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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 26 June 2018 7:11 pm What is it Olive Garden says? “When you’re here, you’re family.” Learning that Sandy Alderson has to step away from his general manager responsibilities because he needs to devote his attention to cancer treatment and recovery was like finding out somebody in the family has taken ill. Having dealt with that kind of familial situation twice, I don’t draw the comparison lightly.
We as hardcore fans are around the Mets, spiritually if not physically, all the time six months out of every year and plenty the other six months. We bicker with the Mets like they are family and we get them in a way others don’t like they are family and, despite all their foibles, we care about them like they are family.
Sandy’s been our baseball team’s general manager for eight seasons. He’s Sandy, not Alderson, usually. He doesn’t know the bulk of us from a hole in the head, but I think he cares for us as we care for him. He wants what’s best for us. He wants a winning team and a winning season. That his administration hasn’t delivered it more than intermittently (and not at all lately) doesn’t detract from the dedication he’s shown, both before and during his diagnosis. This is the second time he’s faced cancer. It’s enough of a foe that many don’t get a second swing. I hope he makes the most of it. I hope he experiences a great recovery. He says he doesn’t know if he’ll be back, no matter his health, that he doesn’t know if he merits a longer term in office. That’s a decision for another day. Sandy’s been a mensch in our lives since 2011. So has Alderson. Our thoughts are with him tonight.
There are relevant issues for the Mets as they go forward during his leave of absence and beyond. The GM job will be shared in the interim by John Ricco, Omar Minaya and J.P. Ricciardi, with Jeff Wilpon no doubt having his say. The Mets haven’t been burning up the league, we’ve surely noticed. There’s much improvement to be had, much work to be done. There’s much to debate, discuss and let off steam about.
Soon. Soon enough, certainly. For now, best wishes to Sandy Alderson, from this branch of your Mets family.
by Greg Prince on 26 June 2018 7:54 am Where it says the Dodgers beat the Mets, 8-7, replace with the Pirates beat the Mets, 6-4.
Where it says sixth consecutive loss, replace with seventh.
Where it says 25th loss in 32 games, replace with 26th loss in 33 games.
Where it says seven solo home runs, replace with two that accounted for three runs.
Where it says Kevin Plawecki provided a moment of hope that proved fleeting, replace with Wilmer Flores.
Where it says a haphazard plan that involved nothing but relief pitchers, replace with a fairly decent outing from Seth Lugo undermined by shoddy defense from seldom-used Luis Guillorme.
Where it says major league debut for Kevin Kaczmarski, replace with major league debut for Tyler Bashlor.
Where it says Brandon Nimmo left the game after being hit by a pitch, replace with Brandon Nimmo entered the game as a pinch-runner and stayed in for defense.
Where it says “a smiling Nimmo,” replace with “a grim Nimmo”.
Where it says Mickey Callaway admitted Dom Smith doesn’t know how to bunt, replace with Mickey Callaway remained resolutely upbeat in the face of nearly incomprehensible ineptitude.
Where it says first baseman Smith, replace with left fielder Smith.
Where it says the Mets are tied with the Marlins for the fewest wins in the National League, replace with the Mets have the fewest wins in the National League.
Where it says 2018…yeah, you can keep that.
Where it says “no game Thursday,” replace with OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS: READIN’, WRITIN’ & RUSTY, Two Boots Midtown East, 337 Lexington Ave., between 39th and 40th Streets, Thursday, June 28, 7:00 PM. Join a trio of Mets fan authors, grab a slice of Two Boots pizza and have a fine baseball time designed to improve all our perspectives.The details are here. Hope to see you there.
by Jason Fry on 24 June 2018 6:27 pm Beat the Mets, beat the Mets
Step right up and sweep the Mets
Sorry kiddies, they’re playing flat
Guaranteed to want your money back
Because the Mets are really sucking this year
They’re 12 behind; it’ll get worse I fear
From Dodgers to Giants, everybody’s comin’ round
To beat the M-E-T-S Mets of New York town!
