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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 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.
by Greg Prince on 1 June 2019 12:01 pm Zack Wheeler, in his fifth major league season of actually pitching as opposed to healing, has never pitched for a Mets team that finished with a winning record. The only two good seasons during his injury-interrupted tenure were the seasons he missed with Tommy John surgery and rehab, 2015 and 2016. The Mets popped every drop of champagne they’ve had cause to spray and spill in this decade without his participation in the jubilation.
So can we at least get above .500 this season for Zack? For the rest of us, too, but especially for him?
Zack helped nudge us to within one game of break-even on Friday night, going seven innings, leaving as the losing pitcher, but magically becoming the winning pitcher when the Mets scored him a couple of runs and his successors didn’t allow the Diamondbacks any at all. It may not have been the smoothest attainment of a positive decision for a starter, but picking up Zack after leaving him behind during the playoff pushes seems the least the Mets can do — the very least. The only time Wheeler’s name came up amidst the all-too-brief exciting years was when the Mets tried to trade him and Wilmer Flores for Carlos Gomez.
Coincidentally those three fellows all converged at Chase Field Friday night, though only two had anything to do with the Mets’ 5-4 victory. Wilmer currently sits on the Arizona IL, modeling the strangest hoodie in that it features no shade of orange or blue, a.k.a. Wilmer colors. Zack gave Mickey Callaway desired length, like a very long snake might. He was really good for five innings, not so hot in the sixth, when Ketel Marte and Christian Walker took him deep, yet he hung in there to complete the frame and then another.
The Mets were down a run after seven, which they wouldn’t stay forever, thanks to Recidivist Carlos lining a just-fair ground-rule double toward the left field corner, driving home J.D. Davis, who himself had just pinch-hit successfully for Juan Lagares and plated Todd Frazier as the tying run. Maybe Carlos’s shot should have been a triple, given that the D’Backs ball dude instinctively fielded the ball and therefore interfered with it while it was live in foul territory. Then again, maybe it would have been called foul initially by a third base umpire had there been a third base umpire. The blue crew was working with one man down after home plate ump Jim Wolf had to depart many innings prior after getting hit by a live ball himself.
Gomez would be involved in a triple in the eighth, not catching a deep drive hit by Eduardo Escobar, but like J.D. and Carlos saved Zack, freshly activated Seth Lugo came to the rescue of Gomez and kept Escobar from scoring. In the ninth, the official task of saving would fall on the shoulders of Robert Gsellman, allowing Edwin Diaz to continue to rest up from Wednesday night’s still nearly unbelievable debacle. It should be totally unbelievable since the Mets led L.A., 8-5, heading to the ninth and Diaz is Diaz, which we were told means something, and hopefully still will. Except the Dodgers are the Dodgers, and that really means something.
Fortunately, the Diamondbacks aren’t the Dodgers and the Mets could be themselves and get away with it.
The Mets had been leading by a pleasant score of 3-1 early, thanks to Wheeler and, of course, Adeiny Hechavarria, whose two-run double brought him to within one RBI of Robinson Cano’s season total. Hechavarria seemed to think he had tied Cano by blasting a three-run homer, but he apparently forgot the center field wall at Chase Field is as high as the Grand Canyon is wide. Maybe he, like Gomez, should have at least had a triple. Maybe it was enough that he was Adeiny Hechavarria, certified season savior so far.
Without Adeiny picking up for Cano (notice who we’re referring to in friendly first-name fashion and who we feel a chilly distance from), Wheeler’s Mets wouldn’t have been a winner Friday. Without Wheeler, the Mets likely wouldn’t be nearing a winning record at all. Right about now would be a very good time to near it, grab it and keep it. The Mets have played 57 games to date. There’s a splendid little history attached to Mets teams picking their 57th game to get serious about their seasons. In three separate years, the Mets have pushed themselves to one game over .500 to stay at this very juncture of the schedule.
