Here’s a free preview of the 2026 Holy Books roundup: It wasn’t Carson Benge‘s fault.
On Friday night Benge made not one but two sparking plays against the Dodgers, first nailing Shohei Ohtani at third when the best player in the history of the game tried to turn a one-handed excuse-me double into a triple, and then starting a perfect relay that erased Freddie Freeman at home.
Two outfield assists, the second setting a mild, very modern-era record of sorts: Benge’s throw came in at 100 MPH, the speediest tracked OF assist by a Met in the 11 years of Statcast. That’s a stat that struck me as equal parts pointless and entertaining; if you’re curious, it broke the record set about two weeks ago by Carson Benge.
So Benge contributed some nifty outfield play. That was good! Meanwhile, Sean Manaea pitched about as well as he has all year, leaning on his fastball and working aggressively, with welcome conviction behind everything he threw. That was also good!
But the Mets won a couple of battles — or at least tied them — while losing the war.
Not all of their shortcomings came with reasons for finger-wagging. The chief problem was that Roki Sasaki was really, really good, wiping out Met after Met with a splitter that was frankly dazzling. Veterans or rookies, capable hitters or somewhat suspect ones … it didn’t matter. They knew what was coming but the splitter was still untouchable.
Sasaki was really good — and so are the Dodgers. They kept coming at the Mets, as teams that know their business do, putting the leadoff hitter on base in seven out of nine innings. Baserunning misadventures? So what: They figured things would eventually break their way, and they did. In the seventh, Brooks Raley allowed a pair of gently struck singles to start the frame, then conspired with Francisco Alvarez on a sloppy rundown, getting Kyle Tucker at home but allowing Tucker’s teammates to wind up on second and third instead of first and second, which paved the way for a game-tying sacrifice fly from Ohtani. The Mets were still in the game, but an inning later A.J. Minter left a four-seamer middle-middle to Tucker, who crushed it for a fatal two-run homer.
Oh, and Juan Soto‘s calf flared up on him, so he exited in favor of beloved David Stearns import Jorge Polanco. Fantastic.
Good performances outshone by somewhat better ones, one team doing the little things better than the other team. Not the kind of thing that has managers overturning buffets or throwing bats into the showers to scare ’em (not that managers do either anymore), but enough for another humdrum loss in a season that’s filling up with them.
Bad! Naughty Met! Go to your room and think about what you’ve done.
Considering that today’s players are extremely soft, if a manager overturned a buffet or threw a bat in the clubhouse, they would probably all go into hiding in their locker mansions.
And I hear the way they measure throwing speeds is different than it used to be. If they measured Nolan Ryan’s fastball using today’s methodology, it would probably register 110 mph.
Yeah, the radar gun thing is an interesting discussion, though one that’s probably unanswerable.
From what I can glean, the answer seems to be “it’s both” — which is simultaneously often the case and a bit unsatisfying.
“Both” as in today’s hard throwers do really throw much harder than pitches of earlier decades, which is mostly due to “max effort on every pitch” becoming the philosophy but also due to a revolution in mechanics, year-round training/better nutrition and playing baseball earlier and longer. But also “both” as in the unicorns of previous decades would in all likelihood be unicorns today — so, yeah, Nolan Ryan and Steve Dalkowski and others quite possibly would hit 110 if you had a modern radar gun and a time machine.
(Though if you do have a time machine, please use it to not make the Fregosi trade.)
Thanks, Jason, that is very interesting. I first heard of Dalkowski from the Baseball Digest, and from what I remember, he had a great fastball, but had no idea where it would end up.
And I seem to remember that Fregosi was under consideration to be the Mets manager, maybe before they hired Randolph, Manuel, or Collins. Had that happened, we could have had that trade thrown in our faces every single day. :)