The Sell With It

So much for well-intentioned inertia. The fourth-place Mets aren’t content to do nothing. Fourth-place they appear resigned to, but they’ll be damned if they don’t keep busy while maintaining it. David Robertson was not looking to be moved, yet moved he’s been, to his seventh major league team, traded late Thursday night to the Miami Marlins as the raindrops on the Mets’ 2-1 win over the fifth-place Nationals were still drying. The Marlins, in the absolute thick of a full-season playoff race for the first time since Miguel Cabrera was a rookie, are buyers. The Mets, a little too far outside the Wild Card action to be termed looking in, are sellers. When the Mets opened their high-expectation season at Miami on March 30, I’m sure we all saw this scenario unfolding four months hence.

Robertson, brought in as setup man to Edwin Diaz, then promoted to closer when Diaz’s right patellar tendon had other ideas, was a) mostly successful in his unexpected assignment and b) pitching under an expiring contract. Those two factors will make a non-contender shop a fella who can save games. The Mets went to market.

They brought back two kids, an 18-year-old infielder named Marco Vargas and a 19-year-old catcher named Ronald Hernandez. They’ve never heard of you, either. The ideal scenario is sometime in the mid-to-late 2020s, when David Robertson is an answer you’re kicking yourself for not filling in on that morning’s Immaculate Grid, we will be benefiting in some way from having grabbed such talented youth at the deadline that season when things weren’t going according to plan, but they sure worked out down the line, huh?

Maybe that happens. Who I am to tell a couple of teenagers their dreams won’t come true? Who am I to tell myself that our dreams won’t intersect with those of a pair of prospects? For now, Vargas and Hernandez are people the more ambitious among us will pretend to know something concrete about before they show up on the next MLB Pipeline list.

The reactions in the Met clubhouse provided a few insights into how business is business. You had the determinedly upbeat veterans, Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso, insisting the Mets’ chances weren’t wholly snuffed as they searched for the right words to show their esteem for Robertson. Lindor called him a great father. Alonso, perhaps indicating that the hitters and the relievers don’t hang out that much, talked about how “decorated” David is in this game. Mark Canha — whose bases-loaded eighth-inning sac fly that followed a sudden 97-minute rain delay delivered the now-forgotten winning run — and Brandon Nimmo emitted the vibes of weary pros who’d attended this rodeo in too many previous lost campaigns. Canha didn’t bother with too many brave words about how it was still possible for the Mets to make a run. Several days remain until the trade deadline. The next run Canha makes may be to catch a flight wherever he is sent.

Kodai Senga, whose six innings of one-run ball typified the effectiveness he’s given the Mets most starts since the middle of June, seemed a little baffled by the late-July rituals unfolding around him. This doesn’t happen much in Japan, he said through interpreter Hiro Fujiwara, adding, in so many words, the most honest thing any ballplayer on a non-contending team may have ever said: this doesn’t really affect me. Kodai explained he meant he still has to prepare for games, and David’s a great guy, but the season goes on.

That it does. For four months, it was essential to have David Robertson rested and ready for just the right moment, whichever inning it arose, usually the ninth. Save situations are what New York Savings and Loan checks were to Leonardo DiCaprio as kiter extraordinaire Frank Abagnale in Catch Me If You Can. As he told the high-end call girl played by Jennifer Garner, the one who only accepted cash, they’re like gold. Robertson was able to cash most of the save situations he laid his hands on, 14 of 17, no questions asked. God help Buck Showalter if he used somebody else and the decision proved counterfeit. Why didn’t you use Robertson? Now Buck will use Adam Ottavino, or Brooks Raley (as he did to raised pre-trade announcement eyebrows Thursday night), or Drew Smith, or whoever emerges as Diaz’s placeholder. In 2018, the going-nowhere Mets traded decorated longtime closer Jeurys Familia to playoff-bound Oakland. Familia was leading the Mets in saves. Their season went on with somebody else closing games. When the season ended, Familia was still the club leader in saves. In seasons when you’re ready to ship your usually reliable closer elsewhere, it likely means you’re not winning enough games to take saves seriously.

There’s a trumpet player who’s a fixture on Mets Plaza before and after every home game. He plays for tips and elicits them by performing the crowd’s presumed favorites: “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”; “Lazy Mary”; “Meet The Mets”. The last game I went to, last week, I noticed he started his postgame set with “Narco,” still the song we think of when we think of protecting ninth-inning leads. David Robertson’s entrance music was “Sweet Home Alabama”. I guess the Mets Plaza trumpeter didn’t make it one of his standards. Good call on his part.