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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 1 September 2018 8:15 pm It’s September 1, 2018. The Mets entered the month 59-75, 15 games removed from any stratum of playoff action. The kind of context that gives September its juice eludes us. We have an individual honor to root for where Jacob deGrom is concerned. We have an unfortunate soap opera to sort out where David Wright is concerned (such a drama queen, that one). We have the usual minutiae to mark down given the expansion of the roster. As soon as we see the newly promoted Eric Hanhold make a pitch, some of us will channel our inner Homer Simpsons and emit a WOO-HOO! because it will give us 55 Mets in one season, a record. Anybody else who shows up, we’ll mark them present, too.
But mostly it’s a September when an eleven-inning, 2-1 victory steered by Steven Matz for the first seven (eleven strikeouts) and brought home on a combination of strong relief (Lugo, Blevins, Gsellman), enough offense (Nido, Flores, Frazier) and a touch of glove (Nimmo) is…fine. Now we’re 60-75. We pick up a half-game on the road to nowhere.
We’ll take what we can get, and if a win is what we can get on a sunny Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, we’ll raise a thumb in its honor and anticipate Sunday afternoon’s ballgame. We have only so many of those left.
It’s September 1. It should have more to it than this. It should have stakes. It should have tension. It should have hope, or at least the illusion thereof. It should have a pennant race or playoff chase or whatever one wants to call it in the Wild Card age. September 1 should loom as the launching pad to a grand climax. Instead it’s the continuation of an extended denouement, except with a couple of more players lingering on the bench and in the bullpen.
But it hasn’t always been that way. Sometimes our team enters September with stakes and tension and hope and no less than a conceivable shot at October, which is what it’s all about. I mean, yeah, it’s about green grass and blue skies and family and friends and all that…but that’s subtext. The story of choice in a given year is winning enough so that you get to this point and you think you’ll win it all.
We’ve been there. We haven’t always won it all. Sometimes we haven’t won very much from this moment forward, but we made it through five months with the promise of a sixth that might lead us to a seventh, and if you’re playing when most of the rest of baseball has gone home, then you know you’ve had a helluva season.
This year, “hell” and “season” have gone together chummily and fiendishly. Other years, the words pair very differently, as in we’re having a helluva season. I count 23 of them where we’ve said that with some degree of sincerity and accuracy when August is done, 23 years when we arrived at September 1 dreaming big and thinking deep. When we get one of those, we are Mets fans first, whatever else in the background. There’s nothing like one of those Septembers.
This is nothing like one of those Septembers.
As a reminder of how it works when it is, I decided to try to remember those other Septembers. The Firsts of those Septembers, at any rate, when life was neither slow nor oh so mellow. Join me as we tour the subconscious of Mets fandom when September comes in like a lion and we’re ready to roar.
It’s September 1, 1969.
Having split a doubleheader at Candlestick, the Mets enter the month 76-54, already with more wins than they’ve ever had in any one season.
After all these years, our Mets really are Amazin’.
Tom Seaver just notched No. 19, tying Jerry Koosman’s mark from last year.
Cleon Jones is batting .351, for goodness sake.
We trailed the Cubs by 9½ less than three weeks ago and now the deficit is down to four.
We’re a little more than a week from Chicago coming into Shea.
Anything is possible, right?
I swear I don’t know how Gil Hodges has done it, but he seems to be doing something.
It’s September 1, 1970.
After sticking it to the Cardinals in St. Louis, the Mets are 68-64 and in a real dogfight, in third place, but only a game-and-a-half behind the Pirates and a half-game behind the Cubs.
Seaver’s lost a few in a row, but he still has 17 wins, seems a lock for 20 and another Cy Young.
Sure wish we were hitting more, though.
Agee’s at .291 and Shamsky’s flirting with .300, but Cleon is more than 70 points off his final average from last year.
Ah, last year.
Tough act to follow, but we are closer to first this September 1 than we were last September 1.
It’s September 1, 1973.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think we’re out of it.
It was a horrible summer, but as Labor Day approaches, look at us, only 5½ back — and nine under, at 62-71 — but out of last place.
Fifth place doesn’t look so bad when everybody is bundled together like this.
Look, we just beat the first-place Cards.
McGraw, who’s mostly sucked, got the win with four innings of relief.
His ERA is still over five, but relief pitchers’ ERAs don’t necessarily mean anything.
The other important thing is we seem to have a healthy, representative starting lineup.
I’m telling you, this division is there for the taking.
It’s gotta be.
It’s September 1, 1975.
We’re hanging in there.
Lost the last two in L.A., but still: 71-64, a manageable five games back of Pittsburgh, only one behind Philly and St. Louis.
Speaking of managing, Roy McMillan’s making a difference, isn’t he?
Nobody wanted to see Yogi go, but it was time for a change.
Gotta love the change brought by Mike Vail.
Roy stuck him in left and Mike’s responded by batting .381, including his last seven games in a row.
See what happens when you play the kids?
Well, one of the kids.
Rusty’s no kid, but he’s driving in runs like crazy.
Felix is no kid, but he’s out there every day.
Seaver, who’s also no kid, goes for No. 20 tomorrow at Shea versus the Buccos
He has a chance to strike out his 200th, too, for the eighth year in a row.
We have a chance to make up ground in this series.
1969…1973…1975? Why not?
It’s September 1, 1981.
The strike was terrible, costing us something like 60 games when all is said and done, but you can’t complain about the aftermath.
Instead of being buried below four teams and barely fending off the Cubs for last, look at us now: a full-fledged second-season contender.
What else do you call being 2½ out entering September, tied with the Cubs of all teams for third, behind only first-place St. Louis and second-place Montreal.
It’s up for grabs.
We’ve won 11 of 21 since they started playing again and there’s no reason Joe Torre can’t figure out a way to get us even more momentum.
It won’t take much more.
Sure wish Ellis Valentine would get it going and that Pat Zachry could find some consistency (and that Lee Mazzilli would finally get off the schneid; what happened to him?), but Hubie Brooks is batting over .300 and Mookie Wilson isn’t far off.
It’s anybody’s ballgame.
Might as well be ours.
It’s September 1, 1984.
I haven’t given up hope yet.
Admittedly it looked much better a month ago, before we made a habit of losing to the Cubs, but even taking that sweep at Wrigley into account, we’re within reach, just 5½ back at 74-59.
Obviously this is the best we’ve been in a very long time.
We can get better.
We have them in for three in a week and go out to Chicago a week later.
They’re the Cubs.
They haven’t won anything since 1945.
They sure as hell didn’t win in 1969.
I’m kind of counting on form holding where that’s concerned.
I’m also counting on Dr. K, who goes for his 14th in the opener against the Padres today.
Man, that Gooden kid’s been on fire.
They also say Calvin Schiraldi, who Davey Johnson is starting in the nightcap, is supposed to be real good.
Look like we’re going to activate John Stearns, too.
Nobody deserves a real pennant race more than the Dude.
I hope we can start closing the gap here.
What a shame it would be not to win it this year.
Then again, we do seem well positioned for next year no matter what.
It’s September 1, 1985.
This has got to be the moment this franchise’s life has been leading to.
What a year…what a team!
Doc’s basically the greatest pitcher ever, Carter’s taping his knees and holding things together, Keith is slumping but he’s still Keith and Darryl’s gonna keep getting better (he’s only 23, you know) — yet here we are, two games behind the stupid Cardinals.
Twenty-four games above .500 at 76-52, yet we can’t get into first place to stay.
Doc’s winning streak even came to an end.
He’s 20-4, so maybe we’ll overlook yesterday’s loss.
We need everything we can get.
Paciorek’s been a disappointment and Bowa hasn’t done anything.
After the finale of the series in San Francisco, it’s off to San Diego, then Los Angeles, then home for St. Louis.
Gotta keep pushing.
This is our year.
I can feel it.
It’s September 1, 1986.
For the first time, we enter the final month in first place.
The Mets are 87-43 and lead the second-place Phillies by 19.
We have a video (“Let’s Go Mets”).
We have a Magic Number (14).
We have a month to go and it’s a formality.
This, to understate the case, is great.
I could do this every year.
It’s September 1, 1987.
What is it Starship keeps telling us on the stations that aren’t 1050 Sports Radio WFAN?
“It’s not over ’til it’s over.”
