren’t wonderful. He broke a twelve-game losing streak. He might have prevented other losing streaks from lengthening. I’ve put quite a bit of that out of my mind. Someday I’ll get back to appreciating the excellence he gave us when we were otherwise mired. But I don’t want to think about the Luke Weaver Mets much at present.
When Sean Manaea came out dealing in the top of the first Saturday, I figured we were set. When we worked Brad Lord patiently and aggressively in the bottom of the first, I figured we would cruise. Not quite two decent weeks of Mets baseball, and I am overcome with confidence. Our boys were walking and stealing, with Jared Young bases-loaded doubling to give us a quick 2-0 lead with surely more to come. Lord threw 44 pitches and was removed after reloading the bases with his fourth walk of the inning.
Then Jorge Polanco, speaking of oh-for-a-thousand, struck out against the second Nats pitcher, Will Dion. Hmm…seems we should be up by more than 2-0. Maybe it won’t matter, given how good Sean looks. It’s the same security schmatta of serenity I wrap myself in when Nolan McLean gets rolling. I try to avoid assuming, but subconsciously, I’m all “we got this.” Then McLean struggles for an inning or two, and “this” gets up for grabs. Manaea was lovely without qualification until Andres Chaparro tagged him for a no-doubter of a home run to lead off the fourth. Just one run, and all that, except this Dion chap was treating every Met batter like Jorge Polanco. Nothing in the second. Nada in the third. A walk preceding nil in the fourth. Blanks in the fifth. Wasn’t this supposed to be a bullpen game for them? Stop with the bulk of Will Dion!
The loveliness of Sean Manaea had its limits in the sixth. Our starter hit Andrew Pinckney to begin the inning. After one long flyout, he walked Chaparro again. Two on. Brady House hooked a ball to left. The game-of-inches truism had teeth. House’s deep fly sure looked like it would continue to hook. The foul pole (or fair pole, if Warner Wolf is still in your head) invited it over for a tickle. Ping! That’s a three-run homer, by inches. That’s a 4-2 Nationals lead. Manaea worked through two more Nat baserunners, with no scoreboard damage done, but the preceding sequence of events felt ominous.
Ominous? For the fifth-place Mets taking on the fourth-place Nats, with the distance between them entering play five-and-a-half games? It’s a game of inches in more ways than determining what’s foul and what’s fair. You inch in when you’re a fan. You get real close to this stuff. You’re winning in the first. You’re losing in the sixth. Maybe it shouldn’t creep along your nerve endings, but it does. You don’t want to lose this particular game to this particular team. I certainly didn’t.
Nor did Carson Benge, who led off the sixth against Tom Cosgrove — Will Dion was done, praise be — with a home run to right. All right, we’ve closed the gap to one. We shall close no more in this inning, however. Manaea returns for the bottom of the seventh, and he dances with danger. Nasim Nuñez singles to lead off. Sean and a cast of thousands pick him off, 1-3-6-3-4. Bases clear. Then the bases get tromped on a beat later when Pinckney triples off the right field fence, his ball bouncing out of the grasp of Benge. Manaea must go now. Dedniel Nuñez enters. Dylan Crews lofts a fly ball to what I think is deep enough right. The Nats agree and send the runner from third. Benge doesn’t concur and fires a one-hop strike home. Pinckney is so out, you forget he’s half of an inning-ending double play. All I saw was Carson and a bolt of lightning delivered to Francisco Alvarez. Yeah, I guess there was a putout directly preceding it.
New Nats pitcher in the bottom of the seventh, Orlando Ribalta. The Mets revert to stymied. Nuñez gets two batters in the eighth. One of them reaches. Jefry Yan replaces Dedniel. Jared Young smothers a potential extra-base hit from CJ Abrams and turns it into a 3-unassisted. Then those who pay attention got what they tuned in for, as Yan strikes out Harry Ford. A Yan strikeout is a sight to behold for the super coda it elicits.
Up in the sky! Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Jefry Yan!
 Super! The top of the eighth was Met momentum incarnate. The bottom of the eighth was the vacuum that sucked it right out. Versus Clayton Beeter (boy, has this become a bullpen game), Lindor singles to get things going. Lindor gets thrown out at second on a ball he thinks has skittered far enough away from Ford to advance. It hasn’t. The Nats’ catcher, having gunned down the baserunner, resists the temptation to leap like Yan.
The eighth ain’t dead, though. Bo Bichette singles. Benge walks. They both move up on a wild pitch that skitters helpfully. Jared is up, ready to do another of those things we can recall the next day in order to remark on what a quietly terrific season he’s having. Except Jared strikes out, and Marcus Semien brings that earlier-in-’26 energy to bear by grounding out.
Yan is still in for the ninth. He grounds out last September’s defensive villain Jacob Young. He strikes out last September’s speedy villain Daylen Lile. He believes he has struck out Nasim Nuñez, who is destined to co-star in a viral video. Yan knows he has the K on called strike three. He leaps. He’s barely back from his flight when he realizes Nestor Ceja has called it a ball. With Nestor Ceja being the home plate umpire, that matters. Jefry Yan, brimming with joy and confidence, adds a flourish to his celebration by patting his head emphatically. It’s the international sign for challenging the call. It’s unusual for a pitcher to ask for one of the precious reserve of reviews to be used. It’s frankly amazing to watch the request unfold at the tail end of a WOO-HOO!!/WHAT?? response like Yan’s.
