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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 10 September 2019 12:30 pm There was a clinching at Citi Field on Monday night. Nothing involving a Wild Card, except for the Mets assuring themselves at least one more evening keeping time at the pennant race party. Nothing definitive for the previously surging Diamondbacks, either, except for confirming our suspicions that Wilmer Flores would make us remember him at his best (winking and rounding bases). Nothing was clinched in the Cy Young derby though if anybody wants to vote Jacob deGrom a second consecutive award, his seven innings of three-hit ball — Wilmer’s inevitable homer notwithstanding — represented convincing electioneering. Also, nothing was resolved in the blistering case of Syndergaard v. Ramos, wherein Wilson, we are reminded, is nobody’s personal catcher, yet he’s undeniably everybody’s community hitter.
What was clinched in the Mets’ 3-1 victory over Arizona was that the Met with the most home runs this season will have more home runs than the Met with the most saves this season will have saves.
Got that? Allow me to elaborate.
Pete Alonso, the Met with the most home runs in any season, socked a pair to raise his total to 47. Breathe that in for a moment. A Met has 47 home runs. It was a big deal when Pete got to 42. Pete just keeps getting more. He has a shot at leading all of baseball at losing baseballs, which he’s already doing. He’s within reach of 50, which nobody anywhere used to hit more than maybe once per baseball generation. He can share the rookie record of 52 with Aaron Judge or, preferably, set a new one with 53.
For now, besides supporting deGrom in furthering what’s left of the Mets’ playoff push, Alonso has achieved the championship of Mets Home Runs vs. Mets Saves, an admittedly little-known competition. Basically, it’s known only to me…and now, you.
Here’s the deal. Early this season, around the time it became apparent that Alonso could set the Mets single-season home run standard, and I began tracking Pete’s progress versus Todd Hundley in 1996 and Carlos Beltran in 2006, I was struck by a related statistical note. Alonso, this rookie who wasn’t guaranteed to begin 2019 on the major league roster, had more home runs than Edwin Diaz, winner of the 2018 Mariano Rivera AL Reliever of the Year Award (which, sadly, is a thing), had saves. Diaz saved 57 games for the Seattle Mariners. He was the kind of closer you could count on to pile saves up, which explained why his presence among us was initially considered a blessing rather than a curse. If the Mets had leads, Diaz would come in and protect them. We saw it early on, when the Mets won five of their first six games, and Edwin saved three of them.
Yet about a quarter-way into 2019, I noticed that Diaz’s save total, while reasonably healthy, had grown stagnant compared to the home run hurricane blowing out to all fields via the new slugger in town. In one sense, it was understandable. Diaz couldn’t save games the Mets weren’t winning, and the Mets weren’t winning all that many games. Meanwhile, an everyday player can hit home runs every day (more than one a day, as Alonso demonstrated Monday) regardless of whether his team winds up winning them.
On the other hand, it had been my core belief for the past thirty or so years that closers in Queens, no matter how unreliable we considered them, stack saves like farmers in the Midwest stack wheat. A decade of exposure to John Franco, who drove me and everybody else crazy, reinforced this notion because as much as we complained about him, boy he could stack saves, so how bad could he be? Never mind that the save already stood on shaky analytical ground if you gave it a few minutes’ thought. You could pick them apart, yet they were still saves. They were receipts showing that a game was won and that a relief pitcher entrusted with providing the effective relief necessary to seal it had done exactly that. They stacked up in the Elias silo. Stack enough and they’d give you an award named for Rolaids before it is eventually renamed for some Yankee.
Thus, I came to believe saves were cheap and home runs were precious, for while John Franco was saving game after game for teams that were mostly not very good through the 1990s, few Mets were hitting a ton of home runs. Once Darryl Strawberry left and Howard Johnson ebbed, there was Hundley with those 41 in ’96 and…well, that was about it. Even when the Mets picked up the power pace in the late ’90s and early ’00s, nobody surpassed Todd. That’s how you wind up with a franchise record that gets passed in August.
With me conceiving the save as a commodity and the homer as a gem, I sort of assumed we almost always harbored an established closer with more saves than we featured a slugger — whoever our top slugger of a given year was — with dingers. But that was just my impression. Was my impression correct? Or was it just something I thought without supporting evidence, like the thing about farmers stacking wheat?
I did a little digging on Baseball-Reference. It turned out I was a little off in my presumptions. Usually throughout Met history, the team’s leading home run hitter has had more home runs than the team’s leading save-earner has had saves. This was especially the case when the franchise was young, saves weren’t yet official, and nobody thought to automatically turn what few Met leads existed over to a designated reliever. In 1962, when Frank Thomas was swatting 34 homers out of the Polo Grounds and other mostly no-longer-with-us yards, Casey Stengel only had 40 wins to steer to a conclusion. Unsurprisingly, the 1962 Mets’ leader in retroactively calculated saves didn’t wind up with many. He practically didn’t have any. Craig Anderson notched 4, leaving Thomas 30 ahead in the HR vs SV category I’d just invented.
The entire Mets pitching staff recorded 10 saves that inaugural season. Roger Craig, who led the team in wins with 10, finished second in saves with 3, including the very first one notched by a Met, on May 6, versus the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium. Craig entered in the twelfth, relieving Anderson, who earned the win after pitching four innings of relief himself, or long enough for Gil Hodges to break a 5-5 tie with a two-run single off Phils reliever Art Mahaffey. Between them, Roger Craig and Craig Anderson started 47 games, which hints at how little specialization was attached to bullpen duty in 1962. (Hell, Mahaffey started 39 games for the Phillies that year, winning 19 of them.)
Thomas only held his single-season home run record until Dave Kingman came along in 1975, but the one he has where topping Anderson is concerned stands to this day. No leading Mets slugger has outpointed the leading Mets saver so decisively since. The gap would close once Thomas was traded, the Mets got a little better, and relief pitching gained respectability — in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher (starting and relief) Ed Charles’s team-leading 15 HRs barely beat out Ron Taylor’s team-leading 14 SVs — but it wasn’t until 1972 when saves gained prominence for a spell. Tug McGraw led the Mets with 27 of them, whereas John Milner’s 17 homers were the most any Met hitter could manage; this was also the season when no individual Met mustered 100 base hits. Tug stuck it to the Hammer again the following year, thanks to his glorious late-season surge: McGraw 25, Milner 23.
These years turned out to be historical aberrations. It took incredibly wan hitting on the part of the Mets to elevate a closer to statistical advantage. For example, in 1977, when three Mets (Milner, Steve Henderson and John Stearns) shared the sorriest-ever Mets home run leadership number with 12, it wasn’t tough for Skip Lockwood to blow past them with 20 saves. In 1980, the year the Mets as a whole pop-gunned all of 61 homers, their leader was Lee Mazzilli, with 16. The door was open for new closer Neil Allen to eclipse that total with 22. The 1977 and 1980 Mets won 64 and 67 games, respectively, yet their most successful saver could post save totals that placed them in the league’s top five each year. No wonder saves began to seem easily attainable, the chip shot extra points of baseball.
The next time saves beat homers was 1984 was when Jesse Orosco’s 31 shattered Tug’s team record from ’72. A year later, the era of Gary Carter, Strawberry and Hojo fully kicked in, while Davey Johnson saw the wisdom in apportioning save opportunities between Orosco and Roger McDowell. Hence, the rest of the 1980s belonged to the sluggers. So did the early 1990s, even as Franco settled in with save after save, including a team record 33 in 1990.
Those were the first 33 in a Met tenure that would conclude with a franchise-best 276 saves, a total 24 above the Mets career home run standard of 252 set by Straw. Funny how comparable home run and save totals can be — and curious how in the Met world saves seem to have a knack for outnumbering homers once you’re lost amid Met history’s nooks and crannies.
Indeed, the tide turned in favor of the bullpen starting in 1994, very much a nook & cranny kind of year, when Franco’s 30 saves outdistanced Bobby Bonilla’s 20 home runs (and a strike precluded anybody from totaling anything else after August 11). Franco also defended the pen’s honor in truncated 1995, with 29 saves to Rico Brogna’s 22 homers in 144 games. Hundley’s career year made home runs the de rigueur statistical indicator in Flushing for a summer, but Franco was back at it again in 1997 and 1998. Maybe if Hundley were fully healthy or Mike Piazza had been obtained earlier than late May, it would have been a different story, but no, Johnny from Bensonhurst’s 36 and 38 saves those two seasons (each a new Mets mark) were more powerful than anything any slugging Mets catcher could produce.
You’d think Piazza, Met legend he was so rightly becoming, would have crushed his bullpen batterymates in this phantom competition, but that wasn’t Mike’s style. Sure, in 1999, with newcomer Armando Benitez taking over the closing role midseason and Mike challenging Todd’s standard, it was Piazza in a breeze (40 HR to 22 SV), but not so much in 2000 and 2001, for even as Mike was slugging just swell (38, 36), Benitez was at his shall we say best: 41 saves in ’00, then 43 in ’01, each of them a Mets record.
Then came the Home Run/Save Solstice. In 2002, Armando Benitez saved (or at least didn’t blow) 33 ballgames and Mike Piazza hit 33 home runs. We had statistical parity between our top closer and our top slugger. Peace in our time in this narrowly defined realm had arrived for the only time in Mets history.