How can it be?
We appeared dead in July (10 out at one point), but we’ve kept making up ground.
Then we lose ground.
But we ain’t dead yet, not at 74-57 and the Cards only 5½ ahead.
This last West Coast trip is off to a good start and, before you know it, we’ll have the Redbirds in our sights at Shea.
We’ll have our pitching intact, we’ll have momentum…you’re gonna count us out after what we did last October?
I don’t think so.
It’s September 1, 1988.
Have we shaken off the Pirates for good yet?
They gave us all we wanted (not that we wanted it), but it appears they’re chasing only our dust.
Even with yesterday’s loss to the Padres, we seem to have this thing in good stead: 78-54, a 7½ game lead and, oh look, a whole new weapon in Gregg Jefferies, who’s batting .429.
Mookie’s been tearing it up since Los Angeles, Darryl’s gotta be the MVP and we’re gonna have some playoffs again.
I missed those.
It’s September 1, 1989.
Quite the scramble in the East, huh?
We’re tied for second with the Cardinals, 2½ in back of the Cubs, with the Expos, for whom Mark Langston maybe wasn’t the big differencemaker, only three out.
I wish I felt more confident, but I have the sense we made our big move in August, not just getting Viola but then edging to within a game-and-a-half of first.
Then Don Aase gives up that home run to Willie Randolph two Sundays ago at Shea and shades of Terry Pendleton and Mike Scioscia began to descend.
Still, we swept the Dodgers on the Coast (revenge!) and we’re part of the race, so you never know.
Plus Doc might be coming back at some point.
It’s September 1, 1990.
We’ve reloaded for the home stretch, picking up Tommy Herr, Charlie O’Brien and, for when the bases are loaded, Pat Tabler.
Plus we’ve called up Julio Valera to take the Saturday start against the Giants (sorry, Ron).
Honestly, I thought we would have pulled away by now, considering how Buddy Harrelson lit a fire under this bunch in June.
Instead we’re sitting here tangled up with the Pirates, 74-53, a half-game back.
Losing Kevin Elster was a bigger deal than I imagined.
So, in retrospect, was never fully replacing Gary Carter.
Magadan’s done the job succeeding Keith, though, and a rotation of Gooden, Viola and Cone oughta be unbeatable in September.
Oughta be.
We’ll see, I guess.
It’s September 1, 1997.
Maybe I’m nuts, but I think we still have a chance.
Granted, seven games out with 27 to go is asking a lot, but I’m keying in on those four in Miami the second-to-last weekend on the schedule.
The Marlins won’t pull away with the Wild Card and I figure the Giants and Dodgers will beat each other up in the meantime, clearing the way for us to make a charge.
After taking three of four, including those last two in Baltimore, I’m not surrendering yet by any means, but I will concede being en route to our first winning record in seven years — 73-62 as we speak — is its own reward.
I had no idea Bobby Valentine was this much of a genius, but anybody who could weave so many spare parts into a fairly legitimate contender deserves the title.
I don’t know if we deserve the Wild Card.
That you have to earn (geez, I sound like Fran Healy).
That’s what September is for for us for a change.
Beats the hell out of what September’s been like at Shea most years of late.
It’s September 1, 1998.
Some days I can barely breathe from this Wild Card race.
Where are we now?
After beating the Dodgers last night (Reeder with his 16th), we are tied with the Cubs for the Wild Card, both of us 76-52, the Giants two back.
Don’t mind me speaking in the first-person plural.
This has been the kind of season to take very personally.
On one hand, Leiter’s been amazing, Olerud is hitting like he did for Toronto and Mike…Mike seems to have calmed down.
He can breathe.
On the other hand, Bobby V has to do a lot of mixing and matching.
Lenny Harris.
Butch Huskey.
Tony Phillips.
It’s like the NBA used to have with foul shots: three to make two.
I love Fonzie, but he’s not quite what he was last year.
I tolerate Franco, but geez, he does not contribute to relaxed breathing.
Nevertheless, deep breaths are in order.
We’ve got a month to get back to the playoffs for the first time in a decade.
We can do this.
It’s September 1, 1999.
I’m having the time of my life, I’m pretty sure.
True, my life would be better without the Braves in it, but other than them, it’s been as dreamy a season any this side of 1986.
More like 1985, I suppose.
The ups, the down.
Lots of them.
Hard to believe they were ready to fire Valentine.
Hard to believe we kind of came back to earth a little after that 40-15 surge he promised and delivered.
Here we are, entering this final presumably crazy month of this already certified crazy year 80-53, 3½ behind goddamn Atlanta, but three up on the Wild Card field.
This infield doesn’t make errors.
Ventura’s like an MVP.
So is Mike.
Hell, Fonzie went 6-for-6 the other night at the Astrodome.
The starting pitching could use a little length (good thing we picked up Kenny Rogers), but the bullpen is solid.
I think we’re gonna do it this year.
Not sure what “it” is yet, but we’re gonna do something.
It’s September 1, 2000.
I don’t want to alarm anybody, but we are in first place.
The first-place New York Mets, 79-54, leading not just the hated Braves (albeit by a half-game), but everybody in baseball.
Well, we’re tied with the White Sox for best record in the sport, but never mind them.
We went 20-9 in August.
Mike made the cover of SI, and I’m not even nervous about that.
Benny threw a ball into the crowd — a live ball — and we won anyway.
Hampton’s come around, Bordick’s been a pro, Rick White’s enhancing the relief corps.
I’m almost too calm about how well things are going for us.
But also very excited.
It’s September 1, 2001.
All right, I know.
It’s a long shot.
Of course it’s a long shot.
We’ve spent practically the entire season under .500, looking dreadful for massive swaths of it.
But so did the 1973 Mets.
Blasphemous?
Possibly, but consider this.
Even though we’re 64-71, we’re hot.
We’ve won 10 of 13 and we’ve whittled the divisional lead to single digits.
The Wild Card may be out of reach (go figure), but do either the Braves or Phillies look like worldbeaters to you?
We have three at the Vet after we finish these two with the Marlins at Shea and six — SIX! — versus the Braves later in the month.
I understand the odds, but what if it is 1973 again?
I gave up repeatedly from April until the middle of August.
Why give up now?
It’s September 1, 2005.
This is a real “why not us?” moment, don’tcha think?
The Wild Card is as up for grabs as in any year we’ve been one of the teams doing the grabbing.
Being 69-63 is good for fourth place in this little playoff derby, but it puts us only 1½ in back of the Phillies.
The Astros and Marlins have the nerve to insinuate themselves between us and them (with the Nationals hanging a half-game behind us), but it’s all there for us if we win this afternoon.
It would have been far better had Pedro not been off his game last night, thus depleting the momentum Ramon Castro provided us the night before — and it would have been fantastic had we simply kept playing at Arizona, where we swept four and combined to beat the Diamondbacks, 32-5, in two of them — but Willie Randolph has us in it, and that’s all we can ask for.
Whatever happens, it’ll be good experience for the kids.
Wright, Reyes, Jacobs, Diaz, welcome to the pennant race.
It’s September 1, 2006.
We’re 82-50, 15½ up on the Phillies, a Magic Number of 15.
We’ve got Beltran posting MVP-type numbers, Reyes running wild and Lo Duca making us if not forget then not miss Mike Piazza.
We could probably use a little more pitching depth, but when isn’t that true?
Otherwise, we have few worries.
Helluva year to this point.
Can’t wait to see what awaits several weeks from now.
I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but what a 20th anniversary present for 1986.
It’s September 1, 2007.
I’d like to think we’ve taken the most resounding punch the Phillies can give us and we’re still on our feet.
That four-game sweep at Citizens Bank this week was brutal, but look at the bright side.
We remain in first place, two games up on them.
If we were really teetering, we’d be ready to fall into a tie with them ASAP.
Instead, we won last night in Atlanta, plus we’ve got Pedro coming back when we get to Cincinnati on Monday.
We’re 75-60.
It’s not quite as up there as maybe we projected when were running away with this thing three months ago (when we were 33-17), but how many years do you get to run and hide from your division?
I haven’t even looked at that the Wild Card standings in case the unthinkable happens and I’m not going to.
Think positive thoughts.
It’s September 1, 2008.
