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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 28 September 2019 1:12 pm Pete Alonso hit his 52nd home run of the season for the New York Mets Friday night at Citi Field in their 4-2 win over the Atlanta Braves.
Pete Alonso hit his 52nd home run of the season for the New York Mets.
A New York Met named Pete Alonso has hit 52 home runs.
A New York Met rookie named Pete Alonso has hit 52 home runs.
A New York Met rookie named Pete Alonso has hit the most home runs any rookie has ever hit for any team in any league, 52.
Pete Alonso of the New York Mets shares the record for most home runs hit by any rookie in any league, having tied Aaron Judge’s 2017 mark of 52 Friday night, with two games of 2019 remaining.
Pete Alonso has 52 home runs.
Pete Alonso of the New York Mets has 52 home runs.
Pete Alonso is a New York Mets rookie and he has hit 52 home runs, the most in the major leagues in 2019, whether hit by a fresh-faced rookie or grizzled veteran.
Pete Alonso’s 52nd home run, a first-inning solo shot off Braves starter Dallas Keuchel that clanged off the blue wall above the orange line in left field, halved the Braves’ 2-0 lead.
Two innings after hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets, Pete Alonso walked, tying the club’s rookie record for most walks in a season, 72, which had been set by Lee Mazzilli in 1977 and tied by Ike Davis in 2010.
Two innings after hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets, Pete Alonso’s 72nd walk of 2019 led to Pete Alonso’s 101st run of the season, via Amed Rosario’s game-tying RBI single.
Pete Alonso has scored 101 runs for the New York Mets in his rookie season, 52 of them crossing the plate upon home runs Pete Alonso hit as a rookie for the New York Mets.
Three innings after hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets, Pete Alonso was among many Mets congratulating J.D. Davis for hitting his 21st home run of the season, which put the Mets ahead to stay, 4-2.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso boosted Marcus Stroman (6 IP, 2 ER, 6 H, 1 BB, 8 SO) toward a win in the final start of his first, albeit partial Met season.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso has hit them all in his only major league season to date; unlike Judge as a rookie (or Stroman as a Met), Pete Alonso has no season fragments on his ledger — Pete Alonso is a pure rookie hitting 52 home runs in his rookie season.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso helped ensure there’d be a lead for Jeurys Familia to protect in the seventh with a scoreless inning of relief.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso pushed the single-season Met home run record (52) ahead of Familia’s single-season Met saves record (51), the first time since 2001 that the Met single-season home run record (which was held by Todd Hundley, with 41) has stood taller than the Met single-season saves record (which was exceeded by Armando Benitez, with 43).
Comparing Pete Alonso’s New York Mets single-season home run record of 52 with Jeurys Familia’s single-season saves record of 51 might be akin to comparing apples and oranges, but the numbers are similar, so let’s say Pete Alonso, with 52 home runs, has one more kumquat than Jeurys Familia ever had.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso set the stage for Six-Out Seth Lugo to record his final two-inning save of 2019.
In recording his sixth save of 2019, Seth Lugo pulled to within 19 saves of team leader Edwin Diaz, whose 25 saves lag 27 kumquats behind the single-season team-record 52 home runs Pete Alonso has hit for the New York Mets as a rookie.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso drove in his 119th run, placing him one behind Robin Ventura’s 1999 total of 120 and five behind New York Mets single-season co-leaders Mike Piazza (1999) and David Wright (2008), each of whom drove in 124 runs.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso moved into a tie for 40th place on the all-time career Mets home run chart, alongside Bernard Gilkey and Frank Thomas, each of whom played parts of three seasons as a Met.
The 52nd home run of Pete Alonso’s rookie season for the New York Mets was also his 26th home run at Citi Field, which places him 10th among all Mets in regular-season home runs hit at Citi Field in their careers as Mets; the nine Mets in front of him each played at least three seasons as Mets.
The 52nd home run of Pete Alonso’s rookie season for the New York Mets places him as ninth among Met home run hitters in the current decade, a ten-season span two games from ending; the nine Mets in front of him each played at least three seasons as a Met.
The 52nd home run of Pete Alonso’s rookie season for the New York Mets includes 22 home runs in the 70 games the Mets have played since the All-Star break, which encompassed the Home Run Derby that Pete Alonso won and the Home Run Derby that inspired fretting that Pete Alonso would ruin his rookie season by participating in.
The 52nd home run of Pete Alonso’s rookie season for the New York Mets came in the Mets’ 160th game of 2019, which leaves just enough opportunity for Pete Alonso to hit 54 home runs in his rookie season, which would match exactly his pace of 30 through the 90 games the Mets played before the All-Star break, which encompassed the Home Run Derby that apparently didn’t derail Pete Alonso’s rookie season.
Pete Alonso has played in 159 of the Mets’ 160 games in 2019, tying him with Lee Mazzilli, in 1977, for most games played for the Mets in a rookie season, though Mazzilli had a partial season with the Mets in 1976, and Pete Alonso is playing as a pure rookie in 2019…and has hit 52 home runs for the New York Mets.
In hitting his 52nd home run for the New York Mets in his rookie season, Pete Alonso broke the record for most home runs hit by a New York National League player; Johnny Mize (1947) and Willie Mays (1955) each hit 51 for the New York Giants.
Pete Alonso’s total of 52 home runs as a New York Met in his rookie season matches the highest home run total in reached by any player in baseball over the course of the first thirty-five seasons that the Mets existed; until Mark McGwire hit 52 home runs for the Oakland A’s in 1996, the only players to hit 52 home runs for anyone were Willie Mays (52 in 1965) and George Foster (52 in 1977).
If you grew up as I did in the 1970s, the idea of a player hitting 50 or more home runs was almost unfathomable. From Babe Ruth in 1920 to Willie Mays in 1965, only nine different players had done it. The names belonged either to Hall of Famers whose immortality had already been certified, Hall of Famers awaiting their inevitable induction, or legends who owned an indelible association with their single-season home run exploits: Ruth, Hack Wilson, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Mize, our own Ralph Kiner, Mays, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris. I’d comb the tables that listed their accomplishments and be unable to imagine anything like it happening in modern times. Mays was the only one I’d seen play, and that was after he’d topped 50 twice.
When George Foster came along in 1977 to hit 52 home runs, it was astounding. It was something nobody in my sentient baseball fan experience had done. I saw Harmon Killebrew’s 49 on the 1970 Topps card celebrating the 1969 American League home run leaders and assumed that was the ceiling for a modern player. When Willie Stargell hit 48 in 1971, with Hank Aaron hitting 47, I was certain that was as good as home run-hitting could get while I was paying close attention. It was like when, as a kid of six or seven, I saw a commercial for an oil company that was sponsoring a contest (Shell, I think) where the grand prize was $5,000. They made such a big deal out of it, that I took it to mean $5,000 was the largest sum of money one could ever get one’s hands on at once. Conversely, I’d hear the phrase “a million dollars,” and believe it was a cartoonish exaggeration — along the lines of “50 home runs”.