The 1987 Mets, who had been floundering in ways unbecoming of a defending world champion, took out their frustrations all over the Cubs, clobbering them at Wrigley, 13-2, upping their mark to 29-28. Considering the 1986 Mets had been 41-16 after 57 games, 29-28 wasn’t terribly impressive for a franchise whose radio bumpers and promotional soft drink cans implored them to “DO IT AGAIN!”. The 1987 Mets had spent the first 56 games of their year acting utterly conflicted. Did they really want to win anymore? After bottoming out at 16-20, you had to wonder.
Hindsight, however, tells us that the 57th game was decisive. Once the 1987 Mets got to 29-28, they stayed over .500 for the rest of their championship defense. Granted, it wasn’t a successful championship defense, but it could have been worse. For 56 games, it definitely was.
Three years later, the 1990 Mets were barely removed from a vexing slumber that eliminated the most successful manager they ever had from their dugout. Davey Johnson led the Mets to winning records so routinely that the alternative barely occurred to you. Yet at 20-22, Frank Cashen’s impatience overwhelmed him. Out went Johnson, in came Bud Harrelson, whose miracle pedigree was impeccable. But not even Buddy, experienced in the magic of 1969 and 1973, could work an instant abracadabra. Remaining lethargic for a spell, the 1990 Mets sagged to 21-26 on Buddy’s watch.
Then talent began to tell, Harrelson’s managing acumen began to jell and the Mets pursued their destiny in earnest. In their 57th game, they spanked the Cubs in Chicago, 9-6, and rose to 29-28. Not only would they never slip back to .500 let alone beneath it again, they were in the process of launching like few Met teams had before or have since. In a veritable blink, the 21-26 disappointments were a 48-31 juggernaut and ensured one more summer of genuine contention in Flushing.
The ’90s soon began to bear little resemblance to the ’80s at Shea, but the Mets regained legitimacy by 1997 (see, Frank, ya have to be patient in these parts). Two winning years led into 1999 with every expectation that the Mets would make it three straight and then some. Imagine every Mets-minded person’s surprise when, after 55 games, the 1999 Mets were a flailing sub-.500 enterprise. It took some doing to get there. The ’99ers were doing fine for themselves, out to a 27-20 start. Only a massive losing streak could do them in. Naturally, a massive losing streak was doing them in. With eight in a row dropped and a 27-28 mark sore-thumbing the standings, Steve Phillips abandoned all pretense of patience, offing three of Bobby Valentine’s coaches and barely hiding his drool at the thought of taking out Bobby next. Bobby dared his GM to go ahead and guillotine him if he didn’t lead the Mets to, oh, let’s say a record of 40-15 in their next 55.
Crazy Bobby was proved a prophet when the Mets went 40-15 in their next 55. The surge started with two consecutive wins, the second of them an 8-2 home throttling of Roy Halladay and the Toronto Blue Jays. The Mets weren’t yet 68-43, let alone the 97-66 they’d be en route to the postseason, but they were 29-28 and over .500 to stay.
It’s too late for the 2019 Mets to follow in the exact statistical footsteps of this trio of highly competitive predecessors. They can’t be 29-28 because they’re 28-29. But they can still get over .500 and stay over .500. The 1970 Mets poked their heads above the waterline at 30-29 and never dipped below again. The 1989 Mets embraced their eventual winning distinction at 31-30. The 1975 Mets did the same at 33-32. A bunch more Mets teams waited longer but got where they needed to go. Some succeeded earlier, which is the ideal path as it shaves angst from your consciousness and losses from your ledger. A winning record doesn’t guarantee a playoff spot but a playoff spot is pretty much impossible without a winning record. Plus the Mets sporting a winning record when all is said and done is simply preferable to the Mets being saddled with a losing record after 162 games.
You could ask Zack Wheeler which he prefers, though at this point of his big league life, he can only guess what one of those feels like.
by Jason Fry on 31 May 2019 11:35 am So if Jason Vargas pitches well — and I mean “pitches well,” without any ironic amplification, subtle disparagement or other snobby little digs — and the Mets lose anyway, what sound does a Met fan make at 1 in the morning?
