The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
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.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Jason Fry on 11 May 2019 11:34 am Friday night’s game was an Earl Weaver special — the Mets scored eight times in the first, then slowly pulled away. It was one of those games you think you’d want every night, because who doesn’t like a laugher that reveals itself as such within the first half an hour? In reality, though, you wouldn’t. This was the baseball equivalent of a tween slumber party, an evening spent eating Doritos and cookie dough and chasing it with Reddi-wip straight from the can. It’s fun that one night, but a regular regimen would be injurious to your health and possibly your sanity.
Speaking of sanity, for Marlins starter Pablo Lopez it was an evening to either flush down the personal memory hole or relive at 4 ams to come. (I hope it’s the former, for his sake.) Incredibly, the Mets led 7-0 before Lopez recorded an out through his own actions, as Jeff McNeil was thrown out trying to go first to third on right fielder Brian Anderson. The first inning, for posterity: McNeil bunt single, J. D. Davis single (McNeil out at third), Robinson Cano single, wild pitch scores Davis, Pete Alonso walk, Michael Conforto single, Wilson Ramos RBI infield single (yeah, that kind of inning), Brandon Nimmo bases-loaded walk, Amed Rosario grand slam, Zack Wheeler strikeout, McNeil HBP, Davis single (his second of the inning), Cano RBI single (ditto), Cano out on Alonso fielder’s choice.
There are a number of WTFs from a sequence like that, most immediately that Lopez was left out there to take the entirety of that beating, not to mention giving up solo shots to Conforto in the second and McNeil in the third before Don Mattingly finally peeled him off the canvas. Suffice it to stay that when your No. 2 and No. 3 hitters both record multiple hits in the first inning, it’s gonna be a good night.
It stayed a good night because Wheeler didn’t succumb to the malady that occasionally befalls young pitchers of being unable to tolerate good fortune. That’s an oddity of baseball I’ve already enjoyed, because it reveals just how much focus and adrenaline goes into throwing a ball with purpose from 60 feet, six inches away. Turn a competitive baseball game into a throw day and it’s hard or impossible to summon that, with results that are usually just slapstick but can be disastrous. But no, Wheeler looked sharp before and after the Mets rang his doorbell and handed him a giant novelty check: his location was pinpoint and he had all of his pitches working. That would have been bad news for the Marlins even without that eight spot on the scoreboard against them.
To the extent a baseball team can reveal itself as anything in May, the Mets have looked like what they’ve been in too many supposedly promising seasons: out of sync, misfiring and ultimately a complicated version of ordinary. This is the part of their schedule where they have a chance to fatten up and figure things out, though in my experience those stretches generally prove better at showing that ordinary teams are indeed stubbornly and frustratingly ordinary. We’ll see; needless to say, shellacking the Marlins by sending 13 men to the plate in the first was a pretty good start. Hey Mom we’re out of cookie dough, and I’m sorry but Doug accidentally squirted Reddi-wip all over the rug and I don’t know maybe also the TV, so do we have any more of that too?
(By the way, if you have a subscription to the Athletic — which you totally should, as it’s excellent and worth far more than the very reasonable price — I hope you saw the article about what Derek Jeter and his goon, Gary Denbo, have done to the Marlins. It’s the I Ate an Entire Bag of Doritos of Schadenfreude, so I’m going to save it for a night when I really need it, but go find it and revel.)
by Greg Prince on 9 May 2019 8:11 am The Mets are an ordinary ballclub. They’re definitely not very good, they’re probably not very bad, even if five losses on a six-game road trip leaves you believing they couldn’t be much worse. They could be. They could also be better. It’s a long season. Teams that have yet to distinguish themselves one way or another can waft upward, drift downward or just tumbleweed along devoid of any kind of identifiable momentum.
Maybe the chance to play teams that have been demonstrably worse than them will be their near-term salvation. I heard that a couple of times as the Mets attempted to put their 1-5 jaunt behind them. The resolutely crummy Marlins, the noticeably depleted Nationals and the ambition-free Tigers constitute their menu of tantalizing possibility for the next two weeks. Sidestepping good teams in favor of bad teams looms eternally as the preferred route to respectability for ordinary teams.
During the offseason, the new general manager of the Mets, Brodie Van Wagenen, framed the Mets as some kind of supercontender in the making. The former agent’s core competency was pumping up the reputation of whoever’s cause he was representing. Other GMs might have tempered expectations and quietly worked to significantly improve the product. It did appear the 2019 Mets were likely to coalesce more effectively than the 2018 Mets, even as the roster that was being assembled now seems to have been explicitly built to defy sustained success. Nevertheless, Van Wagenen wanted us to know what he was selling us was something extraordinary.
Hard to buy that now, huh? The Mets are 17-20, suddenly 4½ games out of first place, not a factor in the emerging Wild Card race. Again, it’s a long season. You can scoff at taking remotely seriously a glance at the Mets’ position relative to other National League team not quite a quarter through the schedule, but every game not won in May is a game that can’t be unlost later. All we have for evidence of what the Mets are is how the Mets have played.
