Sean Manaea pitched … well, OKish in that he walked a ton of Guardians and gave up hits to more Guardians but somehow emerged from it only mildly scathed. Daniel Duarte, newly shot up the bullpen pecking order by vacancies, pitched well and so did Nate Lavender, finally getting to make his big-league debut. Kodai Senga even closed out the game in what’s being called an experiment.
Meanwhile, the Mets hit a bunch of balls really hard: Luis Torrens got them going with an opposite-field three-run homer as part of a three-hit day and Bo Bichette and Carson Benge added moonshots, with extra credit going to Benge for a laser-beam throw from right to short-circuit a Cleveland threat.
Let’s now turn to our analysis of what it means as the 2026 season continues to evolve … oh that’s right, the asteroid has arrived for the 2026 season and the rest of it doesn’t really mean anything.
Sure, Manaea continuing to look serviceable is a good thing; Senga as a bullpen power guy is a Why the Hell Not? idea worth exploring; and maybe a useful part or two will emerge from the scrum of new relief arms. Maybe the something useful will be Lavender, whose perseverance is worth applauding, and whose combination of odd release point and sneaky ride on the fastball is at least intriguing; maybe it’ll be one of the other guys with whom we aren’t yet acquainted.
(Take a moment, though, to feel for Bryce Conley, who arrived with surprise starter Robert Stock but was then DFA’ed. I noted Conley was called up from Binghamton and figured he was a young guy and so would probably get another bite at the big-league apple, but I was wrong — turns out Conley is about to turn 32 and Sunday was probably his shot at an MLB line on Baseball Reference. For now, he’s the 18th Mets Ghost, and the sixth stuck with the status of MLB phantom ballplayer.)
The rest of the season isn’t going to mean much. That can be freeing — it was fun watching the Mets win a no-stakes game against the Guardians — but the bedrock pointlessness of it all has a way of creeping into the proceedings so that the season decays into shrug time. How do we combat that? We don’t, really — you can’t trick yourself into paying close attention to two months of garbage-time baseball. What we can do, while the klieg lights are pointed elsewhere, is remind ourselves to celebrate the Lavenders and feel for the Conleys and hope for the Manaeas and Sengas. Maybe it’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got.
Howdy Nate! Nice to finally say. Though before too long I hope I can offer the same to Dylan Ross. What’s a minor league ERA above 8 among friends? It is nice to be reminded that sometimes other teams’ mistakes hurt them while ours don’t damage us. Most times it goes the other way just like the RISP and LOB numbers from the box scores are usually flipped.
Yep, we can trick ourselves into believing the rest of this season matters, and it does, to some extent. We want to see the progress of Benge and Ewing, and even Alvarez, and the fine young starters, and we want to actually WIN to show the players and the fans, and potential Free Agents to be, that next year really will mean something.
We are already tricking ourselves into caring about the Wildcard races, but not really. It was more interesting when it was either First Place or Go Home.
One thing is certain, however. Nate Lavender should have pitched on Pride Night.
We’re into the Twilight Zone part of the season.. but Lavender pitched well and it’s always fun to see the family celebrating an MLB debut.
So let me see if I’ve got this straight. The following befall one team last night.
They loaded the bases with nobody out and failed to score.
They allowed 3 runs after a 2 out bases empty error.
They had a baserunner make the third out at third base.
They failed to score against a relief pitcher with 51 MLB innings in hus career.
They failed to score against a relief pitcher making his MLB debut.
They failed to score against a relief pitcher with an ERA north of 8.
And this team wasn’t the Mets. Amazing!!!
Like I said above, this is the Twilight Zone part of the season.
We need a couple more of those robot pitchers from “The Mighty Casey” to join our team, as we already have a robot POBO.
I think Stearns gets paid by the transaction.