In between my bouts of melancholy over the impending closing of Shea Stadium, I am allowing myself to enjoy our unusual first-place standing — 76-61, a game ahead of Philadelphia — without rancor or remorse.
How can I stay mad at the Mets for tearing down my ballpark when I’ve got Santana rounding into Cy Young form and Delgado slugging like crazy since late June, roughly around the time Jerry Manuel took over.?
How about Beltran with that grand slam to beat the Marlins last night?
As ever, there’s a few too many injuries nibbling away at the roster, but Murphy and Evans have filled in nicely and no doubt reinforcements are on their way.
I don’t know much about Jonathon Niese (that’s how he spells it), but he’ll start in Milwaukee and maybe he’ll help.
We miss Maine and Wagner, but then again, I already miss Shea.
Sure would love to send it out in style.
It’s September 1, 2015.
It’s not like us to buy in to the Mets being good, but they’re getting to the point of no return.
Or no returns, if you like the retail metaphor.
I understand how they let us down in their most recent playoff chases, but this isn’t one of those teams.
These are the Yoenis Cespedes-injected Mets, 73-58 at the moment, 21-11 since we found out he’d be donning one of our uniforms.
That’s what I’d call an impact player.
I’d also call the 6½-game lead over Washington sturdy.
Anything can happen, of course.
Usually that implies anything bad, but I don’t believe that’s gonna be the case the rest of the way.
We slew a few ghosts at Citizens Bank this week, sweeping both the 2015 Phillies and the specter of 2007.
At the risk of riling up the gods, the Nats don’t seem that great and we…we seem pretty darn good.
Not just Cespedes, but the rest of us.
I’m ready to creep out on that limb and suggest not even Terry Collins making weird calls to the bullpen will knock us from our perch.
Well, maybe I should wait until the three-game series in DC to speak in certainties.
But I’m feeling good.
Feeling better, for sure, than I have in a very long time where this team is concerned.
It’s September 1, 2016.
I’m as surprised as you are that we’re here, in the thick of the Wild Card race, a game-and-a-half back of St. Louis for the second ticket to potential paradise.
San Francisco’s two ahead of them, and we’ve still got the Pirates and Marlins nipping at our heels, but considering where we were a veritable blink ago — 60-62 and barely hanging on — I’ll take it.
After winning nine of eleven (two better than Jeri Ryan territory), our record is a very respectable 69-64, and in the age of double Wild Cards, very respectable can get it done.
Besides, we took two of three at Busch after the winning the last two in San Fran.
Could it be we’re actually the best of the middling lot?
Again, that’s all it takes sometimes.
We’ve stopped sucking.
Cespedes has resumed slugging, as witnessed by his walkoff homer over the Marlins the other night.
I had my doubts about Reyes, but he’s been a decent third baseman.
Cabrera’s been a godsend.
Actually, we’re getting by on a lot of godsends.
Two Riveras I’d never heard of before.
James Loney.
Justin Ruggiano, though I guess he’s out for the season now.
And who the hell is Robert Gsellman?
Just keep giving Terry pieces.
He’ll make ’em fit and maybe we’ll make it back to October after all.
by Jason Fry on 1 September 2018 3:18 am Let’s be clear about one thing after a day where clarity was sadly lacking: Zack Wheeler was wonderful.
Wheeler’s blossoming is one of the unalloyed positives to come out of this weirdly bitter Mets season: Wheeler seems to have shaken off injuries and rust and youth to become the top-flight starter we’d imagined since he arrived. He was dominant, electric, downright deGromian in throttling the Giants: four hits and no walks over seven innings, with nine punchouts.
Unfortunately Wheeler was also deGromian in being abandoned by teammates paid to do something with a stick in their hands. Andrew Suarez, a rookie lefty (two words that make sawdust of Met bats) was pretty darn good himself, and the Mets squandered the few opportunities they had. With runners on first and third in the seventh, Jay Bruce tapped into a double play to keep the game scoreless; with the Mets down one in the eighth and Brandon Nimmo on second, Jose Reyes fanned and Michael Conforto grounded out. Then a whole lot of Met relievers arrived to get not a lot of outs, and the ballgame went down the toilet in a hurry.
Points to Giants rookie catcher Aramis Garcia, child of Met fans, whose first big-league hit was a homer into the left-field stands and whose second big-league hit came in the same inning. I’m too inept to dare try looking it up, but there have to be a lot of major leaguers who retire never having had two hits in the same inning, and Garcia checked that one off on his first night. Another oddity: the game-winning RBI, to use a stat that makes “pitcher win” seem like bWAR, went to another brand-new Giant, Chris Shaw, whose first hit still lies in his future.
Unfortunately, off-field news once again proved the larger story, as David Wright rejoined the Mets to continue his rehab but then received a muddled message from whatever passes for an authority figure these days. It started with word that Wright had medical clearance to play in the minors but not the majors, which was baffling to all involved, and then morphed into the front office wanting to see certain things from Wright before activating him to finally play big-league ball again.
So what are those things? We never really found out. Wright wasn’t specific, perhaps by choice or perhaps because he had no specifics to give. And while I’m not a psychologist, his demeanor when questioned by beat reporters was … well, let’s call it “odd.” A little stunned, perhaps; maybe a little pissed. Wright reiterated that he intends to play this month, and talked about determination and motivation, but it sure didn’t sound like a plan that everybody understood.
Maybe I’m being paranoid. I really, really, really hope so. But something’s wrong here, and the oh-so-Metsian question is what.
What’s not in question is the Mets are back to the only thing in which they reliably lead the league: namely, fucking up.
The positive interpretation of today’s mini-drama is that communications were mishandled between the brass and Wright and the brass and the media. Wright was told something, and instead of having a point person, everyone was left to interpret it, starting with Wright himself. There was no general manager to address the media because there is no general manger; instead, various heads attached to the three-headed chimera that isn’t a GM were heard from secondhand. Needless to say the Wilpons remained silent, unseen and unaccountable as is their wont. The closest thing to an authority figure in the whole mess was Mickey Callaway, who may or may not have known what he was talking about and whose pronouncements just made things worse.
David Wright working towards returning should be an inspiring story for a team and fanbase that could sure use one. But the Mets have managed to turn it into something weird and confusing, botching yet another one-car funeral.
And again, that’s the positive interpretation.
The negative interpretation … well, it’s easy to describe, because it’s scarily plausible. It would have something to do with insurance money and how much of it the Mets would forego this year and next year if Wright plays; who makes the decision that Wright is ready to play or not; and whose best interests that person (or persons, or lack of an actual person) has in mind. Wright said that issue hasn’t come up in his discussions with the club, but that only made me wonder if the team was blindsided by the possibility that Wright might actually return and now doesn’t know what to do.
It goes without saying that if that’s what’s going on, it will be the kind of back-page nightmare that terrifies the Wilpons and — as has happened to innumerable clay-footed despots in fairy tales — inevitably comes to pass because of that fear and its hold over them. A PR nightmare like that is the last thing the Wilpons need, this fanbase needs, and Wright needs — and two out of three of us don’t deserve it.
But let’s admit it: wouldn’t a triumphant return turned curdled and grudging be a fitting ending for this sour, off-kilter season?
by Greg Prince on 29 August 2018 11:20 pm Pending makeup dates instigated by rain, an atmospheric condition that seems to follow the Mets all about the continent, Wednesday brought us the final weekday afternoon game of the season. Yes, we’re actually at that point of the schedule when lasts are taking their final at-bats. Last day baseball infiltrates the traditional workweek. Last visit to Wrigley Field. Last interaction with the National League Central.
First time, though, for a sentence of this nature: Hardy veterans Jason Vargas and Todd Frazier led the Mets to a resounding victory over a first-place team.
See? As long as baseball is being played, it’s never too late for a few miracles.
Go figure these Mets. Led by Frazier, they put ten on the board in support of Vargas and various bullpen successors, yet couldn’t score two freaking runs for Jacob deGrom — or anybody who pitched in his wake — and went down to a 2-1 defeat when the game suspended Tuesday night resumed play Wednesday afternoon. Hard to blame the eleventh-inning defeat on the Mets’ impotent lumber, however, when it was Paul Sewald who all but literally threw away the game.