Scattered exceptional individual outbursts notwithstanding, the Mets have played ordinary baseball. Sometimes they outpitch the competition. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they hit enough. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they make the plays they need to execute. Sometimes they don’t. On the whole, the personnel Van Wagenen added from outside the organization has been neither disastrous nor transformative. Sometimes some of the new Mets do well. Sometimes they don’t. It’s a very generic assessment of a very generic team.
On Wednesday, the Mets couldn’t have started a less distinctive pitcher. His name was Wilmer Font. It is no knock on Wilmer Font to say that other than having fun with Wilmer’s last name and fondly recalling the last Met who shared Font’s first name, there was very little to say about Wilmer Font in advance of his first Met start. He was picked up because the Mets needed anybody, a description that neatly fits Wilmer Font, a former member of several other organizations who joined this one just the other day.
Font pitched OK against San Diego. Going in, the hope was he’d do just that. Seventy-five pitches was considered his highest ceiling. He threw sixty. One resulted in a home run to left field that Jeff McNeil, not quite a left fielder, couldn’t quite rob. Another was a popup to the periphery of no man’s land in much shorter left field, an outpost on the baseball map to which Amed Rosario (lately “RosERRio” in my pal Jeff’s estimation) neglected to get his passport stamped. That pitch fell in and scored a second Padres run, tying the game at two in the third. You would have signed for four innings of two runs allowed from Wilmer Font because that’s what this season has become.
As the getaway game skated along at its brisk 2:44 pace, Robert Gsellman kept the Padres from breaking the tie for a couple of innings. Matt Strahm (a name that more resembles a typo than a Font) did the same versus the Mets. McNeil and Rosario had linked their offensive capabilities to produce one run in the first. Tomás Nido, a sterling defensive catcher, homered in the second and prevented more Padre hijinks with a sharp pickoff throw to first in the fifth. Unlike McNeil, San Diego center fielder Manuel Margot was able to time a leap in the sixth and take away a home run, a ball Pete Alonso made the mistake of hitting only conventionally deep rather than stratospherically so.
The Mets finally nudged Strahm from the mound in the seventh, fashioning their most golden chance to edge ahead. Michael Conforto walked and stole second. One out hence, Brandon Nimmo doubled, but Margot’s ability to delete extra-base hits left enough doubt to keep Conforto from advancing beyond third. In came Gerardo Reyes. Nido, he of the homer plus a single earlier, struck out. Todd Frazier pinch-hit. Frazier lingers on the roster from the previous regime’s offseason mid-market shopping spree. Once in a while Frazier hits a ball over a wall and we can all feel pretty good about Frazier’s presence. The rest of the time he strikes out. This was the rest of the time. Todd went down swinging to Reyes.
In a rare moment of precise prescience a couple of innings before, because I’ve seen a few getaway games from Petco Park, I thought to myself that a) Tyler Bashlor would come in eventually; and b) Tyler Bashlor would give up a possibly decisive home run. Bashlor I predicted because I figured he was due to pitch. The home run didn’t take more than an educated guess. Hunter Renfroe made me a prophet. I could have done without the honor.
The rest was an ordinary conclusion to an ordinary afternoon, better because there was baseball, not so great because there was a Mets loss lurking in the offing. The Mets strung together a hint of a two-out rally in the ninth, with J.D. Davis singling off the glove of Ian Kinsler, who I sometimes forget isn’t Ian Desmond; otherwise forgotten Juan Lagares pinch-running and grabbing second on a wild pitch; and Nimmo walking. Nido was due up. Only Wilson Ramos sat on the bench as an alternative. Nido was having the game of his life, not that there have been a slew to choose from to date. Ramos is an established hitter who isn’t hitting. Like Frazier. Like several Mets. Mickey Callaway, whose second season at the helm is no more inspiring than his first, stuck with Nido, which I was fine with. Nido struck out, which I wasn’t fine with, but that was an ordinary enough outcome for an ordinary enough team losing an ordinary enough 3-2 game. Even the score was ordinary.
by Greg Prince on 8 May 2019 4:38 am Pete Alonso was National League Rookie of the Month for April and National League Rookie of the Night on Tuesday. He is a veteran in kid’s clothing any time you hear him speak. He is a franchise player exploding all around us.
Aside from Alonso, one-man wrecking crew that he seems to be, there were in fact several stars of the Mets’ 7-6 win over the Padres at Petco Park, as necessary a win as a team could claim when a season isn’t yet a quarter done. A four-game losing streak was zeroing in on five. The last pitcher/hitter to capture a contest for the Mets, Noah Syndergaard, put them in position to lose their next. Unlike last week versus Cincy, Noah neither homered like a slugger (his one base hit led to him being picked off) nor dealt like an ace (6 IP, 5 R, 9 H). After throwing his final pitch, the Mets were down, 5-2.
They were, however, not out. A seventh-inning uprising, highlighted by Brandon Nimmo’s return from ohfer purgatory, brought them even. Seth Lugo’s two innings of tenacity kept them there. And Alonso? The object of Chris Paddack’s scorn, contrived or otherwise? Let’s just say Pete took Petco out for a walk, pulling a two-run, ninth-inning job to the Western Metal building that, had the edifice not gotten in the way, was bound to land somewhere in the Far East.