If you’re me, it’s a long, drawn-out sigh.
Vargas pitched well. Hyun-Jin Ryu pitched better. Ryu was Jacob deGrom 2018 good, and the Mets had no chance. They were beaten basically from the beginning: Vargas’s second pitch became a Chris Taylor liner to left, which J.D. Davis chose to make a valiant but ill-advised dive for. It turned into a triple, Max Muncy doubled Taylor home, and that skinny run was enough for L.A. to win.
Everything else was wishful thinking, followed up with a comical ninth, in which Pete Alonso was actually not hit by a pitch, as every replay on the planet showed. Alonso even sheepishly strolled back to home to retrieve his bat, in effect testifying for the prosecution. In a very MLB 2019 development, the umpires ignored that and him to listen to their fellow umps in Chelsea, who were apparently a bit stir-crazy after midnight and doing Whip-Its, as they confirmed the original erroneous call.
It didn’t matter: Todd Frazier struck out against Kenley Jansen, flinging his bat at the ball he couldn’t hit for good measure, Carlos Gomez flied out, and the Mets had lost.
An old but useful cliche about baseball is that April and May are about figuring out what you have, June and July are about figuring out what you need, and in August and September you go for it. So what do the Mets have? To be honest, I don’t really know. They’re deeply dysfunctional, but they’re also surprisingly fun. (Now there’s a slogan!)
What hasn’t worked? At various points, a fair amount. The starting pitching has been all peaks and chasms, which is a hard-working way to be mediocre. The vaunted closer just had the worst night of his career and has had some other less-than-stellar ones. The defense is atrocious, full stop. The health has been oh-so-Metsian — in addition to everything else, I now get to hold my breath when Michael Conforto, one of my favorite players in many years, smacks into walls. The manager is a serial dunderhead, a problem that won’t be solved by infield drills, team doctors or reversions to the mean.
And yet, well, that starting pitching has had peaks. Some of the spaghetti-at-a-wall arms in the bullpen have stuck. Alonso has been a daily delight. Conforto has unlocked his great potential and been allowed to play unmolested, unless you count the shoulders of teammates. Jeff McNeil has resumed being Jeff McNeil, hitting machine. Amed Rosario has had some baffling defensive lapses but made enormous strides as a hitter. Dom Smith has matured into a truly useful piece of the roster. Davis has outhit his glove. The Mets have squeezed some heroics out of their Proven Veterans™, with Gomez and Rajai Davis playing hero and Adeiny Hechavarria more than filling in for Robinson Cano.
I don’t think that adds up to enough to win anything — too many holes, no faith in the people who’d have to pay for fixing them — but it’s made for an interesting team, one I still want to watch after they rip our hearts out. Or after they’re stymied and expire with a sigh far from home in the middle of the night.
by Jason Fry on 30 May 2019 11:39 am As Wednesday night’s game became Thursday morning’s game, the storyline seemed pretty clear — clear enough that I scribbled some notes for myself to peruse around now. Let’s see if I can decipher them:
No aces
Noah’s struggles
Alonso show
Gomez/Seager comedy -> Frazier do or die, see that play a lot with catchers
Adeiny
Walked Buehler twice
116 pitches
And in a better world, that’s the recap I’d be writing: How Noah Syndergaard continues to navigate life stripped of his once-immortal slider, the pitch that left the 2015 Royals trudging and muttering reduced to something stubbornly ordinary. Is it mechanics? The juiced ball? Just mischance? But that recap would also have been about a confrontation of aces that never came to pass, since the Mets used grit and patience to grind down Walker Buehler. Highlights included Pete Alonso‘s two homers, a sign that Alonso might have made the latest adjustment in the endless sequence of pitcher-hitter riposte-and-parry. (Maybe, if I’d been ambitious, I would have crunched a number or two looking at Pete’s pace vs. that of Todd Hundley and Carlos Beltran. Not too early to think about!)
