For Pete's Sake, Fellas!

As it turned out, the Mets played one classic in the first leg of the 2025 Subway Series, sandwiched by a pair of duds.

Sunday night’s finale, narrated by an irritating ESPN crew that licked every Yankee uniform until it was shiny and clean, looked like it was in the running to be a classic for a while — it was 2-2 going to the bottom of the eighth, though the Yankees had collected their two runs in supremely irritating fashion against David Peterson back in the first.

Peterson endured this sequence: error by Mark Vientos, flyout, a little slice by Aaron Judge that went for a ground-rule double, grounder to first that Pete Alonso couldn’t handle because he was playing in and so also went for a double. After facing four batters Peterson had done nothing wrong but was down 2-0.

The Mets put together good ABs against Max Fried, who’s always struck me as vaguely dissolute looking, with the furtive, weaselly mien of a back-alley hood known for hot-wiring beater cars. (Given Fried’s employment as a Brave and then a Yankee, I’m sure there’s no bias at work there — nope, none at all.) The Mets nicked Fried for a run in the second and another in the fifth, with the latter coming home on a wild pitch with Juan Soto standing at the plate.

I’m obligated to note for the record that Soto did not have a good game — he loafed it up the line on a ball to the infield that the Yankees mishandled, overthrew a cutoff man, and generally looked less than fully engaged. It’s not worth making a federal case out of, but it wasn’t ideal. At least Soto’s night was better than home-plate ump Adam Hamari’s — Hamari’s strike zone had a little extra curl on the outside corner, which victimized Starling Marte and Trent Grisham; he also punched out Clay Bellinger on a pitch that was clearly inside and blew a key pitch against Brandon Nimmo. The kindest thing one can say is that Hamari was equitable in being terrible at his job.

Anyhow, with the game out of the starters’ hands after six it was time for reliever roulette. The Mets couldn’t do anything with Jonathan Loaisiga (who stuff looks like he never left) or Devin Williams; Huascar Brazoban somehow pulled a Houdini act to escape the seventh but Ryne Stanek wouldn’t be so lucky in the eighth.

As fans our routine lens for viewing a loss is that our guys failed, sometimes accompanied by a moral judgment we think explains that failure. So let’s be fair in chronicling the eighth: The Yankees put together terrific ABs against Stanek, forcing him to work deep counts and ending up with second and third, one out and rookie Jorbit Vivas at the plate.

That might have seemed like a mismatch, but Vivas battled Stanek for 11 pitches, hanging in there against 100 and 101 MPH gas. As the AB ground along I was screaming for Stanek to go back to the splitter, as Vivas clearly had the fastball measured; Stanek didn’t do that but did get the outcome he wanted, a groundball to Alonso playing in.

Against the speed of Jasson Dominguez Alonso had to hurry. He did so, and threw the ball over Francisco Alvarez‘s head before you could say “Duda to d’Arnaud.” That put the Mets a run behind, Paul Goldschmidt singled in a second run, and the Mets summoned Genesis Cabrera.

A while back Jeremy Hefner discussed Cabrera (whom he inevitably referred to as “Cabby”) as a project similar to Brazoban last year, with the Mets having to essentially rebuild him after neglect and misfortune elsewhere, starting with convincing Cabrera to trust his stuff. That’s worked better than we would have bet with Brazoban, so we should take the long view and be patient with Cabrera’s progress, or lack thereof. But patience isn’t the same as liking what happened Sunday: Cabrera walked Grisham, took advantage of a rare overly aggressive AB from Judge to strike him out, and then yielded an all-she-wrote grand slam to Bellinger. It would have been a flyout in a park with dimensions not suited for a flea circus, but that’s sour grapes: The fences were the same distance when the Mets were hitting, and they didn’t hit a single ball out of Yankee Stadium this weekend.

And so the series ended on a sour note, with bad fundies bookending a reasonably taut middle. The Yankees scored eight runs, four of them unearned, and now I never want to think about this one again. For Pete’s sake, fellas!