I watched this one in the company of my friend Will, a diehard Cardinals fan whose inherent decency has been unsullied by his time in the Gotham irony mines, in a bar on 14th Street. (Last time we witnessed Mets/Cardinals, Will's Ankiel jersey and Cards rooting made him the target of peanut-throwers, which he found strangely delightful.) Before we get to the game, a reality check for any of us who think first place in the NL East should have changed something in this city of frontrunners: The tally of TVs in our bar was Yankees/Rangers 7, Some Fucking Soccer Game in Some Other Hemisphere 2, Mets/Cardinals 1.
Between Mark Mulder flinging ungodly curves and getting ground ball after ground ball and Steve Trachsel being possibly the most impressive I've ever seen him, this one had the look of one of those One Mistake games. Except Trachsel didn't make a mistake. Who didn't want him to walk Bad Albert? Who blamed him for Scott Rolen rocketing an 0-2 pitch off his shoe tops and seeing it go up the gap?
In the ninth, after Reyes wound up on second and it was obvious Mulder was exhausted, his arm angle jellied, I told Will: “This has gone from one of those games where you lose 1-0 and say, 'That was a great game' to one of those games that rips your heart out if you don't win.”
Alas, it would be the latter.
Not that I have a second-guess in me. I've studied the base-out matrix, and maybe it's just my old age talking, but I had no problem with Lo Duca bunting Reyes to third, not on the road with Beltran, Delgado and Wright coming up. Walking Beltran was obvious, Delgado's HBP was just the final sign that Mulder was finished, and Wright…ugh.
David Wright is my favorite player. And I have absolutely zero doubt that he's the next Franchise. But he's still just 23. Ray Knight famously said that “concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary,” but Knight was 33 when he said that. At the risk of waxing avuncular, there are things you learn in the decade between 23 and 33 that you only learn by watching a decade go by.
So chalk up one for the Cardinals — and alas, the rubber game awaits with Pujols hitless and Lima Time! no longer avoidable. But thinking of Knight, I'm imagining a 33-year-old David Wright (still in gray/black, blue and orange, of course) at the plate, bases loaded, one out, tying run on third.
And you know what? I'll take whatever odds you give me.
Meet me in St. Louis.
The offense just looked Deadlast night; if you want a positive Spin, you could blame it on good pitching.
Seriously, though, this stretch has gone from annoying to disppointing to what I think is now frustrating. Next up: worrisome, though I'm not quite there yet. Consensus during the tailgate we had in Philly the night Heilman threw one away was that we'd sign for 8-7 over the next fifteen: split six with Philly, six with the Cards/Yanks, and take 2 of 3 from Milwaukee. Well, we're way off-plan now, and to get to 8-7 it'll take 5-2. Wright or Floyd singles last night? 4-3. That's why last night sucks so much, among other reasons. Now today Pujols gets to have some fun putting Lima's ERA into double digits, and we crawl back to Queens for six with two tough teams. Yikes.
By the way, slightly off-Met point, but really interesting: Monday, May 1st, the Mets beat the Pirates on a bottom-9th, walk-off E1. 8 days later, they were on the other end, losing on a bottom-9th, walk-off E1. One week later, the winner of that game, the Phillies, were on the other end, losing on a bottom-9th, walk-off E1 to the Brewers.
They were only two at-bats, but they defined the gap between (with no apologies to Morgan Ensberg because he flat-out drives me nuts) the two premiere third basemen in the National League.
Scott Rolen's double was one of the most incredible hits I've ever seen. Not only was the pitch impossible, but did you see how the ball just took off?
David Wright? No, not there yet, not all the time anyway, certainly not in the ninth when a fly ball, not the most incredible hit you've ever seen, was needed.
If I bother to fill in All-Star ballot, I'll vote for Wright. Of course I will. But if I had any conscience, I'd still go with Rolen, who is someone Wright is still aspiring to be. Is it possible Rolen is now a ten-year veteran? He sure plays like it.
Chipper Jones is still alive and well, as evidenced by his walkoff homer against the Marlins last night. But I'm not counting third basemen who make Morgan Ensberg look good to me.
Very interesting. It's always sort of bugged me that runs that score as the result of an error by the pitcher are still unearned, considering that it's clearly the pitcher's fault the run scored.
Last night was definitely a frustrating loss (especially since with Lima Time coming up, it was essentially the rubber game), but I was encouraged by how well Trachsel pitched after a couple of rough outings.
When the pitcher becomes a fielder, he's not the pitcher anymore. Does that make sense? Me neither. I don't think wild pitches count as errors if that makes you feel any better.
How about a pitcher trying to secure an ERA title. It's his last start, he knows if he gives up one run he loses it (and a bonus), and he has a runner on second with two out and a tie game in the ninth and a batter he doesn't want to deal with and he just wants the season to end? If he turns and throws the ball into centerfield knowing the speedy runner will score, is it an unearned run? He loses the game but wins the ERA title?
Hard to believe this isn't how Craig Swan won his.
Interesting scenario. How about this one: a pitcher trying for the ERA title makes a wild pitch with a runner on second and one out, allowing the runner to go to third. The next two batters fly out, with the first one bringing the runner home. After the game, the pitcher lobbies the official scorer to change the wild pitch to a passed ball, essentially throwing his catcher under the bus to help his own stats. Or the reverse could happen – it's ruled a passed ball, and the catcher hangs the pitcher out to dry to help his own case for a Gold Glove.
The more I look at that paragraph I just wrote, the more it seems like an incredibly twisted baseball-themed (in)version of the classic O. Henry story, “The Gift of the Magi.”
I filled in an All-Star ballot, but that's because I like spam and junk mail.
[grumpy old man voice] Remember when you could vote for All-Stars without thereby ensuring 85,000 cubic tones of MLB credit-card offers arriving at your door in the next year? [/grumpy old man voice]
Oh, and I voted for Wright.