I definitely would have parsed that goofy play where Carlos Gomez misplayed a flyball into a Bellingeresque throw that nabbed Corey Seager at third, with a tip of the cap for Todd Frazier‘s grab and stab at the bag, the kind of no-look, do-or-die play we see catchers forced to make all the time, and that leaves them looking foolish when the timing’s even a little off.
Oh, and I would have worked in an ironic acknowledgment that the latest Met I inexplicably detest, Adeiny Hechavarria, has been inexplicably delightful to watch play. That’s why it’s good I’m not the GM, baseball’s great because you’re happy when you’re wrong, oh wasn’t that fun.
Yes, that would have been a pretty neat recap to write. I’m not sure I would have gotten in fretting about the 116 pitches Syndergaard threw, or found the “walked Walker” play on words that my partner would have turned into a feast, but I would have enjoyed writing it and you, presumably, would have enjoyed reading it.
But nope, before you could say HOLY JUSTIN UPTON, the game turned into a debacle, one of those games where the other team rips out your heart and shows it to you, glistening and making gross squelching noises because it’s still beating, and after staring at it in appalled disbelief you murmur something witnesses will later reconstruct as “oh, this means I’m dead” and everything goes black.
Homer, homer, double, double, intentional walk, blown play at second for infield single, walkoff sacrifice fly. That was Edwin Diaz‘s night, with the only out he recorded winning the game for the other guys.
What the hell happened? Diaz called it the worst night of his career, which is I hope is still true as long as he’s a Met. He thought his pitches were sharp; the Met commentariat (and the Dodgers’ hitters) disagreed, with the slider in particular seeming to lack the bite that Diaz needs. (Hmm, sliders MIA from repertoires when really needed — there’s another note to scrawl.) Blaming overuse? Seems unfair given not so long ago the suspicion was that Diaz’s problem was rust from underuse. Perhaps the unwelcome but obvious fact that the Dodgers are really, really good should be part of the equation. Perhaps it’s just baseball, which wouldn’t be baseball without the spikes of unexpected beauty/horror that interrupt the placid green Ken Burnsness of it all.
Whatever it was, it turned that recap, the one that still made me smile a bit, into this recap, the one that can’t be pushed deep enough into the archives soon enough.
Worst night of Edwin Diaz’s career. Let’s go with that, and hopefully move beyond it.
by Greg Prince on 29 May 2019 10:22 am I took a little Matz nap somewhere between very late Tuesday night and very early Wednesday morning. It was peaceful. Steven Matz had made it so, via professional hitting, heady baserunning and characteristically competent pitching. The pitching’s what we tune in for even if it’s also what we nod off during. Matz starts didn’t used to seem so relaxing. Nowadays (or nights), you don’t have to stare at the ceiling and count baserunners when he takes the mound.
Thanks to Steven’s third-inning trip around the bases — reach on infield hit; advance to second on Amed Rosario’s single; tag up and take third on J.D. Davis’s fly to deep right, Cody Bellinger’s arm notwithstanding; hustle home on a Michael Conforto trickler Justin Turner couldn’t fire to Will Smith fast enough — we had a 1-0 lead. Thanks to Bellinger being Bellinger, we were behind, 2-1, before the bottom of the inning was over. Thanks to Todd Frazier doing some of his best work at Dodger Stadium (remember how he dove into the stands to make that catch he didn’t make last September?), we were tied in the top of the fourth.
You expected Bellinger to go deep. You weren’t shocked Frazier did so. You knew from the beginning of his career that Matz knew how to handle a bat and use his feet. You’ve come to tentatively assume he will make it through the middle innings at least. With so much of this game tracking within the realm of possibility, you could close your eyes.