Alonso’s eleventh home run provided Edwin Diaz a 7-5 lead to protect for his prospective ninth save — or two fewer saves than Alonso already has home runs. Diaz, as is the wont of many a decorated Met closer in San Diego, made it shall we say interesting. The Padres quickly halved their deficit, sent forth unsavory characters like Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer, loaded the bases even…but Diaz held tight, getting the ground ball he needed to bounce tamely toward Amed Rosario, who (for a change) made the simple play he needed to make, tossing said grounder to Robinson Cano, recent collector of a 2,500th hit and then some.
The Mets were once again winners and Pete Alonso remained freshly baked sliced bread, the greatest thing to which all other hotshot rookies can compare themselves if they dare.
by Jason Fry on 7 May 2019 12:08 pm Jacob deGrom was good. Or at least pretty good.
But Chris Paddack was 2018 Jacob deGrom good. Which — spoiler! — meant better.
Too many of the postgame autopsies focused on Paddack yapping about Pete Alonso being Rookie of the Month for April; too many of the previews of tonight’s game will rev the silliness higher by focusing on Alonso’s yapping back about trying to win a World Series. Personally, it’s been a long time since I paid much attention to what macho dudes still trying out adulthood say with microphones stuck in their faces — Bill Parcells forever summed up said sound and fury with the crushingly bland dismissal that “he’s a young guy, young guys say stuff.”
Anyway, Paddack’s pitching spoke for itself. He kept the Mets’ hitters looking at the wrong part of the plate by throwing a plus fastball at the numbers and the knees, then mixed that with a brutal changeup to wreck their timing. That’s a formula that’s worked for a hundred years and will work for a hundred more. It’s a pleasure to see executed to near-perfection, even when it’s to your team’s detriment.
(If you are going to work yourself into a snit about Yapgate, don’t neglect to note that it worked. A good early sign for Alonso was his steadfast refusal to get anxious in big ABs and expand the strike zone and/or start swinging for fences two counties away. Last night, he was swinging so hard against Paddack that I feared he might dislocate his shoulders.)
But back to the between-the-lines stuff. Even when you’re the team on the short end of a solid performance, it’s always refreshing and reassuring to see bright new stars in the baseball firmament. There’s Paddack, maybe — because a good first month does not a career make. There’s his partner in yap, Alonso, maybe — same warning applies. I was sad to learn the Mets would miss Fernando Tatis Jr., but buoyed by the fact that my visit to Texas and Globe Life Park meant I was in the park for the first career RBI posted by another baseball generational, Vlad Guerrero Jr. New stars are baseball’s lifeblood; with luck two or three of those guys will still be shining in the 2030s, their presence in the sport’s night sky seemingly fixed and eternal. And, again with luck, a new generation of stars will be coming into view. They’re toddlers now, honing level swings in backyard T-ball, but just you wait.
As for deGrom, he left a couple of sliders in too generous spots, and that was enough to lose; following his departure, Justin Wilson was summoned off the injured list without having been sent out for a minor-league tuneup, which is the Daily Mets Hmm we all were unfortunately waiting for. Wilson got spanked and his bad inning moved a 2-0 game into the past tense column.
The game was over in a tidy two hours and 14 minutes, short enough and strange enough that afterwards I wasn’t quite sure to do with myself — my baseball clock told me it should be the seventh inning, but Petco Park was emptying out. I decided to see it as another silver lining. Even the best baseball season contains lots and lots of losses; a West Coast loss that takes 45 fewer minutes than expected isn’t the worst thing that could happen.
by Jason Fry on 6 May 2019 12:27 am The day after an 18-inning Gotterdammerung in Milwaukee, the Mets sent Jason Vargas to the mound and he was middle-of-the-road Vargas. He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t good either (thanks mostly to a Christian Yelich homer that threatened to enter geosynchronous orbit) and then he was gone, with some mild hamstring bother. The Mets then leaned on two pitchers who were spared Saturday evening’s disaster, the newly summoned Tim Peterson and Tyler Bashlor, sandwiched around a cameo by Daniel Zamora.
There was no sign of Chris Flexen, already banished after getting walked off by Ryan Braun. On the one hand, this feels unjust — the real target of your wrath ought to be the man who put Chris Flexen on the active roster in the first place — but on the other, not so much. (Also: Fuck Angel Hernandez for being so reliably himself.)
Anyway, after the game the Mets concocted a nebulous injury for Vargas, who’s now on the 60-day IL, and signed Dallas Keuchel. Oh ha ha ha, I just wanted to feel what it would be like to type that. No, they will undoubtedly do something cheap and pointless and keep bumping along in an N.L. East field as crowded and sloppy as the Kentucky Derby.
But I don’t want to talk about Jason Vargas anymore, or Chris Flexen, or the Milwaukee Brewers. I missed all of Saturday night’s game except the heartbreaking part because I was in Arlington, Texas, visiting what’s now known as Globe Life Park — the home of the Rangers and my 28th stadium visited of the current 30.
