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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 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.
by Jason Fry on 22 August 2018 11:21 pm The Mets won an actually fun game Wednesday night: Noah Syndergaard looked solid for six innings, Jeff McNeil kept hitting, and three Mets (Todd Frazier, Dom Smith and Jose Bautista) cracked solo home runs as the forces of good kept the Giants down.
Entertaining games in garbage time are better than games to be endured, which we’ve also seen. But garbage time is still garbage time — the Mets aren’t going to play a game that matters to them until next April.
Those days will be here soon enough, but until they arrive, a wish list for the rest of the season:
1) Jacob deGrom gets enough wins that this arbitrary, outdated stat isn’t part of the Cy Young conversation. Obviously I’d like deGrom to win the damn thing, but this is a year in which Max Scherzer and Aaron Nola will also have solid claims to the award. There’s no shame in deGrom not winning because voters thought one of those guys was a little better, but deGrom being dismissed because of an ill-fitting stat would be a shame indeed. Twelve wins ought to be enough for better conversations to take place; deGrom can get to work on this one Thursday afternoon.
2) The freaking kids get to play. That means Amed Rosario, McNeil, Smith, Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo being in the lineup every day. Let Wilmer Flores come off the bench. Let Jay Bruce rest up. Let Jose Reyes be as invisible as possible. The Mets have held themselves back by leaving young position players stuck in Triple-A, rotting on the bench, or forced into unfamiliar positions. They have mistrusted and mishandled their own talent, and it can stop any time now.
3) A 55th Met makes an appearance. Whether it’s Peter Alonso or just T.J. Rivera, let’s break that record. But if I could pick, give me…
4) A cameo for David Wright. A return to regular action is more than even the most optimistic dreamer can imagine. But one game with David out at third, holding his bat like a broadsword, gathering himself and letting go of that little sigh before stepping into the batter’s box? That would feel like a reward and a keeping of faith.
5) Healthy finishes for Conforto and Nimmo. I’d be happy with a Wright cameo, but for the Mets to have a bright future, they need everyday excellence from their two young outfielders. Conforto, I suspect, has spent the entire year being stoic about the lingering effects of his shoulder injury; Nimmo has shown flashes of being an impact player, but been shoved back to the pack by HBPs. Seeing both of them finishing the season looking like regulars with a lot to contribute would make me eager for 2019 and what it might bring.
6) Playing spoiler. Even being on the fringes of a pennant race is better than influencing one as the bad team making good. But the Mets aren’t on the fringes of anything; spoiler is the only role open to them. And it’s wide open: the Mets will face the Cubs, Dodgers, Phillies and Braves before September ends. All of those teams are fighting for division crowns. Let’s not go quietly, but exit making some noise.
Got something to add to the wish list? The comments await.
by Jason Fry on 22 August 2018 12:36 am Most of Tuesday night unfolded the way most of Monday night had: we watched a Mets team at home doing a worrisome amount of nothing.
Steven Matz gave up a two-run shot in the first inning, then settled down and looked much more like himself, though it should be said that we still don’t quite know what “like himself” means with Matz, and suspect/fear that description would best fit a Matz who’s injured, or swearing he isn’t injured while eyebrows cock all around him. Whatever the case, it looked like that two-run homer would be fatal, because the Mets were in full pacifist mode.
Fortunately, nobody gave Jeff McNeil the memo. The latest kid the Mets were seemingly hell-bent on not bringing up led off the seventh with his third hit of the night, was doubled to third by Wilmer Flores, and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Michael Conforto.
Austin Jackson then slapped a ground ball under the glove of Evan Longoria, sending Wilmer trundling homeward from second. Or at least vaguely homeward. Honestly, watching Wilmer navigate the 90 feet to third, a devilish right angle and another 90 feet to home was mildly terrifying. He got up to what passes for speed for Wilmer around third, then took an odd route wide of home. First it looked like he was going to injure himself falling over Jackson’s discarded bat. Then it looked like he was going to plow into Nick Hundley, who’d moved to receive Hunter Pence‘s not very impressive throw. Wilmer crash-landed somewhere in the vicinity of home, was declared safe, and the Mets had tied the game.