After that, it was a bit of a see-saw. Armando left our part of town in July of 2003, but his good-on-paper 21 saves proved too much for any single Met slugger to equal let alone top. Beltran grabbed a one-homer edge on Billy Wagner in 2006 (41 to 40 saves); Wagner grabbed it right back in 2007 (34 saves to 33 home runs). When Wagner went down in August of 2008, Carlos Delgado poached the crown back on behalf of the sluggers (38 to 27); when everybody who could slug went down across the vast wasteland of 2009, Frankie Rodriguez created the largest lead savers ever enjoyed over sluggers to end a season (35 to 12, the latter figure belonging to unlikely team home run leader Daniel Murphy). Not that sluggers from other teams weren’t figuring out K-Rod by September, but that’s another story.
Jeurys Familia, who you may remember from such sentences as “Jeurys Familia may be the MVP of this team” and “I can’t believe Terry Collins didn’t use Jeurys Familia in the All-Star Game,” overpowered the power-hitters on his own team. Even in 2015, when Flores etched his name with the Met consciousness forever on the strength of a dramatic home run on July 31, presaging a stretch run whose skies were filled with the darn things. Even in 2016, when the Mets rode a penchant for the long ball — seemingly to the exclusion of singles, doubles and triples — to a second consecutive playoff spot, their closer topped the best they could send to the plate. Yoenis Cespedes (who you may not remember) whacked 31 homers? Jeurys Familia answered with 51 saves, by far the most in Mets history.
Just as the notion of topping 50 home runs boggled the mind of a fan who grew up when nobody produced 50 home runs, exceeding 50 saves, whatever you thought of saves…well, that was a ton of saves. And no Met had produced as many home runs as Jeurys Familia had accumulated saves, lending credence to that core belief that was the premise for my keeping track of this stuff: that at the uppermost level of a given Met roster in any season, saves were easier to attain than home runs were to hit.
Pete Alonso is not specifically targeting Familia’s 51 from 2016 in the mythical chase of large Met numbers by Met players tasked with clearly distinct responsibilities. Pete also wasn’t specifically taking on Diaz in 2019, except in my bookkeeping. Yet on Monday night, by going deep for a 47th time this year, the Polar Bear made sure Sugar couldn’t catch him, therefore clinching the Sluggers a 39th internal championship over the Savers, who have taken the title 18 times (plus that one tie). Good ol’ Edwin has been stuck on 25 saves for several weeks; he’s 22 behind Alonso with 19 to play.
Had Mickey Callaway asked the nominally defending Rivera Awardee to save deGrom’s win over the D’Backs; and had he somehow saved it; and had Diaz been suddenly imbued with the spirit of 1973 Tug McGraw and gone on to save every Mets game for the rest of 2019, including a Wild Card tiebreaker or two; and had Pete pledged to keep his shirt on for the rest of the season, then we could have been theoretically looking at a possible 47-47 deadlock between Diaz and Alonso, echoing the moment of saver-slugger détente between Benitez and Piazza. But that was never going to happen. There’s a better chance that Alonso will outdistance Diaz by a margin greater than the 30 by which Thomas put away Anderson way back in the dark ages of 1962.
In reality, when deGrom exited after seven innings, Callaway called on Seth Lugo, a.k.a. Six-Out Seth, to nail down a team victory that was more important than any particular personal achievement, actual or imagined. And Six-Out Seth, being Six-Out Seth, retired all six Snakes who attempted to bite him. It became the fifth save for Lugo, whose prescribed usage (two innings one night, no innings for the rest of the week, apparently) precludes him from catching Diaz for most saves by a Met closer this season under any dream scenario. That’s perfectly all right, though. The best sluggers generally hit the most homers, but as we’ve deduced over these past three decades, the reliever with the most saves isn’t necessarily your best bet to close a game.
by Greg Prince on 9 September 2019 9:36 am We were never explicitly invited to this so-called Wild party the League was throwing for its “in crowd,” you know. You want to say we crashed it, fine. Somebody left a back door open; we wandered through when we heard the music blasting; and nobody asked us to leave — at least not at first. If anything, we became the life of this shindig for a while. Everybody acted as if they loved having us in the middle of things. We brightened up the atmosphere for damn sure. Nobody knew who we were or what we were doing here, but everybody appeared overjoyed that we’d shown up.
Now they’re checking the guest list and noticing something’s awry. Our names aren’t on it and never were. It appears we’ve been found out and are about to be asked to leave. Suddenly, nobody’s particularly Wild about us anymore.
We don’t wanna go. We like it at the party. We love it at the party. Next to the doldrums we were stuck in before we snuck through that back door, this party is heaven. Everything we’ve been doing at this party has made us feel alive in a way we never expected we could feel at this stage of our existence. That conga line we joined — the one that snakes around the room over and over, each of us chasing the other — that’s been more fun than we could have imagined. Even when we all more or less stand in place, simply trying to be heard over the beats, just the sense that something could happen is incredibly energizing.
No wonder they call it high society.
But they’ve figured us out, that it’s not our party. Somebody’s nudged security and we’re edging to the back door from whence we came, lest it be revealed we have no business being here. God, that would be embarrassing. We could have done a better job of fitting in. We could have looked like we knew what we were doing once we got settled (the guy who led us in here turned out to be incredibly clueless). We could have belonged for real. Alas, that may not be the kind of people we are deep down. Maybe we’re just not good enough for this crowd. Maybe we’re just not Wild enough to keep the music playing.
We’re not all the way out, though. Let’s hang around a little while longer, for as long as we can. I understand we can’t really dance all night, but I’m not quite ready to go.
by Greg Prince on 8 September 2019 7:59 am SESSION NOTES
Date: September 7, 2019
Patient: Mr. L
Mr. L began our session by telling me he had “that dream again,” his very specific variation on the dream in which a person shows up for the final exam and realizes they haven’t been to class all semester. In Mr. L’s case, it’s what he calls “the baseball dream”. It’s not the first time Mr. L has discussed “the baseball dream” with me in therapy, but it had a different twist today.
As usual, it starts with Mr. L wandering around in a mostly empty baseball stadium in winter. He says it’s sort of familiar to him, but not a place he knows intimately. In the dream, he again refers to “an agent” who was supposed to be “my agent,” except in “the baseball dream,” the agent is now an authority figure inviting him to join a new baseball team. At first, Mr. L is happy for the invitation. He is considered a fairly ordinary baseball player in this dreamscape, so he is delighted to be fussed over. In “the baseball dream,” Mr. L describes vividly this moment where he is taken outside despite the cold and asked to pose for a picture. He is wearing a baseball cap and a baseball jersey, but not the entire uniform. “They told me to put the jersey over my dress shirt and stand in front of the scoreboard, so I did it,” Mr. L said.
The disturbing part of “the baseball dream,” according to Mr. L, is how that picture haunts him, because it’s the only evidence that he was invited to play baseball for this team. As the dream goes on, he never actually plays baseball. He tries, he says, but something always goes wrong, usually physical. “It’s my knee. It’s my hip. It’s my calf.” Whatever is ailing him in “the baseball dream,” Mr. L says, the end result is feeling “like I don’t exist in reality. I only exist in that picture from winter.”
What made today’s session different was where “the baseball dream” took Mr. L. Usually, he says, he wakes up frustrated and confused with a lower-body ache that he can’t trace to any particular activity. But today, he said, the dream continued in a way it never had before. “This time, my body felt good. I went to the stadium where I took the picture.” Previously, Mr. L said he’d been in stadiums to play baseball in the dream, but it was never the right stadium. They seemed tantalizingly close, he said, maybe even in the same state or city but they weren’t THAT stadium.
In the version of the dream Mr. L described today, he shows up at the stadium where he took the picture and gets to put on the entire baseball uniform, both the jersey and the pants, plus the baseball shoes. The cap, too. “It was like I was really going to play baseball with this team that wanted me,” Mr. L said. He went on to elaborate in great detail what the scene was like.
“The baseball season was almost over, but for me it was like my ‘opening day,’ even though it was at night. There were all these guys, my teammates, I guess, most of whom had never laid eyes on me before,” Mr. L said. “A few kind of nodded at me, like they knew me from somewhere before, but most of them were younger and never heard of me. Everybody was talking about a polar bear and ripping the bear’s shirt off the night before. I don’t know what that’s supposed to symbolize. Maybe it was me waking from a long hibernation and shredding the anxieties that had cloaked me since I took that picture in winter.” (In past sessions, Mr. L has said something about a “bear” and a “squirrel,” though he couldn’t tell me where he thought those images came from; still, I’m encouraged the patient is striving to make these connections on his own.)
I asked Mr. L to tell me more. He said he was in the dugout watching at first. He saw a pitcher he “vaguely recognized,” but one who seemed “out of place in this stadium. He was smaller than a baseball pitcher is supposed to be, I think. And he wore one number on his back, which I don’t think baseball pitchers usually do.” In the dream, Mr. L said, the uncommonly small pitcher kept getting in trouble, trying very hard to succeed but never quite getting past his obstacles — and that “his friends” couldn’t help him by catching all the balls that were hit to them. (Perhaps this is Mr. L projecting aspects of “the baseball dream” he’s repeated to me on numerous occasions.)
