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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 28 March 2019 5:37 am 1. Welcome aboard the first active roster of 2019 to the eight Mets who have never been Mets before: Robinson Cano, Edwin Diaz, Wilson Ramos, Keon Broxton, J.D. Davis, Justin Wilson, Luis Avilan and Pete Alonso. We like each of you now because you’re Mets. Someday we’ll recall you with varying degrees of fondness because you were Mets. In between, starting with your first game as a Met, our affinity for you will probably be mostly performance-based. It’s nothing personal. We’re fans, and as we watch your every move, we tend to take our cues from Ike & Tina Turner in “Proud Mary”. We’re nice. And rough. Really we’re nice, even if our sentiments instinctively veer in the other direction when instigated.
2. A special welcome to Alonso, that rare breed of pristine rookie who makes an Opening Day roster. Get that service time going, son. Make it count.
3. Welcome back to Jeurys Familia, due to enjoy one of the shortest absences in Recidivist Met history. Your detour to Oakland last July was barely a semester abroad. We’re touched you missed us enough to want to come home.
4. Welcome back to Juan Lagares, disabled list denizen most of 2018. The DL is now the IL, as in Injured List, but let’s hope you don’t get to compare and contrast. You also have the honor of achieving longest-continuing Met status, having been a big league Met since April of 2013. Familia would have it (he came up in September of 2012), but he took that trip to California. Stay healthy.
5. A slightly surprised welcome back to Tim Peterson, Luis Guillorme and Tomas Nido. You’re not new but you nobody was necessarily counting on seeing you among us on Opening Day. Make hay, fellas. Don’t let ’em send ya to Syracuse if you can help it.
6. A hearty welcome back to Dom Smith, who fell off the face of the depth chart only to bounce back onto the map, the radar and, ultimately, the roster. Baseball-Reference doesn’t list your middle name as Perseverance, but maybe it should.
7. Welcome back from Syracuse, Noah Syndergaard. Those couple of hours weren’t so bad, were they? Yeah, it was silly to drag you and your teammates across the state of Florida, then way out of the way of Washington just to show your faces to aficionados of our new affiliate, but you being you made the most of it, running around the Carrier Dome with the big S flag and all. Keep being you, especially when pitching.
8. Welcome back to the rest of the starting rotation: Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler, Steven Matz and Jason Vargas. You first three along with Noah used to be our unit of young and up-and-coming pitchers. Now you’re all basically veterans. None of you is old in the human sense (not even Vargas, who turned 36 in February), but you’re all eligible to pitch crafty when called for.
9. An unlikely inaugural welcome to the mound on Opening Day to deGrom, who has surely signed the largest contract extension ever for a player at any position who has never started on Opening Day. Something was always getting in the way of your taking the ball first. Nothing’s gonna stop you now.
10. Welcome to your first Opening Day outfield start, Michael Conforto. Crazy, huh? But after DH’ing in Kansas City in 2016, you were squeezed out in 2017 and not done rehabbing in 2018. May March be the first of many of your kind of months.
11. Welcome, though not back, to Brandon Nimmo and Amed Rosario, the only two Mets to start on Opening Day in 2018 who are starting on Opening Day in 2019. Your survival skills are admirable.
12. An extra lack of welcome back to Rosario, who is so skilled at not going anywhere that he enters 2019 as the Met who has been on the active roster longest without interruption. You came up at the beginning of August 2017 and haven’t had to step away for any reason whatsoever. We trust it’s all part of your establishing yourself as not only a constant but a force. We remember you were practically baseball’s top prospect when you joined us. We will be ready, not surprised, as you ascend further.
13. Welcome back to the other two Mets who stayed healthy and occupied all of 2018 and return to us in 2019, Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman. Seems you gents have been a matched set ever since we found you on our pitching staff’s doorstep in the summer of 2016, which is suddenly a few years ago. You helped us win a Wild Card. Help us win some more, will ya?
14. Welcome to third base, Jeff McNeil. It’s not your first time at the hot corner (we love calling it that), but four appearances and one start there in 2018 was barely an audition. You didn’t play the outfield for the Mets, yet they were prepared to stick you there. This makes better sense if they we’re gonna move you off second, which they had to in deference to Cano. If you need advice regarding the position, call upstairs to special advisor David Wright. He knows a few things.
15. Welcome to your single-digit number, 6, while we’re at it, Jeff. When you got here and they gave you 68, there was requisite groaning since 68 used to be considered anonymous Spring Training fodder. Yet I came to enjoy seeing it on you, partly because you’d have made any number look sleek the way you were hitting, partly because it allowed me to think of my high school obsession with The Uncle Floyd Show, which aired through the UHF snow on Channel 68. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure, but it gave me a little kick. Anyway, 6 is crying out for distinction. May you be Mora, Wally and Weis in it.
16. Grudging welcome to the recirculation of uniform No. 24, via the jersey Cano will wear. Grrr… All right, got that out of my system. Mostly. Refreshed in early Spring, you said you felt 25. So why didn’t ya take that number? I know, you have a sincere and respectful reason that has nothing to do with treading on Willie Mays’s New York National League legacy, and I appreciate your appreciation of 24 as a stand-in for Jackie Robinson’s 42. But it’s not that. It’s 24. Would have been nice if you or somebody who handed it to you in Flushing had acknowledged its specific significance within the Met narrative the way Rickey Henderson did when he borrowed it for a couple of years. Oh well. It’s yours here now. Make it sing.
17. Get well and welcomed back soon to Todd Frazier, Jed Lowrie, Travis d’Arnaud and Yoenis Cespedes, each of you due to return to Metsdom sometime after Opening Day. In Cespedes’s case, a long time. In the others, you’ll let us know when you can.
18. Get well and see you next year to Tommy John patient Drew Smith, one of the more promising in the parade of young, righty relievers who soaked up innings in 2018.
19. Good luck wherever you wind up, T.J. Rivera, whose initials are overly indicative of his fate. You were released this month after not recovering swiftly enough from Tommy John surgery in 2017. You’re an infielder. Smith is a pitcher. D’Arnaud is a catcher. You’ve all had the Tommy John bug. None of you is with the Mets at Nationals Park at this moment, but Travis and Drew are at least still in the organization. You were a big part of the Wild Card surge of 2016 and figured to be a key bat for us for a while. I hope you’re swinging it soon for somebody.
20. Good luck, Devin Mesoraco, Cy Young catcher of 2018, but unfortunately award-winning batteries don’t stay inextricably linked season to season. DeGrom thrived throwing to you, so much that you guys could have become known as deGroco (The 7 Line could’ve made t-shirts). Alas, depth charts are prone to shuffling and instead of handling Jake this afternoon, you’re en route to the restricted list. Sorry the front office apparently screwed you out of landing somewhere else.
21. Conditional welcome backs — or welcomes back — to a whole batch of prospective Recidivist Mets who, unlike Familia, aren’t on the Opening Day roster, but did quietly slip back into the organizational fold. Dilson Herrera, onetime second baseman of the future, is a 315 area code phone call away in Syracuse. So is René Rivera, Syndergaard’s version of Mesoraco. Ruben Tejada is sharpening his skill sets anew in Extended Spring Training (and presumably sticking pins deep into his Chase Utley doll). Carlos Gomez finally got his work visa approved and maybe we’ll see him for real at some point (he’s been a mirage in the past). Travis Taijeron was signed to a minor league contract as well. You might remember him from such 2017 reactions as “Who the hell is Travis Taijeron?” and “Hey, Travis Taijeron can hit a little.” Should any of you be Mets again, I stand ready to remind the world of your Met priors.
22. A post-Spring “hey” to Rajai Davis, Ryan O’Rourke, Hector Santiago, Danny Espinosa, Gregor Blanco and Adeiny Hechavarria, all major leaguers previously elsewhere and maybe again with us in 2019 after wearing our colors in St. Lucie. We hope nobody gets hurt to facilitate your promotion to the Mets. We wish you succeed so mightily in the minors that you’re desperately wanted.
23. Letting you know, Gavin Cecchini, that we remember you, too. Being a first-round draft choice of the Mets in this decade hasn’t been the E-ZPass to prominence a person so chosen might have assumed.
24. All you minor leaguers, from the prospects we’ll eventually salivate to see, to the unknowns who will stealthily introduce themselves to us, to the erstwhile coffee-cuppers who strive for another pour, to that former quarterback who decided baseball beats every other sporting endeavor under the sun…hang with ’em, guys.