Tied it, but perhaps that was just setting us up for further extra-inning horrors. (Like you weren’t thinking the same thing.)
Except before stumbling into horror, the Mets discovered infutility, or whatever the opposite of their usual Citi Field state is. Jose Reyes — who’d earlier kept the game tied with a nice diving grab at third — tripled off the wall to lead off the eighth. Todd Frazier popped up and Amed Rosario struck out and yeah SAME OLD METS … but here came McNeil again. He’d been fed a steady diet of sliders by Tony Watson the night before and singled, and so reasoned that he’d get a fastball. He was correct, and lined it over third and down the left-field line, chasing home Reyes. The Giants walked Flores, but Conforto launched a three-run homer to ice the game.
Nope, in this one there would be no pitiable collisions, no starting pitchers making the final out at the plate, no band names coined, and no lingering bitterness. Just a Mets win, one that wouldn’t even seem all that taxing to those who’d glance at it in the papers the next day.
We know better, of course. But still, here’s to infutility. We could get used to it, if only a ballclub would let us.
by Greg Prince on 21 August 2018 2:24 am “Whoo! Whoo! Wasn’t that awesome?”
“Absolutely! Great concert! Thanks for turning me on to them.”
“Sure.”
“One thing, though.”
“What?”
“I never asked you. How did they get their name?”
“You don’t know the story?”
“No.”
“Really? I thought everybody did.”
“I swear I don’t.”
“Well, it goes back to 2018. These guys were big Mets fans.”
“Mets?”
“They’re a baseball team in New York. They weren’t any good, and that year they were really terrible. So one night they’re playing this really long game. It’s like…I don’t remember, maybe the thirteenth or fourteenth inning, it’s tied, it’s going nowhere.”
“Sounds boring.”
“I guess. You know baseball, some people like it like that. Anyway, the game’s going on forever and there’s a fly ball to left field. It’s not deep, but there’s nobody there to catch it where it’s going and there’s a runner on third.”
“What’s this got to do with the band?”
“I’m getting to that. The shortstop, Rosario, runs all the way out, and Smith the left fielder — well he wasn’t really a left fielder, but he was in left field — ”
“Wouldn’t being in left field make him the left fielder? I don’t know much about baseball, but I kind of remember that from gym class.”
“This was the Mets. You didn’t always play where you were supposed to.”
“Is that why there was nobody where the ball was going?”
“Something like that. That same game there was another fly ball that was going somewhere around there and nobody was playing there, either. Cost one of their really good pitchers a run, which was why the game was going on all night.”
“Wow, those — what were they called again?”
“The Mets?”
“Yeah, Mets. Those Mets sound pretty wacky.”
“They were. So where was I? Oh yeah, you’ve got this second fly ball heading to left. You’ve got the shortstop — Rosario, fast kid — running out there. And you’ve got the left fielder — Smith, not so fast, not really a left fielder, like I said — running in for it.”
“Don’t they have a system so that doesn’t happen?”
“Normally they do. Actually, they did that night. Rosario called for the ball.”
“Calling, yeah, I’ve heard of that.”
“Yeah, Rosario called for the ball, which means he gets to try to catch it. Except Smith doesn’t hear him or see him because he’s trying to catch the ball, too. And he calls for it. Except Smith calls for it after Rosario. Meanwhile Rosario’s kind of waving Smith off, but that’s useless because Smith’s looking for the ball, apparently forgetting Rosario is running toward it.”
“What a mess!”
“Yup. You can imagine what happens next. Utter chaos. Rosario gets the ball in his glove, but Smith crashes into Rosario at practically the same moment and the ball pops out of Rosario’s glove. Then they both fall down. For some reason, Smith grabs hold of Rosario, who’s on his knees on the grass, like they’re getting ready for a wrestling match or something.”