Then Foster, already established as a dangerous RBI man for the Cincinnati Reds, got going in 1977 and not only hit 50 home runs but passed 50 home runs, hitting 52. I was fourteen that season. I’d been watching baseball since I was six. This was a first for me. It was unbelievable. I don’t remember much being made of it the way later home run accumulations would be covered. Foster didn’t close in on Maris’s 61 or Wilson’s 56, but what he did was earth-shattering and mind-blowing nonetheless. He’d hit a total that hadn’t been touched in a dozen years and wouldn’t be touched again for another nineteen years, as only Cecil Fielder, with 51 in 1990, topped (or touched) 50 between Foster and McGwire.
This helps explain why I was so incredibly excited when the Mets traded for George Foster in 1982, and why, despite his being long past his 52 home run prime by then, I never fully gave up on Foster until the middle of 1986, when he sort of asked to be given up on.
This helps explain why I maintained a low-level lack of affinity for otherwise innocent and capable Danny Heep during his Met tenure that began in 1983, because Heep, the dependable fourth outfielder archetype, was inevitably the people’s choice to replace Foster, the fallen superstar, in left on an everyday basis, whenever Foster slumped. “Don’t you people understand that this is George Foster?” I screamed in my head, since I didn’t have a blog back then. “Danny Heep? You want Danny Heep? George Foster still hits home runs…he hit 52, an unfathomable total, in 1977!”
This helps explain why the home run of Foster’s that I remember most clearly is his 53rd.
George Foster’s 53rd home run was reported by Jonathan Schwartz over WNEW-AM on the Monday night after the 1977 regular season ended.
Schwartz, pausing from playing Sinatra, was blandly reading major league updates, as if it was just another Monday night during the baseball season — this game and that game; I wasn’t really listening.
“George Foster has hit his 53rd for the Reds,” Schwartz said, which perked my ears up, especially considering I knew damn well that the regular season was over and Foster had finished it with 52.
I realized the baseball-loving DJ was doing theater-of-the-mind shtick, pretending the season was still in progress, which was very clever, yet a little disappointing, because for several seconds, I was convinced George Foster had just hit his 53rd home run.
This helps explain why, well after Foster had retired, and elevated home run totals became not altogether uncommon, I cheered just about everybody who broke statistical barriers and never got overly bothered by the abnormal physical states of those doing the hitting.
This helps explain why, when revelations began to confirm what was fairly evident about the abnormal physical states of those who had more home runs than I could imagine in the 1970s, I still couldn’t get overly bothered, because…wow, somebody hit more than 50…more than 60…more than 70 home runs.
This helps explain why, perhaps, what stays with me most from the era when 50 home runs seemed little more than mildly noteworthy was a game at Shea with about a week to go in 1998 season. DiamondVision showed Mark McGwire being robbed of his 65th home run at Milwaukee in the same game that he hit his 64th, and I remember thinking something along the lines of, “my god, we’re living in an age when 64th and 65th home runs are mentioned as fairly routine parts of between-innings game updates” and marveled at the contemporary more than I mourned for a past when just one guy hit 52 home runs and, otherwise, nobody ever hit more than 49.
This helps explain why, more than tying Judge’s record for rookie home runs or breaking Familia’s record for Met kumquats, I’m so psyched by Pete Alonso hitting 52 home runs.
He’s tied George Foster.
He’s done what I couldn’t grasp as a kid.
He’s done what I saw only once as a teen.
He’s done it while I’m an adult…and I can only kind of grasp what he’s done and thus have to keep repeating it to make certain it’s really happened.
Pete Alonso has hit 52 home runs.
For the New York Mets.
As a rookie, with two games to go in his pure rookie season.
WOW!
by Greg Prince on 27 September 2019 12:22 pm You know all those games that got away that have been stewed over in the wake of the 2019 Mets’ elimination from playoff contention? I don’t care for such mulling. Yes, had Edwin Diaz resembled his Seattle self more than he did the reincarnation of Manny Acosta, that’s ‘x’ number of saves that probably wouldn’t have been blown, and if those are wins instead of losses, suddenly you’re talking about a margin measured in games ahead rather than games behind, and we’re still in this thing or even ahead of it. But you can also take any number of anybody’s flaws, retroactively insist that everybody’s strong points been consistent to the point of constant, and conveniently overlook sometimes other teams made mistakes that allowed us to benefit. There are years when what actually happened adds up to a postseason berth. There are years when it doesn’t.
This year it didn’t. We were good without being good enough. We took a long lunge at a goal that didn’t materialize as realistic until it was getting later than it seemed. Over .500, but not too far over. Officially above fourth place (with Philly having deliciously crumbled), yet shy of second, let alone first. Getting a lot of what we wanted, but not all of it.
This was us. Still is for a few more days. Last night, Thursday, was totally us. Maybe not a microcosm of 2019 in precise form or fashion, but it sure felt like we lived a year in nine innings.
First, there was Zack Wheeler, our favorite human interest story every fifth day; sometimes sooner. He’s got an excellent four-seam fastball, an effective slider and a narrative we find hard to resist now that his contract is winding down. “Perhaps Zack Wheeler’s final start as a New York Met” was the tease last night. And what a start it started out to be. For seven innings, he kept the Marlins off the board, though for seven innings, his mound opponent did the same to the Mets. Seems I’ve written a sentence of that nature every time Zack has pitched in September. All due respect to Jordan Yamamoto, the Mets not scoring for Zack Wheeler is the new Mets not scoring for Jacob deGrom.
The bottom of the seventh elevated a zero-zero pitchers’ duel to another level. Yamamoto was out of the game and the Mets were taking a shot at the Miami pen. With one out, the Mets loaded the bases on a pair of singles and a walk. This was a perfect time for a pinch-hitter. Then again, Wheeler had thrown fewer than 90 pitches and was wielding a batting average in the .200s, the pitcher equivalent of flirting with .400. But of far more pressing concern to me as a Mets fan in the 159th game of a season when nothing more than the moment was on the line, there was this: if Mickey Callaway pinch-hits for Wheeler, that’s it. His year is done. He doesn’t get to go on and attempt to continue his shutout in his last turn of the year. With free agency beckoning, it is, narratively speaking again, perhaps Zack Wheeler’s final start as a New York Met.
What do you want to see, all things being equal?
• A professional hitter taking a whack at driving in the go-ahead run in a scoreless tie?
• Or your pitcher whose tenure is among the longest on the team stay in the game to try to do something with the bat if only so he can return to the mound and go out on his own — and hopefully memorable — terms?