Mr. L’s team met with great difficulties. “They kept standing on the bases,” Mr. L said. “It’s like I could see them on first base, on second base, on third base, yet I never saw any of them come home.” (Mr. L has previously used the phrase “I don’t feel at home” to describe the sensation that overcomes him in “the baseball dream”.)
I asked Mr. L to continue. He told me that the game he was watching was apparently important to his team, though maybe not so important. I asked how he came to that conclusion. “The smallish man pitching was suddenly pitching not very well, yet nobody hurried to remove him from the game,” Mr. L said. “The players around me were watching the scoreboard, seeking good news from elsewhere, yet the pitcher kept pitching despite not being very good at it. Maybe the manager of the team didn’t think he had a better option to replace him.” (Mr. L showed impressive empathy here.)
I interrupted Mr. L to ask if he thought there was significance to his mentioning “the scoreboard,” as it was a scoreboard that served as a backdrop for that picture from winter that had so haunted him for so long. “No,” Mr. L answered. “This was a different scoreboard. It was in a different portion of the stadium. Nobody was looking at the scoreboard that I posed in front of. Nobody was looking at me.” (Mr. L went silent for a few moments, perhaps struck by the feeling of isolation that baseball has come to represent in his subconscious.)
For the first time in “the baseball dream,” Mr. L said, he got to play in the stadium. “It was weird,” he said. “The pitcher, our pitcher, was finally done pitching and the manager told me to hit instead of him. I forgot that pitchers sometimes hit, but this was my job now, to go to the plate, with my team losing. I heard a woman’s voice announce my name, and suddenly I noticed the crowd because they were applauding for me. I mean A LOT of people clapped at the sound of my name. I couldn’t tell if they were sincerely welcoming me or simply making fun of the fact that I hadn’t come to class all year and now I was taking the final.” (Mr. L sometimes slips into the “test dream” metaphor. Recognizing this as a tic of his, I let him go on.)
“Finally I get to stand at home plate. I get to swing a bat. I get to be in the game. I realize I’m wearing a blue jersey. It’s different from the one in the picture in ‘the baseball dream,’ and it has a little yellow ribbon of some sort on the front, but apparently it’s official because nobody tells me I’m dressed wrong and no polar bear comes to rip it from my body. Anyway, I’m standing there, and the pitcher starts to throw the ball. He doesn’t seem all that imposing, but none of my teammates have scored against him. I’m very conscious while I’m standing there that they’ve hit the ball hard and they’ve gotten on the bases, but nothing ever comes of it. I don’t remember the pitcher’s name. He didn’t seem all that remarkable, but my team couldn’t do anything against him.”
I ask Mr. L to focus on what happens while he is batting, not just what he is thinking while he bats. “First, I stand there and let him pitch to me. Then I swing a couple of times and miss completely both times. It’s like I’ve never done this before. Usually in ‘the baseball dream,’ my agent or whoever he is tells people how good I am and how good the team is going to be and something about coming and getting us, but here it’s as if I’m helpless. Or maybe I just haven’t played baseball for real in so long that I don’t remember what to do. Then I stand and don’t swing again and I hear more applause, though not as many as when that woman announced my name.” (Mr. L couldn’t identify the woman’s voice. We may have to revisit mother issues in future sessions.)
“At first, I feel kind of good, because somebody tells me I have a ‘good eye,’ and I can be a little self-conscious about my appearance. But then I saw only one more pitch,” Mr. L told me. “And I swung. I swung mightily. I swung to the best of my ability. But I didn’t hit the ball at all and I was told to sit down again. I had struck out. I had waited so long for this chance and that’s what happened. I struck out.”
I told Mr. L he should see this portion of “the baseball dream” as a sign of progress if not a breakthrough. He is now “in the game” in his mind and if he’s “in the game,” he can shake loose from the feeling that his entire existence has been “just a dream,” to use that silly expression. Mr. L nodded, but didn’t seem convinced.
“I went back to the dugout after I didn’t hit the ball,” Mr. L said. “Nothing much happened that I remember after that, except everybody was kind of glum, except when they looked at that other scoreboard. To be honest, it felt a little like winter, where ‘the baseball dream’ usually starts. Very quiet, very eerie. Except this time I’m wearing the blue jersey. And the thing about the polar bear. What do you make of that, Doctor?”
I told Mr. L our time was just about up.
by Jason Fry on 7 September 2019 3:31 am How would you describe Friday night’s Mets game? Thrilling? Reaffirming? Anxious? Horrifying?
Maybe all of the above?
I spent most of the evening not knowing what to think, with good and bad arriving one after the other.
For openers, I wondered when I started trusting Steven Matz. Matz hasn’t had a bad outing in more than a month, and has only had a handful of bum starts all year. Credit an improved changeup, some hard-won maturity that’s helped him stay focused, and finally (and most importantly) being healthy enough to work on things beyond just getting on the mound. Somewhere along the line, I’ve stopped watching Matz through the gaps in my fingers, reflexively fearing that any moment a body part will start barking or some misfortune will cause him to unravel.
Which isn’t to say Matz has learned to pitch efficiently. (A failing which, to be fair, is hardly his alone.) On Friday he departed with 109 pitches under his belt but only five and two-thirds innings complete in a tie game. The Mets not only had to get a run off the Phillies but also had to play their stomach-turning nightly game of figuring out how to get a large number of outs from somebody.
On Friday night, the potentially tragic number of outs needed was 10. Luis Avilan wasn’t the answer, walking the only batter he faced. Enter Brad Brach, the lifelong Mets fan … and Cubs castoff. Brach isn’t a reliever I particularly trust, but he also isn’t Tyler Bashlor or Daniel Zamora or Paul Sewald or, God forbid, Jeurys Familia or Edwin Diaz. Beggars and choosers and all that. Brach was superb, escaping the sixth and coming back for the seventh, where he allowed a double to Corey Dickerson (subbing for Bryce Harper, who took a Matz fastball off the hand and very nearly off the face) but then fanned Rhys Hoskins and Scott Kingery on a mixture of cutters and fastballs.
After Justin Wilson took care of the eighth, the Mets collected the run they needed and one more besides off Hector Neris, thanks to RBI singles from Pete Alonso and Wilson Ramos. (His hitting streak is now one.) But with Seth Lugo unavailable after back-to-back appearances in D.C., their only reliable reliever had finished his work for the night. So closing duties would fall to … who, exactly?
One of the Toxic Twins, but which one?
The answer was Diaz, for which I can’t particularly blame Mickey Callaway, because who else was it going to be? And Diaz actually retired Logan Morrison to start the ninth, which made his appearance better than last time. But Jean Segura singled and up stepped J.T. Realmuto.
“Here comes the dinger,” I told Emily. “Be ready, fans in the left-field seats.”
Scout’s honor, I said that — but odds are you did too.
In Tuesday’s horror show, Diaz abandoned a slider that had looked sharp to throw Kurt Suzuki three straight fastballs at much the same speed in much the same spot, which was an excellent strategy if the goal was to help Suzuki dial in on a 100 MPH fastball. (This was not the goal.) Against the Phillies, Diaz’s slider was consistently up in the strike zone. He threw a good one to Morrison, but left two in the middle of the plate against Segura and two more there against Realmuto. That fourth slider became a souvenir.
What can you even say at this point? Diaz has otherworldly stuff, but he’s been astonishingly, bafflingly terrible. Emulating Jacob deGrom‘s slider grip helped for a little bit, until it didn’t. His location’s been horrible. His pitch selection’s been questionable. Everything’s been a disaster. Given Diaz’s arsenal, track record and arrival in a big-ticket trade, the Mets will do everything they can to fix him, and if you look at the back of his baseball card you’ll probably concede that’s a worthy undertaking. But not even the sunniest optimist could think that Diaz will be fixed this year. Whatever ails him needs attention in March in Port St. Lucie, not in September in a pennant race. Here’s hoping Callaway gives him and Familia the Mike Maddux treatment the rest of the way — incredible though it is to say, I’d feel more comfortable taking my chances with one of the frequent fliers from the Syracuse shuttle.
But say this for the Mets: They sure don’t quit. (You could also say the Phillies’ bullpen is really bad, but I like my version better.) The ninth started quietly, with Amed Rosario and Brandon Nimmo making outs, and I was wondering who was going to pitch the 10th and exactly how awful it would be. But then Juan Lagares and J.D. Davis singled, causing the Phillies to change pitchers and bringing Jeff McNeil up with a chance to win the game and ensure no horrible Mets reliever had to do anything besides holler and throw Gatorade on people.
“Don’t help him” has been one of my 2019 go-to’s on the couch, an exhortation offered to distant Mets who can’t hear me and wouldn’t listen to me if they could. I’ve yelled it at Rosario, McNeil, Davis, Michael Conforto and Alonso, all of whom sometimes get excited and expand the strike zone unhealthily.
Now I yelled it at McNeil, who helped himself by getting hit by a pitch. Up came Alonso with the bases loaded and Nick Vincent on the mound.
Now, Alonso’s been the best thing to happen to the Mets this year, but he’s also a rookie who loves “dieseling baseballs,” in his words. It would be so, so wonderful if he dieseled a baseball into the seats for a walk-off grand slam — but that approach would also play into Vincent’s hands. It would help him.