Paul, who seems like a nice enough kid, is 0-11 in the big leagues, all of it in service to torpedoing already dim Met prospects these past two miserable years. That’s not what you’d call a promising launch to a career. Sewald entered the potentially endless 1-1 affair in the eleventh, walking Javy Baez to get his feet overly wet. Victor Caratini laid down a bunt. Sewald pounced, grabbed and sailed a throw over first base as if he had chosen to idle his afternoon away on Lake Michigan. If the object was to nail Caratini in right, this might have been the play to make. I don’t think it was. Ah, Paulie, maybe someday it won’t all go to L with you.
It didn’t take long for the ivy-covered walls to come crashing in. An intentional walk was issued. An out was recorded. A pitching change was made. Daniel Zamora entered. Ben Zobrist batted. This was a classic Z-on-Z matchup. Zobrist bested Zamora, singling up the middle (where’s a shift when you need it?) to alphabetically clear away what remained of the night before’s soggy leftovers.
But that wasn’t that for Wednesday. Tuesday night’s game was masquerading as a matinee, the seventh resumption of a suspended contest in Mets’ history and the third loss the Mets have waited an abnormal span of time to absorb (the others occurred well after the blackout in 1977 and under less legendary circumstances in 2013). Fortunately the day-after result didn’t diminish the Mets’ enthusiasm for the real afternoon game at hand. Frazier put it out of reach early with a first-inning grand slam and Vargas kept it out of reach into the sixth. The Cubs seemed to be mailing it in, but we’ll accept delivery of a 10-3 win postmarked WRIGLEY FIELD anytime.
Good to see Wrigley Field in daylight. One didn’t used to have to add the qualifier, but night ball now predominates on the North Side, thus there hasn’t been a Mets at Cubs day game since July 20, 2016, which happened to have been the day of my father’s memorial service, so the date kind of sticks with me. It was also the first time the Mets won at Wrigley since July 19, 2016, the night preceding that particular occasion. I vividly recall the morning of the Twentieth, hurriedly writing up Jeurys Familia’s ninth-inning wizardry (he somehow got himself out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out mess) and then donning a dark suit for the cheery ride out to Pinelawn.
Then, last September, the 2017 Mets dragged their not so lively selves back to Wrigley for three night games in which they were outscored, 39-14, which sounds like one of those random couplings of numbers invoked to exaggerate a series of blowout losses, but no, the Mets were really outscored, 39-14. Not only was it depressing, it was at night. Wrigley at night is splendid when you’re clinching a pennant. An afternoon is preferable if you’re going to wallow well below .500.
And a 10-3 win is most choice of all.
How about these Mets and their usually creaky components operating to factory specs? Vargas is overindexing at last. Frazier is suddenly the biggest ex-Little Leaguer going. Jose Reyes pinch-hit and tripled in two runs, even. Hey, have you noticed Jose Reyes is still a Met? I’m the guy who says that without the snarling or sneering usually associated with Internet communication where No. 7 is concerned, yet I’m as amazed as anybody. Barring unforeseen 40-man machinations — or somebody falling down a steep hill on the off day in San Francisco — Jose appears on the cusp of entering September as one of only four Mets active every darn game of 2018 (joining Robert Gsellman, Seth Lugo and intermittently firing sparkplug Amed Rosario), meaning he’ll probably make it to year’s end with his roster spot intact. I am indeed amazed and quietly contented over this long-term development reaching fruition. God forbid it’s repeated in 2019, but for now, as long as you’re giving me good, old-fashioned day baseball at Wrigley Field, give me a player I rooted particularly hard for tripling like he did when he and the century were young and I wasn’t nearly as old as I am now.
Not pictured in Chicago or any MLB facility just yet: David Wright, but we’ll see. He’s playing in Las Vegas. He’s banging out a few hits. He’s making barehanded scoops and firing accurately to first (Paul Sewald take note). Also, per Marc Carig’s reporting in The Athletic, he needs to commence loosening his back today for a game next week. That’s exaggeration, but apparently not much. I couldn’t tell you if David is physically up for the rigors of major league competition. I couldn’t tell you how fiscally clever it will be of the Mets to keep talking out of whichever side of their mouth in order to preserve whatever they might collect from the insurance company if they can hold Wright back. I can tell you that if David Wright honestly believes he can play, I will believe in him. I’ve been believing in David Wright most of this century, too.
Days are better with ballgames and thoughts of ballplayers you yearn to see compete in them again.
by Jason Fry on 29 August 2018 2:51 am How can you have a recap when you don’t have a final score yet?
When that final score’s yet to be recorded but the show everyone came to see is over. That’s how.
No offense to Seth Lugo, Steve Cishek or whatever Met and Cub relievers follow them when the game resumes, tied 1-1, in the 10th. Maybe reaching a conclusion will take mere minutes. Maybe it will require hours. And — because you never know — perhaps it will be an epic, a spiritual descendant of the night the Mets and Braves played all night and 3 a.m. fireworks left Atlantans worrying that a spectral General Sherman had returned to wreak further havoc.
But the teams will have to work pretty hard to create anything as dramatic or impressive as Jacob deGrom’s Tuesday night performance.
We need to order some more superlatives for the Mets’ ace as his unbelievable season — with that word earned in so many ways — rolls along. DeGrom was his usual dominant self on the mound, hitting 100 MPH in erasing Javy Baez and later all but eviscerating Daniel Murphy in a key spot. He was a wizard with the glove, denying the Cubs a run in the fourth by spearing a Kyle Schwarber grounder and finishing his night by pouncing on an eighth-inning grounder from Victor Caratini to turn a critical double play. And he was the Mets’ MVP at the plate, rolling a perfectly placed little single through the 5.5 hole to score Todd Frazier in the sixth.
Alas, that was the only run the Mets would score. Give some credit to Cole Hamels, who was pretty respectable himself for five innings. Assign some blame to the mean-spirited BABIP gods: Jeff McNeil led off the seventh with a booming triple that the wind downgraded from a home run, then had to perform two hasty reversals off third as first Austin Jackson and then Michael Conforto absolutely smoked line drives off Jorge de la Rosa. Jackson’s drive nearly took Baez’s hand off and Conforto’s slammed into Anthony Rizzo’s glove, leaving the Mets with nothing for their efforts.
That meant deGrom was working with his usual minimal support, and it cost him a chance for a victory in the seventh. Ben Zobrist hit a sharp ground ball under Jay Bruce’s glove, giving the Cubs runners at the corners and the chance to score a run without another hit, which they soon did. It was a play Bruce should have made, but beware the easy narrative: our latest first baseman probably not of the future had made a great diving stop in the bottom of the second, denying Caratini a leadoff double. And other Mets had deGrom’s back, at least when gloves were involved: Brandon Nimmo ran down Murphy’s drive into the right-field corner in the first, and Jackson made a fine running catch in the sixth.
But the line score’s the thing, and it told the same old depressing story: deGrom was fantastic but left with no chance at a win. And when he departed, so did the crackle and zip of an otherwise meaningless game for the Mets. The Mets with deGrom on the hill are a must-see show; the Mets without him are a low-budget snooze. And Mother Nature agreed, washing away any thought that the teams would be able to play a 10th inning.
Honestly, that was the perfect ending, but baseball rules dictate that a more quantitative conclusion be reached. The two teams will do so later today. Here’s hoping the Mets win, of course. But even if they earn their bows, the star of the show will have already left the building.
by Greg Prince on 28 August 2018 4:09 pm Jose Bautista will make history when he enters a game for his new team, becoming the first player to play for three separate NL East franchises in the same season. He hooked on with the Braves early in 2018, brought his talents to the Mets in May and is now going to try to be the classic veteran added to a contender. We wish him luck as a Phillie.
We also retroactively wish he could have gotten a few of his Joey At-Bats for the Marlins or Nationals along the way, for then he could be a member of the Four-Timers Club, National League East edition. The Four-Timers Club consists of players who have played for at least four different NL East teams during their careers, one of them being the Mets. It’s possible there are players who’ve been with four NL East teams that aren’t the Mets, but that’s some other blog’s problem.
To qualify, a player had to have played for franchises that were in the National League East at the time of his activity.
• That means if we’re considering Cardinals, Cubs or Pirates, we’re talking about the years 1969 through 1993. Before 1969, there were no divisions; after 1993, there was a Central Division for the likes of them.