Growing up on Long Island, I was pretty much the only non-Yankee fan in my neighborhood and I must have heard that several hundred times, which seems to have left it stuck in my head forever. (The dirt-bike kids’ version was a little different; I altered some socially Neanderthal lines for our nominally more enlightened times.)
That song was playing in a loop in my head while the Mets took a very long time to wind up with nothing against the Dodgers. The game was mildly diverting for a spell, particularly when Kevin Plawecki, of all people, connected for a game-tying three-run homer. Even in the worst season, a three-run blast will make me smile, at least a little bit. Another Kevin, Kaczmarski, made his big-league debut and almost beat out a little trickler for a hit, one he would have been forgiven for slowly morphing into a sizzling line drive over the coming decades. I got to see Drew Smith a day after being MIA for his debut, and the kid was one of just two Met hurlers to emerge unscathed in Mickey Callaway‘s Reliever-a-Rama. I thought Brandon Nimmo‘s hand was broken but X-rays were negative, meaning the Mets won’t be stripped of one of their only players worth watching. (Though it’s not like the Mets haven’t missed fractures before, so we’d be advised to wait and see.)
But the mildly diverting part of the afternoon did nothing to alter my certainty that the Mets were going to lose, and the only question was how. Granted, the Mets losing wasn’t a bold prediction, not with the Dodgers connecting for Citi Field homers at a record-setting pace. My money was on a Joc Pederson homer in the ninth, and Pederson did go deep — but in the seventh, so what do I know. Anyway, I knew they were going to lose, and when they did I just shrugged. Maybe the frown was a little deeper than it would have been without Plawecki’s brief rebellion, maybe the shrug was a little wider — but does it matter? A Mets loss is perilously close to a sure thing these days, as this once-promising season staggers along, accompanied by my childhood tormentors’ favorite tune.
by Greg Prince on 24 June 2018 11:58 am Dom Smith pinch-hit for brand new major league pitcher Drew Smith in the ninth inning of Saturday night’s Mets loss to the Dodgers, which seemed appropriate given that you can pretty much replace one Mets game with another and not even the names changing makes a tangible difference, so why even bother changing the names?
A little intrigue that didn’t have to do with the Dodgers never losing to the Mets or the Mets never winning at Citi Field was welcome. Friend of FAFIF Brian Sokoloff wondered to me on Twitter if the Mets had ever before arranged a similarly eponymous pinch-hitting transaction — and Friend of FAFIF Gary Nusbaum soon provided an answer. It happened on May 10, 2000, when Matt Franco batted on behalf of John Franco at Three Rivers Stadium. M. Franco singled. The Mets lost. Eighteen years later, Do. Smith fouled out…and, as previously mentioned, the Mets lost.
The Mets have only one guy named deGrom, and he couldn’t prevent that overly familiar result, which is actually no surprise, since the Mets have regularly proven immune to the sublime efforts of their ace starter. Jacob deGrom has been the National League’s premier pitcher in 2018. His team has eluded similar adjectives. DeGrom gave the Mets the minimal quality start nomenclature allows — 6 IP, 3 ER — and of course it wasn’t enough, certainly not at sea level. DeGrom generally gives the Mets much more and it’s almost never enough. Jake gave up an early home run to Max Muncy that flew up onto Carbonation Ridge in the first and a lethal double to Chris Taylor that all but buried the Mets in the fourth. In between, when he wasn’t being squeezed a bit by home plate umpire Ed Hickox, deGrom scored one of the two runs the Mets cobbled together off a just-returned Clayton Kershaw. DeGrom also started his own rally with a leadoff single.
If that’s a Jacob deGrom off night, I’ll take it.