Don’t help him, Pete!
Alonso didn’t diesel anything, and given the stakes and how big his swing can get, that outcome was actually more impressive than connecting for a grand slam. With the count 2-2, Alonso laid off a fastball just below the zone. Vincent came back with a cutter around the numbers, which Alonso coolly took. Ball four, and a minute later a shirtless Alonso was talking to Steve Gelbs about teamwork.
It was, quietly, one of Alonso’s more impressive at-bats of the season, and a Mets win. And that’s the important thing, even if my reaction was to sink back into the couch. I was happy, sure, but mostly I was relieved … and still not sure what to think of it all.
by Jason Fry on 5 September 2019 2:55 pm The Mets were on YouTube Wednesday. I have no idea how that went, which is probably for the best, since that was a game crying out for some combination of Gary, Keith and Ron to provide perspective and perhaps solace, following the absurd bullshit of Tuesday night. The two factoids that will haunt me: The Mets had taken leads of six runs or more to the ninth inning 806 times in their history and been 806-0, and FanGraphs gave them a 99.3 percent chance of winning going to the ninth.
Yeah, both of those are gonna leave a mark.
I can’t complain about YouTube muscling out our regulars because I was finishing up moving my kid into his dorm room and then driving back to New York from north of Boston. I was done with dad duties a little after noon, so Howie Rose and Wayne Randazzo were my company for most of the trip back to New York — and yes, sometimes a nine-inning game taking its sweet time actually can be a good thing.
Howie and Wayne’s broadcast was a haunted affair — I don’t think there was a half-inning that got assessed on its own merits, as most every baserunner and out came with a reference to Tuesday’s horror show. Which was entirely appropriate: An 806-1 shot coming disastrously home plays havoc with a pennant race, blows apart the foundations of fan expectations, and has to weigh heavily on a baseball team, whether or not it’s fighting for its postseason life.
Fanwise, I found myself in a place that was both strange and yet utterly logical. I listened to the first half of the game grimly and warily, deriving no joy from Zack Wheeler repeatedly dodging bullets, from Juan Lagares‘ surprise homer to tie the game, or from Robinson Cano‘s homer to give the Mets a two-run lead. Surely I was being maneuvered into position for another sock to the jaw, meaning it was vital for me to see it coming and be ready to yank my chin back. These were the Mets and they were going to betray me, and if I wasn’t braced for impact, that was on me. When it happened, I’d want to end the rental car’s journey at the bottom of Long Island Sound, but doing that would be both undignified and pathetic. Here lies Jason Fry, who was somehow surprised by a loss a day after his terrible baseball team blew a six-run lead in the ninth. I know, right? I mean, it’s sad and all, but he didn’t see that one coming?
As has so often been the case in this strange, maddening but rarely boring Mets season, it was Pete Alonso who made me cheer up a little and start listening to the game like it was just a goddamn game. Alonso’s fifth-inning homer was a line drive right down the left-field line, a trajectory initially baffling to Howie and Wayne, and forgivably so because what precedent is there for Pete Alonso? That was No. 45 for the Polar Bear, it gave the Mets a 4-1 lead, and it gave me permission to think that maybe, just maybe, this might not end horribly.
So of course the Mets ran up their lead to six runs (dun dun dun DUNNNNN) and put in one of their two dumpster-fire relievers. Edwin Diaz has gotten the majority of the scathing headlines, but Jeurys Familia‘s year has been equally terrible. Seriously, has any team gone into a season with two guys who were effective closers the previous season — not three or four years ago, an eternity in closer time, but the previous fucking season — only to watch both of them turn into Rich Rodriguez? Anyway, Familia was horrible, giving back half the Mets’ lead and almost causing me to rage out and abandon my car in Waterbury to spend the rest of my days under a bridge screaming at passers-by. (“Why does that angry man keep saying we’re all Armandos and out to get him?”) Luis Avilan cleaned up Familia’s mess, and then it was time for the Mets to figure out some way (any way) to get nine outs.
Seth Lugo got six of them, the consequences of which we won’t know until Friday, and then Justin Wilson was called upon for the final three, which of course had to be Juan Soto, Ryan Zimmerman and Kurt Suzuki, the AKA The Three Nationals of Recent Apocalypse. Wilson walked Suzuki (after making him belly-flop in the dirt, to my childish satisfaction) but retired Victor Robles and the Mets had won.
They won as I was nearing the Whitestone Bridge, leaving me groping for perspective. On the one hand, the Mets went 4-2 against the Phils and Nats, a scenario any of us would probably have taken a week ago. On the other, their two losses both came at the hands of their most radioactive relievers, a problem that isn’t getting solved until winter, and they’re running out of time to overtake the Diamondbacks, Brewers, Phillies and Cubs. The Cubs and Brewers will now play four games, and the Mets should probably root for the Brewers to sweep while they keep pace with them, and meanwhile hope that … you get the idea.
Tuesday’s debacle wasn’t Elimination Day, which is about math, but it was Execution Day, which is about belief. Before Tuesday, in my heart of hearts I insisted the Mets would somehow win through even though that was a secret hope I reserved for myself and wouldn’t admit publicly; now I don’t see a way they can do that.
Still, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Mets had been blown out a day after the horrors of that ninth inning, and I think I would have been more sad for them than angry at them. And that didn’t happen. Maybe it’s a baseball cliche, but they really are a resilient bunch. I’ve counted them out a number of times, and damned if they don’t keep getting up.
* * *
One nice storyline about the 2019 Mets did come to a sad end: Wilson Ramos‘s hitting streak ended at 26 games. But the Buffalo came within a whisper of extending it: In the ninth, Ramos fell behind 1-2 against Sean Doolittle, fouled off four balls and whacked the ninth pitch of the at-bat up the middle, only to watch Howie Kendrick flop on his belly to corral it and throw Ramos out by half a step.
It was a noble end for a pretty amazing accomplishment. Twenty-six games with a safety is quite something even if you’re a lithe shortstop who burns up the bases; Ramos goes around them like a man tasked with delivering a refrigerator to a fourth-floor walkup. That didn’t stop him; neither did having to keep the streak alive in four games where he didn’t start. Ramos has some deficiencies behind the plate — I wonder if Rene Rivera might help both Familia and Diaz — but after years of catchers as offensive black holes, his presence in the lineup has been a pleasure.
And while I’ll find a way to like most anybody who’s a reliable hitter (OK, maybe not you, Jeff Kent), Ramos goes about his business with a hint of ironic detachment, a glint in the eye and an angle at the corner of the mouth that’s more smirk than smile. You don’t get to be a 32-year-old catcher without having seen some shit, and Ramos carries himself like a man who knows baseball is glorious and wonderful but also cruel and unfair and so takes what comes, because that’s the only way a wise man can play this game and not have it drive him crazy.
by Greg Prince on 4 September 2019 10:11 am On a scale of 1 to 10, Tuesday night’s inarguably epic Mets defeat at Washington, in which for the first time in their history they gave up a ninth-inning lead of six runs to lose ASAP, was a Brian Jordan. The second Brian Jordan Game, to be exact, September 29, 2001, Mets leading the Braves, 5-1, heading to the bottom of the ninth at Turner Field, about to trim Atlanta’s lead to three games in the National League East with the series finale the next day and one more week to go in the exhilarating race to make something out of the big nothing that had been the 2001 season not to mention inject that particular autumn in New York with a shot of joy it could really use.
That’s all that was going on when Armando Benitez took the ball in a non-save situation after Al Leiter threw eight four-hit innings, his only blemish a third-inning solo home run to Julio Franco. Closers in non-save situations could be dicey — and Benitez was Benitez — but c’mon. The Mets were winning by four a game they had to win. The Mets had gotten to this weekend by winning 25 of 31 games. It was 25 of 32 after Steve Trachsel lost Friday night, but that was all right. The Mets were resilient (an irresistible metaphor for a New York team at that moment). Brian Jordan had engineered a briefly dispiriting defeat the previous Sunday at Shea: a homer off Benitez in the ninth as part of a three-run rally that tied what also seemed like a sure Mets win that had been started and steered expertly by Leiter for eight innings; and a homer in the eleventh off Jerrod Riggan that gave John Smoltz a lead to lock down. The season seemed all but over when the former NL Cy Young awardee, rejuvenated as an elite reliever, flied out pinch-hitter Mark Johnson to end a 5-4 momentum-squelching debacle.
Yet those Mets had been all about momentum, beginning on August 18, clear up to September 9, then — after a week when baseball wasn’t played because are you kidding? — somehow picking up all over again on September 17, even if baseball seemed incredibly unimportant. Seemed? Was. But the Mets played and the Mets won before the first Brian Jordan Game, September 23, and after the first Brian Jordan Game. They went to Montreal and swept the Expos, allowing them to arrive in Atlanta three games from first place, a week-and-a-half from conceivably forging a miracle that would take its place alongside 1969 and 1973, maybe above it. The Mets were winning for New York in September 2001. It still wasn’t important, but there they were, doing it. How could it not be important?