“Wrestling? What’s that have to do with baseball?”
“Exactly. The ball is lying on the ground, both of them are frozen in place and the runner from third scores. Pretty soon the game is over, and the Mets lose.”
“Wow. Crazy.”
“Yup. Sure was.”
“Still, what’s that have to do with the name of the band?”
“Oh, right. Like I said, the guys in the band are big Mets fans and they looked at each other and one of them said — maybe because he was studying for a Spanish test or something — ‘¡no tenemos esperanza!’”
“Which means?”
“’We have no hope.’ It kind of became an inside joke with them, and as they started getting gigs, they called themselves that and it stuck.”
“I never knew that. Well, however they came up with it, it’s a great name and a great story, and No Tenemos Esperanza is a great band.”
“Aren’t they?”
“Totally. They rock. Are the guys who inspired it cool with it?”
“Who’s that?”
“You know, Rosario and Smith.”
“Oh. You know, I don’t know. I don’t know that anybody ever heard from them again after the way that game ended.”
“Aw. Too bad. Well, at least something good came out of it, I guess.”
by Greg Prince on 20 August 2018 12:50 pm Whoever decided to release Jason Vargas and replace him with this new dynamic starting pitcher VARGY deserves the full-time GM job. VARGY was NOT AT ALL VARGAS as he tamed the Phillies for five innings and lasted well into the sixth on Sunday night, providing all the pitching required to propel the Mets to an 8-2 victory over a legitimate playoff contender. Of course the guy wearing VARGY on the back of his two-toned pullover shirt, was Jason Vargas, whose performance was, for the second outing in a row, no worse than SORT OF VARGAS.
If attending the Little League Classic is teaching the kids in Williamsport anything, it’s that there’s a chance for everybody to help his team, regardless of past foibles. Jason Vargas, sporting an adorable nickname like almost every Met and Phillie, has had the worst of seasons, but lately, over his last two starts, has been absolutely decent.
So don’t give up, young people who have struck out repeatedly, dropped fly balls with the bases loaded, let grounders go through your legs, thrown wild pitches and gotten yourselves distracted by daffodils. Someday you can come through. Someday you can aspire to not being VERY VARGAS.
Sunday Night Baseball is generally the most cynical of enterprises — encompassed most blatantly in ESPN’s insistence on detonating previously scheduled Sunday afternoon dates and repackaging them without any fan’s approval as prime time content — but this edition makes for an annual exception. It started a little after seven instead of after eight. It wasn’t overwhelmed by commercialism, except for advertising baseball. It had adults willing to play as kids and reach out to kids. I couldn’t speak to the ESPN announcing, because I opted for the mute button and WOR over the stylings of Matt Vasgersian, but it was fun as hell to watch.
There were THOR, WHEELS, MATZY and DE GROM (the best name in baseball) hanging out in the stands. There were TODDFATHER and SCOOTER revisiting the site of childhood glories. There were thirteen singles and one double, the extra-base hit a real “way to go, Dom!” occasion for BIG D, the kid who is best known for showing up late and usually playing left out (I can relate, Dom, I can relate). There was even a handshake line between the triumphant Mets and the nice-try Phillies. I hope somebody’s mom took a cue from the best practices established by the Long Beach Rec Center’s Pee Wee League of 1971 and treated everybody to ice cream at Jahn’s afterward.