For once, Mickey and I were on the same page. Leave Zack in. Let Zack hit. Squeeze, hit away, strike out, whatever. This is Zack’s game. He’s the only Met to this point doing anything about winning it.
Wheeler faced Jarlin Garcia and, son of a gun, laced the first pitch he saw from Jarlin the Marlin into center to score Todd Frazier from third. Jesus, baseball can be beautiful when you let it bat for itself
Brandon Nimmo added a sacrifice fly directly after Zack’s RBI, giving Wheeler a 2-0 lead to protect in the eighth, and everything was going to work out because we wanted it to. Except it didn’t. Next: a leadoff double; a groundout; and, on a one-and-two pitch to Tyler Heineman that caught about 100% of the plate, ball two somehow. René Rivera, defensive stalwart most pitches, dropped apparent strike three, which likely nudged that idiot Eric Cooper (the same Eric Cooper who tossed Mike Piazza from a game at Shea in 2005 after one inning because he didn’t care for Mike’s attitude) to classify it not strike three. Heineman was still up. He saw one more pitch. He sent it over the right field fence.
It was 2-2. Wheeler’s shutout was over. His lead was gone. His chance to be pitcher of record on the winning side in perhaps his final start as a New York Met lasted three more pitches, until “old friend” Curtis Granderson drove the third of them out of Citi Field. “Old friend” shall remain in quotes until I am assured Curtis will stop intermittently reminding the Mets how good he was for us and how much we adored him for the way he went about it.
Just as Zack likely wouldn’t have batted for himself if the game “meant something” in the quotidian sense, chances are he would’ve been replaced by Seth Lugo as soon as Grandy touched home plate had there been no concern more paramount to the Mets than keeping this a one-run game. Seth was even spotted at the bullpen gate, ready to enter. But this was Zack’s game, even if it wasn’t the game we wanted him to have. Mickey allowed Zack to complete this appointed round. Let him be the pitcher of record going to the bottom of the eighth. Maybe the Mets could rustle up a run to take him off the hook. Maybe two to push him back in front.
Wheeler did go eight, with no more damage, not counting the pangs of heartbreak we who invest ourselves in Mets games, Mets seasons and Met storylines felt. If you’re that kind of Mets fan, our kind of Mets fan, every game means something. How Zack went out meant something to us. We prefer he not go out at all. Toss him a qualifying offer. Better yet, negotiate a contract. I’m convinced a Mets staff with Wheeler for the next few years is better than the alternative. Wheeler may be convinced there are alternatives out there he’d find preferable to the Mets and their penchant for not overwhelming him with run support. That’s for later.
In what was still the here and now of Thursday night, the Mets batted to no avail in the home eighth. In the ninth, Callaway brought in Edwin Diaz to either hold the Marlins’ lead at one or ratchet up his deposed closer’s confidence. Diaz achieved neither end, surrendering a solo home run to Austin Dean, which yielded a 4-2 Marlins lead that would constitute the final, dispiriting result. It was Dean’s sixth home run as a batter and Diaz’s fifteenth as a pitcher, all of Edwin’s having been given up in one ninth inning or another. Imagine if Edwin had given up maybe even a third less of that total.
Oh wait, I said I wasn’t going to do that.
by Jason Fry on 26 September 2019 12:03 pm And so it ends.
The Mets will not play October baseball. The last invitation to the dance belongs to the Milwaukee Brewers, who thoroughly deserved it — they lost an MVP candidate and somehow found a higher gear, steamrolling all competition in a magical September. Congratulations to them, and solace to our fellow eliminatees, the Chicago Cubs. Cubs fans still have the afterglow of the unimaginable to sustain them, true, but the Cubs were ejected from a real chance at postseason possibilities in just about the cruelest way possible, swept at home by their arch-rivals.
But that’s baseball, isn’t it? The highest of highs, the lowest of lows, and if you’re the kind of person who feels entitled to the former and can’t abide the idea of the latter, well, maybe this isn’t the sport for you. The Mets gave us both in 2019 — left for dead in early July, but alive until the final minutes of Game 158. Over our years here, I’m said a number of pointed and/or venomous things about the Wilpons, but I’ve never taken issue with Fred’s oft-derided invocation of “meaningful games in September,” because I never thought there was anything wrong with it. Given baseball’s ebbs and flows, variability and luck, I’ll happily sign up to watch a team that plays the final month with a real chance at games with bunting and flyovers and annoying Fox announcers. And a team that has you scoreboard-watching in the last week has had a successful season, even without the pomp and circumstance of Games 163 and beyond.
The Mets will miss the dance by an agonizingly, annoyingly slim margin, but we’ll have time (far too much time) to talk about that later. For now, they followed up Tuesday night’s indignant leap out of the coffin with a laugher. Jacob deGrom closed out his 2019 campaign with a masterpiece, one that happily came without the usual fingerpainting from teammates not inclined to hit or play defense. DeGrom has even given us a last thing to scoreboard-watch — on Saturday, we can root against Hyun-Jin Ryu in hopes that JdG steals away the National League ERA title and, in all likelihood, a second straight Cy Young award.
The other Mets backed deGrom ably. Pete Alonso ended his minor power outage with his 51st homer, a no-doubter deep into the Flushing night; Michael Conforto kept slugging; and Amed Rosario offered further exhibits showing how far he’s come as both a hitter and a defender, combining with Robinson Cano on a balletic double play and then ranging far to his left to make the kind of play we’d decided Rosario didn’t make.
(And, on the melancholy side, Jeff McNeil‘s marvelous season is over a little early, ended by a broken hand.)
Alonso and Conforto have historical milestones and round numbers in possible reach, but I’m going to try and watch these last four games without worrying about them too much. I want to watch Alonso diesel baseballs and Conforto knock in runners without immediately needing to ask for a specific little more. Just like I want to watch Rosario continue to expand his horizons, and see Brandon Nimmo‘s home-run anti-trot again, and hope J.D. Davis does something else that’s endearingly goofy. Maybe Sam Haggerty will get a start and a ball for his trophy case — the Marlins’ Tyler Heineman collected his first MLB hit off deGrom Wednesday night, which has to make an always-sweet first souvenir even sweeter.
And then, when all that’s done, I’ll watch other teams play ball, navigating the highly temporary affections and allegiances of October. No, the Mets won’t be a part of the dance, and that will make me sad. But in 50 years on the planet, I’ve never found a form of entertainment that moves me and fulfills me and makes me as happy as baseball does. Sunset has come for the team we hold dear, but the party will go on under the stars, and there’s no way I’d miss it.
by Greg Prince on 25 September 2019 11:05 am Out of view of the practiced mayhem unfolding at first base — a back-pounding, seed-showering, powder-pouring, jersey-excising exercise in joviality befitting an eleventh-inning walkoff walk that capped a five-run comeback and staved off postseason eligibility elimination for one more day — there was another, more muted celebration at Citi Field Tuesday night. The cameras didn’t pick any of it up, but my sources tell me it happened.