On Saturday, September 29, 2001, at Turner Field, which was well-established as “Turner Field” in the Met mindset, Benitez began the ninth by giving up a single to Andruw Jones. Jones took second on defensive indifference. Armando then struck out Ken Caminiti. True, Javy Lopez singled in Jones to make it 5-2, but Armando followed the RBI by striking out pinch-hitter Dave Martinez. Two outs, runner on first, three-run lead.
Keith Lockhart walked.
Marcus Giles doubled, scoring Lopez and Lockhart. It was 5-4.
Julio Franco was intentionally walked to set up a double play; Bobby Cox pinch-ran Jesse Garcia.
Bobby Valentine replaced Benitez with John Franco, the Mets closer from 1990 until an injury and Armando’s subsequent lights-out work nudged him to a setup role in the middle of 1999. Franco, as of September 29, 2001, had accumulated 422 major league saves, albeit only two of them that year.
Pinch-hitter Wes Helms walked on a full count to load the bases.
Jordan was up. Franco got two strikes on him. All it would take was one more strike to preserve the 5-4 win, move the Mets to within three games of first place with seven games to go, maybe send the Braves reeling and the Mets surging. Anything was possible.
Including, as it turned out, the second Brian Jordan Game, so named because Jordan belted Franco’s next and last pitch over the Turner Field wall for a grand slam, accounting for the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh runs of the bottom of the ninth inning. The Braves only needed the first two, but they all crossed the plate. The Mets lost, 8-5.
And, like Diana Morales in A Chorus Line, I felt nothing. Nothing. It was as if a vital organ had been removed from inside of me. All that I had poured into being a Mets fan over the previous five seasons, dating back to the renaissance of 1997; through the replenishing successes that were laced with agonizing near-misses in 1998, 1999 and 2000; and this season when the Mets buried themselves early and often yet somehow emerged a legitimate September contender against the most horrible municipal backdrop imaginable, had all dissipated into a void.
We had won 25 of 33. We were four out with seven to play. We could still pick up a game on the Braves on Sunday. The Pirates and Expos, two very beatable teams, were due at Shea. Anything had been possible. Anything, technically, was still possible.
“But I felt nothing. Except the feeling that this bullshit was absurd.”
—
The Mets did indeed beat the Braves on Sunday, September 30, 2001, 9-6. It had been 9-3 in the eighth, but Brian Jordan swatted a three-run homer off Grant Roberts to close the gap. Armando Benitez, in his 73rd appearance of an incredibly long season, struck out the Atlanta side — Julio Franco looking, Keith Lockhart swinging, Dave Martinez swinging — to record his 43rd save, the most by any Met reliever until Jeurys Familia surpassed his record fifteen years later. It was the last time Benitez would pitch in 2001, the last time he’d come to the mound in a cap bearing the FDNY logo. Every Met paid homage to the first responders that way every game. Major League Baseball didn’t necessarily approve the gesture. The Mets didn’t care. Or the Mets cared too much for their city and those who gave their lives in an effort to rescue its citizens to bother heeding directives from MLB.
The caps and the thought behind them were hard to miss. You could get riled up at Benitez and John Franco (who was done pitching until 2003, thanks to impending Tommy John surgery) and all the other relievers who gave up home runs to Brian Jordan. You could fume that the Mets, as was regularly the case in the tumultuous Bobby V era, couldn’t beat the Braves when it really, really mattered. But you couldn’t stay mad at them.
When they returned to Shea, the Mets went quietly. They were eliminated by Pittsburgh on Tuesday night, October 2. They completed their appointed rounds against Montreal on Sunday afternoon, October 7. They finished the 2001 season 82-80, six games out with none to play. The same day they stopped playing baseball, America went to war in Afghanistan. On Thursday, September 20, one night before baseball would be played in New York for the first time since September 11, President Bush went before a joint session of Congress and signaled his intentions for taking on the terrorists behind the deadly attacks on four commercial airliners, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. “Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes,” Bush said. “Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.” Eighteen years later, America’s military involvement in Afghanistan is not finished.
Bush’s speech was well-received. On the same Sunday that his words would be put into action — as the Mets were bowing to the Expos to close out their schedule — the New York Times Magazine ran a behind-the-scenes piece examining how the address came together. In “The Making of the Speech,” it was revealed that a quote from Franklin Roosevelt was suggested for inclusion: “We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind.” But it was discarded, according to those in the room because, “The president didn’t want to quote anyone else.” I found that choice curious, given the opportunity to draw a parallel between the challenges that faced the United States in World War II after Pearl Harbor created a global conflict the nation could no longer avoid and the current situation. Yet I also kind of saw what I hoped was Bush’s point beyond personal hubris: that not every current situation necessarily arrives equipped with an easily analogous precedent…and that every calamity and the challenges it presents is unique unto itself.
—
The 2019 Mets could have been construed as done on Thursday, August 29, when Jacob deGrom pitched effectively against the Chicago Cubs for six innings, only to surrender a three-run homer to the previously obscure Victor Caratini in the seventh. Caratini had reached deGrom for a home run earlier, a solo shot. The Mets, as they generally don’t, didn’t score for deGrom all night, save for a J.D. Davis dinger in the first. The three-run job was decisive. The Mets lost, 4-1, and they were swept three straight by the team they were ostensibly chasing for the second Wild Card in the National League. It was their sixth loss in a row overall, dropping them five games behind Chicago with three teams between them besides. “Good night, sweet Metsies”, I tweeted as Caratini’s second home run left the yard, carrying with it, I believed in my bones, our dwindling playoff hopes.
Yet the truth was our hopes hadn’t fully dwindled. Twenty-nine games remained. The Mets traveled to Philadelphia and took two of three from one of the teams directly in their Wild Card path. On Labor Day, they alighted in Washington and trounced the Nats, possessors of the first Wild Card and their likely foe in the Wild Card Game should the Mets make it that far. They had picked up a game on the Cubs since the previous Thursday. It wasn’t much, and they hadn’t passed anybody among the Phillies, Brewers or Diamondbacks, but September was young and twenty-five games remained as of Tuesday, September 3. Just keep winning, and the hopes that once appeared dwindled could just as easily reverse and grow.
DeGrom was starting again. Despite everything we say about the Mets inevitably finding a way not to take advantage of the presence of their defending Cy Young award-winner, you couldn’t have asked for a better chance. You also couldn’t have asked for a more implacable starting pitcher on the other end. The Nationals were going with Max Scherzer, who has a few Cy Youngs himself. Scherzer flashed the Cy Young form more convincingly, keeping the Mets hitless through three. DeGrom was in scuffle mode. Not struggling, but definitely scuffling, looking uncomfortable and allowing extra-base hits accurately described as ringing. A lesser pitcher would have melted. Jacob hung tough and kept the Mets within one run of Scherzer.
In the fourth, the Mets jumped on Max, first-pitch swinging and connecting. Pete Alonso singled. Michael Conforto singled. Wilson Ramos, hitting streak climbing to 26, doubled to tie the game. Brandon Nimmo needed four pitches to deliver a sac fly that put the Mets ahead. Joe Panik needed just one to crush his first Met homer and furnish deGrom with a 4-1 lead.
Jake hung in. Still not at his finest, but good enough. He produced a pair of double-play balls as needed. Kurt Suzuki reached him for an RBI single in the sixth, but that was it (tip of the cap to Matt Adams running the bases in a back-and-forth motion and therefore short-circuiting further damage). The Mets got through seven with a 4-2 lead, then increased it when Jeff McNeil homered off Roenis Elias to lead off the eighth. Ninety-five pitches of scuffling in, Mickey Callaway couldn’t have asked for a better transition to sufficiently rested Seth Lugo.
Instead, deGrom was sent out to start the eighth. I thought of Grady Little extending Pedro Martinez a bit too far in Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, but precedent is neither exact nor everything. Jacob deGrom, like Pedro Martinez, is never the worst bet in the house.
Jake gave up a little ground ball to Anthony Rendon that Todd Frazier couldn’t wrap a hand around. It became an infield hit. There are worse things that Rendon can do. Juan Soto could do no worse than smash a two-run homer to bring the Nats to within 5-4. That’s exactly what he did on deGrom’s hundredth and final pitch. Out went the ace of our rotation, in came the ace of our bullpen. Seth needed ten pitches to create three popouts.
Machinations over who would pitch for the Mets quickly morphed into a state of superfluousness, because in the top of the ninth, the visitors battered those who pitched for the Nats. Elias was the victim of another leadoff homer, this one to the resuscitated Nimmo. After Panik singled, Davey Martinez — who was the Dave Martinez in the middle of the bottom of the ninth of the second Brian Jordan Game — brought in Daniel Hudson. The Mets proceeded to sail on Hudson. A wild pitch. An error. A walk. An incredibly baffling error of omission by Trea Turner who didn’t turn an easily turnable 6-4-3 double play, instead throwing to first with one out. McNeil responded by singling in two more runs and Alonso followed with his 44th home run of the season, the Polar Bear marking Nationals Park as his territory for the first time since the 2018 Futures Game. Heading to the bottom of the ninth, the Mets held a lead of 10-4.