Other positives, because I’m a little worn out writing the opposite: Jose Bautista doubled in a run and later solo-homered; Brandon Nimmo gathered three hits, including a triple aided by Cody Bellinger’s last-second distraction; and the Mets totaled an impressive-on-paper ten hits, which was one more than the Dodgers registered. Despite that isolated Los Angeleno disadvantage, the visitors won by five runs, 8-3. (So much for the positives.) It really helps to hit with runners on base, something Matt Kemp — their version of Jose Bautista, except more so, in a good way — decidedly accomplished when he launched a grand slam off Robert Gsellman, formerly the bright, shining beacon of the otherwise murky Met bullpen.
The Mets’ hits added up to nearly bupkes because the challenge presented by Mets standing on bases was apparently too daunting to deal with productively. Twelve times Mets came up with runners in scoring position and ten times they made outs. Did I mention Kershaw, using this as his de facto rehab start rather than the one planned for him in Triple-A, pitched for only the first three innings and it was the not quite as legendary Caleb Ferguson who did most of the shutting down of the Mets? Every Dodger pitcher is Clayton Kershaw when it comes to facing the Mets, whose last win versus L.A. came when David Wright was a literally active player and before anybody said anything about their ass being in the jackpot into a microphone.
Twenty-five thousand miniature Home Run Apples were handed out at Saturday night’s game. I’m sure they were too nice to fling toward the field in disgust, but I have to believe the ancestral temptation, since tamed by decades of domestication, existed. Seat Cushion Night in 1983 ended with just such an impressive display of civil disobedience/disgust. There was a time when you handed Mets fans potential projectiles at your own risk. Seat Cushion Night wound down with the grounds crew collecting what appeared to be hundreds of cushions, the public address announcer issuing stern warnings and Tim McCarver and Steve Zabriskie cracking up over the air at the sight of the flying squares, at least until somebody tapped them on the shoulder and told them to quit encouraging the throwing of things, lest the fans watching on Channel 9 get the idea this sort of protest was condoned by voices of authority.
Ah, those were the days. No, not really. The Mets were still a lousy team at that stage of 1983, the lousy team they’d been virtually uninterrupted since 1977, and speaking of that halcyon era, the Mets’ record of 31-43 after 74 games in 2018 is exactly what it was in ’77, ’78 and ’79, considered in some quarters the absolute worst period in Mets history. Perhaps it is overstating the case to draw comparisons between then and now, but Jacob deGrom leads the National League in ERA despite having won only five games at almost the halfway point forty years after Craig Swan led the National League in ERA despite having won only nine games when the season was over.
Not scoring for your best pitcher is a cherished Mets tradition, but when you remember Willie Montañez drove in 96 runs in 1978, stranding runners in scoring position suddenly feels very postmodern.
After not winning another deGrom start, we had Jason Vargas to look forward to, so to speak, for Sunday, at least until Mickey Callaway revealed Vargas strained his left eyelash while looking in the mirror (something like that). With Vargas on the DL, the Mets called up Chris Flexen and assigned Sunday’s start to career reliever Jerry Blevins.
That part is accurate. No, I don’t know why the ball was to be handed to a career reliever instead of a professional starter, but I imagine there’s a clever reason for it.
There’s every chance Craig Swan’s name will come up in casual conversation when OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS: READIN’, WRITIN’ & RUSTY convenes at Two Boots Midtown East, 337 Lexington Ave., between 39th and 40th Streets, Thursday, June 28, 7:00 PM. Join a trio of Mets fan authors, grab a slice of Two Boots pizza and have a fine baseball time designed to improve all our perspectives. The details are here. Hope to see you there.
by Jason Fry on 23 June 2018 12:23 am In a better season, Friday night’s loss to the Dodgers would have been one of those defeats that made you say vile things, hurl a remote, and then brood and mutter. In this season, it barely elicited a sigh. Yep, those are the Mets and the Mets are losing. Who’s surprised? Who, at this point, is still capable of getting angry about it?
