Weird and Wonderful

Baseball is almost universally weird, but there’s weird by normal baseball standards and then there’s whatever happened to the Mets on Tuesday night in Miami.

Sandy Alcantara reported for duty with his sinker acting as a Mets sleeper agent. That was obvious from the very first pitch of the game, which Francisco Lindor smacked over the fence. The Mets tallied another first-inning run; in the second, with two on and one out, Alcantara threw Juan Soto a sinker that was doomed the moment it left his hand. The Mets were up 5-0, and out on the mound Alcantara had that look of resignation all pitchers find themselves wearing sometimes. He’d pitch into fifth with the disobedient sinker sent to go away and think about what it hadn’t done, a display of professionalism that was mostly stoicism: When the key piece of your arsenal is missing, there’s not a lot of adjustments to be made.

The Mets tattooing one of the Marlins’ best in a September game at Soilmaster Stadium? That was weird and wonderful. So, for a time, was what Sean Manaea was up to as Alcantara’s opposite.

It’s been a rough stretch for Manaea, and he looked like he need to match Alcantara in performative stoicism, as his first pitch to Heriberto Hernandez was a fastball that came in occupying way too much plate and got walloped. It wound up in A.J. Ewing‘s glove and Manaea went back to work with that oh boy look on his face we’ve seen far too often of late. But the next two Marlins were almost comically aggressive, letting Manaea walk off the mound after just four pitches with no harm done. (Sandy Alcantara, probably: That’s fine, three minutes to catch my breath is plenty, thanks fellas.) After that Manaea found his groove: Twenty-one to go, eighteen to go, fifteen to go, twelve to go. He had five perfect innings under his belt, a low pitch count and hey, why not dream a little?

And then it all came unraveled with startling speed in the sixth, as the Marlins recorded five hits in just nine pitches. Goodbye perfect game, goodbye shutout, goodbye comfortable lead. Manaea trudged off the mound looking dazed and the Mets had work to do to secure this one. Weird, and not wonderful in the least.

But hey, baseball. The Mets, it would turn out, were done scoring, having done all their damage against Alcantara and Momentary Met Tyler Zuber. The Marlins added a fourth run against Jonathan Pintaro in that disastrous sixth and stayed hyper-aggressive, but Nate Lavender wiggled out of trouble and Dedniel Nunez didn’t get into trouble in the first place, so the game came down to Kodai Senga seeking the save — which certainly would have seemed weird just a couple of weeks ago.

Senga, like Alcantara, quickly discovered he too had reported for duty missing something. His initial four-seamer sat in the middle of the plate and Griffin Conine whacked it deeper into center field than anyone would have liked for an ominous first out. Consecutive doubles then brought in a Marlin run and meant Owen Caissie and Kyle Stowers would bat as the tying run. (It didn’t wind up mattering, but I hope you registered the look Clayton McCullough shot Joe Mack‘s way after Mack swung on a 3-0 count with one out, nobody on and his team down three. I’d describe it as existential consternation, seeing how Mack missed a memo that was penned in the 1890s.)

With Senga in trouble, Justin Willard reported to the mound with the interpreter and a psychological profile of the night’s Marlins, which was that they were approaching any pitch to leave a pitcher’s hand the way a starved Doberman regards a steak being tossed around a kitchen. Senga took the lesson to heart, scrapping not just his wan secondary pitches (as he’s mostly accepted doing) but also everything except the ghost fork. Six to Caissie, four to Stowers, torment, tease, repeat. And it worked: Both wound up swinging over forks at the bottom of the strike zone, the tying run advancing no farther than Francisco Alvarez‘s glove. Mets win!

Mets win, and while it couldn’t be trumpeted 1969-style on the scoreboard: LOOK WHO’S NO. 4.

Yes, your 2026 New York Mets are no longer cellar dwellers, having passed the Nationals in the National League East standings.

Which doesn’t matter a whit, and could even be argued is a net negative what with draft picks and all, but still makes me happy. Not as happy as denting the Marlins’ admittedly faint playoff hopes in a bit of September turnabout is fair play, but happy nonetheless. Which is how these remade-on-the-fly, audition-time Mets have generally made me feel since inexplicably getting better by shedding the part of the team that hadn’t been a problem in the first place.

Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp has been a good time. I look forward to watching the Mets more often than not these days, despite the lack of glittering prizes at the end. Like I said, weird and wonderful.