Thanks to it being late, I withdrew from consciousness. Not for good, but somewhere between Frazier homering to lead off the fourth and I’m gonna say Carlos Gomez getting thrown out at second to end the top of the sixth. It had been 2-2 when I drifted, it was still 2-2 when I stirred. Matz was still holding the mighty Dodgers in abeyance, an accomplishment that could be counted as a win within a tie.
How about a win as a win? In the seventh, we had the right man up to make desirable things happen: Adeiny Hechavarria, the inspirational epitome of these misfit Mets. Versus reliever Yimi Garcia, Hechavarria worked out a leadoff walk. Of course he did. Adeiny puts the cat in catalyst. And as I ignored my cat Avery’s entreaties to be fed for a few more minutes, pinch-hitter Aaron Altherr also walked, his base on balls produced against a second Dodger reliever, Dylan Floro. Why, yes, I did envision at some point in 2019 describing a Met rally that included Adeiny Hechavarria and Aaron Altherr as protagonists.
Add to Adeiny and Aaron another A-lister in Amed (I’ll be with you in a sec, Avery). Rosario bunted and reached when David Freese couldn’t handle Floro’s inexact toss to first. Sacrificing with two on and nobody out in the seventh didn’t seem like the most aggressive use of your leadoff hitter, but it was after midnight and we weren’t losing in Los Angeles, so whatever. The stage was set for Davis to do something spectacular. Floro struck him out. The stage remained for Conforto to do something spectacular. He hit a grand slam off Scott Alexander.
That was very spectacular. One swing, four runs. For efficiency alone you have to admire what a grand slam achieves. No wonder it has its own name, plus synonyms. Granny. Salami. I prefer grand slam myself. So much grandeur right there in the title.
The Mets were up, 6-2. I was up for the rest of the game, using the next commercial break to feed Avery, by which time Dave Roberts had inserted his fourth reliever of the seventh, Ross Stripling. In the bottom of the seventh, Robert Gsellman courted disaster to such an extent that I hoped Roberts could make a pitching change for our side, but Gsellman hung tough, giving back only one run and, remarkably, flying out Bellinger as the potential tying run.
Rosario, in a non-bunting situation, tripled home an additional Met run in the eighth to make it 7-3, which worried me a tad because if the Mets led by more than three but not by a whole lot more, Edwin Diaz would have to come in to handle a non-save situation, and heaven forbid a closer tries to close out one of those. But that was getting ahead of oneself, because there was still the Familia frame through which clutching a couch cushion seemed advisable. Jeurys indeed put a couple on, but eased all extant tension with a double play grounder that Frazier threw to Hechavarria and Hechavarria threw to Pete Alonso. “Around the horn,” Gary Cohen said, and for the first time in fifty years of watching baseball, I wondered if that innocent phrase had another entendre lurking inside it, like, “oh man, I am so ‘around the horn,’ if you know what I mean.”
It was late.
The Mets faced their fifth reliever in three innings, Joe Kelly, but didn’t do anything to change the score in the ninth, indeed directing us toward Diaz for the non-save. Alex Verdugo doubled. I awaited further trouble, Somehow Edwin tricked himself into thinking he needed to bear down and did, recording the next three outs in order and preserving the 7-3 win that returned us to .500 for the seventh time in the first third of this decidedly up-and-down season. I drowsily chaperoned Mickey Callaway’s and Steven Matz’s inessential reflections during the postgame show — when did Matz stop looking like he’s perpetually 14? — and, fading fast, clicked off the TV. Victorious sleep resumed.
by Greg Prince on 28 May 2019 9:33 am We may not yet know how to most accurately describe the 2019 Mets as they shift between dismal and decent, but after several hours spent witnessing some gruesome proceedings from Dodger Stadium, we are comfortable confirming the Dodgers are still quite good. They’ve got this long haul thing down pat, winning one division title after another since 2013, poising themselves to carry their streak into 2020. Is anybody in the NL West capable of keeping up with them? An eight-game lead indicates they’re ensconced in a region of their own. Watching them thwart the ultimately helpless Mets at every turn Monday night fast-forwarded my Sheadenfreude toward deep October.