A handshake line formed in a fairly bare room deep inside the Met clubhouse, where media isn’t permitted and most of the players rarely enter. Zack Wheeler, who didn’t participate in the Mets’ 5-4 victory over the Marlins, was ushered within its cramped confines by Jay Horwitz, who diligently handles alumni affairs for the ballclub. It had already been a big day for Horwitz, what with the announcement that Jerry Koosman’s number is going to be retired next year, but he had another event to take care of postgame.
Jay had arranged the handshake line for Zack and Zack alone. One after another, a string of retired pitchers who used to pitch for the Mets waited to congratulate Wheeler. Zack didn’t want to seem rude and admit he was familiar with no more than a few of them by face or name. He also wasn’t sure why he was the only Met brought into this room. It’s not like he had anything to do with tonight’s win over the Marlins.
Still, he politely accepted their grips, their grins and their greetings.
“Hi Zack, I’m Jay Hook. Got the first win for us. Betcha didn’t know that. Way to go, kid.”
“Mike Scott, Zack. Excuse the sandpaper between my fingers. I still carry it around for some reason. Nasty habit I picked up in Houston after I left here.”
“Please to meet you, Zack. I’m Galen Cisco. I used to work over where that parking lot is now. Congrats.”
“Zack, I’m Roger Craig. I threw the very first pitch for the ballclub and lived to tell about it.”
“Maybe you remember me, Zack. My name is Bret Saberhagen. I won a couple of Cy Youngs. Not here, but like I was telling Jay, they all count.”
“Pete Falcone, Zack. Lefty, but I’ll shake righty with you. Good goin’, pal.”
“Hey Zack, I’m R.A. Dickey. How fortuitous that our respective paths converge this splendid evening.”
“Good to see ya, Zack. We sort of have the same name. My last name is Zachry. First name is Pat, though.”
“Hello, Zack. I’m Jack Fisher. I threw a ton of innings in these parts. You have, too, I suppose. Nice job.”
When each of the nine men was done wishing Wheeler well, they formed a circle around the slightly befuddled pitcher and broke into applause. Then they departed the room via an unmarked side exit, leaving Wheeler and Horwitz alone.
“Say, Jay…” Zack hesitantly asked the former PR director.
“Yes, Zack?”
“Um, at the risk of sounding clueless, what was all that about? What was R.A. Dickey doing here? And all those older gentlemen?”
“Oh, right, I never told you. I can be forgetful sometimes.”
“Told me what, Jay?”
“Well, you know how you’ve been on the Mets since 2013?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And all that time, the Mets had never had a winning record in the seasons when you pitched — and how the only times we did have a winning record, you were out with injuries?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you and those guys were the only living Mets pitchers who had started fifty or more games for Mets teams that had never finished with a winning record. Some of them, like Roger and Jay, go back to the very beginning. Galen and Jack came along a little later. R.A. was only a few years ago. Maybe more than a few by now. Time really flies. Pat and Pete were here in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when I first got here. Mike, too, come to think of it, though not a lot of people remember him trying to help the Mets. Oh, and Bret was here in the ’90s. He’s not making up the part about Cy Youngs, but like he said, he got those for somebody else. Anyway, I thought it would be nice for you to meet them now that you’re no longer in their club.”
Zack admitted he didn’t realize he was in a club with any of them, but as Jay explained it, he got the picture. The Mets had just captured their 82nd win of 2019 on Brandon Nimmo’s bases-loaded base on balls, ensuring a winning record for the season. Zack was, of course, part of the 2019 Mets, a statistically winning ballclub, the first he’d ever been fully a part of since coming to the big leagues six years before. He didn’t think about it much these days, what with being busy trying to keep pace with the Brewers and whoever else the Mets were chasing into the last week of September. It bothered him not to pitch for the Met playoff teams of 2015 and 2016, but he focused on getting healthy again and doing as best he could when he came back.
On this night, Zack was only concentrating on the Mets trying to catch the Marlins, who had taken a 4-0 lead amid Noah Syndergaard’s latest confounding outing. Wheeler and his teammates had faith in one another and that neither this game nor this season was quite over yet, even as they were losing, the Nationals were clinching one Wild Card and the Brewers were relentlessly closing in on the other. Sure enough, the bullpen proved uncommonly solid in shutting down Miami and Michael Conforto came through with a pair of two-run homers to push Tuesday into a tenth inning. Eventually winning this game seemed inevitable.
Zack couldn’t say the same about the trajectory of his career and how it intersected with the fate of his team. Had he never been traded from the Giants, he might have pitched in the 2014 World Series for them. Had the Mets traded him on any number of the occasions it was rumored he was going somewhere, he might have playoff experience already or at least a reservation to get some next month. Instead, he stayed a Met, put his head down and kept working to get back on the mound and then get the Mets back on course.
Spurt of second-half excitement notwithstanding, the 2019 season didn’t necessarily follow the course Wheeler or any of the Mets would have preferred. A winning record is swell unto itself, but there clearly weren’t enough wins to guarantee the season going into October. The chances the scaldingly hot Brewers were about to embark on a five-game losing streak (never mind the odds against the Mets concurrently going undefeated the rest of the way) seemed remote. These Mets likely wouldn’t be a playoff team, and that was too bad, but they knew they had been a winning team, and that wasn’t too bad.
For the first time, Zack Wheeler felt it. He got it. He pitched for a winner. It was good to know.
“Thanks Jay. I really appreciate this. Thank all those guys for me. That was real nice of them.”
“Sure thing, Zack.”
The two were about to leave the room, when a dazed Paul Sewald wandered in. He’d never seen this room before, but there were lots of things the third-year Met had never seen. After having been the losing pitcher fourteen times but never the opposite, not even once, since the Mets first promoted him in 2017, Paul was enjoying a new sensation of his own. By pitching a scoreless top of the eleventh, Sewald was in line to be the winning pitcher should the Mets score. Once Nimmo drew the bases-loaded walk that brought Amed Rosario home from third, Paul got the win.
“Guys! Guys!” Sewald asked Wheeler and Horwitz excitedly. “Did ya see? I’m a winning pitcher — a winning pitcher at last. I’m one and fourteen, but I got one! I finally got one!”
The starter and the alumni affairs chief smiled and nodded, telling the heretofore hapless reliever how happy they were for him.
“I was beginning to think this would never happen,” Paul confided. “But it has. Finally. Hey, Zack, I can’t tell you how great it feels to be a winner for the first time.”