25. Welcome back, baseball team of ours. We look forward to spending the next seven months with you. That’s right, I said seven.
by Greg Prince on 27 March 2019 4:50 am If you can’t commit to Jacob deGrom for the next five years of your baseball life, you might as well find something else to do. There’s no point owning the Mets, running the Mets or rooting for the Mets if you foresee a mid-term commitment to the most effective pitcher you’ve cultivated in ages presenting an obstacle to your well-being.
Hence, hurrah for the Wilpons and Brodie Van Wagenen and us. Hurrah most of all for Jake, who’s earned his bountiful contract extension from drawing so many hurrahs out of us for the past half-decade. We’ve reveled in cheering him on since 2014 and we project continuing to do so through 2023 if not longer.
To borrow a phrase from Noah Syndergaard, this is what championship teams do.
Five years? A ton can go awry in five weeks with this team. But five years for a) one of the best starting pitchers the franchise has ever produced; and b) one of the best starting pitchers the sport currently features lands squarely inside the contemporary circle of sanity. The money the Mets will pay deGrom — $137.5 million — is insane for regular people, perfectly rational in the context of the here, now and a little later of the particular business at hand.
A little while ago, like maybe before Spring Training, securing your elite ace’s high-end services before a parting of the ways lurked at the door might have seemed too off the wall to consider the Mets seriously pursuing. The Mets might have thought a commitment an extravagance. Jake was receiving his arbitration-avoiding 2019 salary of $17 million. Another year of “team control” (what a creepy phrase) loomed. The owners, the GM, the guy who paws through my bag in front of the Rotunda could have all concurred to kick deCan down deRoad. Why decide to pay a player, even your premier player, when you don’t absolutely have to make that decision? DeGrom could set his deadlines all he wanted. The Mets could calmly cop to mulling their options regardless and the season would come along, deal or no deal, gripes from the likes of us notwithstanding. Team Control would still be a year ahead in the no-loss column.
The better question, however, became “why not?” especially after highly valued megastars on other teams were shown how highly they were valued. Perhaps it’s a sign of free agency being depleted of its cachet by some amazing collusive coincidence, but suddenly the extension dominoes began to tumble. Arenado. Trout. Goldschmidt. Bregman. Oh, and pitchers — Nola, Snell, Sale, Verlander. DeGrom’s surely in their league. Or they’re in deGrom’s league. However you align them, important players were being handsomely compensated for consenting to stick around familiar environs where fans already know them, love them and wear them.
Add deGrom to those ranks and keep 48 pressed against your back. Yes, the Mets got this done. This wouldn’t be a surprising conclusion to negotiations if they’d involved some team that hadn’t reflexively raised our skepticism in inverse proportion to the depths of Jake’s ERA, but it was, you know… the Mets. Thus it was rather shocking to learn Tuesday morning the talk that these Mets and their main man were talking wasn’t just talk. They indeed had a deal. And we indeed have our ace at the peak of his powers. Jacob deGrom probably can’t pitch any better on a regular basis than he did in 2018. He doesn’t have to. Standard-issue deGrominance, wherein once in a while he delivers us the sun, the moon and only a few of the stars instead of the entire galaxy, is a fine baseline and a reasonable expectation for us to maintain. After watching Jacob deGrom these past five years, you don’t feel unreasonable expecting the next five will feel like the bargain of the century.
by Greg Prince on 25 March 2019 7:26 pm Dave Roberts was out of position. Not the David Leonard Roberts who played 16 games at first base and in the outfield as an expansion Colt .45 in 1962, a year ahead of the Houston arrivals of Joe Leonard Morgan and Daniel Joseph Staub. Not the David Wayne Roberts who caught and shifted around the infield for four teams in the ’70s and ’80s, pausing long enough as a Padre to belt 21 homers in 1973, the rookie season for another San Diego slugger and Dave, David Mark Winfield. And certainly not the David Ray Roberts who stole the Red Sox into a World Series in 2004 and steered the Dodgers into two more in 2017 and 2018.
The Dave Roberts who was out of position, context and the blue was David Arthur Roberts, the pitcher. The Dave Roberts whose 2.10 ERA in 1971 was good for second in the National League that year to righty George Thomas Seaver’s 1.76. The Dave Roberts whose 103 wins rank him third all-time among Jewish lefty hurlers, behind a couple of landsmen named Holtzman and Koufax. The Dave Roberts who contributed five of those victories to the 1979 Pirate fam-a-lee. This Dave Roberts could consider himself at home in many places during his 13-season major league career, but the 1984 Mets was not one of them.
A Met, yes. This Dave Roberts was a Met in 1981, though not long enough to go on strike in June. His career was ending without distinction. Wearing Jerry Grote’s old 15 for seven games, David Arthur Roberts generated five home runs, which is fine if your name is David Arthur Kingman, but not so splendid if you’re tasked with not giving them up. Kingman stayed with those ’81 Mets. Roberts was released by the end of May.
Distinction of a sort came to Roberts nearly 40 years later, in 2019, a decade after he passed away at the age of 64 in Short Gap, W. Va. It was via a short note that indicated a rare gap in facts. Marty Noble was writing a remembrance of Seaver in the days after it was revealed Tom Terrific was suffering from dementia. The news came as a surprise to many. Not to Noble, a writer who’d been covering baseball from an array of angles for most of the previous half-century. The reporter was out of position himself. Most recently associated with mlb.com after establishing himself with the Bergen Record and Newsday, Noble took his piece about Seaver to a former colleague from another paper, Murray Chass, erstwhile baseball labor issues columnist for the New York Times. Chass runs a blog-like Web site usually reserved for his own columns. On March 17, he provided it as a platform for Noble to share his stories of Seaver.
It was a lucky St. Patrick’s Day for readers who gained 410 feet of insight into No. 41, particularly the relationship between a beat writer who haunted Shea Stadium for an eternity and the Franchise pitcher who represented its spirit. Seaver, Noble acknowledged, could be as difficult to deal with in the clubhouse as he was on the mound. That changed, he said, as years and tears went by, but it didn’t detract from Noble’s Seaver truth.
In 1984, Noble wrote in his Seaver story, he spoke to a couple of young Met pitchers who felt they owed a debt of gratitude to a trio of helpful veteran Met pitchers who had just been let go by the burgeoning contender. Noble listed the excess arms as Craig Swan, Dick Tidrow and Roberts. It was hardly the point of the anecdote let alone the story. But to a reader who remembers Met rosters like Noble remembered Met everything, the inclusion of Roberts jumped out of Marty’s piece like a baseball off of Sky King’s bat. “No,” this reader thought. “Roberts was gone by ’84. Marty’s thinking of Mike Torrez,” the same Torrez who made Bucky Dent a [bleeping] household word in New England. The reader was sure of it but less decisive of what to do about it.
Reach out to Chass? Chass was famously prickly toward bloggers, of which the reader was one. A non-starter, the blogger decided. Noble? The reader/blogger once had Noble’s e-mail address (they’d crossed paths pleasantly a couple of times) but presumed he’d lost it in the great Outlook Express calamity of 2016. Was it worth tracking down Marty through channels? It was such an incredibly moving story, exploring Seaver’s personality transformation and Noble’s reactions to them as they each grew older and ever fonder of their interactions. The reader was bothered that Dave Roberts was in for Mike Torrez. Not because it was inaccurate (though the reader was always bothered by inaccuracies) but because he just figured Marty Noble would want to know and maybe fix it. Marty’s copy was always so good. This copy was exquisite. It would serve as the closest thing baseball would have to the official record of what Tom Seaver was really like from the time he was winding down winding up to the time he devoted himself to only his wine. Nothing should mar it. Not even a slight mistake almost everybody else would likely gloss over.
A week later, the reader learned Noble had died at the age of 70. No warning, no long goodbye like the one surrounding Seaver, the subject of the last baseball article this grand baseball writer published in his lifetime. No public knowledge of a hospitalization like that which preceded the death of Staub, a life Noble eulogized beautifully and granularly the year before, as literally only Noble could have. The reader felt sadness for Noble’s family, of course, but he had to admit to himself that he also felt sadness for himself because never again having the opportunity to read a fresh Marty Noble perspective was, to him, akin to a death in the literary fam-a-lee.
Nobody knew the Mets like Marty Noble. Nobody wrote the Mets like Marty Noble, even in retirement when his ceaselessly stylish dispatches were usually provoked by the parameters of mortality. From 2019 forward there loomed no conceivable substitute for Noble and his ability to intimately chronicle the lives of baseball personalities who flourished in the latter half of the 20th century. No Gaspar pinch-running for Grote. No Roberts coming in for Millar. Nobody taking Noble’s place on first with the outcome hanging in the balance.
