May Flowers?

Through five innings Friday night, the Mets were in a familiar place in Anaheim, one that seemed straightforward to write about even though I really, really didn’t want to.

They were down 3-0 to the Angels and the relatively unheralded Walbert Urena, and they looked like a team in the grip of a collective nervous breakdown. I was particularly worried about Francisco Alvarez, whose ABs had been best characterized as “frantic” and had turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-0 one when he airmailed Bo Bichette on a stolen base attempt. Forget a demotion; Alvarez looked like he needed a rest cure.

The highlights, such as they were? Christian Scott looked a lot better than he did in his raw-nerves debut, with his stuff getting better and better as the night progressed, and David Wright had merrily hijacked a Steve Gelbs skit in the stands, walking away with it in his pocket. But so what? Scott was still in line for the L, thanks primarily to a first-inning sweeper to Jorge Soler that hadn’t swept, and my pleasure at seeing Wright brought to mind the Don DeLillo warning about nostalgia being a product of dissatisfaction and rage.

And then all of a sudden the Mets had had enough. Or, after a month and a little more, the baseball gods had had enough of pulling wings off helpless Mets. Whatever it was, something changed, and in a hurry.

Bichette drove Urena from the game with a line-drive shot off his knee, not the way you want to dispense with an enemy starter but all’s fair in love and baseball teams trying to stave off relegation. Juan Soto singled, because no part of the current collective malady can be laid at his feet. But then Austin Slater struck out swinging (“already fitting in,” I mused sourly), up came Alvarez, and up on the scoreboard went two quick strikes from Brent Suter. Maybe striking out wasn’t going to keep Alvarez out of a padded cell, but it would be marginally better than hitting into a double play, an outcome that’s been all too predictable for him in the most recent stages of this team death march.

Suter threw a changeup as bait, off the corner and meant to get Alvarez to chase, but it wasn’t off the corner enough and became a single up the middle. Brett Baty — another Met who looks like he has the men with butterfly nets on speed dial — bounced out to first, moving the runners to second and third for quite possibly no reason. That left it up to Marcus Semien, whose ABs have not inspired confidence so far in his Mets career.

Semien swatted a single off Chase Silseth (navigate those sibilants 10 times fast, I double-dog dare you) and the game was tied.

“Tied” isn’t the same as “won” — there are no moral victories when .500 is so far above your head that the bends are a hazard — but, hey, Scott had cooled the Angels’ bats by retiring the last nine in a row. He gave way to Huascar Brazoban, who worked a scoreless sixth, and Jose Fermin took the halo’ed mound (I’d never noticed it before either) for the Whatever Whatevers of Whatever.

(Seriously, the Angels drive me crazy. I’m inclined to be sympathetic given that they’re another Little Brother in a Big Town franchise and stuck with a dreadful owner, but they do themselves zero favors by not being able decide on a franchise name or a uniform, careening between various terrible ideas every few years. Their City Connects have been a rare bright spot — a perfect surfer-style tweak for what was already their best ensemble — and they should just make those the default. Needless to say they won’t.)

With one out in the seventh, Ronny Mauricio dug in against Fermin, and had one of those ABs that reminds you why no one will ever give up on Ronny Mauricio. Mauricio has trouble with anything thrown with a wrinkle, to put it diplomatically, but when he squares up a fastball it’s a moment to remember.

And he squares up fastballs that shouldn’t be square-uppable. Fermin’s third pitch had too much plate but was up at the top of the zone and running toward the corner. Mauricio’s connection point was near the end of the bat. None of that mattered: Mauricio made contact and it was as if the ball had made the jump to hyperspace, delivered about a second later into the hands of a startled Angels fan 420 feet away in right-center. Mauricio had pulled it. Fermin looked bewildered; even Mike Trout looked a bit impressed; I opted for a bit from columns A and B.

The Mets had the lead, and for once they held it. Held it flawlessly, in fact: a 1-2-3 inning from Brooks Raley; a 1-2-3 inning from Luke Weaver, known more for oratory than mound craft of late; and finally a 1-2-3 inning from the beleaguered Devin Williams.

No Angel threats. No Angel baserunner since Alvarez’s errant throw, in fact. The Mets — these Mets, the collective nervous-breakdown Mets — had flipped the script. They’d been headed back to the Bad Place but then taken a detour, and I was surprised and ecstatic to find myself, at least for one night, somewhere not so familiar.