If you squint — a phrase I’ve used a lot this year — you can see some good things, despite it all. Michael Conforto shouldn’t be playing center field, but he did make a highlight-reel catch, flinging himself across the warning track in left-center to temporarily save Zack Wheeler‘s bacon. The catch was great; I was even happier about Conforto’s little-kid grin as he trotted back to the dugout, getting attaboys and back slaps from his teammates.
Keep squinting, and you could say that Wheeler seems to be learning and growing as a pitcher this season, working more quickly and pitching more effectively. But pitchers’ learning processes are rarely unbroken inclines — they come with dips and setbacks. And one of those was enough to doom Wheeler and his team.
The fatal inning was the sixth. Wheeler’s eighth pitch to leadoff hitter Joc Pederson was a strike. Gabe Morales called it a ball. Wheeler went to 3-0 on Max Muncy, prompting a visit from Devin Mesoraco, then walked him. He retired Justin Turner on a first-pitch flyout, then got to 1-2 on Matt Kemp, putting Kemp in the hole with one of his better sliders of the night.
Wheeler then appeared to lose track of what he was doing mid-pitch, hesitating oddly in his motion and then tossing a high lob homeward that was recorded as a 57 MPH curveball. Wheeler offered Mesoraco a small, sheepish smile, which was funny … except for the part where he’d surrendered an advantageous count to a dangerous hitter. His next slider was flat; Kemp served it into right for a single to load the bases.
That brought Cody Bellinger to the plate. Wheeler threw him a pair of fastballs for an 0-2 count, prompting Mesoraco to call for a fastball above the zone. Wheeler missed the target badly, leaving that third consecutive fastball in the middle of the plate. Bellinger, offered the same pitch three times in a row in the same location, connected. The ball was last seen passing above an airplane carrying the just-DFA’ed Hansel Robles to some new destination. I suspect Robles pointed helpfully at it.
At least that’s not our problem anymore.
With the Mets’ offense being what it is, that was that. Call it one pitch if you like, but it was more than that — bad luck, yes, but bad luck that was followed by missed locations, poor sequencing, and a really weird brain cramp at a very bad time. During that few minutes, Wheeler lost focus and lost the game.
Look, maybe at this time next year we’ll look back on Wheeler’s 2018 as a key part of his growth into becoming a consistent winner, and if so we’ll excuse dips like that. It’s possible to imagine, if you squint.
But it’s also possible to squint so hard that you can no longer see a damn thing. If this train wreck of a season has taught me anything, it’s that.
Don’t get left at the station: OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS: READIN’, WRITIN’ & RUSTY is coming to Two Boots Midtown East, 337 Lexington Ave., between 39th and 40th Streets, Thursday, June 28, 7:00 PM. Join a trio of Mets fan authors, grab a slice of Two Boots pizza and have a fine baseball time designed to improve all our perspectives. The details are here. Hope to see you there.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2018 9:35 am Let us celebrate our team’s most recent spate of accomplishments! On Thursday afternoon, the Mets gave up six runs instead of ten. They scored four runs instead of none. They grounded into five double plays rather than nine. They avoided hitting into triple plays altogether. They generally if not consistently returned balls from the outfield to the infield in diligent fashion. Nobody, as far as we know, sustained a debilitating injury climbing aboard the bus to the airport.
Not much cause for celebration, you say? I’m sorry, I forgot to mention this was a perspective party, hosted by Mickey Callaway, who can always be counted on fill the glasses all the way to the half. The fine print on the invitation he issued after Thursday’s game was explicit:
“You don’t worry about the record. You just worry about how you do your thing every day and how you are playing the game and we’ll start syncing everything up.”
To paraphrase former New York Knick point guard and sharp-eyed observer Micheal Ray Richardson, the ship be syncing, all right.