“Well,” I thought, “at least they have a chance to lose another World Series.”
Lingering Utleyan resentment notwithstanding, it’s too early to cast our lot with the Red Sox or Astros or whoever isn’t the Yankees. There’s much to look forward to between now and then, like this Friday when we’re playing somebody else. To borrow from the anti-war posters of a half-century ago, playing the Dodgers is not healthy for Metsies and other living things.
The Mets need everything to go right when taking on an outfit like L.A. I came to that conclusion after much went wrong against the only outfit like L.A., which is L.A.
• They need Jacob deGrom to be at his sharpest; he wasn’t, lasting only five stressful innings, departing having given up but two runs, for he is still Jacob deGrom.
• They need their bullpen to provide a serene pathway toward the late innings when their starter is gone before the sixth; ha, fat chance.
• They need to run the bases flawlessly; having two runners cut down at home and another at third, albeit on excellent throws the likes of which they don’t usually encounter, indicates sleek baserunning wasn’t a Met core competency.
• They need to hit in the clutch, whatever that means; they roughed up Clayton Kershaw for ten hits and his successors for five more, yet were outscored, 9-5, which, by the end of the night, felt like 19-5, what a way to take a beating.
The Dodgers are a lot better than the Mets. They’re a lot better than the Tigers and the Nationals, who the Mets proved just enough better than for a week. Every game starts zero-zero, of course, and anything can happen in any game, but with the benefit of nine innings’ hindsight, it didn’t seem possible this game would go any in any direction that didn’t wind up with Randy Newman reaffirming his fondness for Los Angeles.
Yet for a couple of minutes there, we led. We were ahead, 3-2, in the fifth. You could look it up. J.D. Davis had homered with Amed Rosario on second — off Kershaw! — and despite several frames of frustration, the Mets were on top. DeGrom took that 3-2 lead into the bottom of the fifth and made it stick through 105 pitches.
In the sixth, the Dodgers saw Tyler Bashlor, Daniel Zamora and Wilmer Font. SNY’s sophisticated field microphones could pick up the sound of lips being licked in the home dugout. In brief, six runs scored. Chris Taylor homered. Kiké Hernandez homered. Mike Trout might have swung by from Anaheim to drive in a few. I lost track. Sure, you could blame Met relievers for being the way they are, but I put the onus on the analytics department for not adequately emphasizing to Met hitters the importance of RAB, or Runs Above Bashlor. It was gonna take a lot bigger lead than 3-2 to keep the Mets in front.
Down 8-3 after six, I was reminded that perhaps the least tasteful flavor of Met loss is the Sisyphus, the kind where the boulder is pushed strenuously uphill for an eternity only to have it come rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ down on the ol’ coconut an instant later. In this sort of game, I’m inevitably taken back to an August night at Shea in 1982, when the Mets trailed the Cubs, 3-1, and, finally, a successful, seemingly momentous rally was staged in the sixth, highlighted by Rusty Staub’s pinch-hit three-run double to vault the Mets ahead, 5-3. There weren’t many of us in the ballpark that night, but we all exploded the explosion of satisfaction. Our boys had done it. We were winning. Everything was gonna be all right.
The 1982 Cubs, who were never going to be mistaken for the 2019 Dodgers, came up in the seventh and scored eight runs. We lost, 13-6. Not far from where I sat, two tipsy businessmen began ironically cheering the Cubs, clowning louder with every run the visitors tallied. This behavior elicited the clearly unironic ire of a thoroughly unamused biker type. He also may have been heeding the gigantic ad suggesting that This Bud was for him. To be fair, Mike Scott, Jesse Orosco, Terry Leach and Pete Falcone combining to give up eight runs (abetted by a George Foster error) would have been enough to make the most sober of souls apply for membership in the Hell’s Angels.
