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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 12 June 2019 2:50 pm When you play in a bandbox, strike up the band nice and loud. The Mets hit only one home run on Tuesday afternoon at Yankee Stadium and lost by seven. The Mets hit three home runs on Tuesday night in the same selectively diminutive venue — brothers from another slugger Alonso, Davis and Gomez starred as the plugged-in power trio — and won by six.
Ipso facto, et al, hit more home runs and win. Also, don’t give up home runs like Zack Wheeler did in the matinee. Come nightfall, Jason Vargas, who went from doing no wrong in his previous start to doing just fine this time, gave up three runs in six innings, but none constructed from a single stroke of the bat. Clever veteran, that Vargy.
The analysis here is simple to the point of simplistic, but what the hell, home runs are simply fun when your side uses them to pulverize their side, and East Side, West Side, all around the town, we are the reigning sultans of the Subway Series based on the most recent sample size available. The Mets are 1-0 versus the Yankees in their last one. Not much else to analyze therein.
Ah, but home runs. Let’s think about them for a spell. They’re both exceedingly popular these days and not a little suspect. They must be popular because so many players in so many parks seem to be hitting them, creating a traffic jam of the skies that seems to have deflated their aesthetic value in the eyes of some. I suppose they are less events than molecules of late, though I still find the Met variety gratifying. You can’t go to a game at Citi Field, which used to swallow up flyballs like Bobby Riggs popped vitamins, and not see a Met hit a home run. That is not an exaggeration, for over the Mets’ past sixteen home games, contests in which the Mets have sent 34 balls out of the yard, or as many Frank Thomas launched in 1962.
Speaking of the Original Met masher, Frank, who visited Citi this past weekend, turned 90 on Tuesday, becoming the third former Met player to have made it to a tenth decade; his predecessors were Yogi Berra in 2015 and Dave Hillman in 2017, a pitcher whose 92nd birthday is three months away. It was appropriate to have celebrated Thomas the day the Mets played the Yankees given that Frank carried one of the few positive placards on our behalf in ’62 and did so in every one of the five boroughs.
It wasn’t just that he set a single-season franchise mark so lofty that it took thirteen years and Dave Kingman to top it. Emerging from the wreckage of 120 losses and associated atrocities, Frank Thomas crowned himself the home run champion of New York. Those 34 he catapulted out of the Polo Grounds and other stadia of blessed memory topped the totals wrought by Roger Maris, who was coming off his season of 61, and Mickey Mantle, he of the 54 in ’61. In 1962, Maris and Mantle went deep a mere 33 and 30 times, respectively. True, they were part of a World Series winner come fall and, with Yogi, appeared in That Touch of Mink alongside Doris Day and Cary Grant at a theater near you that summer, but the most home runs in New York is the most home runs in New York, and it was our guy Frank who had that goin’ on.
In 2019, our guy Pete has that goin’ on, too. Pete Alonso compacted the dimensions of Yankee Stadium even more Tuesday night with his 22nd homer of the season, placing him ahead of all local comers, including Gary Sanchez, Luke Voit and Oriole-feaster Gleyber Torres, to name three players I will now return to devoting no thought to. The Polar Bear is chilling as champ in every city ’cept Milwaukee. The Brewers have Christian Yelich, and Yelich has 25 homers at the moment. Alonso thus has the most unChristian home runs in the majors presently.
It’s a long season, yada cubed, yet let’s continue to revel in how easy Pete is making hitting home runs look, even in an era when they are maybe not that hard to crush, but especially for an outfit for whom dingers have never been donged like it’s a natural inclination. Consider, if you will, the progression of that aforementioned single-season franchise record.
Frank Thomas hit those 34 home runs in 1962.
Dave Kingman hit 36 in 1975, then 37 in 1976 and 37 again in 1982.
Darryl Strawberry hit 39 in 1987 and once more in 1988.
Todd Hundley hit 41 in 1996, a figure matched by Carlos Beltran in 2006.
Over the years, the numerical spaces between Thomas and Hundley/Beltran have been filled in on occasion. Howard Johnson topped out at 38 in 1991, as did Carlos Delgado twice. Mike Piazza made it to 40 in 1999 while continually crouching every other half-inning, the baseball equivalent of building a Hall of Fame résumé backwards and in heels. In all, there’ve been nineteen seasons in which a Met has slugged 34 or more home runs.