“I hear ya, Paul. It’s not bad at all.”
by Greg Prince on 24 September 2019 4:38 pm On the fiftieth anniversary of the clinching of the 1969 National League East, we learn the New York Mets are retiring No. 36 in honor of Jerry Koosman. My, it feels good to write that.
 Jerry Koosman breaks through. I had been clued in recently that something might be stirring in this area, yet Kooz didn’t immediately jump to mind. Now that he’s there, I love that 36 is next. Best lefty pitcher the Mets ever had. Best postseason pitcher the Mets ever had. Long and meritorious service and then some across twelve seasons. For the past forty years, you looked at 36 on anybody else, from Wayne Twitchell to Mickey Callaway (now clad in 26), and you thought, “Koosman,” regardless of current occupant. He’s owned 36 since 1967. Might as well make it official that it belongs to no Met but him.
Jeff Wilpon (hold your applause) indicates a few more number retirements are on the table, that the Mets have some catching up to do where filling the left field rafters are concerned. I say good. Celebrate this franchise’s cream of the crop. We’re already proud when we’re not disgusted. A little reminder to peek up and remember our best helps the cause. Certainly doesn’t hurt.
Kiner’s mic. Shea’s name. Robinson’s American history. 37. 14. 41. 31. 36. A few more to come.
I can definitely see it.
by Jason Fry on 24 September 2019 10:40 am It’s the faces I’ll remember.
Steven Matz, hunkered down on the mound with his knees bent as Jorge Alfaro jogged around the bases, having authored a grand slam and a 6-0 Marlins lead. Matz’s face was a mask of horror and self-loathing, and for a moment I wondered if he’d be able to get back up.
Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil, standing side by side in the infield at much the same moment, their faces cycling through shock and anger and determination and the rapid-fire realizations that a) at some point determination, however admirable a quality, isn’t enough; and b) that point had arrived.
Brad Brach sitting in the dugout after seeing an inning flip from “over and the Mets are only down 6-4” to “not over, the Mets are down 8-4, and I’m no longer pitching.” All of the Matz/Alonso/McNeil expressions were visible on his face, with maybe one more in the mix. Brach grew up an avid Mets fan, so perhaps this was his Joe Boyd moment. He got to wear his childhood colors, only to be wearing them at center stage during an oh-so-Metsian moment of reversal.
Yes, the Mets lost. And so did the Phillies, which pushes the Mets’ tragic number to a depressingly imminent 2. They’re not dead yet, but their collective head is on the block, the executioner has donned his hood and taken his money, and I’m afraid that whisper of air ruffling the little hairs on the back of the neck was from an ax — not coming down, true, but going up, which is generally preface to a disagreeable conclusion.
And of course it’s the Marlins holding the ax. Because baseball fandom means the pain of your spiritual forefathers will one day become yours.
Though, if we’re being honest, the real executioner of 2019 won’t have been the Marlins, or the Nats or the Brewers, but time. Monday night’s loss wasn’t a killer like the one against the Nats right after Labor Day or against the Dodgers two weekends ago. It was a merely frustrating one, like the one against the Reds on Saturday. Matz’s location was poor and an inning snowballed, Brach was a little slow getting off the mound on a quirky play, and the Mets had about a zillion chances to score runs but limited themselves to one swing of the bat by Amed Rosario.
And, I should add, the Marlins showed resilience and grit and character and all those attributes we tend to reserve for our own team, either praising them for being gallantly employed or lamenting that they were shamefully withheld. Alfaro went deep twice, Jon Berti was all over the bases and center field, and Harold Ramirez busted it to first to beat Brach by the slimmest of margins. Even good teams lose 20-odd games like that each and every year. In May or June, they’re the cause of grumbling. It’s only in the last week of September, when a team’s out of survivable mistakes, that they’re the stuff of tragedy.
But back to the faces.
During one of the weekend’s broadcasts, Howie Rose recalled how Willie Randolph had wound up sharing a cab with David Wright at the end of a season turned to dust, and urged Wright not to wash away what he was feeling, but to remember it — remember it and use it.
Or there’s the end of Davey Johnson‘s Bats, an as-told-to baseball book elevated to something more worthy by Johnson’s lifelong allergy to bullshit. There was a paperback edition of Bats, with a lengthy afterword about the 1986 championship season, but the hardcover edition didn’t have that. It ended with the 1985 Mets coming up just a little short, and Johnson telling Peter Golenbock what he thought and said after it was over.
Johnson thought about his last moments as a 1969 Oriole, when he’d accepted having been beaten by some band of upstart Mets and vowed his team wouldn’t be stopped in 1970. In 1985, now a Met himself, he told his charges that he wanted them to make up their minds that they’d win it all in 1986. And then Johnson retreated to his office and made the promise that ends the book: “Next year, by God, nothing is going to stop us.”
I’d like to think I saw some of that in the expressions worn by Matz, Alonso, McNeil and Brach. That they’ll remember this, and use it, and maybe make a vow or two. And that the paperback edition will be something special.
by Jason Fry on 23 September 2019 11:23 am The Mets kept their heartbeat faint but detectable by beating the Reds on Sunday afternoon — a game I started listening to on the Tripper Bus back from D.C. and that ended with me standing in my living room in Brooklyn. (First comment: “I know they’re throwbacks, but the Reds really need to retire those uniforms.”)
Your orange-and-blue heroes: Michael Conforto, who tagged Trevor Bauer for a first-inning three-run homer; J.D. Davis and Brandon Nimmo, whose solo shots shoved the Reds back in a way the Mets needed to do but couldn’t on Saturday; Marcus Stroman, who outlasted both the Cincinnati hitters and his own rebellious guts; and Brad Brach, who entered to retire Eugenio Suarez on a single very important pitch.
Speaking of nausea, the Cubs finished being dismantled by the Cardinals, the finale of a late-season sweep that leaves them just a half-game ahead of us and four behind the Nationals and Brewers, currently tied as wild-card leaders. That one will leave a mark in Chicago that will last quite a while. The Nats are stumbling around up there on the leaderboard, having lost to the Marlins, while the Brewers just keep winning, despite being without Christian Yelich. It helps that the Brewers got to play the Pirates, who decided to play a 140-game schedule this year. Pittsburgh has been roiled by clubhouse fisticuffs and revelations of vile behavior by players, and the Pirates’ braintrust will have to find a way to move on from the fact that, to put it bluntly, this year’s club quit.
Add up all that and you have an odd scenario in which the Mets are behind the Cubs, Brewers and Nationals but it really only feels like they’re chasing the Nats, since the Cubs are Icarus plunging towards the Aegean of the offseason and the Brewers don’t seem interested in ever losing another baseball game.
The Mets emerging from that scenario to play a 163rd game is unlikely, to put it mildly, but “unlikely, to put it mildly” is not the same as “impossible,” and the fan-emotion rollercoaster has looped back around to the point where the chase is fun again, which is what baseball ought to be and what Mets baseball too often hasn’t been in the final week of seasons.