Nobody else had remained so close to baseball, particularly Mets baseball, for so long. Nobody else could tell his kind of Seaver story, his kind of Zimmer, Gibson and Torre story or the Whitey Ford story to end all Whitey Ford stories (specifically Ford’s pre-written obituary, which Noble crafted only to have it outlast its author). Nobody else could inhabit his kinds of stories with his kind of presence. Nobody, even allowing for the occasional Roberts-Torrez lineup card of memory mixup, retained so much detail. Nobody on Earth knew how to insert all of it into the written game for such optimal effect. Nobody seemed to relish putting it all together for publication the way Noble did. When David Wright completed his playing career by asserting repeatedly to an adoring Citi Field crowd, “this is love,” the Captain could have been referring to how Marty Noble approached baseball.
Others will reflect on baseball and pay tribute to its characters and they will do it well. But they won’t do it like Marty. That leaves all readers a little out of position.
by Greg Prince on 23 March 2019 3:11 am It was sometime after nine o’clock in the morning Thursday. Seattle and Oakland were playing the second game of the regular season in Tokyo. The date was March 21. The year was 2019. Ichiro Suzuki was being celebrated for concluding a career that spanned two continents and encompassed nearly 4,400 hits. I was watching it live on cable television, but because I found the commentary there grating, I muted the sound and opted for the Seattle radio broadcast, available to me via subscription on my mobile device.
Within a couple of hours I learned my baseball team of fifty years, the New York Mets, planned to acknowledge the golden anniversary of its first championship by renaming one of the thoroughfares bordering its ballpark after Tom Seaver, my baseball hero of fifty years. Tom, 74, is sidelined from the spotlight as he endures the effects of dementia, thus he won’t be on hand for this summer’s ceremonial transformation of 126th Street into Seaver Way or whatever it winds up being called. In Port St. Lucie, three of Seaver’s teammates from 1969 — Ron Swoboda, 73; Wayne Garrett, 71; and Jerry Grote, 76 — pulled on Mets uniforms and shared for media outlets their fond recollections of the pitcher eternally known to all who cheered him as The Franchise, the Mets’ greatest player ever. When those Mets were en route to winning the World Series, Time, the magazine, referred to them as Baseball’s Wunderkinder. A half-century later, time, the fact of life, has all of those ’69 Mets still with us past 70.
The day before the Mets announced Seaver at last rated a street (and finally a statue), the Los Angeles Angels’ approximation of The Franchise, Mike Trout, had just agreed to a twelve-year contract valued at $430 million, a record for professional sports. In the wake of Trout’s inarguably lucrative decision to stay an Angel for the rest of his career, other superstars lined up to sign fairly gaudy extensions with their current teams: Paul Goldschmidt of the Cardinals, Alex Bregman and Justin Verlander of the Astros, Blake Snell of the Rays, Chris Sale of the Red Sox. The money was mind-boggling on the surface (maybe less so for young Snell and the perennially penurious Rays), yet, according to those who’ve done the math, inadequate when calculated within the context of the individuals’ talents and the industry’s resources.
The two best free agents of the preceding offseason (two of the best ever when age and potential are factored in), Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, also inked enormous deals, they with new teams, but only after entertaining barely a handful of suitors apiece amid an unexpectedly lengthy wait for resolution. The lack of a rush toward their estimable impact was widely taken to infer something akin to collusion was placing its thumb on the market scale. Other free agents of distinction, most notably Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel, landed in the last week of Spring Training without an employer. The services of other players not on their level, yet certainly not bad, went wanting through the winter. Free agency was no longer seen as a star player’s automatic ticket to riches, thus the burst of bountiful extensions agreed to by those who don’t want to test the efficacy of shopping one’s services to would-be bidders uniformly gone paddle-shy.
On the eve of its 150th anniversary as a professional endeavor, baseball as a whole attempted to balance its contradictions. Trout was universally hailed as the best of his generation, though also widely considered obscure in comparison to the megawatt celebrities atop other sports. Teams continued to rake in fortunes from their regional television arrangements while metrics measuring the National Pastime’s popularity indicated its following wasn’t what it used to be. Minor leaguers — among them the Trouts, Harpers and Machados of tomorrow — were compensated as little as their current status would allow, the debuts of the most promising among them tactically delayed to sap their bargaining power for as long as legally possible. Judicious juggling of data and payroll made permanent contenders out of some ballclubs while providing a handy excuse to others that immediately aspiring to compete for a pennant wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture.
To address areas where the game’s pace and personalities lagged, new rules were either in the process of implementation or negotiation. On the table if not the books as 2019 took shape: a larger roster most of the season; a smaller than usual roster toward its end; a trade deadline that sorted out personnel sooner; an insistence that, for the most part, pitchers pitch to at least three batters per appearance; a pitch clock to assure all pitches are thrown in a timely manner; an All-Star Election Day to elevate excitement; a million bucks awarded to the winner of the Home Run Derby to magnify glamour; further regulation of mound visits to keep innings rolling; proliferation of the designated hitter, regardless of league, to dumb down strategy.
Some of it was jarring. Some of it seemed evolutionary. We are constantly surprised by adjustments to the game, then we get used to them, grudgingly or otherwise. During the preceding decade, instant replay review took effect, making it possible to overturn an umpire’s obviously errant call. Collisions between runner and catcher at home plate, forever stitched within the fabric of the hard-fought game, were mostly eliminated. Sliding into second base was monitored as it never had been before. Intentional walks didn’t necessitate the throwing of four balls. Battles for the Wild Card were judged so compelling that their quantity was doubled. Terms like exit velocity, launch angle and spin rate — all of them tripping off the tongues of analytically inclined decisionmaking executives — infiltrated the lexicon to a point where none of it sounded any more foreign than the Major League Baseball season beginning in March in Asia. That wasn’t really foreign, either. The Seattle-Oakland series in Tokyo was the fifth of its kind since 2000. The 2014 season commenced in Australia; the 2019 campaign would include a whistlestop to England.
As Ichiro was tipping his cap across the International Date Line and his Mariners were taking two from the Athletics, the rest of baseball was winding down the extended rites of Spring Training (underway since roughly Lincoln’s birthday), preparing to get going for keeps a week later, on March 28. Opening Day used to be a staple of early to middle April, but that custom had faded over the past couple of decades. Same for the notion that the year necessarily begin on a Monday in Cincinnati, then everywhere else the next day. Give or take some bundling up where necessary, Opening Day 2019, in the tradition of its predecessors, figured to be toasted in every city as a harbinger of sunny days ahead and for rekindling warm feelings we never leave behind. This ritual of baseball loomed as completely familiar and utterly welcome to any fan of any team of any tenure.
Somehow, though, between 9 and 10 AM on March 21, with a regular-season ballgame transmitted to me from half a world away…and my childhood idol all but certain to be visible to me again only through memory and tribute…I realized I was living in a baseball future I wouldn’t have envisioned during my lifetime stay in a baseball present that inevitably became the baseball past. I’m not bemoaning it arrived. It’s been arriving continually for as long as I can remember. Usually I don’t notice it. On Thursday I did.
by Greg Prince on 15 March 2019 4:50 am On Wednesday morning, March 13, a bright, warm Florida day, Jeffrey M. Hysen woke up with a squirrel in his stomach. In his good life as a baseball fan, there had never been a month quite like this one. In the next few hours he was going to see Noah Syndergaard sharpen his right arm for the season ahead, Jeff McNeil reacquaint himself with the peculiarities of third base and Ol’ Sol challenge his personal comfort level. The Mets and Astros are sold out, to Jeff’s surprise. The ticket today will have to be in the picnic area. Even though he’s been going to these Spring tuneups since March began, the excitement of it, the lure of the games, makes him nervous. Nervous but delighted. Baseball to Jeff Hysen, and thousands of other expatriate New Yorkers, is as essential as air conditioning. It is what a Mets fan grows up with, feeds on, worships, follows, plays and, very often, dies with. Jeff Hysen, 60, married, father of two boys, semi-retired attorney, intermittent stand-up comic (he’s told jokes in one of the rooms Jerry Seinfeld frequents), Fantasy Camp graduate, baseball enthusiast, was either going to live a lot this afternoon or die a little.