 Yes, we’re deep in the sprawl of Texas. Frankly, I feel like anything I say about Globe Life Park should come with an asterisk — the Rangers’ new home is already rising across the street, and the staff has already turned the mental page, at times treating the team’s current abode as an inconvenience. Which is ridiculous for a park that’s only 25 years old and should only be considered middle-aged, but on the other hand, have you spent a summer in Dallas? The new place will have a retractable roof and be habitable for fans who don’t qualify for a Purple Heart.
My visit started with an unintentionally hilarious attempt to get there from downtown Dallas via public transport. Nope — this is Texas, where public transport is used only by the poor and Communists. It was Lyfts for me, a there-and-back-again experience that wound up costing more than my StubHub ticket.
The ballpark itself rises out of the middle of nowhere, or at least the middle of the suburban roadway where I abandoned my Lyft driver after going nowhere for several minutes. It then reveals itself as part of a tangle of stadia and accompanying mallish purveyors of terrible beer and generically suburban thrills, a knockout blend of the enticing culture offered in the likes of St. Louis and Kansas City. I looked around and headed inside at once.
 Inside, well, it’s pretty generic. The strutwork is adjoined with lone stars — there are so many lone stars that the Lotsa Stars State feels a more appropriate sobriquet — but I will say the architects made a pretty decent attempt to turn the latticework a throughline of the stadium — it’s present inside as you walk through the concourse, in the frieze running around the stadium rim and in the center-field “plantation balcony” stacks of suites that are Globe Life’s most recognizable feature.
The park itself has an interesting dynamic going on as you move from one level to the next. Field level was jammed — it was Bark in the Park night and they were giving away a bobblehead, with lots of customer-service folks and long but brisk lines at concessions. The club level was sparsely inhabited — it’s a confusing mix of bracelet-only areas and public space — and the top deck was basically abandoned, with few concessions open and most areas occupied by smokers or overly tired and/or overly sugared children. (Here’s Greg’s review of the place from a 1997 visit.)
My biggest objection to Globe Life is that the Rangers aren’t much of a presence there. Granted, they’re about as anonymous as a franchise can be after 47 years in the same place, with few highlights and ever-shifting uniforms, but still. The one iconic meeting place is a statue of Nolan Ryan doffing his cap, but the Ryan Express is basically stuck in the slow lane of a food court. I went looking for the Rangers Hall of Fame, only to find after consulting three different customer-service people that I wouldn’t be able to visit because it had been moved to the new park. (To review: It’s May!)
 This may sound like I’ve got it in for Globe Life, but I don’t mean to be overly harsh. It’s a pretty generic park for a pretty generic team, but I had a perfectly good time there. First of all, the food was legitimately good — I started with al pastor and brisket tacos that were excellent, ended by eating a Frito pie the size of my head (equal parts excellent and a terrible idea), and had easy access to legitimately good beer whenever I wanted it.
The other pleasant surprise was Rangers fans. They’re dressed half in blue and half in red, befitting their franchise’s steadfast refusal to figure out its own identity, but they know their baseball and they love their team, unimposing history and all. And they were kind to a stranger: I made everybody get up so I could return to my proper seat with my gigantic Frito pie, then realized to my horror that I didn’t have a fork.
 Was I going to have to get back up and re-disturb everyone while I shamefacedly fetched a utensil that arguably should have come with my food in the first place? Yes I was — except I was already conscious of sidelong looks from my seatmates, and a moment later the teenaged girl on my left said, “We have an extra fork we didn’t use — would you like it?” Good luck having that happen at Citi Field. I accepted gratefully and started in on transforming approximately 35,000 calories into suet around my middle.
Anyway, that’s 28 ballparks in the books — with full awareness that this one will come off my ledger next April, necessitating a revisit. Maybe I’ll wait until summer, so I can appreciate that retractable roof — and finally get to see whatever passes for the Rangers Hall of Fame.
by Greg Prince on 5 May 2019 5:49 am With the possible exception of Angel Hernandez, moral failings are undetectable after the fourteenth inning. They don’t call it “free baseball” only because conductors don’t come around to collect a step-up fare (though I can’t imagine Rob Manfred hasn’t contemplated implementing such a revenue-generating opportunity and labeling it a loyalty reward).
You’re free if you’re in marathon territory. You’re free of implications. You’re free of judgment. You’re free to be. Baseball games are plotted to be decided in nine, with allowances made that a tenth is entirely possible, and if ten innings can’t settle the matter, an eleventh looms. As you drift into a dozenth inning, you’re less attached to the formalities that dictated human behavior back in the hazily recalled era known to historians as regulation. Thirteen…fourteen…that’s crazy enough, but you can still see those first nine in your rearview mirror if you squint hard.
Get to a fifteenth inning, you’re in another state. You’re on your honor to try your best with the understanding that circumstances aren’t close to best. You can’t be overly faulted for your shortcomings as a baseball person or person in general
Unless you’re Angel Hernandez, for you are no good any hour of the day or night.
