I’ll grant you that we’re grading the post-deadline 2026 Mets on the curve, but still: Aside from the ending, that was a fine way to spend an afternoon.
You had Nolan McLean, with the movement on his pitches baffling the White Sox and sometimes McLean himself. I’m pretty sure what he did to Andrew Benintendi with the bases loaded in the third inning was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. You had the White Sox countering with three guys in shifting roles, the most impressive of whom was young Hagen Smith.
Both teams then turned to reliever roulette to settle a 0-0 deadlock; reliever roulette, like the ill-advised real thing, is a chancy affair full of surprises and perceived injustices. Dedniel Nunez kept hanging sliders but escaped unscathed; Daniel Duarte made one bad pitch but it was enough to leave him decidedly scathed and his team down 1-0. The pitch that drew blood was to Benintendi, because baseball has a keen eye for irony; Carson Benge almost threw Miguel Vargas out at the plate, but was undone by a tricky carom off the wall which forced him to rush, leading to a throw that was slightly off-line.
(By the way, Vargas is a helluva hitter. Glad not to see him again!)
The White Sox looked to close out the Mets with Grant Taylor, who’s been impressive but was mortal today, giving up a bloop single to Benge and walking revenge-tour Luis Robert Jr. before Jared Young got him for a game-tying single up the middle. Taylor was fighting his control but managed to get Francisco Alvarez and then dialed it in against A.J. Ewing, erasing him on a fastball at the top of the zone.
Enter newly minted closer Kodai Senga, whose promising experiment has yielded shaky results of late — which shouldn’t surprise us, honestly. Senga got the first out but then Tristan Peters connected for a drive to right-center that juuuuuuuuuust eluded Ewing’s glove (should that be “just eluuuuuuuded” or “juuuuuuuuust eluuuuuuuuded”), bouncing off the top of the wall and into the stands.
Another day, another Tristan Peters drive not quite secured. Which meant White Sox 2, Mets 1 and the second enemy walkoff in three days.
Ewing retrieved his cap, looking crestfallen; maybe it’s my imagination but I could see Senga thinking, “Huh, in this gig one bad pitch can end your day.”
I wasn’t too downcast, to be honest — it was barely a pinch, to quote Greg. Good game, crummy ending. Those happen. Focus on the former and try to shrug off the latter. Or hey, think of it this way: Crummy season, good ending?