I was struck by Conforto and Davis being front and center in the Mets’ Sunday win. Both have become favorites of mine — Conforto a few years back and Davis recently — but both are at least mildly confounding to assess as players.
Conforto has endured a lot as a New York Met, a soapbox I’ve climbed on before and a rant I’ll largely spare you this time. (Short version: The Mets did everything possible to wreck his development as a hitter and then repeatedly set him up to fail as a defender, only to wind up with a 3 WAR player despite themselves.) The only thing I’ll add is that Conforto has to be the unluckiest hitter in baseball — if you turn on Howie and Wayne just in time to hear them lament a ball that hung up or an enemy fielder’s tricky catch, odds are Conforto was at the plate.
After writing that I did some nervous Googling, waiting to discover that I’d succumbed yet again to confirmation bias. But no, Conforto’s BABIP this year really is a head-scratching .283, the lowest among Met regulars. (For the uninitiated, the average MLB batting average on balls in play hovers around .300 year to year.) Conforto attracts more than his share of Met fans somehow dissatisfied with 30+ homer/90+ RBI seasons; if he’d like to silence them, his best bet would be to figure out some ceremony that will propitiate the BABIP gods and make them torment someone else.
(I find BABIP one of the more interesting “advanced” stats for its value finding players whose current circumstances may owe a lot to luck, whether fair or foul. Looking at other Mets, the BABIP leaders are Jeff McNeil and Amed Rosario, both at .338; Wilson Ramos is at .315, and down there with Conforto you’ll find Pete Alonso at .284. McNeil had a starry BABIP last year too and Rosario is helped by his speed, but the Ramos and Alonso numbers are pretty interesting.)
As for Davis, we all know him as the adorable Solar Bear, Alonso’s goofy, endearing sidekick. (“WHADDYA GONNA THROW ‘IM? WHAT NOW?”) He’s also a guy without an obvious position, unless “boy can he hit” counts. Baseball Reference has J.D. at 0.8 WAR, which is shorthand for “this player needs to be kept out of your starting lineup.” That surprised me, as I would have thought Davis would net out as at least a useful piece. The statistical shortcoming is all defense — he’s worth a highly useful 2.8 WAR as an offensive player, but gives back most of that with the glove.
Defensive stats are still something of the wild west in baseball, with the formulas and methodology in motion. (Which is part of the process, and not a reason for anyone who wants to be taken seriously to dismiss them.) I’d love to know more about Davis at different positions and over time. But outfield defense is also where I put the least faith in the eye test — catches are made or not made based on instinct, footwork and first steps, which are the hardest things for a non-scout to assess and a broadcast to break down.
Barring a miracle (and hey, they’re not unknown in these parts), the 2019 Mets will be remembered as a team that came up just a little short of October baseball, undone by its bullpen and its defense. (Having a dunderheaded manager didn’t help.) The Mets need to improve defensively and have a glut of outfielders — of whom, unfortunately, only McNeil nets out as a positive contributor by defensive stats. Could the Mets improve by packaging Davis for help they need elsewhere?
That would make me sad — I want J.D. Davis to play 20 years, create a long playlist of goofy celebratory moments with Alonso, and retire as a Met with an on-field ceremony that ends with one of his squeaky-voiced calls to arms and Alonso sneaking up from behind him to tear off his jersey one last time. But then I always want that ending (or, OK, something like that but a lot less specific) for a player I’ve come to enjoy, and the construction of baseball teams is a job for the head, not the heart.
For now, the Solar Bear is here, hammering dingers and doing whatever he does in the outfield, and it’s a story I’ve found compelling and entertaining and thrilling and even heart-warming, and I’m going to enjoy the heck out of the last week of it.
And then, as always, we’ll see.
by Greg Prince on 22 September 2019 8:10 am With apologies to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who identified five distinct stages of grief, I have determined there are only two steps to a Mets fan’s mourning for a dying season:
1) Acceptance
2) Ah, fuck
Who needs five when you can do what we do, which is simply cycle between our two for several weeks? Following the conclusion of Saturday’s probably definitive killer loss to the Reds, I pinged back and forth, accepting that the loss indeed probably definitively ended our quest for a Wild Card berth and cursing out the way the defeat went down.
Ah, fuck. We shouldn’t have lost to the Reds, 3-2. Or 30-2. I suppose the score doesn’t matter, but when it’s that close…Ah, fuck. The Mets didn’t hit, but they had their chances. The Mets didn’t field, though Todd Frazier had his chances. Zack Wheeler, as seems to be his role, single-handedly stemmed the tide of looming gruesome inevitability, same as he did against the Dodgers last Sunday. The Reds aren’t nearly the team the Dodgers are, but like the score, the opponent doesn’t matter. All opponents come prepared to beat you when you’re straining to win something valuable. Except for the Pirates, whose new logo is a doormat that says “WELCOME TO MILLER PARK!”
Is bitterness a stage of grief? Or can I just file that under Ah, fuck?
Wheeler was Wheeler for seven innings, which feels good to say in a positive manner. I hope Wheeler will be Wheeler for us in 2020 and beyond, but that’s for winter. Summer hung in there on Zack’s shoulders for seven strong, his only blemished inning the first, and that was from Frazier making like a B-movie evil scientist who replaces the Clearasil in all the medicine cabinets in town with zit-inducing cream so every teen will show up for school on Monday too embarrassed to live.
I doubt Todd was that cunning in making first an error on a potential double play ball, and then what he called “a bonehead play” on a foul ball ruled fair, the bonehead aspect being his not throwing the ball to first for an out because, gosh, it looked foul to him. It looked foul to many, but not to third base umpire Mark Ripperger. Throw first, judge second, Todd. By reversing that order, Frazier enabled the initial Cincinnati run. A second followed on a soft single. The Reds led, 2-0.
Two runs shouldn’t have been insurmountable for the Mets, who merrily tallied eight the night before. They managed one on Wheeler’s groundout in the third and another from Brandon Nimmo conveniently placing his elbow pad in harm’s way with the bases loaded in the fifth, but no more off Cincy starter Anthony DeSclafini or any Red reliever. They didn’t have to “save some of that for tomorrow” on Friday. Somebody should have informed our offense that making more “of that” is permissible.
Zack threw 109 pitches to get through his seven innings, and as in his previous start versus L.A., Mickey Callaway relied on his compressed circle-of-trust to take care of whatever came next. Unfortunately, neither Justin Wilson nor Seth Lugo matched their dependable profiles. In the eighth, Wilson allowed a walk and a dying quail (which might make a good fill-in mascot on the upcoming homestand should Mr. Met require a mental health day). Lugo came in with two on and one out. He struck out one of the 2019 Cincinnati Reds, but then was done in by a 2015 Kansas City Royal masquerading as a 2019 Cincinnati Red.