Those aren’t annals that will necessarily frighten any but the most gopher-prone of pitchers, but that’s OK, we’re used to it. We’re humble when it comes to homers. It took Hundley, also burdened by catcher’s gear, all he had to squeak past 40 and we were grateful for the effort and result. Beltran’s 41 were a welcome accumulation, but Beltran was so busy being Beltran as he led us to a division title deploying every tool in the hardware store that we didn’t get too carried away by his tying Todd. As mammoth and majestic as the output of Strawberry, Johnson, Delgado and Piazza could be, really the only home run craftsman who totally Metsmerized us as a matter of course because he could hit ’em far and hit ’em often was Kingman. It helped that there wasn’t much else to Dave’s repertoire, but that doesn’t diminish the sheer power Sky King brought to the plate day after day when got into a groove.
And there was one season when the groove appeared endless. It was 1976, recalled widely as the year of the Bicentennial, so dubbed because Dave Kingman was on pace for 200 home runs. No, not really, but it sure felt that way. We weren’t counting down to Thomas’s 34 anymore, given that Dave had passed Frank’s surprisingly stubborn milestone the prior September. We had our sights set on Hack Wilson, the Cubs outfielder who established the National League standard of 56 home runs in 1930. No Met had ever been seriously mentioned in the context of a home run record held by anybody else before, but Dave was on his way. At this very stage of 1976, Kingman had blasted (and I mean blasted) 23 home runs, with No. 23 coming in the Mets’ 65th game. For the first time, the phrase “at this pace” entered our vocabulary. At that pace, Kingman was gonna hit 57, one more than Wilson.
In the Mets’ 92nd game, Dave put No. 32 on the board, maintaining his Hack-hacking pace. He also put himself on the disabled list by attempting to field, which wasn’t the best use of his talents, and there went the Mets’ only flirtation with the home run stratosphere.
Until now. Maybe. Nobody wants to put too much pressure on Pete. For one thing, he’s a rookie, so you have the caveat that the league might all at once figure him out…though if there’s ever a season that seems unlikely to encompass pitchers outfoxing hitters to the point where they won’t leave the yard so much, it wouldn’t seem to be this one. Plus, rookie status notwithstanding, does Pete Alonso strike you as a callow youth capable of suddenly being flummoxed? You can’t speak for slumps and you can’t account for dives after flyballs that do unspeakable things to thumbs, so any downturn is possible.
But so is this pace. At this pace, Hundley and Beltran, bless their Met hearts, are going to be joining Thomas, Kingman and Strawberry in the Former Home Run Record Holder club. The Mets have played 67 games to date. When the 1996 Mets played 67 games, Hundley was up to 18 home runs. When the 2006 Mets played 67 games, Beltran was also up to 18 home runs. So Pete’s got a four-homer jump on each of them with more than half a season to go. Todd whacked his No. 22 in the 1996 Mets’ 86th game. Carlos got there in the 2006 Mets’ 78th.
Hack Wilson no longer holds the National League record, and Barry Bonds’s 73 is probably out of Alonso’s range (probably). But let’s relish a few other marks Pete’s puttering around with.
• The Mets’ rookie record of 26, held by Darryl Strawberry since 1983, is an all-but-goner. To be fair, Darryl was promoted from Tidewater until early May, but Pete is on course to surpass Straw before July.
• The Mets’ record for most home runs hit by a player whose entire Met career took place in one season belongs to…why, it belongs to Pete Alonso already! With his 22nd longball (or ’Lonsball), he blew by Marlon Byrd, who hit 21 in his lone Met season of 2013. To be fair, Byrd was traded in late August, but, again, it’s not yet the middle of June and here Pete is.
• Alonso has already staked out a spot on this decade’s Top 20 Met home run list. It wasn’t a tough plateau to reach, but he’s already arrived, currently tied for No. 18 with Beltran and Juan Lagares. Lucas Duda is No. 1 from 2010 to 2019 with 125, followed by David Wright at 102. Nobody else is in triple-digits.
• As if making a splash in the rapidly concluding 2010s before they’re history isn’t enough, Pete is already in the Top 100 all-time where Met career home runs are concerned — and boy, is he climbing. Those 22 home runs are good for No. 77, a position he shares until further notice with Lagares and Willie Montañez. If you are willing to play “at this pace” with Pete, you can envision him cracking the Metropolitan Top 40 with 53 before this season is over. If he gets there, he’d pass, by one, extremely recent birthday boy Frank Thomas, who totaled 52 homers as a Met before the Mets traded him to the contending Phillies in 1964.