• Likewise, Braves are NL East creatures from 1994 forward only; before that, they were either in the NL West or the National League as a whole or Milwaukee or Boston.
• The Expos were never anything but an NL East component, starting in 1969, stopping operating under that name in 2004. The Nationals picked up their erstwhile Canadian torch in 2005. Contiguous Exponentials (as we used to call them) will be considered as players for one franchise. Anybody who left the Expos prior to 2005 and realighted as a National later on will get extra credit.
• A Marlin has by definition been a National League Easterner since that outfit’s birth in 1993.
• And, of course, those Phillies and our Mets have been division staples since 1969.
Things are much more fun with rules, aren’t they?
The commissioner of our club is someone who’s surely gotten his mail mixed up with Jose Bautista’s: Miguel Batista. Miguel Batista seems to have played with more NL East clubs than anybody. I say “seems,” because I won’t swear my research has been exhaustive. Mostly I scanned the opponents section of Ultimate Mets Database and did some quick cross-referencing. Still, I think that’s enough to tell us Miguel Batista got around in our midst pretty deftly.
Batista, who pitched professionally for us in 2011 and less assuringly in 2012, began his career as a Pittsburgh Pirate in 1992. That’s chronological NL East territory right there. His next time in the majors was 1996, as a Florida Marlin. Two years later, he was a Montreal Expo across three seasons. Other pastures in other divisions awaited, but Miguel could always come home again, to the relatively new Washington Nationals in 2010. Given that his service as an Expo and a National were well separated, we’re gonna call that two different teams in his case. A couple of stops later, he became a New York Met. Then, at age 41, his final iteration, an Atlanta Brave.
I count six distinct National League East identities for Miguel Batista. What makes it more intriguing is Miguel, is better known for his time as a world champion Arizona Diamondback than he is for how he pitched for the Pirates, Marlins, Expos, Nationals, Mets or Braves — and in his homeland of the Dominican Republic he is best known as El Poeta, the poet. When it came to traveling the National League East, he was certainly the unprecedented beast.
One wonders how he missed the Phillies. Same could be said for Livàn Hernandez, who sprang to prominence as a Cuban defector who landed with the Florida Marlins in 1996 and won World Series MVP honors for them in 1997. What do you do for an encore? You tour most of the rest of the division between other engagements. Livàn joined the Expos in 2003, remained on the roster as they morphed into the Nationals in 2005, threw the first pitch in any kind of major league game at Citi Field in 2009 — then stuck around past that exhibition versus the Red Sox for most of the Mets’ first post-Shea season — before journeying back to Washington. A stint in Atlanta made him a fiveish-timer, depending on how you want to score his Natspos experience.
The Phillies get involved in these narratives when we turn to an early ’70s hotshot, some would say hot dog. Stylish first baseman Willie Montañez took the division by storm in 1971, homering thirty times, driving in nearly a hundred runs and finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting. The Phillies were dreadful then, but behind young players like Montañez, they’d start growing into contenders…but not finish the job until they traded Willie to San Francisco. The Phillies got all-world center fielder Garry Maddox. Montañez went on to cover a pretty fair amount of ground across division lines, but he always came trotting back around to the NL East. A Met in 1978 (96 RBIs!) and 1979; an Expo in 1980 and 1981; a Pirate in 1981 and 1982; and, before 1982 and his career were out, a Phillie again. No wonder the San Diego Chicken was so anxious to mimic him.
From the same era and sharing some of the same pedigree is old friend Richie Hebner. Richie began digging a place for himself as the third baseman on the perennial division champion Pirates of the early 1970s. He later picked up where Montañez left off, playing first in Philadelphia. How could the Mets resist him when he became available via trade in 1979? Richie took the Turnpike north but resisted the charms of being a deRoulet-era Met. Some resistances are more worthwhile than others. Being a Met famously didn’t suit Hebner, but being an NL Easterner clearly was his bag, baby, because after a Pittsburgh homecoming in 1982, he caught on with the NLCS-bound Cubs of 1984 and retired in the shadow of the ivy a year later. Yup, wherever Richie went in the division, he saw October. Except in Flushing, where he saw only red. His loss.
Ray Burris didn’t get a lot of postseason action, but what smidgen he did was unique. Ray pitched for the 1981 Expos, and the 1981 Expos were it as far as National League playoffs went in Canada. Prior to Montreal Ray was a Cub (1973-1979) and Met. (1979-1980) Before he hung ’em up, he was a Cardinal in 1986.
Jose Cardenal was already a veteran of some standing, dating back to 1963, when his National League East career commenced as a Cardinal in 1970. Baseball card collectors will remember his hair being quite photogenic in the mid-’70s when he was a Cub. After a brief stopover in Philadelphia, his ’fro and other qualities became our concern in 1979 and 1980. His final swing was of the World Series variety, taken for the Royals.
Late in the 1985 season, one of the more nettlesome last-place Pirates I recall from one of those series you’d love to have back was a young outfielder named Joe Orsulak. Who the hell was Joe Orsulak and what the hell was he doing getting in the way of the Mets’ march to the division title? Orsulak, it turned out, was a pretty good hitter and, come 1993, a New York Met whose presence I would enjoy immensely in some otherwise not so enjoyable seasons. By the time Orsulak was done as a Met, he wasn’t so young, but he still had enough hits left in his bat to attract the interest of the Marlins in 1996 and the Expos in 1997.
You know who was around forever? Of course you do: Todd Zeile. He was a Cardinal catcher in 1989 when the Cardinals were our archrivals or record. Todd stayed in St. Louis long enough to change divisions without changing uniforms, but his laundry ticket would begin getting awfully wrinkly shortly after realignment. Among many other things, he’d be a first baseman, a third baseman, a Phillie, a Marlin, an Expos and twice a New York Met of some early 21st-century renown. Today you can find him filling in on SNY pregame and postgame duty. Surprisingly, he hasn’t been traded to Fox Sports Southwest.
Crossing paths with Zeile on many a diamond, even if they weren’t necessarily teammates on any of them, was consummate hitter Moises Alou. Young Alou began his career with the Pirates in 1990, built his reputation with the Expos, won a World Series ring with the Marlins and went on the disabled list for the last time as a Met. He also set our hitting streak record (30) in 2007 while all around him was collapsing. If I met him, I’d think about shaking his hand, though might just settle for a friendly nod.
Would you mind giving Bruce Chen a hand with his luggage? You might want to hesitate before agreeing. Bruce got around, from the Braves in 1998 to the Phillies in 2000 to us in 2001 to the Expos in 2002 and then a whole lot of non-NL East outposts clear through to 2015. Another southpaw who you might have seen traipsing through airports in his prime was Keith Hernandez’s childhood chum Bob McClure. We knew him as our lefty specialist for the pennant drive of 1988. He was also known in cities like Montreal, St. Louis and Miami, where he concluded a nineteen-season career as an expansion Marlin in 1993.
Relief pitchers have a way of making themselves at home anywhere. Consider Luis Ayala of relatively recent vintage (Met desperation closer in 2008, Marlin, Brave, Expo/National), Yorkis Perez from the generation before (implosive Met, Phillie, pre-realignment Cub, Marlin) and spot starter Jorge Sosa. Sosa got to the Braves just as their divisional dynasty party was ending, in 2005. He became a Met just as ours wasn’t getting started, in 2007. Jorge kept pitching as an NL Easterner after our various devastations and disappointments, giving it goes with the Nationals in 2009 and Marlins in 2010.
That very same year was when we were giving up on former Brave Jeff Francoeur. Frenchy was a splashy rookie in Atlanta as their habit for winning titles was being shaken off. He joined our ranks in 2009, served as low-level lightning rod over the span of about thirteen months — making his most indelible mark as the victim of an unassisted triple play — before being sent packing to the Texas Rangers who were on their way to the 2010 World Series. Frenchy’s heart was always in the NL East, though. He was roadkill for the 2015 Mets as a Phillie, then a Recidivist Brave in 2016 and, finally, a Marlin. Jeff’s not yet 35, but he has retired.