The Mets’ unorthodox road trip — eleven games in ten days in five different venues, culminating at a minor league park in the middle of Pennsylvania — didn’t kill them and perhaps made them stronger. They went 7-4, lost zero series, acquitted themselves nicely in several showcase opportunities and provided a week’s worth of tweetable highlights hitting, pitching and simply being. The Mets set records some games, shut down offenses others and smiled for the camera continually. Their participation in the pennant race never materialized in 2018, but as we pass the three-quarter turn en route to the finish line, they’ve suddenly earned themselves some of what’s always worth spelling out:
R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
They won’t get much of it for long, because they’re still the 2018 Mets. The next time they noticeably stumble, this late summer vacation from their problems will be mostly forgotten. Not that they haven’t earned derision, too, but playing well under relatively challenging circumstances is the stuff of TCB. True, there hasn’t been much pressing business to take care of from the perspective of fourth place, but you can only deal with what’s in front of you. The eleven games in the five cities were dealt with ably and satisfyingly. Not much of a slogan, but versus the way most of this year has gone, I’m willing to call it baseball like it oughta be.
What’s in front of the Mets the rest of the way are three more homestands (they’ve been far worse at Citi Field than they’ve been away from it) and two more lengthy road trips. Aside from the marquee attractions of Jacob deGrom’s Cy Young pursuit and David Wright’s potential return — wouldn’t he make an ideal 55th Met of 2018? — the most compelling reason to stay tuned, beyond habit, oughta be the search for signs of what the 2019 Mets will look like.
Oughta be, indeed, but I take that with one of those shakers of salt Todd Frazier isn’t using anymore. A year ago at this juncture, we were thinking pretty much the same future-facing thing. Really, only a digit has been changed. The Mets had shed veteran after veteran and were now immersing themselves in the kids…or the major league version thereof, as opposed to the ones scampering about the Little League World Series. The composition of the 2017 Mets as the third week of August closed was presumed the shape of things to come: Rosario had arrived. Smith had followed. Plawecki was recalled. Conforto was already the centerpiece. Use these games to gain traction for 2018, we said. Get us rolling toward tomorrow.
Tomorrow has mostly sucked. None of the aforementioned four has had what could honestly be called a good season. Dom Smith has barely been a Met. Kevin Plawecki got hurt early and is only now forging a case for himself, the way he did a year ago. Michael Conforto’s 2017 ended abruptly and his injury cast a long shadow over his presumed glide path to stardom. Amed Rosario alternately lifts our hopes and lets us down. They’re all young. They’ll all stay young until suddenly, except when decked out for Players’ Weekend, they won’t seem like kids anymore.
We can add Jeff McNeil to the spirit of baseball not yet played. He’s a comer this August. His bat has been as hot as Brandon Nimmo’s was earlier in ’18. Hey, don’t forget Brandon. If anybody should have been romping around Williamsport, NIMMS was the manchild made for the moment, but he contracted an oww-ie the other day and, well, that’ll happen to Mets of all ages. McNeil might be the real deal, though. As might Nimmo once he’s healed. As might Rosario and all the others. We won’t find out in late August and September because we never find out in late August and September. All we can do is watch and learn as they play and learn.
And next year? That’s literally unknowable and inherently predictable. Don’t believe anybody who lays a Projected Everyday Lineup for 2019 or anything like that on you. Project for next year? You can’t project day-to-day with this team. Or with this game. A spate of months doesn’t necessarily work, either. Look at the top of the NL East standings and reckon that with where you thought the division was heading as 2017 was morphing into 2018.
Still, we can express broad-stroke preferences. All things being equal, I’d be happy to see more of the kids, partly because the former kids the Mets reflexively rely on haven’t much delivered on a daily basis and partly because the Mets normally recoil from giving any kids a shot until things get as bad as can be — and I’m tired of things annually getting as bad as can be, which at some point in every season this decade (even the couple of good ones) it has.
I suppose the two habits go hand in hand. For all the yammering this organization has done about “culture,” altering the philosophy that you can’t possibly call up your top prospects until you get desperate would represent an encouraging change of direction.