It was a ball. Wow.
But then Yan got the batter swinging. Double wow.
I had a friend in sixth grade named Jeffrey. He was over at my house one day as lunchtime approached. We hadn’t eaten yet. My mother was on the phone with his mother. His mother was concerned about the current lack of food on our table. His mother fretted to my mother, “Jeffrey hasn’t had a thing in his mouth all morning.” It became a running joke in our family for several years. I bring this up because I heard myself think, in my friend Jeffrey’s mother’s voice, “Jefry hasn’t had a win in his mouth all year.” Eventually, my mother saw that sixth-grade Jeffrey got fed. Only the 2026 Mets could tend to their teammate Jefry’s appetites.
The Nationals were up to their sixth pitcher of the game, Yovanny Cruz. The Nats have a reputation for hitting a ton and running wild, but they are also known for bullpens that don’t get them the results they seek. Will Dion was a problem for us, and a couple of other Washington relievers were plenty effective, but ya had to think if we face enough of these guys, their alleged cheap-suit nature would unravel as our hopes required. Brett Baty walking to lead off the bottom of the ninth was a good sign. Jorge Polanco singling next was heaven giving the A-OK. Polanco was now one-for-a-thousand-and-four. Baty moved to second. Cristian Pache came into pinch-run for Polanco. Jorge needed to be removed and placed under glass to preserve whatever mystical force had suddenly infiltrated his abilities.
Alvarez doubled to left on the first pitch he saw. You usually wish Francisco would take a pitch. He took this pitch where we wanted it to go. Baty scored to tie the game at four. Pache zipped to third. Luis Robert, Jr., pinch-ran for Alvy. One inning! Two pinch-runners! Andy Green and I are serious about winning this right here, right now. Maybe not right now, because A.J. Ewing struck out on a full count. But right here, in the ninth…yes! Lindor cracks a liner to deep right that even if it’s caught isn’t going to prevent Pache from scoring the winning run. It goes for an RBI single, and the Mets go into a Yan-like frenzy, having come from behind in the ninth inning to win in the ninth inning, 5-4.
I was certainly frenzied, receiving a few desirables in practically one burst. Got that ideal walkoff. Got that punch of revenge I’d been wanting to give the Nats for last September. Got a win in Jefry’s mouth. Got two pinch-runners in one inning, even. Also happy to see Lindor clicking, especially after his baserunning short-circuited what could have been a real rally in the eighth, more especially since he’s been scorching the ball since I suggested in July that he might be done. I love when a Met proves me wrong by going right. I also dug noticing an unfakeable smile-filled embrace between Francisco and Juan Soto. Glad to know those two are getting along.
The scene I enjoyed most from the clubhouse was the interpreted interview with Yan. Man, that kid can smile. There was a Spanish-language hit shortly after I turned eleven called “Eres Tu” by a group known as Mocedades. American radio listeners had no problem not knowing what they were saying, but an English-language version was released just in case. It was called “Touch the Wind”. I heard it a couple of times and decided I didn’t need to be catered to in my native tongue (when I got to seventh grade, I was shocked to learn “Eres Tu” was not Spanish for “Touch the Wind”). My wife, who took German in high school, retains a similar preference for Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” over the version called “99 Red Balloons”.
I bring this up, because I can’t know exactly what Yan is telling reporters without Alan Suriel translating his answers, but I don’t need to know. The kid’s look in these scrums says it all. He’s thrilled to be here. He’s aware that his response to his successes are unorthodox. It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s just that he’s acting on the outside what he’s feeling on the inside. And, yeah, he’ll rethink that challenge business next time. Jefry, tu eres the real thing.
Carson Benge, in the big leagues about four months longer than Jefry Yan, is an grizzled veteran by comparison. When he was asked about the ballclub being so much more Yannish than it had been, he nodded and said something about how great it is to be reminded of what it was like to play the game the way you did as a kid. Voice of experience Benge is 23. Nolan McLean, another Rookie of the Year contender, was on the same page in Cleveland, saying the vigor his new teammate was generating brought him back to his roots. Nolan recently turned 25.
They’re such old pros! Yet so new to winning baseball games as a unit. The fifth-place Mets have wafted to within four-and-a-half games of fourth place. The Mets haven’t finished alone in last since 2003, the last year before this one that I didn’t go to see the Mets play a team known as either the Expos or Nationals in person. That about-to-lapse streak was more curiosity and coincidence than needing to be on hand for a big Met rivalry, but let’s not stop the assault on respectability now. Let’s catch those Nats! I didn’t think we would be in position to catch anybody or anything other than a higher draft pick.
The Mets have won eight of their last eleven and are nearly .500 since Andy Green took over. Green still feels like he’s keeping an eye on the front counter until management can send over somebody full-time, but what he’s doing is working. Or he’s not undermining it. Truly, I don’t know what’s going with these Mets. But dang, do I endorse it.
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