And it’s not yet August 31. Stay tuned to your waiver wire for more potential four-timers.
by Greg Prince on 28 August 2018 3:57 am The Mets’ second-half surge to the periphery of mediocrity ran into a roadblock Monday night: a team decidedly better than them. Not that the Mets can’t lose within their peer group or take random advantage of a contender bogged down in doldrums, but for the most part the respectable hay they’ve made in July and August has been baled at the expense of opponents whose October aspirations consist primarily of hunting and fishing. On the North Side of Chicago, however, when confronted with competition that wasn’t…
• stumbling
• or tanking
• or throwing in its towel
• or coping with aches and pains
…they looked thoroughly outclassed.
They looked like the 2018 Mets playing the 2018 Cubs.
The Cubs, who are very good, looked very good. Against the first-place Cubs, the Mets couldn’t get away with being the fourth-place Mets, which is unfortunate, because recent decent performances notwithstanding, that’s exactly who they are. I doubt I have to elaborate. You’ve lived with them as I have (if probably not as deeply) for these past 131 games. You understand their limitations. If you watched on Monday, you were reminded of them again.
Noah Syndergaard fell short of Thorness. The bullpen alchemy fizzled. Players who did good things — like Rosario and Plawecki — were negated by players who did not so good things — like Plawecki and Rosario. There were key singles and daring steals and clutch homers, but there were also exasperating pickoffs and clueless strikeouts and pitches that got away with runners on third.
And on the other side, there were Rizzo and Zobrist and Baez and, oh yeah, Daniel Murphy, who hasn’t loosened his eternal grudge against the first organization to not grip him tightly. There was also Jon Lester, who survived his six sloggy innings in slightly better shape than Syndergaard, thanks primarily to his driving in two runs off Syndergaard.
Eventually, it amounted to a 7-4 Cubs win. The Mets had a sensible decision (walk Schwarber with two on to get to Lester) backfire. They were jobbed by Tony Randazzo’s spiritual cousin Eric Cooper as they attempted to rally in the ninth. They hung in and by no means succumbed to the motions, yet they simply didn’t measure up — except by one impressively lengthy yardstick.
Michael Conforto launched a home run to center field that measured up fine. It measured 472 feet, the longest a Met has ever hit in the Statcast era (which is a corporate way of saying since the middle of 2015). Alas, no additional points are awarded for distance. Conforto’s blast was his nineteenth of the season, pretty good considering the dark forest that enveloped him for so long. Michael took over the team lead from Asdrubal Cabrera, who, you might have noticed, hasn’t been a Met since sometime in July.
Not being a Met seems ready to apply to Jose Bautista. The Phillies claimed his contract (or whichever fraction the Braves aren’t paying) when the Mets put it on waivers. Jose played Monday night, but will likely be gone by Tuesday night, as soon as the Mets are satisfied with the warm body, slot money or magic beans the Phillies ante up. Joey Bats, if I can call him that following our unexpectedly extended dalliance, might help a team that is striving to persevere as the pennant race approaches the September turn. We stopped being that kind of team in May. If this is farewell, fond adieu to a guy who was hired to pick up the Cespe-less slack and once in a while did.
If it’s not, well, see you in right field real soon. (Nah, it is. Bautista traded on Tuesday to Phillies for a player to be named later or the ever popular cash.)
—
A word regarding Sunday afternoon’s affair, since I was at Citi Field for its unraveling:
YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are fourteen exclamation points in the above line, one for each run allowed by Paul Sewald, Tyler Bashlor and Corey Oswalt in the eighth and ninth innings. Holy smoke…which is what I think I saw rising from National bats (sans Murph, no less). It was like somebody detonated a suckbomb. One minute, my friend Ben and I are sitting behind home plate, schvitzing in the sun — making us Sunshine Boys, you might say — but otherwise enjoying the charms of a taut 1-0 battle, and then, for what seemed like an eternity, we absorbed the most compact blowout Elias has ever tracked.
Seriously, according to the Sports Bureau of record, no game with a score of 0-0 or 1-0 through seven innings ever went so completely sideways or pear-shaped or whatever cliché fits in the eighth and ninth. It was the second-worst shutout the Mets ever experienced; the worst in their current home; and it tied the largest margin of Flushing defeat post-Shea. It was shocking in its scope and suddenness, yet, honestly, not terribly surprising.
Is anything surprising where the Mets are concerned? Like I said earlier, we’ve had 131 games to acclimate ourselves to this team’s adorable monkeyshines. We know they are capable of anything. More losing “anything” than winning “anything,” but the parameters are wide. Lose 25-4. Win 24-4. Fill in a lineup card almost accurately. Triple the traditional number of general managers. Deprive your Cy Young candidate of oxygen. Dispatch a first baseman to left field to tackle the shortstop. Roar from the end of March clear through the middle of April. Register for conscientious objector status in June. Appear intermittently professional yet never convince anybody who cares that competence is just around the corner. Downs. Ups. More downs. The highlight montage could be directed by George Romero. Thus, when an eight-spot is ordered at last call and it’s served with a six-run chaser, forgive my YIKES if it lacks conviction.
Of course a 15-0 final from a 1-0 seventh happened. The Mets keep happening. Someday, perhaps, that will carry a different connotation. For now, we all know what that means more often than not.
by Jason Fry on 27 August 2018 12:25 pm I really thought I had MLB At Bat licked.
Volunteer duties and a kayaking trip kept me away from the Mets’ matinee against the Nats (I know, smallest of violins) and my post-vacation brain forgot to set the DVR to record the game. So when I arrived home a little before 8, my path to semi-responsible recapping required being able to navigate MLB At Bat to get to the archived game, ideally without revealing how that archived game had turned out.
And it almost worked.
I stayed off my phone while away — no angst from Mets Twitter, no postgame notes emailed by the club. Firing up At Bat, I covered the score with my hand and got to the option to watch a game without seeing the score — and got the archived SNY broadcast to start playing. Yes!
Next step: mirror my phone on the TV. Which worked. Double yes!
It worked for about five seconds. Then darkness. Ugh!
So I tried again, this time through the Apple TV app. Success on the first part: I covered the score and pulled up the interface for watching the archived game.
Except there was the score, helpfully placed smack in the middle of my TV set: WAS 15 NYM 0.
Well shit. On so many levels.
And then, because I was bone tired and unable to move from the couch, I actually watched a game I knew would turn out that way.
It’s kind of funny watching 15-0 unfold while not knowing how things went horribly, horribly wrong. I imagined 15-0 meant an implosion and an early exit for Steven Matz, but he was out there inning after inning, doggedly putting up a zero and doggedly putting up with doing his job in public with MATZY on his back. (Oh, a lament for the golden age of baseball nicknames. Once we had the Sultan of Swat, the Splendid Splinter and even Death to Flying Things; now it’s the era of Choose the Most Obvious Diminutive.)
Meanwhile, it seemed like young Jefry Rodriguez was about to come apart like a cheap watch. He kept falling behind hitter after hitter as the Met batters pushed him deeper into counts and scrutinized his entire arsenal, like burglars sizing up a property’s defenses. Surely Rodriguez would get ambushed this inning. No, this inning. Hmm, OK, but surely it will be this inning. I already knew it would be none of those innings, but it was still strange to see him escape the reckoning that always seemed to be at hand.
As for Matz, he finally cracked in the sixth, letting in a run on a Juan Soto grounder too slow to interrupt Trea Turner‘s dash home, but he departed down just 1-0. Going to the top of the eighth, the game was still a pitcher’s duel, a nail-biter with another plot twist or two likely and plenty of reasons to be hopeful as a Mets fan. Maybe Todd Frazier would run into another one. Maybe Wilmer Flores would play late-inning hero. Perhaps Jose Bautista had another bat flip in him. Perhaps the coming of Tomas Nido was nigh.
I knew none of that was going to happen — and not in that Doomed Mets Fan way of knowing, but the less mythic variant where the game was over and I’d seen the final score. But it was still bizarre to be at the top of the precipice, aware that one kind of game was about to turn into a very different kind.
The kind where your team’s relievers are out there on the mound for nearly half an hour — and then nearly as long in the ninth. Yeah, that kind.
Paul Sewald, Tyler Bashlor, and Corey Oswalt all wound up crawling back to the dugout after a frightful beating, making Matz’s duel with Rodriguez feel like it had happened days earlier. I mean, Bryce Harper started the game in the hospital with an IV in his arm and ended it with 43 RBIs. Or something like that. Close enough, really.
