The Kid from Left Field

The Mets have used a franchise record-tying 64 players thus far this year. The proliferation of personnel has won them 63 games, or approximately one win per player. This ratio doesn’t exactly scream efficient allocation of resources, but that panoply of participants can sure make things exciting. Granted, the churn has backfired 77 times, but the intermittent successes, especially of late, have been surprisingly sweet. Wednesday night was the Mets’ way of saying we’re gonna keep doing it the way we’re doing it ’til we get it right on a more regular basis.

If the Mets’ 63rd win of 2026 can be said to belong to any of the 64 Mets who’ve tried their darnedest since March to avoid those pesky 77 losses that have nonetheless piled up, naming rights have to go to Nick Morabito. Nick Morabito is everything a fan with an affinity for the underdog can’t help but adore.

He is a September callup, looking to make his major league mark.

He had been an ohfer-toter from his previous audition, still looking for that one hit that would put Lake Morabito on the statistical map.

He was asked to be an understudy to an understudy, a pinch-runner for a pinch-hitter; he wouldn’t even get in the game unless the manager made at least two moves, one of them dependent on the productivity of somebody else.

Gotta root for the kid!

He’s a kid! Just a kid! Nick Morabito is 23 and looks 13. How can ya not root for a 13-year-old kid getting his chance with the Mets? One of my all-time favorite baseball movies is The Kid from Left Field, from 1953, in which a 9-year-old manages a perpetually hapless big league team called the Bisons. I root for that kid every time I see it. I’m also partial to an occasionally hapless big league team that’s on television most every night for six months.

In real life, young Nick stepped on the Tropicana Field turf in the top of the sixth inning. To that point, the game belonged broadly to the Mets, with specific key contributions having come from Jared Young, Marcus Semien, and Brett Baty on the offense and starting pitcher Justin Hagenman — Met No. 64 on the season — on the mound. Hagenman, back from a long stay on the IL and a short slate of rehab outings, bedeviled the Rays for two innings, then withstood them for another frame. He left on the happy side of a 6-1 score. Pitching wasn’t quite the same gentle breeze for his immediate successor, Chris Devenski, who gave up three runs in the fourth. Carson Benge threw a ball that hit a bat, yet Carson wasn’t pitching. It was that kind of outing for Chris, that kind of inning for the Mets. The first-place Rays had pulled to within two runs. Dedniel Nuñez finished off the home fourth without incident, but you that trademark first-place Rays hot breath could be felt on the necks of the last-place Mets.

The 6-4 lead might as well have been on Ozempic. It looked a little too skinny too quickly. No wonder Andy Green prioritized putting some meat on its bones. Left fielder Baty, who’d cleared the bases with a three-run double off righty starter Griffin Jax in the third, was due up to lead off the visitors’ sixth. It had been his night, as much as it had been Young’s (Jared’s first-inning single plated two runs, with a Rays error greasing those skids a bit), Semien’s (Marcus’s double scored Young), Hagenman’s, and most recently Nuñez’s (adding a scoreless fifth to his clean third of the fourth). Green just wanted to make sure it wouldn’t become the Rays’ night. Lefty Cam Booser was on. Righty Mark Vientos was called on to pinch-hit. Swaggy V made like Le Grand Orange and came through in a pinch, lining a single to right. Like Rusty Staub, Mark Vientos is more truck horse than race horse. Like Rusty Staub, Mark Vientos is capable of keeping pinch-runners on their toes. What’s the sense of having 28 players in September if someone on the bench isn’t faster than Mark Vientos?

Enter Nick Morabito. As a pinch-runner, he got no further than second base. But his insertion was hardly for naught, because he could indirectly replace Baty in left via Vientos. Baty’s no left fielder, not really. Vientos certainly isn’t. Morabito may never have been inside the Trop before this week, but he’s comfortable in an outfield. Plus he knows those other guys out there, A.J. Ewing in center and Benge in right. They’re each appear 13. Combined, it’s hard to believe they add up to 40.

The game briefly belonged to Nate Lavender. Most games belong to Nate Lavender as long as he’s in them. He held the team aspiring to move from St. Pete to Tampa at bay in bottom of the sixth. The Mets were still advised to add some weight to their lead. Their chances looked voluptuous in the seventh. Bo Bichette led off with a double. Benge followed with a single that put Bo on third. Then their chances grew thin. A safety squeeze attempt from Young squeezed Bichette off the basepaths. Semien conveniently took one for the team, loading the bases. Ewing, however, took strike three for the second out. Morabito stepped up in what had been Baty’s, then fleetingly Vientos’s spot. Morabito’s previous fourteen plate appearances had yielded no hits and nine strikeouts.

He’s 13 — look at him!

Yet you know what they say about the fifteenth time being the charm. Nick laced a double inside the left field line. Everybody who was on base crossed the plate. With one swing, Morabito increased the Mets’ edge from 6-4 to 9-4. He also raised his batting average from nothing to something.

Was that enough to give him title to The Nick Morabito Game? Once he dove to rob Victor Mesa of an extra-base hit to close out the eighth, hell yeah! By driving in three runs, then making the highlight reel catch, the kid had pulled off what one veteran observer who bears an uncanny resemblance to me refers to as a Reverse Gary Rajsich. In 1982, Rajsich, also a heretofore struggling rookie (albeit 27), inspired gasps with a right field grab reminiscent of Ron Swoboda’s from 1969, then more awe by belting his first-ever homer, a three-run job over the right-center field fence at Shea to certify him, at least for one evening, a multi-tool player. Different ends of the outfield, same general idea. The Mets beat the Reds that May night, 7-1, indicating they might have done fine without Gary Rajsich having the game of his life, but Gary Rajsich had the game of his life, and it therefore became The Gary Rajsich Game.

Ain’t nothing like the first time, baby.

We’ve cited a procession of Mets who put it to the Rays on Wednesday. We’ll throw in a couple more. Daniel Duarte followed Lavender and retired all four batters he faced. Juan Soto made home run contact so loud in St. Petersburg in the eighth that it might have been set off car alarms in Clearwater. That raised the score to 10-4, an advantage easily protected by Jonathan Pintaro in the ninth. When it went final, it was absolutely The Nick Morabito Game, punctuated by the outfield embrace effected by young Nick, young A.J., and young Carson, the three youngest Mets on the active roster. The kids played and the Mets won. That at least whispers market efficiency.