—
In a parallel universe, we question the wisdom of Callaway wasting Lugo’s precious pitches with a six-run lead. Mickey won’t use Seth on consecutive days. He has to be careful with his de facto closer’s right shoulder. The six-run lead provided the skipper with an excuse for removing Lugo at once and returning him to his glass case. Still, this was September. These were important games. If the manager were tempted to stretch Lugo, this was the month to do it. A day game awaited Wednesday. It would sure be nice to have Seth available had he thrown just those ten pitches in the eighth inning Tuesday. But nailing down a win that isn’t yet won is also important. Could you really blame Callaway for keeping Lugo in with a six-run lead? So what if it was Mets 10 Nats 4? Three outs are three outs. Better to let Seth get them and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
That’s a helluva parallel universe. I don’t know how we get there other than in theory. In the only universe we’ve got, Mickey did, in fact, remove Seth Lugo with a six-run lead, entrusting it instead to Paul Sewald. Sewald had pitched well enough upon his latest promotion from Triple-A to earn trust. “Owns a 1.23 ERA (one earned run/7.1 innings) with a walk and 13 strikeouts over his last six appearances,” per the game notes the Mets communications staff e-mailed on Tuesday afternoon.
Sewald’s first batter was Victor Robles, who led off with an infield single. Pinch-hitter Howie Kendrick next sent a ball to deep right, but Conforto caught it for the first out. Turner, making amends for his botched DP in the top of the inning, hit one Conforto couldn’t catch. It went for a double that scored Robles to make it 10-5. No biggie, I figured. All it cost us was an easy CB radio joke.
Asdrubal Cabrera, who had greeted his former teammate deGrom in the first with one of those ringing doubles, came through off Sewald, too, singling Turner to third. Rendon, the heart of any order, beat Paul with a single to left, bringing in Trea. It was 10-6. It was time for Sewald to go.
Luis Avilán was called on for the express purpose of retiring Soto, who isn’t old enough to clearly remember Brian Jordan. Juan will turn 21 two months prior to Christmas Day. On Tuesday night, he stuffed his stocking with a single to right, loading the bases and ending Luis’s evening. The next batter for Washington would be Ryan Zimmerman, a part of their organization since shortly after it migrated from Montreal in 2005. He’d be facing Edwin Diaz, about whom I came to a swift decision: if he got out of this, I’d pretend to forget everything Edwin did wrong prior to getting out of this. Diaz blew saves left, right and center back when we still thought of Seth Lugo as one on his setup guys. But there’d been much talk about the erstwhile Seattle saver having gotten his slider back. Phil Regan worked with him diligently. DeGrom offered a valuable tip. During the Cubs series, in the rainy game when I had a very good look at him from behind home plate, I saw the Mariner monster I’d heard so much about last winter. He really did seem to have his act reconvened. Diaz was gonna be fine. This was gonna be fine. It was still Mets 10 Nats 6.
Except Zimmerman, David Wright’s close childhood chum (I wondered who the Captain was rooting for here if he was watching) doubled quite convincingly. Asdrubal scored. Anthony scored. Juan was on third. We see the Nats enough to be on a first-name basis with them. We were hoping to address them personally in early October in that Wild Card Game. That was a ways off, but at the very least, we had an appointment to try and sweep them Wednesday. That framework was in the bag at 10-4, good buddy. It still seemed reasonably certain at 10-6. But now it was 10-8, Nationals were on second and third and Suzuki was due up.
You know how you see one random player do one random thing in one random game and you never forget it and your impression of that player’s capabilities are forever more colored by that one random thing? I saw Kurt Suzuki homer off R.A. Dickey for the Oakland A’s at Citi Field on June 22, 2011. It was Suzuki’s only hit that night. He was batting .225 when the game was over, a game the Mets won in thirteen. Nevertheless, I became certain from there on out that Kurt Suzuki was put on this earth to kill the Mets. I seem to recall him doing so for the Braves the last couple of years. I seem to recall every Braves catcher since Javy Lopez doing so for the last couple of decades, actually, so I can’t say my impression fully meets reality. Kurt is a lifetime .244 hitter against the Mets.
That’s after last night. That’s after I thought, at the sight of him stepping in against Diaz, “Well, we’re screwed.” Which we were, because it’s also after Suzuki ended his eight-pitch, full-count at-bat by cranking Diaz’s last pitch into the left field grandstand for a three-run home run.
—
The Mets lost, 11-10. The score rang a bell. They’d lost 11-10 games six previous times, according to Baseball Reference. The first one was the one resonating in memory: Expos 11 Mets 10, April 8, 1969, the first game of the season fifty years ago, the first game the Expos ever played. Exactly five months later, Jerry Koosman would be knocking down Ron Santo and the Mets would be on the verge of taking first place from the Cubs, a feat they would accomplish two nights hence by sweeping the very same Expos in a twi-night doubleheader at Shea. In between April 8 and September 10 there was a black cat and plenty of time to make up for an 11-10 defeat.
This 11-10 defeat at the hands of the Montreal Expos once removed doesn’t have a lot of time on the other side of it. While the Mets were blowing the largest ninth-inning lead they’ve ever blown (after scoring five in the top of the ninth, no less), everybody they are chasing won, leaving the Mets five games back with twenty-four to go. Most post-Diaz games this year, the Mets have evinced an undisturbed attitude. Baseball, they explained in so many words, is one game after another, and you shake off the last game and go play the next game. It’s an attitude that’s served them well.
Some of the Mets said something like that Tuesday night, but not without implying this might be different. Brandon Nimmo, the heretofore happiest man in baseball, confessed, “It kind of seemed like a bad dream,” and for a change he wasn’t smiling.
Me, I felt nothing — except the feeling that this bullshit was absurd.
by Jason Fry on 2 September 2019 9:09 pm With the Mets in a pennant race again, I’ve been remembering all the little stresses that come with meaningful games in September.
Here’s one of them: Getting to within an hour or two of the game and thinking that this could be Execution Day — the day where, if they don’t win, you can pretty much write them off.
On Sunday, you probably heard if you didn’t see with your own eyes, the Mets flubbed a chance to move within three of the Cubs and half a game of the Phillies. The damage was lessened by the Cubs and Diamondbacks losing … if you discount the fact that another day was lost from the calendar, which is increasingly hard to do as September rolls along.
Anyway, the schedule dictated that Sunday night’s dispiriting loss and missed opportunity would be followed a day game in another city against a red-hot baseball team. That sounded like a recipe for another loss, and then the Mets would be facing Max Scherzer, and … well, yeah, maybe Monday was Execution Day, the day belief put its neck on the chopping block.
But baseball, as always, is a funny thing.
I wasn’t particularly surprised that Noah Syndergaard came out looking to put a hurt on some unfortunate enemy nine, as his implosion against the Cubs struck me as more lousy luck and bad defense than anything else. And, indeed, Syndergaard carved up the Nats. He gave up a leadoff single to Trea Turner, then retired the next 16, and ended with 90 pitches and seven spotless innings.
Meanwhile, the Mets ambushed Joe Ross — whose curveball looked positively vicious early — with contributions from up and down the lineup. J.D. Davis looked rejuvenated after an off-day in Philly, while Brandon Nimmo burned up 15 pitches in his first two ABs and then doubled on the first pitch he saw in his third appearance, which is pretty much the classic mix of Nimmoesque (Brandonian?) patience and aggression that we’ve missed all summer. Joe Panik and Rene Rivera had RBIs, and Jeff McNeil cracked a homer that he desperately needed for his own sanity. Seriously, McNeil grounded out to the pitcher to end the second, stranding two, and I was a little worried that he might implode into a neutron star of self-loathing.
Instead of two crushing losses in 18 hours, the Mets wiped the slate clean — or at least cleanish — with a laugher. That would make no sense in fiction, but in baseball it’s just a “well, of course,” because anyone who tries to outguess this sport will soon make a fool of himself or herself.
The rest of Labor Day’s wild-card machinations weren’t particularly Mets-friendly, as the Cubs, Phillies and Diamondbacks all won, meaning the Mets only made up ground on the Brewers. That’s another one of the stresses of being a team on the bubble in September — hoping the scoreboard will give you a triple-bank shot in the standings. And, of course, time claimed another of its daily victories.
Tomorrow the Mets send Jacob deGrom out to face Scherzer. Maybe events will conspire to make that feel like Execution Day. Or maybe it will be the day after that. Or maybe the Mets will keep avoiding that date, ducking the hangman while he’s busy elsewhere.
All we know is this, and it’s a good thing to know: Execution Day? It wasn’t today.
by Jason Fry on 2 September 2019 12:26 am Sometimes life — by which I mean, “that stuff scheduled around baseball games” — gets in the way.
First there was dinner, then a podcast interview. I moved what I could thanks to the kindness of other folks involved, but only so much movement was possible, and the Mets would have to take a back seat to non-baseball events.
Which was OK, because over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping tabs on what’s happening in that metaphorical back seat. At dinner, I had Gameday tucked between my knees, a little glowing rectangle of tidings from the baseball world. My kid was a beat ahead — I hadn’t known it, but it turns out At Bat notifications go out a second or two before Gameday. So I knew if Joshua grabbed for his phone (he’s still working on subtlety, but so was I at 16), it was time for me to put down my fork, scoot my shoulders back and peek down between my knees for an update.
We got back to my in-laws’ house with the Phillies up 2-1, which was worrisome but hardly seemed insurmountable. Except now I was scheduled to be interviewed for a Star Wars podcast. My answer: ESPN with the sound off.