Jeff Hysen is a modern semi-retiree. Being a modern semi-retiree means Jeff Hysen chases the Mets up and down Florida’s so-called Treasure Coast as if they’re going somewhere. They are, to Washington in a couple of weeks, where Jeff will be in position to greet them, since he still lives near there most months, though not most of this one. Jeff retired from his 31-year government job at the end of last year and promised himself one satisfying detour en route to new life adventures as winter begat spring and spring begat the runup to another baseball season. Jeff was gonna plant himself close enough to Port St. Lucie to keep a wading white ibis’s eye on his New York Mets.
And he has. He has a ballpark, backup ballparks and a tube of sunscreen. He’s seen the Mets play the same handful of teams over and over again because that’s what the Mets do in Port St. Lucie, in Jupiter and in West Palm Beach, each facility reasonably accessible from his snowbird home base in Boynton Beach (“I’m 60 and I feel young here”). He’s gotten to the ballparks early, stayed in them late and soaked it all in, not every day but most days. Jeff’s as warm all over about his choice of activity as someone who carries a tube of sunscreen every game he goes to by necessity. You have to do that in Florida, even in March.
Does he like these Mets? Jeff does, particularly the routine he’s attached himself to. “It’s been fun,” he swears. “The weather has been fantastic and it’s always good to see the Mets.” Words to live by from a lawyer who dedicated himself heart and soul to ethical issues at the Federal level, which may sound like an oxymoron to the civilian ear (like “starting left fielder Jack Reinheimer”), but Jeff took his job seriously. Comedian by night, you couldn’t as much as jest with him in daylight about the niceties of the Hatch Act or any Act. Jeff’s colleagues took him and his dedication to heart. When he retired, they chipped in and presented him with a bottle of wine autographed by Ed Kranepool.
Multiple trips up and down I-95 have made Jeff a Spring Training authority. He even knows the names of the facilities by their sponsors and tenants — FitTeam, with the Astros and dogass Nationals in West Palm; Roger Dean, home of the Cardinals and lonely Marlins in if not on Jupiter; and of course historic old First Data Field, formerly everything else, in St. Lucie, where the Mets and the antelope have played since 1988, or just after Jeff started being a Fed. Jeff wound up in the District of Columbia the year prior because he won a contest on WHN right before it became WFAN. The prize was a train ticket and a game ticket to see the Mets and Phillies at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. It rained and it was cold and he escaped to the dry and warmth of Union Station where he found his future job listed in the Washington Post. The Mets wouldn’t make regular visits to RFK until 2005. Jeff accepted gainful employment nearby anyway.
As a newly minted sunscreen-toting semi-retiree, Jeff will tell you the first priority at any Spring game is “shade. It’s important in Florida. You think that you want to sit as close as possible to the field, but it’s 83 degrees and sunny, so you move back.” If the games look empty on TV, it’s not because baseball doesn’t still tickle Florida’s fancy. “In reality,” Jeff explains, “everyone is hiding from the sun.”
As a modern Mets fan, Jeff objectively ranks First Data as his favorite Spring ballpark, followed by Roger Dean, then FitTeam. Across the board, “the food is mostly garbage,” he concedes, “and they don’t allow any outside food, so you have to find the good places.” Jeff also advises you bring your own water bottle, either sealed, or empty “to fill inside.” The dimensions at First Data are leftover from Shea…and so is “lots of the food,” Jeff says, “but the pizza will make you think that you’re in Queens,” plus there’s Nathan’s hot dogs and fries. Ten dollars near the tiki bar will buy you “a good grilled chicken sandwich with Nathan’s fries. That counts as a bargain.”
Go for tacos at Roger Dean, Jeff counsels. Avoid the pizza. “That’s not what pizza is supposed to be!” is what he felt like telling the guy who sold it to him, but Jeff kept the thought to himself. At FitTeam, “eat at the concessions stand behind home if you hate yourself.” If you don’t, go with the Italian delights out beyond center.
Jeff is also happy to rank parking, a must given the lack of 7 train or, for that matter, Metro (Jeff despises the Metro after 31 years of waiting for the Red Line to arrive as scheduled). Roger Dean’s lot edges First Data’s based on the permanent “annoying traffic jam” at First Data. The parking lot at FitTeam “might as well be in Houston,” he says, given the hike to and from the front gate. As for the fans who come in the cars, well, Jeff swears to Gil Hodges that Mets fans are the best in their slice of the Grapefruit League (“so smart and good looking”). Runners-up are Astros fans “because I have no reason to dislike them.” He can report having “actually” sighted a Marlin fan. Behind that lost soul in Jeff’s estimation are “Cardinals fans, who are not smug as in past years. I surprisingly met some nice ones.”
Nationals fans, Jeff has decided, “are as ignorant and arrogant here as they are in Washington,” and he’s had opportunity to comparison-shop. “I thought my dislike for Nationals fans might change in the Florida sunshine,” he admits, “but when I went to a Mets away game and saw the Nationals red, it felt like a regular season game.” Jeff’s adherence to ethics forbids him from saying anything inaccurate about the collective baseball IQ he encounters every summer at Nationals Park…or pointing out the pocket schedule he picked up at FitTeam identifies “Sherzer” as the Nationals’ pitching ace.
It doesn’t matter where he takes in a Spring Training game. Jeff believes there are some rules fans of all stripe should be legally required to uphold. Like not “yelling ‘I got it’ at a foul ball that is many sections away”; like not saying “can of corn” on a fly ball, “a cliché that makes you sound stupid”; like not “clapping when the PA commands, ‘everybody clap your hands!’ Please stop,” Jeff begs. “You’re just encouraging them.”
This is lowbrow big league behavior at Spring Training prices, which Jeff regrets is also bordering ever more on big league. “It’s getting more and more expensive” to get them not to neglect you, Jeff reports. “Tickets are at least $25” for games that don’t and never did count. “Roger Dean has a ‘day of game’ surcharge, parking is ten bucks and all three places inspect you like you’re boarding an airplane” when it comes to potentially smuggling a sandwich past the turnstile. “I hope that the towns in Florida and Arizona are not pricing out their customers in an effort to recoup the money that they are paying to keep teams when greedy owners threaten to leave.”
For someone who can and will volunteer a list of what’s wrong around the edges of Spring Training, Jeff is just as quick to tell you the whole thing “is a delight. Everyone should be able to experience the joy of baseball in March.” He’ll even share a secret with you: the best spot to “experience the Mets in a way that you can’t during the regular season” is whichever corner they’re assigned to set up their bullpen at Roger Dean on a given day, where you can get so close, you’re surprised you don’t have to whip out extra to cover the proximity fee. Wilson Ramos stood right next to Jeff one fine day. Jacob deGrom practically loosened up inside his camera. “I didn’t need to zoom in,” he marvels. “What a thrill to be that close to the Mets.”
Jeff’s been thrilled by the Mets even when he’s been disgusted by them during most of his sixty years. He grew up near them in Great Neck and suffered the distance from Shea as he built his career and family outside Washington. The names change, the loyalty doesn’t. Nor does his discernment. Jeff didn’t come to Florida merely to lounge in the shade, snap photographs and kvetch purposefully. He’s done some scouting.
Jason Vargas has impressed him so far (“I can’t believe I just said that”). He’s also high on Seth Lugo, Pete Alonso, Dom Smith and J.D. Davis “as a hitter.” He insists Robinson Cano “is going to be fun to watch,” observes a young catcher named Ali Sanchez “has a great arm” and praises Rajai Davis for “his instincts as a runner. It’s not something that the Mets are good at. He is smart and can help the team off the bench.”
Less of a thrill: Corey Oswalt (“the press likes him, but I don’t”); Jacob Rhame (“the only uniform that I want to see Jacob Rhame wearing is a Nationals uniform”); J.D. Davis “as a fielder”; and, deGrom’s preferences notwithstanding, Devin Mesoraco, who, Jeff suggests, “seems to have trouble catching the ball, which is part of his job description.”
With less than two weeks remaining to Opening Day, Jeff describes his ownself “as optimistic as a Mets fan can be. I think they can finish anywhere from first to fourth,” which doesn’t speak bountifully for optimism. “Brodie made many good moves that could pay off, but I’m not sure if he did enough with starting pitching depth and the outfield. Plus, the Phillies, Nationals and Braves improved as well. They could finish first but they could stay in fourth.” Regardless, he says, “I’m excited about the season and can’t wait to see what happens.”
In the meantime, he’s not done in Florida. Is he really going to Jupiter for Mets-Marlins again?