Still, I’m going to count the experience as a first and probably last: I watched an entire game I knew my team was fated to lose 15-0. Please schedule my intervention.
* * *
Before we turn the page to Chicago and its resident Cubs, a little about the Nats.
This is a franchise I’ve had my differences with. I remain outraged by their unretiring the Expos’ numbers and their generally shameful refusal to admit that they are the Expos in a new guise instead of some third incarnation of the Washington Senators. Those two franchises exist, are known as the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers, and are connected to the Nats only by geography. Period, full stop.
When I started visiting D.C. for Nats games, the dearth of baseball knowledge in the crowd left me stunned and openly derisive. At RFK Nats fans would leap to their feet, cheering wildly, for fly balls that the second baseman was already camped under — and not just once, but over and over again. By the fifth inning I’d be sprawled in my seat, rolling my eyes and braying “LOOK AT THE FIELDERS” while the home fans tired themselves out all over again. And if you think that’s something, my pal Will Leitch recalls attending a Cardinals-Nats game in which fans kept pestering Albert Pujols to sign autographs from the on-deck circle. Yes, during the game.
Clearly, with baseball having gone missing for a couple of generations, the home crowd had a lot of catching up to do. That’s mostly happened: now Nats crowds strike me as pretty much like those you find elsewhere, with booze-soaked partisans and unkempt OCD scorekeepers and moms and dads in explainer mode and every other fan type you’ll find yourself sharing a row with.
And those Nats fans have the baseball-fan equivalent of hair on their chest, because the Nats have been through some shit. Bad clubhouses, regular-season collapses, fizzled postseason series, strategic controversies that will live forever — if you can name it, it’s happened to this franchise and fanbase.
Including this year.
Let’s be clear: The 2018 Mets are a tire fire, one that’s burned with particular noxiousness because of that 11-1 start that wound up meaning jack shit. But the 2018 Mets’ ceiling was an slightly-above-.500 team that could overperform or get lucky. The 2018 Nats’ ceiling was to win the World Series, and its floor was to win the division. They haven’t done either; instead they may finish under .500. The Mets are a disappointment, but the Nats are a smoking crater.
That arouses no pity in me — I’m still pissed about the retired numbers and the mucked-up record books and the general disrespect for team history. But I don’t make fun of Nats fans any more. They’ve earned their stripes through searing disappointment after searing disappointment. It’s been a brutal initiation into the baseball ranks, but an effective one. And when they are finally rewarded for it all, I’m pretty sure I’ll be happy for them.
by Greg Prince on 25 August 2018 9:19 pm The Mets only came to Citi Field to do two things Saturday afternoon: kick some National ass and hand out some Jay Bruce bobbleheads. Come the sixth inning, looked like they were almost outta bobbleheads.
But they weren’t done with the other top priority of the late summer, so in addition to Zack Wheeler continuing to daze and confuse Washington hitters, and Mets defense similarly perplexing their visitors from the Middle Atlantic, our batters brought out their paddles to build an eventual 3-0 win.
Amed Rosario in the sixth: WHACK — home run off Tanner Roark, into the M&M’s Sweet Seats.
Todd Frazier in the seventh: WHACK — home run off Wander Suero, out to left.
Michael Conforto in the eighth: WHACK — a grounder the other way through a hole that gaped too invitingly to decline, off Matt Grace, a lefty brought in to retire previous hitter Jeff McNeil. But McNeil, as we know, is just getting going (his hitting streak has reached ten; Mike Vail beware). McNeil singled Rosario to third. Rosario was on first after speedily beating out what might have been a double play ball in some other runner’s colorful Player’s Weekend shoes. Then came Conforto making like the headiest of geckos, providing the insurance run.
Wheeler had put us in good hands with his seven shutout innings. A little bending, no breaking — vintage Helen Reddy stuff familiar to those of us who’ve been on track with Zack going back a ways. The next sets of reliable arms belonged to Daniel Zamora, Drew Smith and Jerry Blevins, a curious blend of freshman and senior relievers, but who’s asking for ID when everybody’s chipping in toward ending a game? Kevin Plawecki grabbed a foul pop at the screen in the seventh after nailing a stealing Juan Soto in the sixth. Soto tried to nab an extra base off Austin Jackson in the eighth, but Rosario stood firm for the tag when the wunderkind bounced ever so slightly off the ground. And how about Amed being in exactly the right place to start an inning-ending double play on Bryce Harper in the fifth? The last time Zack pitched, his shortstop was positioned hither and yon and, next thing you knew, here came temporary left fielder Dom Smith, his GPS set to Good Intentions, his sense of direction all kaput. Wheeler wasn’t too happy when that excellent start of his wound up in hell.
Ah, but that was when the Mets were wandering in circles. That was Monday. This is Saturday. Saturday the Mets in their adorable, unbeatable Little League-ish togs are winners over the Nationals twice in a row, winners in general four of their last five, a 14-8 juggernaut since August 4 and three games over .500 since the turn of July.
You can argue that none of it adds up to anything other than good days outnumbering bad days as a bad year winds down. But that’s all right, we’ll worry about that later. Let me ask you this in the meantime: is it ever any less than a marvelous thing when the Mets nudge the Nationals ever closer to their demise?
I didn’t think so.
by Jason Fry on 25 August 2018 12:22 am What if the secret of making the Mets better is being mean to them?
No, not by forcing them to play a new position, letting them rot on the bench, warming them up too often and not putting them in a game, not putting them in a game for weeks, letting injuries linger without DL stints, or ignoring their minor-league stats and concluding they’re platoon players. The Mets have tried all those strategies with their charges, and the results have been predictable.
No, I’m talking about us — the fans sitting on the couch at home or in the Citi Field seats. Generally accepted wisdom holds that the Mets cannot hear us yelling at their images on TV, or pick out our dismayed exclamations from the crowd when we’re in attendance. (Physics is in general agreement on this point.)
But obviously the conventional wisdom is wrong and classical physics needs some retuning, because I’ve got irrefutable evidence to the contrary in the recent performances of Jason Vargas, Kevin Plawecki and Jay Bruce.
The return of recidivist Met Vargas to New York after 11 years away has been a nightmare, leaving us to grumble about Vargas taking starts from … well, anybody else and the fact that we’re stuck with another year of not wanting to look at him. His biggest contribution to the 2018 club, perhaps, has been pairing up with Jacob deGrom to convince traditionalist Met fans that pitcher wins are a dopey stat: the record books insist Vargas won 18 games for the Royals last year, an obvious typo that a startling number of conspirators swear to be fact.
But you knew that. What you might have missed is that since Greg introduced Mets fans to the Vargas Index earlier this month, Vargas — or Vargy, as his players-weekend motley bills him — has gone 2-0 with a 2.08 ERA.
On Friday night he was NOT AT ALL VARGAS, throttling the Nationals over six innings. It was easily his best start of the season and we can just as confidently call it his best start as a Met, given his Metdom during the Shea Stadium era consisted of a bad start and a horrific one.
Plawecki came up with enough hype to get dubbed the Polish Hammer, which started as praise (admittedly of an aspirational sort) but became more likely to cause a neighboring fan of that ethnicity to demand to know whether you’re being funny or what. I soured on Plawecki this season, tired of watching him look useful during garbage time but useless the next year.
In our house, Plawecki has been known since late July as Tits, which deserves some explanation. It started with a moment of frustration: I asked anyone listening to rank the following items in order of uselessness: Plawecki, Jose Reyes, and Tits on a Bull. Thus was a nickname born; shortened for routine use, it became something I’ll have to remind myself not to blithely yell at Citi Field.
But a funny thing has happened to he of the nonfunctional bovine parts since late July: he’s hit two homers and collected 13 RBI. The batting average isn’t good — .225 since his remonikering — but the production is passable, and so the nickname has not only stuck but been crowed with affection from time to time. As it was when Plawecki collected two hits against the Nats.
Then there’s Bruce. His return to the Mets (on a three-year contract, oh goody) has been wrecked by plantar fascitis; typically, he played 10 weeks of ineffective baseball before the team finally sent him out to get better. His return to action Friday wasn’t exactly greeted with hosannas, certainly not by me — I can conservatively name four players who deserve playing time in right field or at first base over Bruce, and so registered his name in the lineup with a vague grumble and a weary shrug.
