With one out in the top of the ninth in Cincinnati Wednesday night, a baseball team and its adherents desperately needed therapy.
Mark Canha [1] had just started the inning by fouling out against Hunter Strickland [2], conspicuously useless as a 2020 COVID Met and now somehow the Reds’ closer. The Mets had managed two runs against Cincinnati, an improvement over Tuesday night [3] even if one of those runs had come on a Jeff McNeil [4] grounder past a nearly sessile Brandon Drury [5] and the other had come on a broken-bat parachute hit by Tomas Nido [6]. But the Reds had tallied three on a night new father David Peterson [7] looked … well, like a man who hadn’t slept properly in a couple of days.
The Mets had stayed in the picture thanks to some sparkling relief by Adonis Medina [8] (who might get sent down by way of thanks) and the aptly named Colin Holderman [9], but it sure looked like they were about to lose, and it was just a little frustrating. Most obviously, there was the lack of hitting. More specifically, there was the lack of hitting against the thoroughly lousy Reds, a ragamuffin assemblage foisted on fans who deserve better. The Mets had 11 hits, which normally means three or four runs even when not firing on all cylinders, but their sequencing had been nonexistent and their luck had been inexplicably and almost comically bad. Now add in far too much Dada umpiring — I think home-plate ump Paul Clemons was using a Magic 8-ball for anything near the edge of the strike zone — and word that the horrifying Braves were winning again and it was suddenly just all too much.
Brandon Nimmo [10] singled, but that felt like more proof that baseball is capricious and cruel and engineered to torture you. And then Starling Marte [11] smacked a ball down the left-field line, over the third-base bag and foul. Except third-base ump Alex MacKay called it fair.
I don’t know, maybe it was fair. That’s one of the most difficult calls for an umpire. But it sure didn’t look fair to me — or to Strickland, who stared at Nimmo in disbelief as he scampered home and then spent the bottom half of the inning glowering at MacKay with cartoon steam whistling out of his ears. The game didn’t make any more sense than it had a moment earlier, but now it was the Reds who were gape-mouthed with disbelief.
(By the way, how did a game with so much farcical umpiring not feature a big moment from that cackling gremlin Angel Hernandez?)
Tapped to pitch next for New York was Adam Ottavino [12], whom I like while not particularly trusting. The lack of trust is a product of that sometimes disobedient slider he depends on; the liking is a product of the fact that Ottavino always looks deeply weary on the mound, weighed down by the psychic tonnage of being a veteran reliever who’s Seen Some Shit.
On Wednesday night Ottavino’s pitches were riding high, but the Reds did nothing with them. On we went to extra innings and ghost runners, with Ender Inciarte [13] replacing Pete Alonso [14] as the Mets’ unearned passenger. McNeil flied out, but Dom Smith [15] snuck a double past Drury (who really shouldn’t be forced to play first) and the Mets had somehow scored. Dauri Moreta [16] — if nothing else there are some wonderful names in that beleaguered Cincinnati pen — buzzed Eduardo Escobar [17], leading to some barking and brief on-field milling before Escobar flied out. (I was mostly worried that Strickland would use a brawl as cover for an opportunity to shank MacKay, which would probably lead to at least a moderate suspension.) Moreta then intentionally walked Luis Guillorme [18] to get to pinch-hitter James McCann [19], which is what I would have done, seeing how McCann is 1 for 342,612 in his tenure as a Met with 342,611 ground outs.
Make it 2 for 342,613: McCann somehow lashed an RBI single to give the Mets a two-run lead, because nothing made sense any more. And then Nimmo unloaded, burying a homer in the right-field corner much as he did against St. Louis. It was one of those baseball moments where frustration gets transmuted into joy, a balloon carving madcap zigzags beneath the ceiling as all that stale imprisoned air escapes and blares a PPPPPPTTTTTTTT of amazed happy defiance.
The Mets led by five, a lead they turned over to Edwin Diaz [20] in a non-save situation. That’s not always been a recipe for success, but Diaz was apparently feeling some frustration himself, because he simply erased the Reds with 101 MPH heat and that deadly slider. Seriously, the man had a five-run lead and that was probably the most impressive he’s ever looked in a Met uniform. Maybe the Mets should try to figure out how to keep him frustrated. Or maybe the lesson is the same as it was when the Mets were losing — that some nights nothing makes sense, because baseball is like that, and it’s maddening but OK because this time your team staggered out of the funhouse having somehow won [21].