Jeff Hysen looks offended. “They’re playin’, aren’t they?”
Thanks to Jeff for providing the information. Thanks to Dan Jenkins for providing the inspiration.
by Greg Prince on 11 March 2019 7:52 pm You knew me as Peter if you knew me at all
I tower several inches above six feet tall
I’d prefer if rather than Peter you please call me Pete
Get me onto the roster, I’ll get you out of your seat
You’ve known me as Dominic or interchangeably Dom
I used to be a prospect you’d ache to take to the prom
That was before you saw me play yet rarely succeed
From my ranks of supporters you were swift to secede
Pete here — you should now know me as that
I trust you’re growing familiar with my big booming bat
Have you caught my power-laden act thus far this spring?
Have your eyes lit up once they’re filled with my swing?
I’m still Dominic or interchangeably Dom
I, too, am capable of launching the occasional bomb
My entire game has improved, just like my demeanor
I can hit balls past fences, I can smother a ’tweener
Don’t ya wanna see Pete, your potential new idol?
Wouldn’t ignoring my talent make ya just wanna bridle?
I’m hearing crazy things about years of control
Hey, focus on offense — mine’s on a roll!
As a former hyped rookie I’m wishing Pete well
But having been Dominic has been kinda hell
All that went wrong for me has gone in for repair
You can’t ignore two kid first basemen amid a March tear
Listen Dom, I rake righty, I see you lash left
If we’re both in New York, our platoon could be deft
I’m up for a timeshare that looms as productive
The sum of our lumber is surely seductive
Pete, my amigo, I’m in no spot to complain
Discounting our hot streaks would be simply insane
We’ll share the position till one of us slumps
I know from hard knocks we’ll encounter speed bumps
You got a deal, Dom; now someone inform Brodie
Omitting our wood will make fans ornery as Grote
As you can infer, I’ve studied Met lore
I plan to add my name to it when I go four-for-four
They can spell yours just “Pete,” me I’m chill on the choice
Having sputtered for two years will soften one’s voice
Call me Dominic, Dom, Mister Smith or Ol’ Smitty
A team without each of us would be a real pity
by Greg Prince on 7 March 2019 5:41 pm Tom Seaver is no longer a public figure. Lyme disease and its long-term effects have assured we won’t see him when the living members of the 1969 Mets gather at Citi Field in late June to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a world championship that Seaver never viewed as a miracle. Tom had a point, as there could be nothing miraculous about a team led by Tom Seaver proving itself the best on the planet.
When word spread on Thursday afternoon that one of the greatest pitchers ever and the greatest Met there will ever be has been diagnosed with dementia and has thus “chosen to completely retire from public life,” it was simultaneously a shock to the system and not exactly surprising. We’ve read and heard about Tom dealing with Lyme disease for ages and had more than an inkling that it was taking an inevitable toll on someone who rarely gave into anything or anybody during that extended period when so many of us chose him as our idol. Seaver had already stopped traveling across the country to attend Hall of Fame induction weekend, an event he never seemed to miss in the first couple of decades after he himself was honored. I’d noticed that when the Mets put out statements and releases celebrating Jacob deGrom’s Cy Young last November, there was no boilerplate quote from the Met who’d won three of them. The media guide stopped listing him as a Club Ambassador in 2018. I can’t recall him having been present in Flushing since the 2013 All-Star Game, when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch to David Wright. Quietly, Tom slipped from view.
Except when you thought about the Mets. There he was and is and forever will be — No. 41, on the mound, pitcher-perfect motion, striking out any of 2,541 batters between 1967 and 1977 and then again in 1983 who dared thought of connecting with his fastball. Yes, there’s a 41 at the end of that figure, just as there’s a 41 at the top of any list of anybody who’s ever played for the Mets. He’s been the greatest of Mets since his debut in 1967, he’ll be the greatest of Mets come 2067. We’re open to auditions between now and then, but we don’t seriously expect anybody to supplant Tom Seaver atop our chart.
Tom’s family says he’ll continue to work in his California vineyard. In that spirit, if you’re so inclined, raise a glass to Tom Terrific and those who will care for him as he goes on. Think of him at his best. There’s a ton to think about there.
by Greg Prince on 25 February 2019 2:30 am The Oscars were handed out Sunday night. Thus, per Monday morning-after tradition, the Academy pauses to remember those Mets who have, in the baseball sense, left us in the past year.
Cue the montage…
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GEORGE CHARLES “Buddy” BAUMANN IV
Relief Pitcher
May 16, 2018 – June 2, 2018
Baumann looked good in his first inning of work but terrible in his second, establishing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s suited to be a member of this ridiculous, ramshackle franchise.
—May 17, 2018
(Free agent, 11/2/2018; currently unsigned)
___
KEVIN MICHAEL McGOWAN
Relief Pitcher
August 22, 2017 – October 1, 2017
Out came Terry. On the scoreboard, his expression was in plain view: he looked not so much like a deer in the headlights, as a deer uncertain what headlights are, but vaguely aware that they’re nothing good. As Terry waited for Kevin McGowan, I thought about the situation. Here was Terry Collins, in the last game of his Mets managerial career, standing on the mound in the middle of an inning that had gone to hell, making a pitching change four batters too late. And as I took this incredibly representative situation in, I couldn’t help but smile again.
—October 2, 2017
(Released, 9/25/2018; signed with Sugar Land Skeeters, 3/19/2019)
___
SCOTT REAST COPELAND
Relief Pitcher
May 31, 2018
Scott Copeland — with Tim Peterson one half of the Who? Brothers Show Band and Revue — acquitted himself nicely from out of nowhere and that can surely be interpreted as inspirational.
—June 1, 2018
(Free agent, 10/1/2018; signed with Nationals, 12/30/2018)
___
CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL “Chris” BECK
Relief Pitcher
June 15, 2018 – July 8, 2018
Where were we? Oh yeah, losing. Losing 3-2 after four, losing 5-2 after five (Daniel Descalso doing the longball honors), losing 6-2 after Jon Jay drove in pesky Dyson, who had walked, stolen second and stolen third off the inspiring duo of Plawecki and Chris Beck, the latest Mets pitcher you’d never heard of until basically just now.
—June 16, 2018
(Free agent, 10/1/2018; signed with Cardinals, 11/29/2018)
___
GERSON BAUTISTA
Relief Pitcher
April 17, 2018 – June 2, 2018
As Rose Marie advised, wait for your laugh. It’s coming. It will take a while if you’re a Mets fan. Perhaps the tale of the team whose first six pitchers struck out 24 batters in thirteen innings before its final two gave up six runs in the fourteenth will come off as amusing in a future context. Not hilarious at this juncture, however. Buddy Baumann didn’t strike out any Cubs. Nor did Gerson Bautista. Outs of any sort were elusive for that duo until the barn door was detached from its hinges.
—June 3, 2018
(Traded to Mariners, 12/3/2018)
___
JAMES DOUGLAS “Jamie” CALLAHAN
Relief Pitcher
September 2, 2017 – October 1, 2017
[Ron] Ziegler would have loved flacking for the Mets relief corps, as inoperative a unit as you’ll stumble across on a September evening this sad season. Hansel pointed the Mets toward a loss; Chasen Bradford confirmed the direction the game was going in; and the rest of the poor little lambs who’ve yet to find their way waved home wave after wave of Cub after Cub. By the time Kevin McGowan, Jacob Rhame and Jamie Callahan had clocked some of that all-important valuable experience, the Mets were down, 17-5.
—September 14, 2017
(Free agent, 11/3/2018; signed with Giants, 12/28/2018)
___
PHILLIP MATTHEW “Phil” EVANS
Infielder
September 8, 2017 – August 1, 2018
It doesn’t get more athletic in the middle of the infield than Reyes at second and Amed Rosario at short. And it doesn’t look less athletic at the corners than Smith at first and Phil Evans at third. They are athletes, they are skilled, they have futures at the highest level of professional baseball…but it is striking how they each — as rookies — appear to have wandered over from a keg-intensive softball game in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. On the other hand, the limber and lithe Rosario seems to display a little less savvy every diamond day. Let’s give everybody a clean slate come spring. This season hasn’t honed anybody to a fine edge, physically or mentally.
