Well That Was Certainly Ridiculous

Welcome to a sunny Friday without a baseball game, which is so weird that I know that come early evening I’ll be poking at my TV remote in consternation until I remember: “Oh yeah, stupid World Cup.”

At least that gives us extra time (see what I did there) to marvel at the Mets’ 6-4 win over the Phillies from Thursday, a thoroughly ridiculous baseball game that came out the way we wanted it. Seriously, it was ridiculous, and it was ridiculous from the jump — though not the familiar “Citizens Bank baseball Pachinko” ridiculous, but more “Are you sure you’re tall enough for this ride?” ridiculous.

The Mets got off to an immediate 1-0 lead when Juan Soto banged a home run off the facing of the second deck, one of those homers you knew was gone the second you saw the improbable launch angle, then added another run on an A.J. Ewing double that was a double because Brandon Marsh took a Jeffy in the Family Circus-style route to its vicinity, a misplay that followed Aaron Nola tagging Jared Young near first only to discover the baseball was in the grass behind him. Whoops!

The Phillies immediately halved the lead in the bottom of the first when Alec Bohm — who, lets recall, is suing his parents — singled home Trea Turner. But Sean Manaea escaped further harm when Bryce Harper was thrown out on a strike ’em out, throw ’em out steal attempt. (Harper came up small repeatedly in this game, which makes me reflexively brace for impact as we move forward — but that’s a Saturday problem because, again, stupid World Cup.) It looked like the Phillies would tie the game in the second, as certified annoyance Edmundo Sosa hit a leadoff triple, but Manaea sandwiched two grounders around a pop-up to escape harm.

Soto led off the third and hit a fly ball to the outfield, one that saw him begin the mildly disgusted trot of a hitter who knows he’ll hit first and then make a left for the visitors’ dugout. But Gary Cohen saw the danger before any of the principals did — Soto had hit the ball high if not ominously far, and the wind was whipping out. The ball kept going and going and plopped into the seats above an unhappy Justin Crawford‘s head, with Nola looking disgusted and Soto looking pleased but a little sheepish.

(Yeah, this is a lot of detail. But a) we’ve got time, because stupid World Cup; and b) it was one of those games where you kept going, “Wait, what in the world is happening now?” Which is always fun to try and recreate.)

The Phillies got closer in the bottom of the inning thanks to another dose of ridiculousness: Kyle Schwarber reached first on a strikeout/passed ball/throwing error, with the umps not calling him out for running inside the baseline as they should have. Schwarber came home on an RBI double from Bohm, one Carson Benge came within a whisker of making a terrific catch on in the right-field corner near the groundskeeper’s little hobbit house, a feature of Citizens Bank Park I’ve always found endearing, and a definite improvement over the Vet’s unfortunately emblematic in-house jail. The Phils then tied it an inning later when Ewing’s throw home hit not just the mound but also the rubber, caroming over a helpless Francisco Alvarez‘s head.

That drained the reservoir of ridiculousness for a time: Manaea gave way to Huascar Brazoban, whose newfound reliability continues to startle me, while Nola handed his duties over to Seth Johnson and then the hulking, mercurial Jose Alvarado. There’s no Phillie reliever more satisfying to get to than Alvarado, and in the seventh the Mets got to him. It started relatively conventionally: leadoff single for Benge, two-out walk for Mark Vientos, clutch pinch-hit RBI single for Eric Wagaman. But then things got weird again: Marcus Semien appeared to have struck out on a 2-2 cutter, with Alvarado and J.T. Realmuto walking off the field. But Semien thought he’d tipped it — channeling Gil Hodges, albeit without the shoe polish or dugout chicanery, he asked home-plate ump Brian Walsh to look for a smudge where the ball had hit the dirt before Realmuto secured it.

Smudge detected! Semien went back to work, and an understandably deflated Alvarado delivered a sinker that was more of a sitter. Semien mashed it to left-center, into the wind again. Crawford’s first step was a bit tentative, and the ball wound up off the wall above his glove for a two-run triple. The Mets got more good relief, with Luke Weaver fanning Harper, Bohm and Marsh in the eighth, and turned a three-run lead over to Devin Williams.

I don’t think I have it in me to trust Williams — ironic, since it was his close encounter with Pete Alonso that seems to have knocked his career off-kilter — but let it be noted that Bo Bichette misplayed a two-out grounder that should have ended the game. Someone named Gabriel Rincones Jr. singled, Crawford singled in a run, and oh boy here came Schwarber with a chance to hit a walkoff. In Citizens Bank Park. With the wind blowing out.

Williams’ 2-2 pitch had too much plate, and Schwarber belted it — but it was a low line drive out to right, not a high line drive destined for Mets Hell. In fact, it was just a couple of steps from where Brett Baty was patrolling. Baty secured it, first blood had gone to the Mets, and our reward is to wait around for a day.

Stupid World Cup!