If you wish to blame Satan’s home plate umpire of record for the Mets losing to the Brewers in eighteen innings Saturday night in Wisconsin/Sunday morning for us folks back east, feel free, for you, too, are unbound by decorum. “The ump is crooked and inept and against us” isn’t necessarily an airtight argument for the prosecution; it speaks more to persecution. But we’ve known Hernandez for decades. We know he will find a way to screw with us and ours. He doesn’t need an extra inning. Any old frame will do.
Chris Flexen got squeezed some. He kind of asked for it (as if that old devil Angel requires a signed permission slip). He nibbled in the eighteenth inning when a more direct approach to the plate — like you and your fork would employ at the first diner you pull into after a long Saturday night out — might have served his purposes better. Then again, he’s Chris Flexen. A lot more innings than originally scheduled have to fly by before you grudgingly call his number.
With or without official assistance, Flexen loaded the bases on walks in the bottom of the eighteenth after the Mets had furnished him with a lead in the top of the eighteenth. Ryan Braun, who’d already notched five hits, was the man up with three teammates on. It’s not a scenario that advertises ostentatiously for a nineteenth.
No nineteenth inning materialized. Braun delivered a sixth hit and two RBIs to create a 4-3 victory for Milwaukee in Milwaukee. The box score says it’s Flexen’s fault, as he’s the only Met saddled with an additional “L” for his name. Our eyes suggest it’s Hernandez’s misdeed, which is a default reflex as deeply ingrained in us as shouting “Let’s Go Mets” or cursing…well, Angel Hernandez. But let’s not, à la Angel, lose sight of things here.
It was the eighteenth inning. Eighteenth innings are foreign territory to all of us. This goes for Mets, Brewers, umpires, fans, broadcasters, anybody who comes in contact with overly extended play. Sure, we can whip out our stories of having visited there on a handful of occasions in our younger years (“did I ever tell you about that time Shaun Marcum and I backpacked through the Marlins lineup?”) and are able to phonetically dust off a few phrases we’ve retained in ancient Sudolese, but none of us is truly comfortable there. We’re all just trying to persevere in this strange place until our ride to tomorrow — or later today — arrives.
So let’s not hold too much of what the Mets didn’t do well toward the end of their deluxe Miller Park package tour against them. Let’s celebrate Zack Wheeler’s seven strong innings (or six strong innings surrounding his lone limp one). Let’s celebrate Wilson Ramos rampaging from first to home on Amed Rosario’s second-inning triple; scoring from first on a triple doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment until you consider he who had to thuddingly negotiate those 270 feet. Let’s celebrate the recently dormant power source known as Pete Alonso, who decided going down meekly was no way to continue a weekend in Milwaukee. Alonso’s leadoff homer in the ninth was a bolt of beauty. It was almost worth the staying up long thereafter that it mandated.
Of course break out the Champagne of Beers on behalf of every Met reliever who wasn’t Chris Flexen. Let’s have a roll call to recognize Daniel Zamora, Seth Lugo, Edwin Diaz, Drew Gagnon, Ryan O’Rourke and Robert Gsellman, who kept the Brew Crew off the board from the eighth through the sixteenth. An especially hearty handshake is due Seth and Rob for their three scoreless innings apiece. If you’re feeling charitable, tip a cap to Flexen and his characteristic 11.12 ERA for the scoreless seventeenth that preceded the execrable eighteenth.
And hey, how about that Jeff McNeil, not really a left fielder, making a dazzling catch in left in support of Edwin Diaz (in a tie-game, non-save situation) when Braun bid for what would have been yet another hit, probably a leadoff double, in the twelfth? The hit that never was could have prevented future Braun belts because there’s a decent chance it would have set up a winning run six innings sooner than actually occurred. Now maybe you’d have preferred an earlier final out, but in the twelfth, things are still a little normal. You’re still looking to prevail over the Brewers, not just defeat sleep.
McNeil is lodged in left for his bat, and he brought it to bear, collecting three hits, including the single in the eighteenth inning that put the Mets ahead, 3-2, when Jeff drove home Adeiny Hechavarria. Adeiny Hechavarria? The journeyman glove guy whose only Met distinction to date was inadvertently elbowing Dominic Smith off the roster? Turns out he was called up to be our extra-inning secret weapon, sneaking a single through the infield, stealing second and racing home when McNeil connected. As introductions go, that’s a display of good manners worthy of any inning.
If you’re still wiping the loss out of your understandably grumpy eyes, don’t blame the Mets for losing in the eighteenth. Blame them for not hitting during most of the first nine and the several that followed. Blame the starting shortstop who’s showing no sign of being a glove guy; Rosario’s sloppy defense might not have directly led to any Brewer runs, but Amed is not embodying strength up the middle. Blame the enduring Miller Park hex that keeps the Mets from ever (since 2009, anyway) winning the penultimate game of a series in which the Brewers host them. Blame the array of management types, uniformed and otherwise, for whatever you deem as their complicity in assembling and steering an alleged powerhouse team to its current discouraging pit stop of 16-17. Under .500 is no place for a purported contender to rest for the night. Then again, an eighteenth inning is no place to draw conclusions regarding that same team’s intestinal fortitude.
