Take that, overdogs!
Putting up 12 runs against the Yankees in their home park won’t change anything about October or much about the trajectory of a disappointing Mets season, but boy was it ever a satisfying way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Francisco Lindor led off with a line-drive homer into the short porch on Gerrit Cole‘s third pitch, the first of six Met homers — some of which would have been home runs in a real park scaled for actual adults. (For the record: Luis Torrens, Carson Benge, Juan Soto, Lindor again for a grand slam, and Jared Young.)
Lindor hasn’t exactly had a year to write home about — his average has been mired well below his career norms, and he’s been uncharacteristically sloppy in the field, making both physical and mental gaffes. As is often the case with baseball players, my suspicion is that he’s been hurt but said nothing due to the usual diamond omerta/whatcha gonna do calculations given that everyone’s a little hurt by midsummer. But over the last few weeks Lindor has looked more like himself, with a barrage of leadoff homers and other big hits — only rotten luck kept his late liner from putting the Mets right back in Friday night’s game. His resurgence has been both a relief and a joy.
I suspect the same omerta/injury calculus may be at work with Soto, who’s given us too many shake-your-head moments of late but also battled leg woes all season. But hey, we won by 10 so we’ll leave that for another day.
What I won’t leave for another day is what absolute babies Yankee fans are with their boos for Soto. Sure, some of that’s just baseball theater and in semi-good fun, but it’s fueled by the bedrock entitlement of this fanbase. Your average Yankee fan would fit right in with the rogues gallery of hideous children in Willie Wonka: But I want ALL the toy soldiers, Daddy! No one else can have EVEN ONE! Buy them ALL for me Daddy! BUY THEM ALL FOR ME RIGHT NOW!
(Insert musical number here, with Gene Wilder on the sidelines bearing a look that’s equal part ironic detachment and deep disgust.)
Anyway, a dozen runs were more than enough to support Zac Thornton, though half that barrage came late, meaning the Yankees had to be held at bay. That proved fruitless when it came to Clay Bellinger, but then that’s always the case — I just shake my head in unhappy anticipation when Bellinger drops his hands from that straight up and down stance of his.
But other than Bellinger, Thornton did just fine, pitching quickly and aggressively and mixing up his pitches nicely to back up a fastball that showed some extra life. I loved seeing him pump his fist after the Mets turned an inning-ending double play in the seventh, and I agreed with Andy Green that that was the right place to end his day: Let the rookie depart with a last flourish and the satisfaction of a job well done, rather than try and coax another 10 or 20 pitches from him.
(Little extra dollop of whipped cream on the sundae: Tobias Myers has looked a lot more like his early-season self than the guy whose performance got him exiled to Syracuse.)
We have to be careful of narratives and Just So stories: The Mets have played their best baseball of the season since Green’s arrival, and so of course we give Green credit for all sorts of excellent qualities. But while the warning that correlation isn’t causation is a good one, sometimes causation really is at work, and I’ve been impressed after both wins and losses with how Green’s handled his young players and his comments about them.
Take Green’s comments about McLean after Friday night’s loss. McLean said he was happy about where he’d put the curve that Bellinger hit out in that game, and he wasn’t wrong. But he was missing something, and Green didn’t let it go: “I think Nolan had the opportunity to probably attack in more than he did today. You could tell from the beginning they were living out over [the plate]. So that wasn’t necessarily his best day.”
McLean had never given up a home run off his curveball, but Green pointed out a key factor in why he had — and he did so publicly, a challenge that he then made part of a vote of confidence: “His season’s been solid. I still think there’s another level for him. I think that’s the healthiest way to look at your best players, that there’s more in them than has come out of them, even if what’s coming out of him has been really good. I still hold that he can be one of the best in the game.”
Green is slated to return to his duties as farm director, where he’ll give a lot more future Mets that combination of tough talk and back pats. And hey, that’s valuable. But more and more, I’d like to see Green keep delivering that message right here in Flushing.