Yet it was our prodigal son who turned a 1-0 Met lead into something far more comfortable, clubbing a two-run homer in the eighth to give Robert Gsellman breathing room and keep Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmerman from batting as the tying run. Gsellman got through them both, putting the game in the win column for the Mets. (And dropping the Nats once again below .500, neener neener neener.)
Vargas, Plawecki and Bruce. Hmm, maybe we need to be even meaner about Reyes.
by Greg Prince on 23 August 2018 9:27 pm I just started reading a book I’ve had around for a while, The Greatest Game Ever Pitched by Jim Kaplan. It’s a deep dive into the legendary sixteen-inning 1-0 duel between Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal in 1963 and wisely includes a statistical section. For frame of reference, I looked up each Hall of Famer’s numbers from the season in question, and by numbers, I mean the first thing I looked at was wins and losses.
Geez, I thought to myself, if after all these months of Jacob deGrom dominating every starting pitching metric except for wins and losses, and me lobbying the fates like any good Mets fan for Jake to win the Cy Young because wins and losses are the metrics least reflective of excellent starting pitching, I still can’t break the ingrained habit of looking at what we have all agreed is an archaic measurement of effectiveness.
What was Marichal in 1963? Among everything else, he was 25-8, with the thirteenth win earned when he and the Giants downed Spahn and the Braves on July 2 at Candlestick Park. Spahn would be known at the end of ’63 as a 23-7 pitcher, his fourth loss incurred despite 15⅓ scoreless innings hurled ahead of the home run Willie Mays hit off him to capture that same game for San Francisco. Calling Marichal the winner for a shutout spanning sixteen innings seems understatement. Calling Spahn the loser after recording 46 outs in one evening seems absurd.
But there it is and there it’s been across generations. It’s the cross deGrom’s Cy Young candidacy bears, no matter how much we’ve evolved as informed consumers of our national pastime. As his Thursday start against Madison Bumgarner loomed this week, I went to Bumgarner’s Baseball-Reference page to see how the Giant among Giants has been doing this year. The first stat that drew my eye wasn’t ERA or WHIP or anything remotely New Agey. The first thing I focused on was, “Oh, Bumgarner is 4-5.”
D’OH!
By the way, with the Giants having defeated the Mets Thursday afternoon by the kind of score the Mets tend to lose by when deGrom pitches (3-1), Bumgarner is now 5-5 and deGrom is now 8-8. We can not care, but it gets registered that way, nonetheless. Two of the greats of the current decade are just guys who are apparently no better than they are bad — or no worse than they are good. Bumgarner and deGrom are .500 pitchers, which tells us next to nothing if you watched them today or most any day. What does 8-8 mean? Well, if Jake was in the AFC, I imagine he’d be waiting on the final of the Bills-Ravens game to see if he somehow snuck into the playoffs, but in the National League where he pitches, 8-8 when paired with a 1.71 ERA makes 8-8 look more insignificant than a 1.71 ERA looks microscopic.
Those who vote on the Cy Young could strike a blow against the vestigial tyranny of ancient yardsticks by homing in on all deGrom has done well this year, taking fully into account the mediocre outfit he works for and, at least on one occasion, the bottom-of-the-barrel umpire he had to work against. It would really help Jake’s and our cause if there was no extremely viable alternative to his routine brilliance. Alas, as Jake and Madison took on each other at Citi Field, the out-of-town scoreboard kept us posted on the machinations of deGrom’s prime hardware competition, Max Scherzer, and the dark horse candidate galloping along the outside rail — the Gary Johnson of the Cy Young race, to put it another context — Aaron Nola. Nola’s Phillies beat Scherzer’s Nationals, 2-0, which is to say Nola beat Scherzer. Scherzer threw a seven-inning two-hitter, striking out ten. That dubs him a loser in the parlance so popular in previous centuries. His record drops to 16-6. Nola’s, following eight innings of five-hit shutout ball, rises to 15-3. Each man is posting an ERA of 2.13.
That’s an outstanding earned run average. It’s just far less outstanding than 1.71. But did ya see those won-lost records? As Ray Stevens warned in The Streak, “Don’t look, Ethel!” But it’s too late. She’d already been ingrained. It’s gonna be hard to cover up for the BBWAA electorate whatever 16-6 and 15-3 wind up being, especially when Jake and his tiny ERA are left nekkid as a jaybird, over by the .500 records.
That the Mets could not aid their ace is nothing new. That the Mets could barely lay a finger on Bumgarner, who was last seen at Citi ending our very brief postseason in 2016, is also a tale as old as time. Maybe the elements were not in place for those of us who visited Flushing on an otherwise beautiful late summer day to come away satisfied. Yet satisfaction seemed within reach when Thursday started. My wife and I spent the morning at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, enjoying some free “Fan Week” admission to qualifying matches and hitting practice. Judging by what we saw of the latter, Novak Djokovic stood a better chance against Bumgarner than half the lineup Mickey Callaway deployed in ostensible support of deGrom. The tennis, Stephanie’s idea, was a novelty; usually I rail against the US Open hordes encroaching upon the 7 train, taking our seats and daring to enjoy something other than baseball. Today I forged rapprochement with an event I otherwise consider a high-priced racket.
Did I mention it was free? Also, did I mention it provided an excellent excuse to be in Flushing Meadows prior to 1:10 PM, and since we were already in the neighborhood…yes, my wife knew where my sudden interest in the sport of strings was coming from. But it was actually a fine appetizer to our main course. We strolled the grounds, we sat in on some qualifiers, we lingered over the many photographic tributes to Arthur Ashe (during the twelve Augusts they overlapped, I loved that stadiums that were anagrams for each other — ASHE and SHEA — were separated by only a boardwalk) and I looked forward to first pitch.
Yeah, Thursday was pretty good when the first half of its agenda had not morphed into its second.
As Jacob deGrom has said repeatedly in some form or fashion, you can’t worry about what you can’t control. I was delighted to take in the final midweek matinee Citi Field was offering for 2018; I was elated to be sharing it with my ever-indulgent spouse (this was our first non-weekend summertime afternoon game together in a dozen years); and, y’know, deGrom vs. Bumgarner is nothing to sneeze at, even when their respective teams are allergens for excitement. 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.
So it was a great day to be at a ballgame — just maybe not this ballgame the way it went. The deGrom portion was valiant as hell. The rest was just the usual fourth-place nonsense. The phrase I heard myself mutter to Stephanie as we trudged through the Field Level foot traffic toward the Rotunda when it ended was, “It is so unrewarding to be a fan of this franchise.”
Certainly no reward was forthcoming for our proxy on the mound. Masterful Madison outpitched him a little and the home plate umpire, the eternally inept Tony Randazzo, undermined him a lot. From where we sat in right field, I was pretty sure I saw the strike three that was called something else cross the plate, and I definitely watched Jake begin to leave the field, secure in the knowledge that he’d K’d Nick Hundley to finish the fourth. The helpful monitors hanging above Section 102 confirmed that deGrom, not Randazzo, was the one who wasn’t hallucinating.
With the third out taken away from him, deGrom walked Hundley, then gave up an RBI double to Bumgarner. Bumgarner may not be directly involved in this year’s Cy derby, but he is something special, dammit. In the aftermath of Jake’s departure (he went six, struck out ten and deserved little linked to today’s outcome), I allowed myself to grudgingly admire Bumgarner from across the outfield grass. This is the most spectacular postseason pitcher of my sentient baseball lifetime. We saw for ourselves how quickly he can end an October. Today he quite possibly threw a crimp into this November’s award season.
If Scherzer and Nola were producing a miniature version of Spahn vs. Marichal in Washington, Bumgarner reminded us he can still do a pretty decent Koufax. Sandy, incidentally, went 25-5 in 1963, accompanied it with a 1.88 ERA and took home that year’s Cy Young. We can assign any historical doppelgänger we like to Jacob deGrom, but I’m pretty happy with him being exactly who he is. Jake’s ERA is lower now than Koufax’s was then, for goodness sake. You can gripe with the umpiring and curse the luck of the opposing rotation’s draw, but you can’t ask for more than what deGrom is giving us.
That 8-8, though. Wish we could do something about that. Tennis would give it an appealing name like “deuce” or “love”. Maybe somebody could dash across the boardwalk on Friday and get some advice. Jake can use all the help he can get.
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