Unless they won. Then we’d say it was destiny.
by Greg Prince on 4 May 2019 10:12 am To start a game, you want to see your leadoff batter, Jeff McNeil, get on base. McNeil, we can all agree, is the greatest hitter extant. He was batting .352 as Friday night began, which is all the proof our Mets fan hearts require to declare supremacy on behalf of one of our own. Sure enough, Jeff gets on base via infield hit, and you know things are going your way.
To keep the game going, you want to see NL Rookie of the Month for April Pete Alonso (it’s a real award), come up next and give May a powerful boost. Except Alonso was better earlier in April than he was later, and he strikes out with McNeil running, and McNeil is thrown out, and there are two outs, and what happened to our way?
To regain the game’s bearings, you want to see a veteran like Robinson Cano battle the starting pitcher, working the count to three-and-two, then fouling off four-seam fastball after four-seam fastball until the pitcher, Brandon Woodruff, comes too far inside with his twelfth pitch to the third hitter of the evening and walks him. A dozen pitches seen and a base on balls…that’s some steamy baseball porn right there. Cano, sitting on 2,499 hits, may not spin his odometer to 2,500, but he doesn’t have to sit down. You can sense a productive first inning in the offing despite that unpleasant little strike ’em out/throw ’em out double play.
To maintain the momentum of the game, you want Michael Conforto, not hot, to reach, which is what he does on an infield hit, sending Cano to second. Your dreams of the moment are on the verge of coming true.
To prove that this game is gonna be yours, you want Wilson Ramos — a.k.a. the Torpid Torpedo — not to hit the ball on the ground. Don’t strike out, don’t pop out, don’t fly out, don’t make out at all, but at least leave a little mystery to the process. A ball on the ground off the bat of Wilson Ramos looms as another double play, never mind that there are already two out. They’ll just forward the second out of his GIDP into the next inning. Except the Buffalo’s stance pays off this time around as he laces the second fastball he sees from Woodruff into right field, chasing Robinson home and Michael to third. Wilson will settle in at first. A Buffalo can only roam so far.
This Friday night game at Miller Park is going well, don’t you think? The first hint of an onslaught might have been elbowed aside, but the Mets didn’t relent. Their three, four and five hitters each made something good happen and created a run for their efforts. Meanwhile, Woodruff has thrown 31 pitches, and as much as Craig Counsell enjoys lifting Brewer pitchers in favor of other Brewer pitchers, this was probably not in his game plan. The Mets are up, 1-0, they have two men on, and…
And the game never got any better from a Met perspective. Brandon Nimmo, who ignited the Mets in their first game at Milwaukee last May with four hits and a walk, grounded out. The 1-0 lead became a 1-1 tie three pitches into the bottom of the first when Lorenzo Cain took Steven Matz’s sinker over the left-center field wall. Matz squirmed in and out of trouble into the sixth inning, pausing to remain ensconced in a mess in the fifth when Ryan Braun launched a two-run rocket, making the score 3-1 for the home team. Woodruff’s 34-pitch first seemed to fortify him for what qualifies for the long haul in Craig Counsell’s scheme of things. The starter lasted five, giving up nothing else of substance.
Then came Alex Claudio for an inning, Junior Guerra for an inning and Josh Hader for an end to whatever chance the Mets had. Hader, the Brewers’ best bullpen option, went two because sometimes you use your closer to get the closing going as soon as possible. The Mets’ offense, it turned out, closed out of town, the curtain coming down on it in the first inning. The second through ninth yielded four base hits and two walks. There were no runs. There was no change to Brewers 3 Mets 1.
The 16-16 Mets aren’t hitting, aren’t scoring and aren’t winning any more often than they are losing. They’re pitching well, which is incredibly reassuring, for the Mets are simply not the Mets when they are not pitching, but now we’re in wasting one good outing after another territory — unless the starting pitcher homers to not just help his own cause but successfully account for all of it (which is fun as hell, but doesn’t exactly signal the drenching of a drought).
Among those not hitting for the Mets on the Friday night was Dominic Smith, but that’s because he was optioned to Syracuse despite being one of the more likely players to come off the bench and make something positive happen with a bat. Smith was victimized by the fine print in Adeiny Hechavarria’s contract. Hechavarria, the experienced backup infielder we’d been lacking to date, had to come up or be let go. Judgment will be reserved regarding the importance of keeping Adeiny in the fold. Dismissing Dominic seems shortsighted. Hopefully his exile will last no longer than Nimmo’s inexplicable three-day demotion last April. That was another of those instances in which the Mets, faced with a roster squeeze, opted to cast off the most vulnerable young player whose presence they instinctively undervalue.