Unlike the 1982 Mets, the 2019 Mets convinced themselves the game wasn’t over after handing back a tenuous lead. Slugging second baseman Adeiny Hechavarria, for whom Robinson Cano can anticipate caddying once he is physically able, belted a two-run homer off Joe Kelly in the eighth to pull the Mets to within three. Things appeared on the verge of growing even closer when, in the same inning, the Mets mysteriously loaded the bases with one out, compelling Dave Roberts to call on Kenley Jansen earlier than the closer is accustomed to being disturbed.
It couldn’t have been a more perfect setup: Tomás Nido on third, Carlos Gomez on second, Rosario on first, Davis at the plate. Even a fly ball would push across one run, keep the momentum building, keep hope alive. Sure enough, Davis delivered a representative fly to medium right. Nido, who is either deGrom’s personal catcher or deGrom is his personal pitcher, could pretty much jog home from third. Even better, speedy Gomez could aggressively take third so he’d that much closer to scoring when Michael Conforto came up next.
A little problem with that recipe for chicken salad, however. Cody Bellinger was the Dodger right fielder. Bellinger, the .383 hitter who’d already blasted his 19th homer and thrown out Conforto at the plate, felt he hadn’t ruined the Met night enough. So he loaded his cannon and took aim at third base. My first thought was it was a misguided throw, that it’s gonna sail wide, that Gomez might just trot home when the ball goes in the dugout.
My second thought was to be amazed by Bellinger’s amazing accuracy, as his throw landed exactly where it was intended, in the glove of Justin Turner, who applied a tag on Gomez’s rear end a microsecond before any of Carlos’s fingers reached the bag…and comfortably ahead of Nido crossing the plate.
So it was an inning-ending 9-5 double play that foresaw the final score. Oy.
I thought Gomez was gonna be safe. I couldn’t imagine Nido hadn’t already scored. I was mind-boggled that the Mets, who had had one runner gunned down at home in their first 52 games, had two tagged out there in their 53rd — not only Conforto in the first, but Nido in the fifth — along with what just happened at third.
To ice the cake, the Dodgers added another run in the eighth, this one off Drew Gagnon (because why should he be left out?). The Mets, still not fully clued into their fate, threatened in their own adorable manner in the ninth. Pete Alonso tripled withone out, which is to say he came about an inch from a solo home run that wouldn’t have made that much difference in the overall story of the game, but it was just one more elbow to the ribs to see his ball not leave the park. Pete neither got thrown out at home nor had any reason to approach it when Jansen struck out Todd Frazier and Hechavarria to dash the last iota of a comeback dream.
And if Adeiny Hechavarria can’t save you, who can?
by Greg Prince on 27 May 2019 3:08 pm Bill Buckner, one of the finest hitters of his generation, died Monday morning at the age of 69. Buckner recorded 2,715 base hits in a career that touched four different decades. He won the National League batting title in 1980, drove in more than a hundred runs three separate times and helped two teams — the 1974 Dodgers and 1986 Red Sox — reach the World Series.
There. That needed to be done. Bill Buckner deserved a first paragraph of his obituary that didn’t include the one play every clever person at one point or another cavalierly declared was destined to soak up real estate “in the first paragraph of his obituary”.
Buckner’s passing, first reported obliquely via tweet from his former Dodger teammate and longtime friend Bobby Valentine, was confirmed as Memorial Day went along. Jeremy Schaap of ESPN tweeted that he spoke with Bill’s wife Jody, who told him her husband, after suffering from Lewy body dementia, fought it “with courage and grit as he did all things in life”.
When I think of Bill Buckner at his best, I remember him as a dangerous hitter I did not want to see come up against the Mets. If you’re old enough, think of Al Oliver or Bill Madlock. That’s where I place Bill Buckner as a Met opponent, especially during his Cub days. He was as tough an out as any who haunted our schedule on a regular basis.