Honestly, I don’t love playing “at this pace” because it’s like filing a formal request for trouble with the baseball gods. Maybe that’s the 13-year-old Dave Kingman/Hack Wilson tracker in me speaking. But, gosh, can you imagine a Met not only hitting 42 home runs, but then hitting at least eight more? In one season? And then coming back the next season, and still being a Met and only being 25 with a 50-home run season under his belt and having much more Met career in front of him?
I would, but then I’d start to float, and if I start to float, I’ll surely carry out to the right field seats at Yankee Stadium, ’cause it doesn’t take much to count as a home run there.
by Jason Fry on 11 June 2019 4:59 pm Doubleheaders are funny beasts.
Lose the first game — as the Mets just did in the Bronx against some team from an arriviste beer league — and you simultaneously take solace in the fact that doubleheader sweeps are hard to pull off and are gripped with horror at the prospect of dropping two games in one day.
Win the first game — as the Mets decidedly did not — and you get the opposite bout of double vision. Sweeps are rare, so you have the queasy feeling that you’re being set up for watching the glass go from full in the eyes of any philosophy to clearly and obviously half-empty. On the other hand, win that first game and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to bask in the afterglow of a double-victory day.
And when it’s a day-night doubleheader, all these weird feelings get magnified as you grumpily kill time between games.
If doubleheaders are funny beasts, there wasn’t much funny about Game 1. Both teams played atrocious defense and sent starting pitchers out to get whacked around, but Zack Wheeler proved more of a piñata than Masahiro Tanaka. Wheeler looked sharp in the early innings, but was betrayed by his defense and his slider (oh, 2019) and saw a three-run lead turn into a five-run deficit that would prove fatal.
I’m tempted to drop in a paragraph about Yankee Stadium being a ridiculous arena baseball park, which it is, except none of the home runs struck Tuesday afternoon — the Yankees’ three, Jeff McNeil‘s briefly satisfying one — were cheapies. In fact, if you listen carefully, you might be able hear Luke Voit‘s drive bounce off the top deck of a Europe-bound cruise ship right about now.
Anyway, it’s over now, so cleanse your palate in time for whatever’s served in Game 2. The afternoon was no fun; here’s to a better evening.
by Greg Prince on 9 June 2019 8:23 pm I want to be on a winning team with Todd Frazier.
I want to be pointed at by Todd Frazier while he stands on second and nods vigorously in my direction.
I want to point back at Todd Frazier and return his nods in kind.
I want to receive voluble vocal encouragement from Todd Frazier and learn what it means to have and be a good teammate.
I want to be slapped on the back and, if necessary, the rear end by Todd Frazier.
I want to master the gesticulative vocabulary of Todd Frazier, understand the best base to round while checking my imaginary home run watch, and discern what I’m supposed to grind if not invisible pepper to celebrate a single.
I want to seem excited to be on whatever team I’m on with Todd Frazier, no matter that I might have been on a bunch of teams before, the way Todd Frazier has, for Todd Frazier couldn’t seem more excited about being a Met whenever there’s a reason to be excited about being a Met.
Being on a winning team with Todd Frazier appears to be more emotionally immersive than the alternatives. Being on a winning team without Todd Frazier might make for more wins, as the connection between Todd Frazier and winning seems only casually causative, but it doesn’t feel as if it would be as engaging. And being on a losing team with Todd Frazier is superfluous. A losing team can lose with anybody. The Mets have lost with Todd Frazier and there hasn’t been much to mark it as any different from losing with scads of other players.
The Mets aren’t technically a winning team, given their record of 32-33, but they were a winning team on Sunday, 6-1, and they’ve been winning quite a bit lately, having taken four of six on this homestand that presses pause for a couple of Subway Series days. The winning has involved a heaping helping of Frazier belting long fly balls and driving in runs. Sunday at sunny Citi Field against the Rockies, he provided four RBIs for Noah Syndergaard, three on a first-inning homer that allowed Thor a comfy cushion with which to smother Colorado’s bats over seven one-hit innings. Less than a month ago, Todd was flailing under .200 and the Mets were lifeless. Now he’s hitting over .260 and they’re capable of mustering vital signs for entire weeks.
Todd has not only been producing offense, he’s been the personification of “into it”. I think if you put him in any uniform and surrounded him with any 24 people he’d be the same way. We have him in our uniform, surrounded by our Mets. Often he’s been buried in slumps so deep that you could dredge Toms River and not find evidence of a once-warm body. These moments when all is well remind you why the Mets signed him for two years. The rest of the moments remind you these moments are fleeting.