Hopefully, Smith is back soon. Also hopefully, the Mets’ offensive woes last less long than Nimmo’s this season (.211/.342/.347), which more than a month in, no longer qualifies as a small sample size. We miss Brandon’s smile. We miss our smile. We miss what the top of the first inning felt like.
by Greg Prince on 2 May 2019 5:47 pm Zachary Wheeler gets his pitch count risin’
He doesn’t care for an early hook
Jason Vargas sees the order twice ‘n’
Mickey figures out he is cooked
Jake deGrom is a Cy Young winner
Ain’t ya glad he showed up? (Oh yeah!)
And when the ballclub is fallin’ apart
Sometimes Matz gets it all sewed up
And then there’s Thor
He strikes out ten
And then there’s Thor
Gives up no runs
And then there’s Thor
Goes all the way
And then there’s…
Mascot-trashin’
Dinger-bashin’
Beats the Reds in solo fashion
Right on Thor!
***
Translation for all you kids out there who aren’t fluent in Maude: Noah Syndergaard threw a 1-0 shutout and homered to defeat Cincinnati at Citi Field on Thursday afternoon. The Bea Arthur reference in a 2019 baseball game recap is no rarer than the concept of a Met pitcher doing what Noah did.
That, when broken down by its component parts, was as rare as a Mets pitching/hitting performance gets.
• Nine innings from a starter surely seems exotic to the point of extinct, but it actually still happens once in a great while. The Mets chalked up three complete games last season.
• Allowing zero runs across those nine innings is highly unusual, yet not without precedent in this modern world. Syndergaard himself achieved such a feat on the final day of 2018.
• A Mets pitcher homering will never not be cause for jubilation, but with four instances of DH-defying hurler power in the books already in 2019, we can no longer refer to it as a wholly infrequent phenomenon.
• Winning 1-0 while driving in the run that makes you the victor is an extremely uncommon occurrence, but Met examples exist. Most famously, Jerry Koosman and Don Cardwell turned the trick in the same doubleheader at Pittsburgh in 1969. More obscurely, we’ve also had Buzz Capra versus the Giants at Shea in 1972 (the day before Willie Mays’s debut); Ray Sadecki at Atlanta in 1974; and Nino Espinosa at Philadelphia in 1977. Forty-one years passed without an addendum until Wheeler beat the Pirates, 1-0, last July at PNC Park, doubling in the “1” himself.
But Zack, who was the only pitcher in this scenario to register his RBI with an extra-base hit, went only six. Cardwell and Capra each turned the ball over to Tug McGraw after eight to save their respective superlative efforts. Koosman, Sadecki and Espinosa went nine, but no, they didn’t homer.
Noah homered (in the third inning, high and deep to the opposite field, off Tyler Mahle).
Noah completed what he started (scattering four hits, walking only one).
And, for that matter, Noah became the only member of the seven-Met 1-0/1-RBI club to notch double-digit strikeouts, including a ninth-inning K that Wavin’ Jesse Winker was hilariously ejected in the middle of (bye Jesse!).
Koosman-Cardwell Arms has been headquarters to a very exclusive society for a half-century. After fifty years, it’s been compelled to add a private penthouse suite. You homer for your only run in a 1-0 complete game win as Noah Syndergaard did, you have earned the most singular view of them all.
by Jason Fry on 2 May 2019 3:11 am Can you have good developments on a day that saw the Mets lose a 1-0 game on another homer off their vaunted closer?
Well, maybe.
The first good development is that the Mets put Jeurys Familia on the Injured List with some kind of complicated malady that, depending on your level of cynicism, is best described as a bone spur or that old standby, inability to pitch. If you feel like you need to squint pretty hard to see that as good, I get what you mean, believe me. But Familia hadn’t been effective, he seemed lost about how to regain his effectiveness, and Mickey Callaway seemed hell-bent on continuing to jam that particular square peg into a round hole, because he’s Mickey Callaway and there’s no brick wall he thinks he can’t bash down with his own forehead, the lack of felled brick walls notwithstanding. Hopefully Familia will get the time he needs to silence his barking shoulder and/or the nagging voices of self-doubt, and return looking more like the valuable pitcher we hoped we were getting back. (As for Mickey and his noggin, well, we’ll save that for another post.)
The second good development was that Jacob deGrom looked a lot more like, well, Jacob deGrom. He was throwing strikes and the Reds were swinging and missing his fastball instead of lining that pitch up gaps. But deGrom’s good stuff came without the benefit of an accompanying offense, and in the fourth inning the Reds loaded the bases on an error, walk and a hit by pitch. With two outs, up came Tucker Barnhart, who worked a 3-2 count. Out to the mound went Tomas Nido to discuss what to do.
Their decision — and I’ve yet to hear whether it was Nido’s preference or deGrom’s — was to go with the change-up. Which is a pitch that’s gone from critical piece of deGrom’s arsenal to misfiring ordnance of late. With deGrom’s mechanics out of whack, his change-up has been sailing wide of its target, winding up ignorably outside or perilously over the middle of the plate. An errant change and the game could easily be 4-0 Reds.
DeGrom fired, the pitch arrowed towards the plate as if it were a fastball above the knee, and then it darted outside to dot the outside corner — a perfect location even if Barnhart hadn’t swung through it. Barnhart let his swing carry him through a discontented little pirouette at the plate as Nido trotted towards the dugout and deGrom trudged off the mound. SNY’s cameras caught him looking tired and vaguely irritated, as if he was thinking, “Why wasn’t that pitch behaving like that when I needed it?”
