When your team’s going well, you call a game like Sunday afternoon’s things like “an inspiring win” or perhaps “proof of resilience.”
When your team’s going badly, you just laugh at being randomly atop karma’s wheel for a day.
I’m not sure what to call Sunday afternoon’s game, because I’m not sure what the Mets are.
One of the joys of baseball — which was a lot more joyous before they stuck a football-style clock on the proceedings — is the way good games unfold with a surface lack of action that hides the tension being ratcheted higher and higher, until boom! that tension is released in a hurry and anyone who’s been paying attention realizes that was the payoff of all the apparent quiet.
So it was Sunday, when Sean Manaea [1] and Luis Ortiz [2] traded zeroes for six innings and then handed it over to their bullpens. Both teams emerged from the seventh unscathed, but the eighth was another story: Things were about to happen in a hurry. In the Mets’ half, All-Star snub Brandon Nimmo [3] laced a double off former teammate Colin Holderman [4] to chase home Francisco Lindor [5] and give the Mets a 1-0 lead. In the Pirates’ half, Dedniel Nunez [6] was removed after getting two outs (and allowing two hits) in favor of Edwin Diaz [7]. Diaz? With four outs to get? After working the night before? (Admittedly, with relatively few pitches thrown.) Without a clean slate?
Cue mutterings from the large contingent of visiting Mets fans at PNC Park and all of us on our couches farther away. And, indeed, Diaz walked Joshua Palacios [8] on four pitches and his fifth pitch was a slider that sat in the middle of the plate, and which Nick Gonzales [9] spanked into center for a two-run single and a Pirates lead. That sent the Mets out for the ninth a run in arrears with Aroldis Chapman [10] — he of the fastest reasonably documented pitch ever thrown — filling in as the Pittsburgh closer.
Chapman got two quick strikes on Francisco Alvarez [11], but this year Alvarez has developed an ability to fight his way back into counts that brings to mind Edgardo Alfonzo [12] and a young David Wright [13], as well as current specialist Nimmo. Alvarez worked the count to 3-2, spat on a slider that was just low, and was replaced at first by Ben Gamel [14]. Harrison Bader [15] fought his way to 3-2 and singled, putting speed on the bases and bringing up Mark Vientos [16].
Hope? It’s a delicate thing — a little bird to hold gently on your palm while it dries its wings, perhaps assisted by some gentle exhalations to speed the drying process up and accompanying assurances that the sky is wonderful and little feathered friends will love it up there. Vientos went down 0-2 on a pair of sliders, worked the count full … and got caught looking at a slider when he was expecting a fastball.
One out, ugh — and the ughs were compounded when Luis Torrens [17] went down on three straight pitches, having clearly been looking for the exact opposite pitch of what Chapman had given him three times in a row.
Jose Iglesias [18] was up as the Mets’ last hope, and I allowed myself to think he was exactly the kind of hitter I’d want there — possessed of a good eye and a reputation as a battler. And Iglesias did battle, fouling away putaway pitches at 101 and 102 before walking on a 101 MPH four-seamer a hair below the zone.
Chapman’s pitch count was rising steadily, and here came Lindor — who can look hopeless at the plate in one AB and like a wizard in the next one. Chapman’s third pitch was a slider that got too much plate; Lindor squared it up and a moment later it was touching the outfield grass and the Mets had the lead back.
Hope was flapping happily around at treetop level tweeting that the world was a wonderful place, but I was holding my breath because I knew what it didn’t: there are hunters lurking in the sky that a little bird doesn’t want to meet. Diaz went back out to the mound after nearly half an hour of sitting and, one feared, marinating in his own unhappiness about what had transpired. His first pitches to Oneil Cruz [19] weren’t exactly reassuring, either: sliders getting too much plate and fastballs missing a bit of crucial juice.
But Diaz got Cruz looking on a slider at the knees and his pitches then seemed a lot crisper against Rowdy Tellez [20]. He grounded out and Diaz went to work on Jack Suwinski [21], who worked a full count but tapped a ball harmlessly to Iglesias. It nestled in Pete Alonso [22]‘s glove and the Mets had … enjoyed the rotation of the karmic wheel? Yanked one out through pluck and grit?
Damned if I know — every time I think I do, the Mets try and convince me of the opposite. What I do know is they won [23], and they’re about the most interesting .500 team one can imagine, even if you have no idea where that’s taking them.