Still, he’s here and not presently an impediment to our enjoyment. We all default to impatient cloddishness when somebody far from a groove isn’t instantly disappeared from view for his crimes against OPS. Frazier received our collective cold shoulder when his start did not sizzle. I’m less surprised that he arose from his morass than it didn’t seem to recalibrate his attitude one iota. He’s still barking and chirping and slapping and clapping and doing all that good-teammate stuff that gives a season its backbeat. It can get a little too quiet out there without a Todd Frazier to rile things up. The hitting helps, too.
What we’re experiencing of late is likely peak Frazier. Unless he’s the reincarnation of Ray Knight and we wind up riding that peak for months on end, somebody else will ultimately prove more productive in his place. Every other Met is a part-time third baseman-left fielder who could use more at-bats. Todd will yield them when appropriate. According to my imaginary watch, he’s still got some time.
by Jason Fry on 9 June 2019 2:51 am Goodness knows the Mets have had plenty of drama in this very strange year. But every so often, they play a baseball game that’s just a baseball game, refreshingly free of sideshows and controversies and agita. And it’s a reminder that, to quote the endlessly quotable Bull Durham, “this game’s fun, damn it.”
At our house the game began on the radio, as we were out in the backyard grilling — on a perfect evening, with mosquitos still happily absent. It was 2-2 when we moved inside, saying farewell to Howie Rose and new fill-in John Sadak and hello to old friend Kevin Burkhardt and, well, Joe Girardi. (Who was fine, though I kept thinking that, as with some other baseball lifers, Girardi looks faintly ill at ease if he’s wearing anything that isn’t a uniform.)
The Mets and Rockies kept trading blows (on the scoreboard, not between the pitcher’s mound and home plate), with Carlos Gomez‘s two-run homer matched by singles from Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado, then Todd Frazier‘s RBI single followed by some lousy Mets defense that scored Brendan Rodgers. It was 3-3 as Steven Matz topped 80 pitches, then 90, and just kept going.
When the count topped 100, I have to confess I was muttering to myself. This was Matz, the Mets starter most likely to have an arm actually come off mid-pitch, spontaneously combust, or do both at once. Still, a look at the Mets bullpen made me think a one-armed, burning-like-a-torch Matz was better than any of Mickey Callaway‘s options for the sixth inning. (Or Jim Riggleman‘s — Callaway was ejected in the fifth, having had enough of Mike Winters’ surrealist, wobbling parallelogram of a strike zone.) Matz allowed a leadoff single to Ian Desmond, fanned Rodgers, and hit Tony Wolters. Jon Gray tried to bunt the runners over, but Wilson Ramos pounced on the ball and threw to third, getting Desmond fairly easily.
That left Matz facing Blackmon, a dangerous confrontation at any pitch count. Matz’s final pitch of the night was a high curveball — but Blackmon swung under it, and Matz was out of the inning and the game at once. He’d wind up the winner thanks to a Ramos double past Blackmon, a Frazier single and a double-play grounder from Amed Rosario, with Pete Alonso chipping in an insurance run with a homer just above the left-field wall. Alonso arrived at third along with the ball, then hung around a bit sheepishly in the dugout with his helmet on until the umpires declared that it was, in fact, a home run.
It’s been a weird year, with Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler all maddeningly inconsistent. Quietly, Matz has become the guy you worry least about — he’s had two bad starts all year, and the Mets are 8-4 in his outings. I’ll happily sign up for that kind of performance and an Alonso homer, particularly if that also comes with the game as faithful companion on a pleasant spring evening. Sometimes a game’s just a game, and that’s more than enough.
by Jason Fry on 8 June 2019 11:09 am On Friday night the Mets lost, and they lost in a very 2019 Mets way: good start that felt like it should have been better, not enough offense, poor relief, a silly sideshow.
The GSTFLISHBB game from Jacob deGrom, which feels like you could put an “of course” on it for ironic effect, except you could write the same thing about plenty of Zack Wheeler and Noah Syndergaard games too. DeGrom’s numbers look just fine, even enviable — 6 IP, 10 Ks, 6 H, 1 BB, 2 ER — but just ask him if he was satisfied. The problem, as per usual, was a slider that wouldn’t slide, depriving deGrom of his out pitch and making him merely very good.
Why won’t that slider slide? I’ve given up on an answer. Maybe we’ll get one a couple of years from now, when enough people have dissected baseballs and MLB mutters something about a new supplier or coefficients being clustered at the wrong end of an acceptable range and then everyone argues about whether or not to believe that. Maybe statistical analysis will point to a fluke. Maybe nothing will ever point to anything. We’re all playing Clue without part of the rules sheet, so we don’t know who all the players are or if there are other murder weapons or if the killer wrote the rules himself, and boy does it feel aggressively pointless by now.
