Remember the long-ago ad [1] in which they switched a fancy restaurant’s presumably fancy coffee for Folgers crystals? A similar experiment seemed to have happened in Milwaukee Tuesday night.
That was platinum glover Brice Turang [2] looking oddly lethargic on a Carson Benge [3] grounder that wound up bringing in two critical runs, and that was the Milwaukee infield doing ill-advised things with balls entrusted to it. (Pat Murphy [4]‘s look of disgust in the Milwaukee dugout brought me back to the gape-mouthed stare Dallas Green [5] sported too many days at Shea.) Meanwhile, that was Bo Bichette [6] making beautiful plays at third and A.J. Ewing [7] manning left field like he’d been there his whole life instead of making his maiden voyage.
But then it was a game of switcheroos, with Brandon Sproat [8] starting against the club that sent him away in the now-infamous Freddy Peralta [9] deal and Devin Williams [10] returning to the site of his greatest success — and, if we’re being less charitable (as I generally am where Williams is concerned), the place where his career arrived at a fateful before-and-after moment.
Sproat looked pretty good, all told, working into the fifth and allowing two runs. But he also looked inefficient, with four walks ensuring his early departure. Sounds a little like Peralta, minus the snarling and snapping from your chronicler — and oh what I wouldn’t do for another switcheroo that involved those two changing places once again.
On the other side of the ball, Zac Thornton was terrific once again — and this time his teammates didn’t blow it, ensuring his first win [11]. (Baseball Reference, like most places, seems not to have adopted the three-letter version of his name quite yet, so you’ll find our Zac here [12].) Thornton has unprepossessing stuff, but he fills up the strike zone and he’s aggressive, pitching with a sense of conviction that too often feels absent elsewhere on the Mets’ pitching staff. I’ll be curious if Thornton can keep it up once the league gets wise to his approach; for now, though, he’s a welcome sight in a rotation that feels like Russian roulette for the stubbornly innumerate.
And the Mets actually hit behind him! Jared Young [13] grabbed the early lead with a second-inning homer, Francisco Lindor [14] had three knocks, and Luis Robert Jr. [15] mashed a ball that menaced a satellite or two, turning mouths in the Mets dugout into a comical line of amazed Os.
When Juan Soto [16] is impressed by something you did at the plate, add it to your personal highlight reel.