Now, obviously, that’s not what I think of when I think of Bill Buckner in general. No Mets fan does, but today, you know, let’s give a great hitter his due first. Let’s keep all he accomplished in baseball in mind. No player with as many miles as Bill Buckner had accumulated by October 25, 1986, gets to a tenth inning of a sixth game of a World Series without having earned his way there. That maybe he shouldn’t have been left in to play first base on bad legs is another matter. He was Bill Buckner, an essential component of the American League champions. He was no accident or asterisk. He was Bill Buckner. I never felt good as a Met fan seeing him at bat.
Do you realize Bill Buckner batted in the first inning of the seventh game of the 1986 World Series and singled? Thanks to rain, he’d been left to dwell on his instantly legendary defensive mishap for nearly 44 hours. He didn’t need to be reminded that Mookie Wilson’s ground ball went under his glove and through his legs, allowing the Mets to complete a miraculous comeback that kept Boston from winning its first world championship in 68 years. All of humanity had made sure he was aware, including what sounded like the vast majority of 55,078 in the stands at Shea who accorded him the most sarcastic standing ovation in the history of applause when he was first introduced that Monday night.
To be fair, no Mets fan wasn’t grateful for Bill Buckner’s failure of commission, the whiff on that grounder. There just had to be a better way to show gratitude. Whether Bill could have possibly beaten Wilson to the bag had he scooped up that ball we’ll never know. He didn’t pick it up. Ray Knight scored from second. The Mets won, 6-5. Just as Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell, Knight and Wilson all combined to make the Met victory reality, Calvin Schiraldi, Bob Stanley, Rich Gedman and John McNamara was each partly culpable for the Red Sox defeat. Buckner, too, but only partly. Win as a team, lose as a team. But in the aftermath of Game Six, Buckner bore the brunt of blame.
Watching from home, more than a little bit of me groaned when Buckner was cheered by Mets fans. Bad form. Bad karma. Bad idea. The tiniest sliver of me — a microscope couldn’t have detected it — was actually some version of happy for the guy when he singled off Ron Darling with nobody on and two out in the first. He deserved to answer back in style.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want any Red Sock driving him in and I wanted to see nothing else out of the Red Sox that evening except them clearing completely from the scene so the Mets could celebrate ostentatiously. My empathy has limits. My desired scenario pretty much unfolded, though not without some angst. I’m not fully on board with the myth that after Game Six there was absolutely no way the Mets could lose Game Seven. The Red Sox took a 3-0 lead. Having experienced 108 wins in the regular season and all those innings in the Astrodome, I had faith coming out of my ears that the Mets could/would come back, but it didn’t feel like the kind of sure thing in which you don’t consider an alternative to what you prefer exists. Not after all it took to beat Houston, not after the way we’d fallen behind Boston too often for comfort.
The Red Sox yielded their lead in the sixth and fell behind, 6-3, in the seventh. At that point, I was certain we were good. You know who probably wasn’t so certain, though? Bill Buckner. He led off the top of the eighth against Roger McDowell and singled again. The national joke was 2-for-4 in the seventh game of the World Series. I wasn’t worried. Nor was I remotely perturbed when Jim Rice singled Buckner to second. Now, when Dwight Evans came up and doubled the both of them in and the Red Sox were within one and nobody was out…yeah, I was getting a little antsy.
McDowell had nothing left. Fortunately, Davey Johnson understood that and brought in Jesse Orosco, who retired the next three batters, keeping the Mets in front, 6-5, as we headed to the bottom of the eighth. Darryl Strawberry came up and homered to Mars, Jesse drove in an additional insurance run himself and, in a matter of minutes that were seventeen years in the making, Orosco struck out Marty Barrett to end the 1986 World Series with the Mets as champions and Bill Buckner on deck.
Our celebration was on. Buckner’s reputation was altered. That’s not what we were celebrating, of course, but you’ll take all the help you can get in October. Years later, it appeared the great hitter had made peace with the fielding moment for which he is most remembered. He appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm to make fun of it. He signed autographs alongside Mookie Wilson to raise funds from it. He went on with his life, definitely destined to be known for a dramatic error, but not needing to be defined by just one mistake.
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