For all that, the Mets were only down 2-0 when deGrom threw his final pitch of the evening, and it sure felt like they had another late-inning run in them. Michael Conforto homered and Dominic Smith singled, and up came Wilson Ramos and we collectively rubbed our hands together. (Rubbed our collective hands together? Oh, let’s move on.) But no, Ramos had used up his luck in that situation two innings earlier, when Trevor Story inexplicably hurried a double play for which he had all the time in the world and wound up getting nobody. This time Story moved with an appropriate lack of dispatch and the inning was soon over. It was an odd offensive night in general for the Mets, who managed only four hits off Antonio Senzatela despite never striking out, which probably breaks some 2019 baseball law.
In the eighth, Drew Gagnon — who after a brief flurry of usefulness is starting to look like another piece of hard-throwing spaghetti that isn’t sticking to a wall — gave up back-to-back homers to David Dahl and Daniel Murphy. That gave the Rockies a four-run lead, after which Gagnon hit Ian Desmond in the back, causing everyone to come onto the field and mill around and squawk at each other and try and figure out if they were mad or what. Eventually the teams chose “or what,” the benches were warned, and another game settled into listless lossdom.
The Mets are 30-33, and if you feel like this could have been a recap constructed Mad Libs style, I’m not going to argue with you. So it goes far too often in the Year of the Disappearing Slider.
by Jason Fry on 7 June 2019 10:58 am My Met fandom is not an unbroken line from seeing my mom jumping up and down and cheering for Rusty Staub to now. Yes, my mom’s joy is my first Mets memory — and one of my earliest memories of anything — but in 1981 I lost the thread. That year my Topps cards are pristine, with immaculate corners, because they were barely touched. That’s also the year I lost track of the team, caring less and less until I stopped paying attention at all.
It would be easy to blame the strike, but I don’t think that was it. Certainly the team’s serial lousiness played a role, but I’d been a dedicated fan of bad Mets teams before then. The real culprit was that I’d turned 12 and other interests had ignited, which crowded baseball out. Dungeons & Dragons. Music. Girls. It took the arrival of Dwight Gooden, and a new pennant race, for me to pick up the thread again. Somewhere in ’81 through the midpoint of ’84 are my missing years — I have to rely on others for recollections of Brian Giles and Tom Veryzer, the return of Tom Seaver and the arrivals of Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry, because I wasn’t there.
My son Joshua is 16. He was a big Mets fan as a child — he got there by osmosis, what with being raised by two diehards. His first game at Shea, Kris Benson pitched abominably and the Mets got clubbed. He was sitting on my lap when the Mets almost came back against the Braves and were robbed of an amazing victory by serial robber Willie Harris — after which the baby monitor caught him singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to himself as he drifted off. Greg can tell you about a young Joshua giving him a complicated analysis of Carlos Gomez‘s speed and what it could bring to the Mets.
A few years ago, the Mets dropped out of Joshua’s life. He stopped joining us for games, preferring to read, play in his room or watch YouTube videos. (Every modern parent sighs with me.) He had his reasons, and they were good ones: When Jose Reyes signed elsewhere and R.A. Dickey was traded, he asked me what the point was rooting for a team if the players you loved went away, a question no high-minded talk of contract lengths and buying low/selling high could satisfy. But mostly, he got older and got interested in other things.
I was sad to see him go, but if I’ve one learned one thing as a parent it’s that sometimes the best reaction is the smallest one, or no reaction at all. I let him be, and hoped he’d have his own Dwight Gooden, his own ’84 pennant race, and that would call him home.
He got the pennant race, but a 2015 N.L. Champs flag didn’t rekindle his fandom. Oddly — and, from my perspective, ironically — it was devouring video on his laptop. Somewhere in there he started adding MLB highlights to his media-consumption diet, and eventually that reforged the baseball connection. I was surprised this spring when he asked about sharing my MLB.tv account. I explained that wouldn’t work (and that three hours of televised baseball a night was not a good fit for high-school studies), but gave an enthusiastic yes to a MLB At Bat account — and smiled when Joshua said he liked listening on the radio better anyway.
And so we’ve spent this season apart but together, chronicling the joys of Pete Alonso and the travails of the Mets’ starters. And then school ended and the kid came home and there was a 12:10 pm home game on the schedule and a chance to do something we hadn’t done in quite some time.