I have to confess that for all the Metsiana I retain, Christian Colon’s role in ending our most recent attempt to capture a world championship never fully registered with me. Colon, little-used in KC, delivered the go-ahead hit for the Royals in the twelfth inning of Game Five four years ago. It was his only plate appearance of the entire Series. I fully comprehend this fact at last because Gary Cohen mentioned it in Colorado and dwelled on it in Cincinnati. I did vaguely recall the name and the hit, yet somehow my mind shuts out the potency of the details related to anything that happened after Lucas Duda threw a mile above Travis d’Arnaud’s head and Eric Hosmer scored from third in the ninth to tie Game Five, which was when I reluctantly approached Acceptance of our 2015 fate. Colon’s single for Kansas City breached the floodgates, driving in the first of five twelve-inning runs. By the time it got to the ultimate final of 7-2, they all looked alike to me and I was mentally incapable of sorting through the villains.
Ah, fuck.
Stealth bastard Colon, who flitted through Las Vegas as a Met farmhand in 2018, demonstrated he hasn’t lost his black magic touch, singling sharply up the middle to drive in what became the winning Red run on Saturday. The only solace I could find was in suddenly remembering Don Draper’s snippy retort to upstart copywriter Michael Ginsberg during a tense elevator ride on Mad Men.
GINSBERG: I feel bad for you.
DON: I don’t think about you at all.
For four years I hadn’t thought about Christian Colon at all. Now I don’t even have that going for me.
Postgame, Callaway’s usual unbothered veneer cracked. “This one hurts,” he said a lot. Wheeler pumped out clichés like they were four-seam fastballs: “crunch time”; “bear down”; “give it all ya got”; “put your head down”; and “keep grindin’”. Self-described bonehead Frazier explained he’d already calculated the Mets could afford to lose only one game in their final ten and defiantly declared, “Here’s the one, so let’s roll.”
In Milwaukee, the Pirates heeded his call and said, “Yes, let’s roll over.” Somebody’s gotta check their hearing and maybe their credentials, for they’ve ceased playing like major leaguers, again bowing to the Brewers, this time by nine runs. The score may not matter, but it did serve to illustrate how impossible catching Milwaukee will be. Not that it’s gonna be possible when the Mets experience one season-ending setback per series. You can only have so many of those. The camel rightly complained his back couldn’t take another on Saturday. No, losing this game wasn’t a very good idea.
At the risk of being impolite, it seems worth noting that the Mets’ middling record of the moment — 80-74 — isn’t truly the stuff of a title contender. Except for the eternal anomaly of 1973, no Mets team with this few wins at this late a stage of a season has ever nosed its way into the playoffs. Two Wild Cards have lowered the barrier to entry somewhat (we hosted in 2016 with an 87-75 mark), but really, 80-74 does not normally qualify a club for MLB’s heavyweight division.
Yet let’s not explicitly throw in the towel at 4½ back with 8 to play. Let’s burnish the 80-74, GB column be damned. Eighty wins is better than any non-postseason total we’ve accumulated in this decade. Faint praise, I know, but it amounts to a taller stack of Met victories than every year from 2010 to 2014 yielded, not to mention 2017 and ’18, and we really hate to mention those seasons. An 81st win guarantees we don’t root for a bleeping bunch of losers. An 82nd win allows us to spin a winning record, the twenty-sixth in our history should it come to pass. Getting to eight over .500 would be particularly pleasant because it would mean that after peaking at 67-60 once we swept the Cleveland series, we didn’t totally come apart at the seams. Mostly we’ve held together the seams, even climbing back to seven over .500 as of Friday night. A slate weighing in at 85-77 would literally reverse last year’s 77-85, making for fairly sweet symbolism.
Does any of this matter? Not much, but we each carve out our own path to Acceptance.
by Greg Prince on 21 September 2019 12:35 pm Oh, those beautiful round numbers coming out of the most roundly spelled state in the union, O-H-I-O…
10 wins for the preeminent pitcher in the league.
50 homers for the most prodigious slugger in the world.
80 wins for the team that still allows us to dream.
Three-and-a-half out of where we wanna be with nine to play. That’s less a round number than a big block of Wisconsin cheese in our way, but you can’t have everything. Isn’t it enough that we have Jacob deGrom, Pete Alonso and the continuously contending New York Mets?
Not really, but we’ll take what we can get ’round here. Especially when you consider how true this description of the Mets season, as published in the September 21 edition of the New York Times, rings:
The Mets now have only nine games left in a season that has seen them hurt, slumping, vilified and resurrected at various stages.
Thing is, that perspective on a Met season hanging in the balance at a very late hour in the schedule was written not after the 153rd game of 2019, but the 153rd game of 1973, which happened to have occurred on the same date forty-six years earlier.
That’s right, kindred history-minded spirits, September 20, 1973, which we immediately recognize as the “when” in the legendary Ball Off the Top of the Wall play, which some refer to as simply the Ball off the Wall, but that doesn’t do it justice, for it was the peak of the left field fence where Dave Augustine’s almost-certain two-run home run landed for a second split so finely that, before the clock struck :01 in the top of the thirteenth at Shea, that non-home run bounced up and into Cleon Jones’s glove.
Cleon wasted no time in relaying the ball to shortstop Wayne Garrett — not third baseman Wayne Garrett, nor shortstop Bud Harrelson (Buddy had been pinch-hit for) — and Garrett turned and fired said Wall Ball to catcher Ron Hodges (Jerry Grote had been pinch-hit for, too). Hodges used it to tag Richie Zisk, the runner/lumberer from first, out at the plate.
Seven. Six. Two. Not round numbers, but Amazin’ ones. The Ball Off the Top of the Wall play kept the Mets tied in that game, a game they would win, 4-3, when rookie Hodges singled home John Milner in the bottom of the inning. As the Times went on to report on September 21, 1973, in the wake of the 153rd game of that season, “[W]ith all their adventures, they will probably remember last night’s four-hour thriller as one of the soap operas of the year.”
We will, or certainly should, remember last night’s 8-1 thumping of the Reds in Cincinnati as one of this year’s most satisfying triumphs, considering it featured sizable contributions from our preeminent pitcher, deGrom; our prodigious slugger, Alonso; and the other among their teammates to have been dubbed an All-Star in 2019, versatile player of multiple talents Jeff McNeil. The trio traveled together to Ohio in July, Cleveland, and together they constituted the brightest lights in the Metropolitan galaxy. We’re in a different month, they are in a different section of the Buckeye State, and the Mets are in a far better place than they were at the break, but when these three come together do their best, it is inevitably a starry, starry night.