Understanding that every player’s progress needs to be calibrated individually based on readiness and club need, the Mets’ default mode has been to not call anybody up until there’s no viable option otherwise. The offense of July 2015 had to disappear from radar tracking before they’d promote Conforto. Conforto had to be judged to struggle beyond salvation in June 2016 before they’d promote Nimmo. Once they wound up on the same roster, neither was granted much in the way of consistent playing time. The dregs had to overwhelm 2017 before Rosario and Smith saw the light of day. The process had to play out similarly to bring McNeil to Flushing.
There are always undeniable circumstances to consider: the impending free agent whose talents need to be displayed as July 31 approaches; the experienced bat that needs more reps before it can be fully dismissed as inadequate; the minutiae of service time and contractual control; concerns that big league game might move too fast for a youngster who’s never encountered such stunning velocity before; managers and general managers (and perhaps owners) who simply trust who they know over who they don’t. None of it has necessarily been wholly misguided when applied case by case, but the consistent refusal to say, in so many words, “ah, screw it, let’s go with the kid and see what he can do” has left the Mets perennially both creaky and undercooked.
In this century, the Mets haven’t broken camp with a serious positional prospect in their ranks. Early April MLB debuts among Met position players have grown scarce. If you discount Tsuyoshi Shinjo in 2001 and Kaz Matsui in 2004 (rookies in name only, given their long track records in Japan) and Brad Emaus in 2011 (a Rule 5 guy, so he had to be here), the only true freshman non-pitcher who’s had an Opening Day with the Mets since 2000 is Ruben Tejada, in 2010, and he snuck in because Jose Reyes needed a few days on the DL. Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Juan Lagares drew April promotions in 2012 and 2013, respectively, out of necessity (somebody was hurt, somebody was failing) rather than a desire to actually give a kid a chance.
None among Tejada, Nieuwenhuis and Lagares was pegged a prime prospect. Jose Reyes was. The struggling Mets waited until June 2003 with him. David Wright was. The struggling Mets waited until July 2004 with him. Lastings Milledge was. Xavier Nady had to have an appendectomy in late May of 2006 before they’d elevate Milledge, and they didn’t keep him around long. It took forever to get Travis d’Arnaud up here in 2013, too. The pattern was in place well before Conforto. The only glittering position player prospect who was promoted in April in the 21st century — I mean the kind a team’s fans salivate over in advance — was Ike Davis, in 2010, and even then the Mets waited a couple of weeks to finagle his service time and go down swinging with reclamation project Mike Jacobs. Judging by all that’s been said by who’s said it, it doesn’t seem like we’ll even get a September peek at minor league RBI machine Peter Alonso, lest a clock start and paperwork need to be properly sorted.
Some of the top prospects of the 2000s and 2010s eventually flourished. Some fizzled. Some remain works in progress. What’s nagging at me is they are all treated as suspect by the people ostensibly developing them to compete at their sport’s highest level. A position player isn’t promoted to the major leagues and permitted to play regularly by the Mets because he’s deemed ready. A position player is promoted to the major leagues by the Mets and permitted to play regularly because they’ve exhausted all other conceivable alternatives. That’s certainly how it’s come off for close to twenty years, maybe longer.
Possibly because I’m so accustomed to this operational tendency, I’m pretty patient on the subject of lobbying for callups. “They’ll get here when they get here” has been my mantra when all around me are demanding to know how soon this kid or that will trade in his Tides or Zephyrs or Bisons or 51s uniform for a Mets model. I’m also somebody who truly appreciates a brimming dose of veteran grizzle on my roster. Yet I have to think once in a while the Mets would throw hesitancy to the wind, or at least toward the breeze, and find out what would happen if they don’t wait for a season to barrel hopelessly to hell before turning a little more youthful. Maybe it would prove terribly detrimental to the player and the franchise alike and we’d all be set back from our shared goals of eternal happiness.
Or, perhaps, not. Maybe fueled by young blood, the Mets would get off to a flying start and keep soaring for six months. Maybe they’d have a budding star whose contractual status six years up the road would come to matter in practice rather than in theory. Maybe kids being kids would look good on the Mets as a rule, and not just in Williamsport.
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