It wasn’t the perfect fairy tale. New York City seems to have skipped spring and gone straight to the relentless, heat-like-a-vise part of summer that reminds me this place is basically uninhabitable for eight months of the year. I was moving too slowly and got us out the door 15 minutes later than we should have gone, which is the difference between in seats (or at least about to pay for food) at the anthem and rolling in for the bottom of the first. And something was seriously goofy at Citi Field — when we rolled up at 12:10-ish, there were still enormous lines outside the stadium. New bag policy? Big walkup crowd? Everyone’s internal clocks were set for 1:10? I have no idea.
But there we were, and we were immediately rewarded by home runs from Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith, an initial flurry of offense that promised a good day for the Mets. Except, the Mets being the Mets, the rest of the first inning was a fallen souffle and the Giants’ Shaun Anderson found his location and his rhythm after that.
And the ball was carrying. That was more than apparent — and not the best thing that could have happened to Zack Wheeler. Brandon Belt tied the game, Pablo Sandoval put the Giants ahead with a shot that didn’t need any help from summer air, the hitherto hidden Giants rooters around us made their presence annoyingly obvious, and the game turned into a grind.
It was a grind I was perfectly happy to be part of, though, even with the sun beating down, a clean hot-dog wrapper pressed into service to shield a sunburned knee (OK, the wrapper was cleanish) and the Mets not doing much. My kid was there and we were talking baseball and that felt like a great reward. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to earn it, but sometimes that’s the sign that you have.
And then the Mets came back. They tied it up on a little Jeff McNeil parachute in the seventh, with some actually sound tactical managing by Mickey Callaway getting the right guy to the plate in the right situation. I didn’t like having Tomas Nido bunt — even Nido’s hitter enough to make that an unwise surrender of an out — but Carlos Gomez’s sacrifice was statistically sound, and having McNeil pinch-hit for Rosario was wise maneuvering. (I wouldn’t have put J.D. Davis in the field, but it worked out.) I also happily noted the presence of Gomez — my kid’s long-ago hero, older and thicker and slower but still back in orange and blue, and suddenly that felt like a promise kept.
And then the Mets were back at it again the next inning. Alonso slapped a single to left, was out on a Michael Conforto fielder’s choice, Conforto stole second and the Mets were a hit away. Todd Frazier smacked a ball to the left fielder and I craned my neck but then settled my butt back into my seat, knowing it wasn’t enough and hoping Adeiny Hechavarria — whose value I’d been utterly wrong about — could be the one to get it done.
But happily, I was wrong about this too. The ball was carrying in the heat, and this ball carried over Mike Yastrzemski‘s head and into the M&M seats for a 5-3 Mets lead, one they’d add to and not relinquish. And then off we went, victorious, chatting about pitching and the next series and what might lie ahead, until we’d come home again.
by Greg Prince on 6 June 2019 12:38 am Vargy! Vargy baby! Where ya goin’? C’mon, have a seat. Lemme buy ya a cold one. Barkeep — anything my man Vargy wants, it’s on me. My man worked up quite a sweat out there tonight.
Listen, Vargy, that was some game ya threw at those Giants. Other people might say “p’shaw, they’re only the Giants,” but I say “only the Giants” beat us good the night before. They’re major leaguers and ya just shut out an entire lineup of ’em for an entire game.
Ya good with that drink, Vargy? Got enough ice in there? Barkeep, make sure my man Jason Vargas has all the rocks he needs in that drink of his. He threw a complete game shutout, y’know.
Yeah, that’s right. A shutout, seven-zip. The whole distance. Not too many Mets have gone that far since Citi Field opened, Vargy. Noah did it to the Reds when he hit that homer — I guess yer savin’ one of those for when ya need the runs, huh, big fella? — and he did it on the last day of last year when the Marlins probably had one foot on the bus. DeGrom racked up a complete game at home the year before that, but that wasn’t a shutout. Gsellman? Gsellman had one of those rain-shortened ceegees in 2017, so it was hardly what men of the world like you and me would call a real complete game.
No, Vargy, what ya put out there tonight was a rarity, only the 21st nine-inning complete game win by a Met in this here ballpark and only the 16th such shutout. And when ya factor in lefthanders like yourself, there’s only been eight.
What am I saying? There’s only one you, Vargy! I mean, sure Johan Santana threw four complete game shutouts at Citi Field, including the first no-hitter in Mets history, but I didn’t see him mowin’ down the Giants tonight, did I? Big Shot Mr. Nohan’s got nothin’ on you!
Need that drink freshened, Vargy? Barkeep! My man Vargy’s drink’s looking a little tired.