I could follow what was going on, but I needed about two-thirds of my brain to respect my interviewers and talk Star Wars without sounding like a total idiot. Which seemed unfortunate but turned out to be a kindness, because it meant only one-third of my brain wound up freaking out at the Mets and Mickey Callaway.
I actually don’t have a problem with bunting with first and second and nobody out. Or at least I don’t think I do.
The Mets absolutely needed to score at least one run, and the base-out matrix tells you that the bunt slightly elevated their chances of scoring at least one. It’s not a big difference — an additional 6.6 percent — but it’s there, making the call statistically defensible. (Having a minimally competent position player bunt with none out and a runner on first, on the other hand, is not defensible — it actually decreases the odds of scoring at least one run.)
Yes, the Mets had just six outs left to burn and handed the Phils one of them for free. Yes, they were on the road, where conventional wisdom says you play for the win and not the tie. Yes, the base-out matrix also tells you that the bunt cuts the number of runs you’ll score on average in that situation. Yes, those are a fair number of yes-es. But even as someone often driven to frothing rage by bunting, I can squint and understand the decision: tie things up, hold the line, and take another shot at that beleaguered Phillies pen. (Incidentally, Gabe Kapler took Zach Eflin out after 84 pitches despite having given up only three hits, lest you think only our manager does odd things.)
Nor do I have a problem with resting J.D. Davis in the Sunday game, though I came to that conclusion reluctantly and it took me a little longer to get there. Davis looked a little heavy-legged to me in the first two games of the Philly series, and presumably he’ll now be in there for the Monday day game against the Nats.
Opting for Daniel Zamora against Bryce Harper, though? That one bugged me. Callaway said Justin Wilson was unavailable, but Wilson hadn’t thrown an unreasonable number of pitches over the last few games, and he’s a far better bet than Zamora to get the inning off to a clean start. Speaking more generally, it’s now September and the Mets are fighting for their postseason lives. If you’re going to push Wilson past his comfort zone, isn’t a 2-2 game where a win brings you to within three of the wild card the time to do that?
(But wait, Jace — didn’t you just have no objection to resting J.D.? Yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? Maybe by tomorrow I’ll have changed my mind again.)
Granted, the Mets could done any number of things to make that eighth inning a sideshow instead of the main event. They could have done more in a bandbox against Eflin, whose campaign hadn’t exactly been stellar so far. Brandon Nimmo could have thrown to the proper base as things unraveled. (Welcome back anyway, Brandon — our smilingest Met did work a seven-pitch walk.) Jeff McNeil could have delivered the hit we so often expect from him (and perhaps have come to take for granted). Jeurys Familia could have not walked the first batter he faced, as he’s done far too often, and could have thrown Scott Kingery something other than the same pitch he’d just thrown him in much the same location.
But still, throwing a brand-new callup with a mixed track record out there against Bryce Freaking Harper with everything on the line? Shit, Mickey, really?
As it was, the Cubs and Diamondbacks both lost, which limits the damage somewhat. But it’s another opportunity not seized and another day off the calendar, and all too soon that will be damage enough. Or maybe it already has been, and we just don’t know it yet.
by Greg Prince on 1 September 2019 11:52 am Congratulations, fellow Mets fans, we did it. We made it to September and we still have standings to pore over (don’t “pour” over them; they’ll just get wet). On Sunday morning, September 1, the 2019 Mets are four games removed from a playoff spot with four weeks to go in the regular season. It’s four large games, considering the three they recently lost to the team in possession of that playoff spot, and there are a few too many competitors for comfort as we peer out across this final month, but it’s September and we’re in it. As we were reminded last couple of Septembers, that’s a baseball joy only intermittently accessible to the likes of us.
For the privilege of saying “four games out” this fine Sunday in New York, we can thank several Mets from a lovely Saturday in Philadelphia, none more so than Wilson Ramos, four-for-five, and now on a 24-game hitting streak. This would have tied the Mets’ single-season record had Moises Alou not shattered the standard set by Hubie Brooks in 1984 and matched by Mike Piazza in 1999 by hitting in 30 straight in 2007. I phrase it as awkwardly as I do because I find relatively few of a diehard bent join me in having any recollection that Moises Alou hit in 30 consecutive games as a New York Met. But he did. Moises was 41 and on practically his last legs — his last everything, really — but his bat was eternally young and inextinguishably hot. Alou may have invented the fire emoji. He may have invented fire. I tell ya, that guy was old.
The collective incognizance of Alou’s feat a scant dozen seasons after the fact probably has something to do with the circumstances in which he forged it. The date it began, August 23, 2007, the Mets were in first place by a sizable margin. The date it crested, September 26, 2007, they were barely hanging on. On the first night in a month that Moises took an ohfer, the Mets found themselves with unwanted Philadelphia company at the top of their division. The next night, the Mets found themselves in second place. Two days later, that, and not in the playoffs, was where the Mets’ season ended.
Rest assured, however, the Collapse of 2007, the tertiary details of which you may have reflexively repressed from your memory, would not have occurred had the Mets had a few more Alous in their employ that September. Moises slashed and burned at the rate of .403/.445/.588 over his thirty games of hitting without pause. His accumulation of age and his absorption of mileage made the heat his lumber generated all the more remarkable. Moises Alou was out much of 2007. He’d be out most of 2008 to the point of disappearing by the middle of June. He’d been plying his craft on behalf of nearly half the member clubs of the National League since 1990, which was longer ago in 2007 than 2007 is long ago in 2019. What I remember most about the hitting streak, beyond the fact that it happened; that it was impressive; and that it alone couldn’t stave off disaster, was that the new Met record-holder conveyed the sentiment that he wished it wasn’t necessary. When Kevin Burkhardt interviewed him about how well he was going, Moises didn’t resort to clichés about seeing the ball well or being happy to help the team. Practically gasping for breath, Alou admitted he was, in so many words, gassed from playing every single day. I could feel him eyeing the bench longingly and lovingly.
Assured rest seemed to be what Moises craved most. After Game 162, he and his teammates would be granted an offseason’s worth of it. After 135 games of 2019, Wilson Ramos and the rest of the Mets are still striving to play more than their scheduled allotment. Good for them. The untimely lull in their fortunes versus the Braves and Cubs that erased so much of their encouraging progress killed neither them nor their desire to keep going. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s made them stronger, yet for two games they’ve effectively outmuscled the Phillies, one of the several obstacles that stands in the way of their full recovery within those nice, dry standings we continue to pore over because we’re a part of them, too.
On Saturday, our spiritually indefatigable Metsies stuck it pretty good to the Charmless Brycemen of the Delaware Valley, prevailing, 6-3, on the strength of the many.
• On the aforementioned Buffalo at his Moisesiest.
• On five sound innings from Long Island’s Own Steven Matz, who hung in south of the 631 until LIOSM realized in the sixth that he was totally out of his area code.
• On “old friend” Jason Vargas, whom we may have unfriended when we traded him, yet he definitely did us a solid by being VERY VARGAS as the Phillie starter and reliable pin cushion (4+ IP, 9 H 3 BB, 1 HBP).
• On critical middle-innings relief work from a bullpen whose setup component no longer automatically connects at Citizens Bank Park to a bright red button marked IMPLODE.
• On Six-Out Seth Lugo, who lived up to the nickname Mickey Callaway and I are determined to pin on him.
• On a calm and stable two-RBI double from Joe Panik, who now and then proves more of a San Francisco treat than Rice-A-Roni.
• And on Todd Frazier, national spokesman for those presumed dead but aren’t yet. Todd followed his two-homer performance from Friday with three hits, two runs driven in and a leaping grab of a bases-load liner struck by Cesar Hernandez that could have completely changed the tenor of this column. Legendary Little League veteran that he is, Todd seems to respond positively to playing in the same state that encompasses Williamsport.
The Mets not only arrived in September 2019 reasonably vital, they fended off a trip back in time to another September that may ultimately be their destiny. When they were losing their sixth in a row this past week, I was convinced I knew where they were going.
They were going to 2005. The 2019 Mets were the 2005 Mets incarnate. They still may be. At this moment, they even have the same record as them: 69-66 after 135 games. It’s the same record achieved at this juncture by the Mets of 1971, 1976 and 2016, but the similarity I’ve sensed in the present is of a piece solely with 2005.
Two-Thousand Five is so long ago that Moises Alou was still in his thirties and only on his sixth team. It is so long ago that one of the San Francisco Giants who was playing alongside All-Star Moises Alou (.321/.400/.518 at age 39) was Edgardo Alfonzo. Alfonzo was in the third year of a four-year deal I still stubbornly resented the Mets not giving Fonzie, even though Fonzie was never quite the force with San Fran that he was in Flushing. On Friday, we hit the twenty-year anniversary of Fonzie’s 6-for-6, three-homer night in Houston, a milestone rightly celebrated and praised on SNY. With Edgardo ensconced as the Cyclones manager after serving as a Mets ambassador, it feels as much like Fonzie never left as it does Alou was never here, a sensation I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed in 2002 we’d ever glean again. Some Mets should never be out of the fold. Alphabetically and otherwise, that list begins with Alfonzo, even if it doesn’t wind its way through Alou. (Apologies to Agbayani, who oughta be up there, too.)