Start with deGrom. Always start with deGrom if you can. Finish with deGrom should the pitch count stars align. They never do, but wishing upon a star never goes out of style. When deGrom is pitching, you feel like you can have whatever Met eventuality you seek. For seven innings, we could have a shutout going that — despite the presence of a pretty prolific power source on the other side (Eugenio Suarez and his not so parenthetical 48 HRs) — you sensed could go on forever if need be. Consider that within deGrom’s Friday night 9-K universe, our ace induced strike three four times on a slider, three times on a four-seam fastball, and twice via changeup. Jake’s out pitch is basically whatever he feels like throwing.
His mound opponent, Luis Castillo, was no easy customer. The game stayed scoreless through five (another symptom of a deGrom start). It would be left to Met All-Star McNeil, whose face presumably appeared accurately on the Great American Ball Park scoreboard, to get the Mets off the schneid as effectively as Cleon got Augustine’s ball off the top of the Shea wall, blasting a Castillo changeup where no Red outfielder could hope to perform miracles with it. Jeff thrust us in front, 1-0, which isn’t enough for most pitchers, and not a fair margin to depend on deGrom to flawlessly defend, but it was better than 0-0.
Better still, in the seventh, with Castillo still throwing, Amed Rosario, a second-half All-Star candidate if such a thing existed, belted one of Luis’s sliders even further for even more runs, as J.D. Davis had walked just ahead of him. Now it was 3-0 and deGrom could more or less cruise along the banks of the Ohio. After the home seventh was complete, however, so was deGrom’s evening. Jake had thrown fewer than a hundred pitches, but he revealed later he wasn’t feeling all that great. Imagine deGrom against the Reds in the pink.
Before we had much chance to experience discomfort from deGrom not feeling his best — THERE ARE STILL SIX OUTS TO GET!!!!!! — Jacob’s fellow All-Stars made us feel all better. With one out and Castillo replaced by stylish Sal Romano, McNeil made an artistic choice to single to right. That brought up Alonso, and that brought the house down.
If you were listening to Howie Rose on the radio, here is what Gary Cohen said on SNY about what Alonso did to a Romano fastball:
“And Pete crashes one, deep right-center field, that’s headed toward the wall…it’s OUTTA HERE! NUMBER FIFTY — PETE ALONSO! Deep into the night! Only the second rookie in major league HISTORY to hit fifty home runs in a season! And Pete hit one outta SIGHT into the Ohio night.”
If you were listening to Gary Cohen on television, here is what Howie Rose said over WCBS about that very same swing:
“Two-two to Alonso. Fastball hit HIGH IN THE AIR! Deep to right center. Ervin goin’ back…ladies and gentlemen, the New York Mets have a FIFTY-HOME RUN HITTER! Pete ALONSO, the first player in franchise history to hit the magic FIFTY mark! He hit it into the stands in right-center field, NUMBER FIFTY, RBIs number one-hundred FOURTEEN and one-hundred FIFTEEN, the Mets have a FIVE-to-nothing lead, and Alonso is now just two home runs behind Aaron Judge’s rookie record of FIFTY-two! Congratulations PETE ALONSO on joining Major League Baseball’s hallowed FIFTY-home run club.”
Either way you heard it, it looked like it would never come down. It finally did, somewhere amid Great American’s kitschy riverboat backdrop, appropriate enough in that Pete has sailed away with every single-season Met home run record that used to seem impressive.
Geez, a Met has hit 50 home runs. Did you ever think such a total was possible from one of our guys?
Mets up 5-0 on Alonso’s big 5-0 was pure poetry, but with this bullpen, you don’t mind governing in prose. After a Mets trio less decorated than deGrom, McNeil and Alonso (Brach, Avilán and 2018 American League All-Star Edwin Diaz) wriggled us out of our bottom-of-the-eighth anxiety, the Mets tacked on three runs to make it 8-0, the kind of score we used to not so kiddingly refer to as Francoproof. Or Benitezproof. Or Looperproof. You get the idea.
I’m delighted to report 8-0 was Familiaproof, too, even if it did wind up 8-1. The important thing is we had the eight and picked up a game on the Cubs for second place in the very specific National League Second Wild Card standings. If only trailing Chicago by a game-and-a-half was the goal in all of this, then we could be digging deep for postseason fees right now. Instead, our 80-73 Mets are still looking up at the Brewers from a distance of three-and-half games. I’m less delighted to report the Brewers’ opponents, the Pittsburgh Pirates, remain in the league and will continue to play Milwaukee this weekend. A predilection for believing the Mets aren’t too far back to charge at the playoff spot the Brew Crew is currently strangleholding prevents me from explicitly adding the Pirates will probably continue to play dead as well. If you’ve seen the Buccos of late, you can draw your own conclusions.
Three-and-a-half out with nine to go is by no means statistically impossible, but I gotta tell ya that no Mets team in this particular circumstance has navigated waters this choppy and discovered dry October land. Your wonder-of-wonders, miracle-of-miracles 1969 Mets were on the verge of clinching the NL East after 153 games. Your Ball off the Top of the Wall, balls to the wall 1973 Mets had moved practically into port, edging to within a half-game of those scurvy Pirates. The 2016 Mets, who made a mini-’73 out of erasing a late-August deficit of 5½ games to win a Wild Card, were already tied at the top of their ad hoc division through Game 153 (an Asdrubally memorable affair you hopefully still recall three years after the fact). As for the handful of teams we cheered on who were still reasonably alive yet not exactly well at this stage of previous schedules…their omission from the roll call of inspirational Metropolitan September stories tends to speak for itself.
If you’re thinking of deriving precedent and taking heart from beloved 1999, me too, of course, yet those Mets were saving both their worst and best for the final week of the season. We were actually in OK playoff shape twenty years ago at this very interval, two up on Cincy for the Wild Card following our 153rd game, despite getting ignominiously swept out of Turner Field. And if you’re contemplating karmic compensation via a 2007 or 2008 in reverse, those races had already tightened up in the wrong direction prior to Game 153 (and, besides, who wants to take inspiration from the Chase Utley Phillies?).
So we’ll have to do something unprecedented in Mets history. We’ll have to turn being 3½ GB into no worse than tied over the course of approximately 81 innings. We’ll need good teams to suddenly go bad, and bad teams to suddenly get good, and teams with nothing to play for play like nothing, and, oh yeah, we’ll definitely need the Mets, in a season that has seen them hurt, slumping, vilified and resurrected repeatedly at various stages, to be pretty much infallible over the nine games they have left.
And if not, we still have deGrom, Alonso and a ballclub that has won more than it’s lost keeping us engaged clear down to the nub of a year we assumed was over repeatedly at various stages. Beats the hell out of the parts where we were hurt, slumping and vilified.
by Greg Prince on 20 September 2019 9:41 pm
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