You didn’t look tired, Vargy. You were out there for a third time through the order, a fourth time through the order, whatever it took. Seven innings? Vargy. Eight innings? Vargy. Nine innings? Boy, did you make Callaway look like a genius…and that ain’t easy.
Need any pretzels with that drink, Vargy? Barkeep — don’t let my man sit with the munchies! He needs salt in his system to replace those electrolytes he lost. And that’s the only thing he lost, am I right?
Know what I loved about ya tonight, Varg? Can I call ya Varg? Varg, what I loved was how ya were afterwards. I pictured a fella like you who not everybody has had all that much confidence in since ya came back to the Mets — I don’t mean me, of course, ’cause I’ve believed in ya all along — maybe taking the opportunity of all those cameras and microphones surrounding ya to make it all about yerself. I mean ya deserved to. Ya pitched a complete game shutout on top of looking good start after start lately. Ya coulda told everybody to stick their doubts where the sun don’t shine. Ya coulda beat yer chest. Ya coulda even said “I gotta go hit the showers because nobody sent me there this entire game,” but no, you were calm, you were soft-spoken and you made it all about how you were just glad to give the bullpen a night off.
Vargy, that was beautiful. Look, right here — tears. Well, maybe ya can’t see ’em with the lights in this dump — barkeep, can we turn up the wattage in this joint so it’s commensurate with my man’s starpower? — but trust me. Inside, I’m Niagara Falls from the way ya pitched and the way ya talked about the way ya pitched.
Yer a real veteran, Vargy. I know that’s not always in style these days, but ya conduct yerself like a pro. Even when it wasn’t happening for ya in the box score, I don’t remember Jason Vargas ever griping or moaning out loud. Even when those mopes out there took their shots at ya every five days like clockwork — other mopes, not me — ya just kept yer head down and kept throwing yer stuff until it all clicked.
And now ya got a shutout in the books and yer probably as good a pitcher as we got. No kiddin’, Vargy, it’s great to see.
by Greg Prince on 5 June 2019 1:43 am Maybe Mickey Callaway took some cold medicine early in Tuesday night’s game. I took some cold medicine early in Tuesday night’s game and saw printed clearly on the back of the box, WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MAKE PITCHING CHANGES.
Really, that warning should follow Mickey around, no matter how congested or clear his head is feeling. Me, I’m coughing up god knows what, but not a lead. Mickey’s bullpen needs to take a lot of pills. Or Mickey should have simply taken one pill marked CHILL in the seventh when he decided, against the recommendation of the American Medical Association, four out of five dentists and me repeatedly blowing my nose, to remove Noah Syndergaard with two men out, a runner on first and the Mets ahead, 3-2.
Seth Lugo could have gotten that third out, of course, but then we wouldn’t have Mickey to kick around. Nah, we would. There’s always a reason.
This time, it was Seth not getting the one out and instead giving up two hits and letting in the one run that allowed the Giants to tie the Mets at three, setting the stage for one inning too many, the tenth, when another Met reliever of Callaway’s choosing, Robert Gsellman, entered…and the Mets did not emerge alive. What was a 3-3 tie became a 9-3 deficit and, ultimately, loss. The Mets’ pen does better on the road, if only because last at-bat defeats in the other team’s park are limited to a margin of four runs.
Later, Mickey said he regretted taking Noah out. Noah regretted it while he was still on the mound. He regretted it so much they had to pixelate the slo-mo replays of his spoken reaction lest all you kids out there be scandalized. Most of us had the same reaction as Noah. Nobody asked us about it afterward. Mickey was asked. Coming out and admitting it was a bonehead move (not his phrase, but it fits) was certainly honest. It was also a little bizarre. Managers ought to be able to explain their thinking so we can at least say, uh-huh, I disagree, but I see what you tried to do. He’s tried doing that on occasion, and his explanations have been clear as my sinuses these past couple of days. So perhaps forthrightly admitting he just didn’t make what seemed both in real time and retrospect the proper call was the way to go.
Doesn’t really matter. The game was lost. Callaway invoked the cliché that hindsight is 20/20. The Mets, meanwhile, are 28-32 and not looking sharp.
On the bright side, the Mets did reach Madison Bumgarner with Noah Syndergaard on the mound. It would have been a far brighter side had this been October 5, 2016, when Thor brought half the marbles, MadBum the other half and all of the marbles were on the proverbial table. This here was a table-free game in June between lousy teams. Conor Gillaspie was nowhere in sight and Jeurys Familia was presumably assigned backpack-banning duty at the McFadden’s entrance. Hard to believe how long ago less than three years has quickly become.