Which I’d bet is pretty much exactly what he was thinking.
During deGrom’s run of un-deGromlike starts, the Mets have insisted that the problem wasn’t a physical malady, and haven’t officially cast a cold organizational eye on the composition of this year’s baseballs. They’ve maintained that the problem was one of mechanics, compounded by illness and disrupted between-starts routines.
It would be nice if Wednesday night was evidence they were right, whatever the scoreboard read at the end of the evening.
by Greg Prince on 1 May 2019 4:55 am “Oh, what’s this? I wasn’t expecting anything!”
“C’mon, open it.”
“I almost don’t want to. It’s so beautifully wrapped. Who put the bow on it?”
“That was Pete.”
“As if Pete hasn’t already done enough. I’m going to undo it very carefully…oh my!”
“Do you like it?”
“Like it? I love it!”
“It’s an extra-inning win.”
“I can see that!”
“We all put it together for you. See? There’s ten innings in there.”
“Such interesting craftsmanship. The foundation is so sturdy.”
“That was Jason’s doing. He crafted the first five-and-a-third.”
“Jason? The same Jason who could barely get through a third of an inning just a few weeks ago?”
“The very same. He’s been taking classes.”
“It shows!”
“I hope you don’t mind the little crinkle there just past the fifth.”
“No, it’s wonderful. It shows it was made with his very own left hand.”
“It was Mickey’s idea to let Jason keep working on it. It was also his idea to eventually make him stop.”
“Well, it’s beautiful. You don’t even notice there’s something a little wrong with the sixth. Is this a hair?”
“Oh, that’s Robert’s. Robert helped Jason do the sixth and then he did the seventh all by himself.”
“The hair just makes it more authentic. Ooh, what’s this little thing over here?”
“That’s a bunt. Jeff put that on in the third.”
“Jeff is so smart! Like a regular little squeezing squirrel.”
“That’s not all Jeff did. Take a look. He put four hits in altogether. Scattered them throughout.”
“The way he’d hide nuts for the winter — what a clever young man!”
“And did you see this catch over on the right? Michael made that. And this RBI single. He came up with that, too.”
“Michael was certainly busy, I see. Did he put this ball all the way over here?”
“No, that was Todd. Todd wanted to do something special, and that’s basically what he knows how to do.”
“Todd does it very well. He should be proud. Tell me, though, whose idea was it to make this an extra-inning win? That wouldn’t have occurred to me!”
“Funny story about that. We weren’t gonna do that originally. I mean not that you’re not worth the extra effort…”
“Please. Mind you, a regular win would have been just fine.”
“But Mickey had this idea about making it extra.”
“Mickey again? First he has Jason do more than five innings and now you’re telling me this was his brainchild? So creative, that one!”
“He got Jeurys to help him.”
“Jeurys? Did he do the eighth inning? Did he do it all right? I know sometimes Jeurys has trouble.”
“No, Jeurys was fine with the eighth. Well, mostly fine. Good enough.”
“That’s a relief. I know Jeurys tries so hard. It would have been fine with me had he just signed the card.”
“Mickey thought it would be good to let him do the ninth, too.”
“The ninth. Really?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Um, I hope this doesn’t sound unappreciative, but doesn’t Edwin usually do the ninth? I wouldn’t want to bother him too much, but he does so well with those.”
“Mickey didn’t want to disturb him again so soon after he did his last one, not to mention the ones just before that.”
“I understand. It’s just that Edwin is so good with those.”
“So Mickey asked Jeurys to do the ninth.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, I really don’t want this to come out wrong, because the thought is really what counts, but is that the reason…”
“The reason the ninth looks like it does? It’s OK, you can say it.”
“Well, I know this was obviously put together with so much love and care — and Jeurys really does try his best — but the dents, and the splotches of Red…”
“It was Mickey’s idea.”
“I see.”
“Now to be fair, Jeurys tried his best.”
“Oh, of course, of course! I’m absolutely sure he did.”
“But he’s not as handy as Mickey seems to think, so…”
“Is that why there’s an extra inning?”
“Pretty much.”
“But it’s a very nice extra inning. Who made it?”
“Drew put the top half of it together.”
“Drew? It’s such exquisite work! I didn’t know he knew how to do something like that!”
“None of us did. And the bottom half, that was J.D. and Jeff — and you already saw the bow Pete put on it.”
“It’s extraordinary. It really is. I’m going to line it up right over here with the other wins you boys have given me. See? It looks gorgeous next to them. I’m going to tilt it just a little but so you can’t make out the ninth unless you go looking for it. I mean I know Jeurys worked hard on it and all.”
“And Mickey.”
“Oh, Mickey. Of course, Mickey. So creative. Two innings for Jeurys, the eighth and the ninth. I guess it all turned out for the best, but…”
“But what?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. There, in this light, this win is absolutely flawless.”
|
|