—September 25, 2017
(Free agent, 11/2/2018; signed with Cubs, 12/17/2018)
___
MATTHEW G. “Matt” den DEKKER
Outfielder
August 29, 2013 – September 28, 2014
July 11, 2018 – July 26, 2018
We learned “den Dekker” is Dutch for “not Lagares”. This is linguistic clarification gleaned after the Mets center fielder of the moment lost three fourth-inning fly balls in translation. Mets fans with memories longer than a Yankee Stadium short porch home run will recall Matt den Dekker was originally cast as the can’t miss defensive whiz in the attempted 2013 reboot of the Mets as a competitive baseball entity. Turned out den Dekker did miss — loads of time, due to the injury which opened the gates for Lagares to take his projected Gold Glove role — and could miss, specifically a trio of not easy yet not impossible chances hit in his general direction Saturday. They went for a triple, a double and a single, but when measured by cringe factor, the first was a boot and the next two were reboots. Given that Matt is 0-for-17 since his surprise recall from obscurity, one wonders what his particular major league acumen is at present.
—July 22, 2018
(Free agent, 10/1/2018; signed with Long Island Ducks, 3/26/2019)
___
JOSE MANUEL LOBATON
Catcher
April 13, 2018 – September 28, 2018
Jose Lobaton, presumably aboard an eastbound flight from Vegas, you’ll recall from killing the Mets as a National. Now he gets a chance to make it up to us.
—April 13, 2018
(Free agent, 10/29/2018; signed with Mariners, 1/24/2019)
___
ROBERT MARTIN “Bobby” WAHL
Relief Pitcher
August 2, 2018 – August 16, 2018
There was a plethora of contributors. One of them was Bobby Wahl, another very recently introduced name (called up August 2) growing suddenly into a person we recognize as our guy. Wahl replaced Noah Syndergaard with the bases loaded and one out, Joey Votto up to bat. The Mets were ahead by five, so maybe the leverage didn’t soar as high as McNeil’s homer, but it was a tall enough order for a reliever with minimal cachet. Wahl walked Votto, which should probably count as a rite of National League initiation, but then struck out another All-Star, Scooter Gennett, before giving way to Robert Gsellman and, ultimately, closer du nuit Jerry Blevins.
—August 7, 2018
(Traded to Brewers, 1/5/2019)
___
JOHN PATRICK “Jack” REINHEIMER
Utilityman
August 15, 2018 – September 29, 2018
Oh, and Jack Reinheimer collected his first major league base hit. That’s more of a Jack Reinheimer highlight, but he’s entitled to one for himself, just like we were entitled to a night of swimming in Mets-related jubilation. The pool has been empty all summer. What fun to find it filled.
—August 16, 2018
(Selected off waivers by Cubs, 11/2/2018)
___
AUSTIN JARRIEL JACKSON
Outfielder
July 27, 2018 – September 30, 2018
Austin Jackson’s .350 as a Met has been fashioned in a similarly brief span. Unlike McNeil, who excelled at Binghamton and Las Vegas after an otherwise off-radar minor league run, no Mets fan was rattling cages to get Jackson on our roster. Jackson’s been on most everybody else’s roster since 2010. We usually get a turn at guys like that, generally when we’re desperate for help and they could use an opportunity.
—August 5, 2018
(Free agent, 10/29/2018; currently unsigned)
___
ANTHONY RAY SWARZAK
Relief Pitcher
March 29, 2018 – September 29, 2018
Then, suddenly, Anthony Swarzak got up and, almost just as suddenly, Anthony Swarzak was in the game. Nobody fast-forwarded to skip over the boring warming process. They got him in there just before it was too late. A couple of instants later, it was too late. The stilted two-pitcher process that permitted four Pittsburgh runs required 25 pitches in all. The eventual result approached our rainy shoreline with the relentlessness of Superstorm Sandy. You could see it in the forecast. You knew it was coming. You braced for the worst. There went the trees.
—June 28, 2018
(Traded to Mariners, 12/3/2018)
___
TYLER PATRICK “Ty” KELLY
Utilityman
May 24, 2016 – April 5, 2017
July 9, 2018 – July 23, 2018
In a sense, Mets at Pirates was an understudy’s gala, with the unlikely character of the rookie third baseman, played by little-known Ty Kelly, rescuing the first act with a display of power clearly at odds with the script’s prevailing narrative arc. There was no hint that Mr. Kelly — whose name was familiar only to those whose Playbills were properly supplemented with squares of white paper alerting the audience to his existence — had such a forceful outburst in him, but proponents of baseball will always default to their pastime’s capacity to jar as explanation for such illogical turns of event.
—June 9, 2016
(Free agent, 10/1/2018; signed with Angels, 2/5/2019)
___
ADRIAN SABIN GONZALEZ
First Baseman
March 29, 2018 – June 10, 2018
I’m not looking to rush Adrian to the exit, but most of what I see when I look at him is a large man with a bad back who I’m kind of surprised to learn used to play professional baseball. I’m impressed he’s on an active roster. I’m impressed that he’s active in the older adult who takes walks in the woods now that his doctor has recommended this new bladder control prescription sense. I should talk; I’ve done nothing for two games but sit on the couch and form opinions. Gonzalez was thrown out going first to third on a Juan Lagares single in the sixth, which didn’t really hurt our sacred cause, and could be taken as evidence that Mickey Callaway is running a suitably aggressive ship. Things are so borderline giddy right now, I was convinced he was going to be safe. Someday, somebody will be surprised to come across evidence that Adrian Gonzalez was a Met. Maybe it will be in the 2018 World Series highlight film. That would be sweet.
—April 1, 2018
(Released, 6/11/2018; currently unsigned)
___
ALEJANDRO “AJ” RAMOS
Relief Pitcher
July 30, 2017 – May 26, 2018
AJ Ramos, who not so long ago was considered by experts a major league closer, a major league setup man and/or a major league pitcher, was called on next, perhaps as some sort of immersion therapy so he and we could face our worst fears. We all feared seeing Ramos facing the Brewers approximately ten psychic minutes after he walked them to victory the night before. Our fears couldn’t have been any more founded: three runs in a mere two-thirds of an inning. Ramos truly puts the frack in fraction.
—May 27, 2018
(Free agent, 10/29/2018; currently unsigned)
___
JOSE ANTONIO BAUTISTA
Outfielder
May 22, 2018 – August 27, 2018
I got a particular kick out of sitting practically directly behind Jose Bautista, who spent his defensive day doing what appeared to be tai-chi to stay loose. Jose had no putouts but was a crowdpleaser between innings, consistently reaching fans with balls and smiles. That stuff goes a long way when batting averages no longer climb very high.
—August 23, 2018
(Traded to Phillies, 8/28/2018)
___
RAFAEL MONTERO
Pitcher
May 14, 2014 – October 1, 2017
Rafael Montero doesn’t normally pitch into the ninth inning. Rafael Montero doesn’t normally limit his opposition to no more hits than there are bases. Rafael Montero doesn’t normally get a Mets fan excited, except to see what else is on. To be fair, almost nothing gets a Mets fan excited at this juncture of the current Mets season, save for the knowledge that the current Mets season will eventually give way to a different Mets season. But Rafael Montero and what we’ll refer to as the Rafael Montero Game (at least until we have another one remotely like it) did. You wouldn’t have thought any Met starter whose last name begins with an upper-case letter could, but Montero was as good as any Met not named Jacob deGrom could possibly be. Against the Reds, he was sublime.
—August 31, 2017
(Free agent, 11/2/2018; signed with Rangers, 1/4/2019)
___
KEVIN JEFFREY PLAWECKI
Catcher
April 21, 2015 – September 29, 2018
You know who looked happy? The guy from the charter bus company who threw out the second first pitch (a guy from a car company threw out the first first pitch). The charter bus company guy was stoked to stand at the lip of the same mound Steven Matz was about to tread, even more stoked to toss one on the fly to Kevin Plawecki. Imagine being that happy to see Kevin Plawecki.
—July 7, 2018
(Traded to Indians, 1/6/2019)
___
HANSEL MANUEL ROBLES
Relief Pitcher
April 24, 2015 – June 19, 2018
During the third game Wednesday, in the bottom of the sixth, Wheeler the ace was — because this will happen in a pitcher’s second start after two years’ absence — huffing and puffing in an effort to blow away three more batters. The wolf, however, wouldn’t exit the doorway. Zack got two outs but loaded the bases. Away went Wheeler, along came Hansel Robles, making his eighty-fifth appearance of the thus far nine-game season…check that: it was his third night in a row pitching. Seems like more. Robles is too talented to dismiss, too enigmatic to trust fully. Enigmatic is one of those words you use when you want to acknowledge a reliever’s talent but chronically cringe when he shows up with runners on base, especially when all of the bases have runners. Cringing turned to caterwauling when the first pitch Robles threw to Maikel Franco turned into a grand slam and chopped the Mets’ lead to 5-4.