One of the Met runs driven in for a change at Citi Field against Bumgarner was by Pete Alonso via his 20th home run. Alonso needed a souped-up DeLorean to make it count in that Wild Card Game of yore, but let’s not put everything on Pete. Or Mickey. Or Seth and Robert, who were the surprise aces in the hole who got us as far we were gonna go in 2016, which, if I haven’t mentioned it already, was three years ago.
Happiest sound coming out of the TV Tuesday night was the voice of Ron Darling, back in the booth after thyroid cancer surgery. Todd Zeile did an admirable job filling in, I thought, but GKR is GKR. That’s one team based in Flushing that can never be beat.
Happiest sound coming out of the TV the night before was the excitement emanating from Brett Baty, Mets’ first-round draft choice and, if he’s not traded for, I don’t know, Jason Bay, future third baseman of the New York Mets. Maybe he’ll be, horse before the cart and all that. I’m in the mood to express a lot of confidence in a name that was unknown to us 48 hours ago. The young man sure seemed happy to be selected as a Met. His childhood tee-ball team was called the Mets and his teammates knew him as Brett the Met (a nickname immediately trademarked by “that kumquat Tom Brady,” as Howie Rose accurately referred to the decidedly non-Terrific quarterback Sunday).
I was plenty enthusiastic about Baty on Monday night, but when Tuesday’s game was over, I was left to wonder why the Mets don’t just keep drafting relief pitchers until they get a few who function as we wish they would. Or maybe a manager who does that.
by Jason Fry on 2 June 2019 10:49 pm The Mets lost, this time not with the thunder of a bullpen avalanche but with the merest whimper. Steven Matz had one of his games where he shows up for duty in the second inning instead of the first, the offense began and ended with a solo home run, and Amed Rosario had a wretched inning at shortstop. That was enough for them to be beaten rather thoroughly, slinking home after a 2-5 West Coast trip that saw two agonizing bullpen collapses, the usual number of Mickey Callaway head-scratchers, and altogether too much uninspired play.
Sure, you might, argue, take away those two bullpen meltdowns and the Mets would have been 4-3 on a tough West Coast swing. But that’s not the way this works. With June upon us, the Mets have the look of one of those bad teams that always has excuses within reach — they’re not so much hopeless at any one aspect of baseball as they are serially inconsistent at all of them. Iron out those inconsistencies and they could be good! Which isn’t wrong, and such a straightening out isn’t impossible — the 2015 Mets pulled off the trick and rode the results straight to the World Series, before tragically turning back into the team they’d been in the early part of the summer.
But it doesn’t happen very often. Teams like that tend to stay maddeningly inconsistent all season as they stumble their way to 74 or 76 or 78 wins, or else they get consistent the way you’d prefer they didn’t and lose for weeks on end.
In the meantime, well, a team that could desperately use a day off finally gets one. They could use a week off, honestly. Or a month, or a year, or the rest of eternity.
As could we all. Go do something with your Monday that makes you happy.
by Greg Prince on 2 June 2019 11:46 am Most of the Mets game I watched Saturday night was pretty good. Jacob deGrom was outstanding, looking more like Jake from 2018 than he has since he was making beautiful music in Miami in early April. Todd Frazier continued to bring the power despite being written off in multiple quarters as an irredeemable sunk cost. Michael Conforto laid down one of those sweet shift-beating bunts that makes you point at your head and nod appreciatively. Dominic Smith hit. Pete Alonso hit. Tomás Nido caught his personal pitcher and drove in a run. Adeiny Hechavarria handled the bat and fielded fancily.
A little of the game I watched started to be not so good. DeGrom had a hip problem of some sort. Hechavarria rushed an ill-advised throw. Something seemed to be wrong with Nido after he made a questionable choice with a baseball. Mickey Callaway had to emerge from the dugout and approach the field a couple of times, which is never very good at all. He was joined by head trainer Brian Chicklo. You only want to hear the name “head trainer Brian Chicklo” when he’s introduced on Opening Day and never again.
Then I fell asleep because Arizona pretends to be closer than California to New York, yet they began their Saturday night game at 10:10 PM, which is something they do in Los Angeles, and I’ve had enough of that this week. The Mets were winning the game I watched, though not as decisively as they had been. The Mets lost the game I didn’t watch, which, unfortunately, was attached to the one I did watch and, when you added it up, which I did at approximately 5:45 AM, it came out to Diamondbacks 6 Mets 5 in eleven innings.
I have no first-hand comment to offer on how this game got completely away from the Mets other than to say stop doing that.
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