I digress, and that’s fine, because it’s Sunday morning going on Sunday afternoon and the Mets don’t play until Sunday night. The only good thing about the Mets playing Sunday night is I can write on Sunday morning and not feel certain nobody will read what I wrote come 1:10 first pitch. So relax and keep reading. The larger point embedded in my digression is that in 2005, the Mets were not only 69-66 like they are in 2019, they alighted there in a disturbingly similar fashion. For most of 2005, the Mets didn’t much foreshadow 2019. The 2019 Mets were hopeless for months on end, then incandescent. The 2005 Mets were equal parts promising and frustrating. When I say “equal parts,” I’m being absolutely accurate. The 2005 Mets held a .500 record on 27 separate occasions, 25 of them in the first two-thirds of the season. Every time we thought they were ready to fade away, they took off. Every time we thought they were ready to take off, they stalled.
Then they got going enough to make us believe (oh, that word) that maybe they’d figured out how to win. The 2005 Mets grew so hot in late August that Moises Alou would have thought twice about touching them. These were the days of Mike Jacobs and Victor Diaz torching Bank One Ballpark so badly that the Diamondbacks had to rechristen it Chase Field; of Steve Trachsel emerging as a welcome sight from the disabled list and bolstering a starting reputation fronted by future Hall of Famers Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine before the latter changed the spelling of his name; of emerging wunderkinder Jose Reyes and David Wright; of Cliff Floyd being such a hard act to follow that the Mets would two Novembers hence sign the one and only Moises Alou to follow him.
The Mets were doing really well. They got to eight games over .500. They took on the Phillies in a crucial Wild Card race matchup at Shea. Ramon Castro hit a dramatic home run. The Mets moved to within a half-game of “if the playoffs were to begin today” glory. Visions of a September to Remember™ danced in our heads.
Suddenly, the music stopped. After the Castro bomb detonated, the 2005 Mets commenced to fizzle, losing the last two games of that Phillies series and continuing to lose. They got to September in decent enough shape, but by the time the kids in Steven Matz’s neighborhood were grimly gathering at the bus stop for another year of school, the baseball season had gone shapeless. On September 8, the team that had been eight games over was a .500 enterprise again: 70-70 and trending both downward and backward. It began to feel a lot — A LOT — like the preceding Septembers. Septembers 2002, 2003 and 2004 were relentlessly depressing. So was September 2005. As of September 15, the Mets were 71-75, and nobody in these parts was any longer tracking the standings.
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to cruelest oblivion. The 2005 Mets came back to life. Not enough to create the kind of ending that doesn’t require recounting fourteen Septembers hence, but rewarding in the moment. The Mets got their act together again and inflicted inconvenience on everybody they played. Pedro shut out the first-place Braves. Glavine, or the Manchurian Brave as he we used to call him before we settled on Gl@v!ne, tossed a complete game against his first and future ballclub. The Mets would beat the Marlins a couple of walkoffs when the Marlins were in their last weeks of behaving like a normal franchise and actually attempting to contend. The same Mets who dissipated shortly before Labor Day reached .500 at 77-77 and kept going. They even managed to thoroughly spoil the Phillies’ Wild Card aspirations — and the Phillies were just as annoying in 2005 as they’d be in 2007, if not yet as good at it.
It was a grand Metropolitan finish, a rise from the depths of 71-75 to a plateau of 83-79, the official record of so-so Mets teams, previously inscribed into the book of franchise life by the 1970 Mets and 1971 Mets, the epitome of so-so Mets teams. Those were the teams that cemented my Mets fandom following 1969, so I was fine with so-so. I thought 83-79, after 71-75, after 68-60, was splendid.
More splendid was what happened after 2005 — 2006 happened. I don’t know that there was an absolutely inarguable throughline from finishing strong after falling apart in 2005 to the blazing start that never cooled in 2006, but in 2006 I thought so. Changes for the better would be made during the winter in between, but to me, the 2006 Mets were the 2005 Mets enhanced, the 2005 Mets matured. To me, the 2005 Mets, once their loftiest goals proved unreachable, were a dress rehearsal for the 2006 Mets. To me, despite the notoriety associated with a certain NLCS Game Seven, the 2006 Mets are the best Mets I’ve seen since taking up blogging…which is something we did here in 2005, which might be why that swoon and subsequent resuscitation stay with me so vividly.
It may not be September 2005 in September 2019. It could be a superior September, a September that establishes a precedent we invoke in a far sunnier context in some later September. I’d prefer the downward and backward trending inherent in losing 19 of 22 between August 27 and September 15 be completely avoided. I’d prefer to keep poring over the standings for more than historical reference purposes. After these last two games in Philly, I’ve stopped giving up until further notice.
But if all the September 2019 Mets can do is point me toward next year the way September 2005 did…well, fellow Mets fans, rest assured, I will take it.
by Jason Fry on 31 August 2019 2:14 am When is taking an 11-1 lead to the ninth inning not a laugher?
The answer isn’t “when you give the ball to Chris Mazza and wind up wondering if he can get three outs before the other guys score 10,” though Friday night’s game felt that way for a fidgety spell. No, the answer is when that 11-1 score masks the fact that the game was 1-0 Phils going to the seventh and then tied going to the eighth, before the Mets put up five spots in the last two innings, with Todd Frazier connecting for three-run homers in each.
Call it an exhaler, maybe.
Much of Friday night’s game was a taut pitcher’s duel between Zack Wheeler, armed with a high, riding fastball, and Aaron Nola, armed with an evil change-up. Both used those key pitches to great effect. Wheeler was scratched for a run in the fifth, when J.T. Realmuto hit a bloop that Michael Conforto skidded on his belly to catch, with the annoyingly competent Adam Haseley just beating his desperate heave home. After a spell of by now familiar frustration, the Mets countered in the seventh, when Wilson Ramos came off the bench with the bases loaded and one out and smacked a liner over the head of Cesar Hernandez at second. (That’s a 23-game hitting streak for the Buffalo, made even more impressive by the fact that he’s kept it alive by collecting hits in four games that he didn’t start.)
Wheeler is impressive when he has all the pitches in his formidable arsenal in hand, but that goes without saying. He was even more impressive Friday night because he had to battle, stranding leadoff runners in the first, third, and sixth.
The same fate awaited Justin Wilson, who entered a 1-1 game in the seventh and promptly surrendered a single to Corey Dickerson. But Wilson went to work, fanning Realmuto and coaxing a double-play ball from Bryce Harper. (Harper had the kind of night that can make even young fans feel grumpy and old, striking out twice and hitting into a double play before collecting an RBI double off Mazza while everyone in the Mets dugout was studiously averting their eyes.) In the top of the eighth, with the bases loaded, Amed Rosario — who’d missed a hanging curve from Nola an inning earlier — walloped a Mike Morin slider up the middle for two runs. Frazier was next, and connected with a Jared Hughes sinker for a low line drive over the left-field fence.
That sound you heard from a decent-sized minority in Citizens Bank Park and from a fair number of couches in the tri-state area was the whoops and yells of a fan base that could finally exhale after a week of hopes that curdled into frustration and despair.
It felt like an echo of a night that’s somehow become 20 years ago. In September 1999, the Mets dropped seven in a row, one of those awful stretches in which your favorite team has seemingly forgotten how to play baseball. Into Shea came the Braves and Greg Maddux, looking to extinguish the Mets’ hopes. Emily and Greg and I were in the park, so tight with anxiety that we could barely cheer. The Mets trailed 2-1 in the fourth, because of course they did, and then came an avalanche of unthinkables: Darryl Hamilton single, Roger Cedeno single, Rey Ordonez single, Al Leiter bloop single (yes really — and it tied the game too), Rickey Henderson two-run single, Edgardo Alfonzo single. Now it was 4-2, the bases were loaded, and we were howling — but the game was still tight and nothing had gone right for a week, leaving us still worried and begging for release. Then John Olerud hit an 0-1 pitch over the fence for a grand slam, popping the cork on a week’s worth of emotions and unleashing bedlam, pandemonium and about a million stored-up furies.
That Mets team went on to play in October, fighting bravely until the last in an amazing though ultimately agonizing NLCS. This team’s fate is uncertain, but it faces a hard road. With the Cubs and Diamondbacks both winning, the Mets’ rewards were scant for a Friday night well spent: They drew even with the Brewers and to within two of the Phillies, remaining five out of that second wild card.
But such are the perils of squandering opportunities as time dwindles. However hard the road, the Mets won and let us all exhale. And maybe start to believe again, just a little. (Did you see J.D. Davis‘s great throw to the plate? Didn’t Edwin Diaz look like his old self?)
Why not? After all, this is a franchise that’s known a fairy tale or two. Remember The Princess Bride? Westley gets killed, but his friends bring his body to a healer (played by annoying mercenary Billy Crystal, but never mind that for a moment), who proclaims that Westley’s only mostly dead. All dead, he explains, means there’s nothing that can be done, but mostly dead is slightly alive.
Mostly dead is slightly alive. Maybe that doesn’t scream out to be a t-shirt slogan, but when you’re five out on the eve of September you take what you can get, and see what tomorrow might bring.
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