—April 13, 2017
(Selected off waivers by Angels, 6/23/2018)
___
JERRY RICHARD BLEVINS
Relief Pitcher
April 6, 2015 – September 29, 2018
Blevins and Bourn battled for eight pitches. The count reached three-and-two. The Mets led by three. The Diamondbacks had two on. Sixteen runs had scored on Monday. Eleven runs were in on Tuesday. I didn’t know it for a fact that Bourn was going to drive in anywhere between one and three runs imminently. I just knew it was true. Here’s some truth: Blevins struck out Bourn on the eighth pitch. Three innings later, Jeurys Familia would come on to record his fortieth save of the season by pitching a one-two-three ninth and officially preserving a nervous 7-5 Mets victory — their first over these demons of the desert — but, really, Jerry saved the day. Syndergaard’s swing was more glamorous, but the one Blevins coaxed from Bourn proved the most vital.
—August 17, 2016
(Free agent, 10/29/2018; signed with A’s, 2/4/2019)
___
JAY ALLEN BRUCE
Outfielder
August 2, 2016 – August 9, 2017
March 29, 2018 – September 30, 2018
Bruce is productive. Other Met hitters are sporadic. A couple are dinged up — contusions of the wrist (d’Arnaud) and hyperextended elbows (Duda) are all the rage this spring — but only one lately seems prone to produce dingers, plural. That’s the Jay Hey Kid, as we’ve been calling him ever since I wrote the first part of this sentence. If breathless cable news talking heads applied their talents to baseball, they’d declare that Jay Bruce launching those missiles is when he became president.
—April 20, 2017
(Traded to Mariners, 12/3/2018)
___
ASDRUBAL JOSE CABRERA
Infielder
April 3, 2016 – July 26, 2018
Cabrera simply gets the job done. The job at hand in the bottom of the eleventh with two on and one out was monumental. If Asdrubal could avoid grounding into a double play, it would rate as a net-positive. If he could as much as walk, it would be welcome, since it would set up Cespedes as the potential game-winning hitter for a third consecutive night, and you know what they say about third times and charms. If indispensable Asdrubal could manage to stay in one piece amid the myriad possible outcomes given the precarious condition of his continually balky knee, well, that would be keen, too. Asdrubal transcended all ancillary aspects of the job when he connected authoritatively with the final pitch Ramos threw, the last of 409 delivered by nineteen pitchers in all. As soon as Cabrera swung, he knew it was gone. His bat was flipped, his arms were raised, his trot was jubilant. The camera stayed on him an instant before it cut to the ball Gary Cohen was describing in flight, so we could tell it was going to land easily beyond harm’s way a tick ahead of the rarely uttered double-OUTTA HERE! the home run so richly deserved. Ender Inciarte was in another city and no Phillie could climb, leap or pray high enough to do a darn thing about this one. It was indeed outta here, outta here. The Mets were 9-8 winners.
—September 23, 2016
(Traded to Phillies, 7/27/2018)
___
WILMER ALEJANDRO FLORES
Infielder
August 6, 2013 – September 18, 2018
Asdrubal and Yoenis each made an out, leading to (assuming Steve Henderson was unavailable) Wilmer Flores as humankind’s last great hope to win the game on one magical swing. Wilmer had done that before, my companion reminded me, as if I needed the nudge. Wilmer Flores might as well approach every one of his late-and-close at-bats tugging at the wordmark on his jersey. He is the walking, talking, swinging, stinging embodiment of Tears of Joy™, one of the Citi’s most humble and lovable characters, a veritable Shoeshine Boy who, whenever there is a call for help, emerges as Underdog! Wilmer could make forays into the sciences, the arts, public policy, anything you name, and the first question he’d be asked is how it compares to that home run he hit against the Nationals two nights after he was weeping on the field over being traded, which he wasn’t. Flores’s Flushing calling card is made of such sturdy stock that nobody ever mentions he took called strike three to end the 2015 World Series. Carlos Beltran might go into the Hall of Fame…might go into the Hall of Fame as a Met…and he will never not be reminded in Metsian circles that he took a strike three to end a postseason series. Different strokes for different folks — and not all Met folks are certified Met folk heroes. Wilmer Flores is assuredly that, and his legend grew on Saturday night, July 22, 2017, when he lined a Simon Castro pitch over the left field fence for a game-winning homer not exactly like the one from July 31, 2015, but close enough to exhilarate 39,629 skeptics, 15,000 of whom thought they’d be leaving the park with nothing better than a bobblehead, none of whom (save for my companion) sensed they’d get to take home a 6-5 walkoff win boxed inside a stirring comeback from five runs down. Prof. Flores, in the parallel universe in which he takes up laboratory work, had just found a cure for chronic doubt. As he accepted his Nobel, he was asked how it compared to that time he beat the Nationals.
—July 23, 2017
(Free agent, 11/30/2018; signed with Diamondbacks, 1/21/2019)
___
MATTHEW EDWARD “Matt” HARVEY
Starting Pitcher
July 26, 2012 – May 3, 2018
If long-term health and contractual status hold out, there will be plenty of time and way more evidence provided to determine if, indeed, Matt Harvey is better than Stephen Strasburg or, heaven forefend, Stephen Strasburg is better than Matt Harvey. Matt Harvey will go up against other aces from other rivals, too. Matt Harvey will draw crowds and focus in an age when crowds are usually sparse and focus tends to be fractured. Matt Harvey will win and the Mets will be forced to follow if they care to keep up. Inevitably, it will all be traced back to the “Harvey’s better” game, one of those nights destined to stay with those who were in on its ground floor. Mets fans from 2013 who have yet to be introduced will sit next to one another some night up the road and trade reminiscences as Mets fans do. They will feel each other out, who was where for what and so forth. If it’s the relatively near future, one of them will say “Harvey’s better,” and the other of them will know what it means. If it’s far off, there will be a prelude to set the scene, about this game I was at when Matt Harvey was in his first or second year, against the Nationals, and the sentence will be finished by a different voice: you mean the ‘Harvey’s better’ game? I was there, too!
—April 20, 2013
(Traded to Reds, 5/8/2018)
___
JOSE BERNABE REYES
Infielder
June 10, 2003 – September 28, 2011
July 5, 2016 – September 30, 2018
The Mets wouldn’t have won on July 23, 2005, without young Jose Reyes, and they wouldn’t have won as they did — 5-3 — on July 22, 2016, without older Jose Reyes. As if to bookend the eleven-year trail of Reyes runs, we even got another nifty quote from his starting pitcher, this time Logan Verrett, who said, “He’s like a can of Red Bull balled up into a human being, and that’s something we were lacking.” Jose is indeed energetic, but also a human being, and we know, through the circumstances under which he was available to re-emerge as a Met earlier this month, that human beings are capable of doing lousy things to their fellow human beings. Upon his return, it was hard to look at Jose, not see the domestic violence charge and instinctively not want to look at him at all. It was nearly impossible to look at Jose and see the Jose-Jose-Jose wunderkind to whom we took such a melodic shine a long time ago. The vision is changing. I suppose it’s transactional. Now that he’s hitting and running and resembling the Reyes of yore, I’m less inclined to dwell on the legitimately negative (human beings will do that in exchange for a couple of runs sometimes). I’m seeing the Met again, the above-average baseball player. I’m hearing the kid we once embraced in pre- and postgame interviews and he sounds like Jose, except older and perhaps wiser. He is full of pep and positivity and, where the rest of his life is concerned, hopefully nothing else. I’m rooting for my longtime favorite player again. I don’t know that he’s my favorite player anymore, but he’s here, he’s getting on base and I’m getting used to him.
—July 23, 2016
(Free agent, 10/29/2018; currently unsigned)
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DAVID ALLEN WRIGHT
Third Baseman
July 21, 2004 – September 29, 2018
David Wright was up to stay and David Wright, unlike his worthy predecessors of the preceding quarter-century, wasn’t going anywhere…in the good sense. With Wright’s arrival, the Zimmer-Wigginton epoch was over. With Wright’s recall, recalling Met third base travails became trivial, not troubling. David Wright is the best third baseman in Mets history. When all is said and done, even though the saying and doing is barely out of the first inning, we will likely recall him as the best third baseman New York has ever seen. And as great as the feats in front of him will be, he is to be admired now for something he’s accomplished already: he has put all the laughable, cryable, mystifyable connotations attached to “playing third base for the New York Mets” far, far behind us. It’s no wonder that so many of us are willing to wear his name and number on our backs.
—July 11, 2006
(Released, 1/7/2019; joined Mets front office as special advisor upon release)
by Greg Prince on 23 February 2019 5:10 am First exhibition game? I know people get excited, and that’s great, but for me, having done this over so many Springs, it’s about knowing what I can do and when I’m ready to do it. Believe me, I’m excited, too, but I’m not gonna do anything crazy today.
What I plan to do is get my watching in, nice and simple. Gonna take it easy. Don’t wanna overdo it on the first day or even the first weekend.
I’ll see a few pitches, then ramp up to full plate appearances. I’ll listen to the announcers, settle in for a couple of innings, let the remote get comfortable in my palm again. Work on thumb flexibility — volume mostly. I watched TV during the offseason, but watching TV under game conditions is a whole other discipline.
Checking out other games between innings comes later in Spring. Picture-in-picture you save for the last week.
I’m scheduled to switch to the radio for the middle innings, hear how that sounds, probably alternate with the TV a little. Then, the next day, I start with the radio and then go to the TV. Ideally you wanna get to the point where you can listen to both at the same time while tweeting. You don’t do that too early in these games, though. That’s a headache waiting to happen.
TV and scroll. Radio and scroll. Then TV and radio and scroll. Only then do you wanna start tweeting. Besides, observations this early are gonna be half-baked by their very nature. “Baseball’s back!” gets repetitious fast. I mean you hafta do the drills — the disparity in weather between here and Florida; uniform numbers above 90; Darren Reed comparisons; Tebow pro or con — but you gotta keep in mind that you’re preparing for a long season. Short threads now keep your tweets fresh later.
At this stage, really, you just look to build up strength and stamina. No sense trying to follow the action. Right now it’s about anecdotes and generalizations, forming vague impressions. Noticing the score is the last thing you wanna do right out of the box.
You wanna make the roster, natch, but you hafta be conscious that making the roster in February is literally impossible. Somebody’s gonna get injured, and there goes your roster. Somebody’s gonna have a good outing and you’ll wanna put him on your roster. But wait: is somebody else out of options? What about the Rule 5 guy? Three catchers? How versatile is versatile? How deep is a deep bullpen? Seven relievers? Eight? And if so, where’s your third catcher then?
Syracuse, that’s where. See?
You don’t start making a 25-man roster on the first day of games or even the first week. Make a 10-man roster, then a 12-man and keep going. Use a pencil with a thick eraser and keep a sharpener nearby. I like a legal pad. Scratch paper is OK, too. I know they have apps for it now, but fundamentals are key in Spring. You wanna make the roster? Write it out in longhand.
Most of all, remember that you have more than a month to get ready. I know it’s a cliché, but you gotta take it one game that doesn’t count at a time.
by Greg Prince on 17 February 2019 1:53 am When we began this blog fourteen years and one day ago, we didn’t have Jacob deGrom to root for and write about. Jacob deGrom was a high school kid four months shy of his seventeenth birthday and nine years away from making himself known to us. But had Jacob deGrom been a 2005 Met coming off a Cy Young season and glimpsing forward toward eventual free agency, I would have fiercely believed there was no way he and the Mets would part ways. Maybe eventually, after his next contract played out to everybody’s satisfaction, but not while he was in his prime, not when he was so comfortable in orange and blue, not while the Mets were benefiting so bountifully from his excellence.
Here in 2019, as FAFIF’s fifteenth Spring Training gets underway, we have the actual Jacob deGrom coming off an actual Cy Young season, yet I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s wearing some other team’s threads by this time in 2021, if not sooner. Maybe that won’t happen. Maybe the Mets and their ace will stare deeply into each other’s eyes and realize they’re unquestionably better together than they are apart, sealing their sentiments not with a kiss but the appropriate extraordinary dollar amount.
But maybe not. I’m leaning that way based on the inability of the two parties to have gotten anywhere despite the installation of deGrom’s former agent as Mets general manager (there’s a sentence you don’t expect to type). Jake and Brodie Van Wagenen blandly platituded this week, save for the modest dollop of newslike information that Jake wouldn’t rule out seeking an innings limit to preserve his right arm so it is fit to carry a boatload of money wherever he might happen to encounter it in due time.
If that characterization sounds a bit harsh, well, everybody’s a professional here. Everybody but the fans. Jake’s a pro’s pro. I don’t really expect him to put himself on ice for self-preservation’s sake (he’s welcome to skip a start between the division clinching and the postseason). I’ve seen nothing out of him across five superb years of pitching to suggest he’ll put forth anything less than a full-tilt effort when on the mound. Still, “I think that’s a discussion that’s going to have to be had with my agents” is a far cry from “just give me the ball, Skip.”
I don’t blame Jake, even with a $17 million arbitration award in his pocket, for theoretically hedging his bets. He’s the best pitcher in the game, but the game is weird right now. The game is weird enough right now that Jacob deGrom has to be asked whether he might want to keep his innings in check in the season ahead because, $17 million notwithstanding, way more money might be sitting on another table elsewhere. There are enough variables floating around to make nothing automatic, not for the star performer who says he loves being a part of the only team he’s ever known in the bigs, not for the team that has seen him succeed wildly whenever he’s performed for them.
Still, what’s the point of being a Major League Baseball franchise if you’re not going to secure the best talent possible, especially when that best talent already dresses in your clubhouse and doesn’t appear in any rush to leave it? In a perfect world, Jake remains a Met more or less forever. Nobody connected to the Mets wants another outcome. But anybody watching the Mets these past fourteen seasons — or any team in this era — knows other outcomes are waiting to engulf and devour what is ideal. Ideal is Jake continuing to pitch and pitch very well for the Mets well beyond 2020. His early Tommy John surgery and his relatively late promotion to the majors implies less wear and tear than your typical thirtysomething pitcher. Jake is hardly typical of his breed to begin with. If you’re gonna sign any pitcher up for keeps, sign this pitcher up for keeps.
Or don’t. Because maybe the best pitcher in the game in 2018 will never be quite as good again. Maybe? Probably. Getting a six-month ride of 1.7 earned runs allowed per nine innings seems a ton to ask for more than once in a lifetime. But if you got something approximating last year mixed in with what you got the four years before, you’d take that, right? DeGrom doesn’t have to learn to pitch. Doesn’t need to mature. Doesn’t need to get used to New York. That’s worth plenty, you’d think. Even if we are to assume that a pitcher who passes age 32, 33 and so on might have a little less on the ball every year, we would also figure this pitcher will know what to make of what he has.
Yeah, that would be swell. So would David Wright gracefully entering the penultimate year of his long-term contract in tandem with Yoenis Cespedes continuing his more compressed megadeal uninterrupted. Wright’s a front office guy now and Cespedes is guessing when his heels will be up for baseball activities. On some since-erased drawing board in St. Lucie, they were marked down as batting third and fourth in 2019.
Emotionally, which is where fandom comes in, I know I would cringe hard at Jacob deGrom buttoning another jersey over his shirt and tie and announcing that, though he’ll always cherish the memories he has as a Met, he and his family are grateful for this opportunity with this new team in this new city and he can’t wait to get out there and pitch for these great fans.
It’s as likely to happen that way as it’s not. In 2005, despite a lifetime to that point of seeing almost all of my favorites slip or storm away, I would not have accepted this a fifty-fifty likelihood. Intermittently since 2005 I’ve generally refused to accept lurking departures as faits accomplis. The Mets would never let their homegrown batting champion go away. The Mets would never let their first twenty-game winner in more than twenty years go away. The Mets would never do less than everything they can to keep their best players on the team.
Handshakes and lifts to the airport aren’t a 21st-century invention, but perhaps my acceptance that they’re inevitable is. I’m heading into my fifty-first season as a fan. I’m still a little shaken that the Mets traded Ron Swoboda after my second, never mind Tom Seaver in the middle of my ninth. This has been going on forever. What hasn’t is my preparing myself to sort of shrug the day Jacob deGrom becomes an ex-Met, should that day occur. I won’t like it. I will despise it. But I half-expect it. I will reason that though I will always cherish the memories he brought us as a Met, I really look forward to this new season.
Will I really? That’s a discussion that’s going to have to be had with my agents.
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