I must admit I am not immune to the Callaway way of semi-positive thinking. As the Mets and Rockies locked into a 5-2 score during the matinee that wound down the Mets’ latest furlough from Citi Field — with Colorado’s lead remaining unchanged for several innings despite Steven Matz’s early troubles and Coors Field’s incubative instincts — I heard myself think, “This could be a lot worse.” Then I heard myself counter, “Define ‘a lot’.” Losing by three, I realized as I slipped myself out of Mickey mode, is still losing, and the Mets were losing by enough and not doing anything substantive to reduce the margin. True, Matz and his relief helpers kept the Swingin’ Arenados from increasing their advantage in the bottoms of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh innings, but their colleagues in the batting order demonstrated uncommon courtesy toward Rockie pitchers, generating no Met tallies in the top portions of the fourth through seventh.
Rarely has Denver witnessed such a surfeit of civility, decorum and goose eggs. Eventually, the Mets added two runs, the Rockies one and the game ended with a gentlemanly final of 6-4 in the home team’s favor, a score that could have been posted anywhere on the North American continent, proving a mile-high ballpark occasionally plays like a standard major league entity, even if the Mets don’t.
But let’s get back to the perspective party, where you do your thing every day and not all of it looks like it was done by the seventh-worst team in baseball. For example, the Mets outhit the Rockies, 11-9. What a shame that isn’t the object of the game. Five of the Mets’ twenty-seven outs became ten via ground ball double plays, which seemed antithetical to the prevailing regional tendencies. Launch the ball up into that legendary thin mountain air and it has a chance to go far. Put the ball on the ground and there is a chance to turn two — or in the Rockies’ case, turn ten.
Ah, but perspective! Keeping the score stable for a while was better than allowing the game to get away. Not letting Coors’s tendencies overflow could be construed as a small victory for aesthetics. Compiling more hits than the opposition would earn you a check mark if Jimmy the Greek was breaking down the action for Brent Musberger. Fans of efficiency surely had to applaud the method by which the Mets enabled the Rockies to repeatedly shorten their defensive frames. And cruise director Callaway remains Rocky Mountain high on the concept of process taking precedence over record…as, it is natural to suspect, would anybody whose record resembles his to date.
Things are going so great by so many largely irrelevant measures that one is tempted to ignore all the killjoy indicators that illustrate the Mets just endured a brutal series (1-3) and terrible road trip (3-7) amid a season in which whatever thing the team is doing every day doesn’t seem to be leading to success as measured by the traditional metrics that still define whether you’re much good.
Which, at the risk of being a perspective party pooper, the 31-41 Mets aren’t.
Projected to be more fun than a barrel of Mickey postgame pressers: OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS: READIN’, WRITIN’ & RUSTY, coming to Two Boots Midtown East, 337 Lexington Ave., between 39th and 40th Streets, Thursday, June 28, 7:00 PM. Join a trio of Mets fan authors, grab a slice of Two Boots pizza and have a fine baseball time designed to improve all our perspectives. The details are here. Hope to see you there.
by Jason Fry on 21 June 2018 3:15 am The Mets lost, 10-8, and no, this is not a blog malfunction. They essentially played the same occasionally hopeful, ultimately deflating and consistently ridiculous game on Wednesday night as they did on Tuesday night.
This time around … oh, must we? I suppose that’s why you’re here and we’re here, so yes, we must. Things started well enough, as the Mets sent eight men to the plate in the first and emerged with three runs.
The idea of scoring runs early is a new thing in Mets Land and to be applauded. Actually, the idea of scoring runs at all is a relatively new thing in Mets Land and to be applauded. Alas, that’s only half the battle — you also have to score more runs than the other guys, which proved difficult.
Seth Lugo had never pitched in Colorado, which is an excellent idea until you can’t avoid it, a reckoning that arrived on Wednesday. Lugo, alas, didn’t fare quite as well as Logan Verrett did in his mountainous debut: his curveball wouldn’t curve, without which Lugo is basically unarmed. He gave up a monster shot in the first to Nolan Arenado, was undone by a Todd Frazier error and a whole lotta hits in the second to make the game 4-4, and then was immediately in trouble again in the third. That inning was it for Lugo, who departed with the Mets down by two.
Coors Field being Coors Field, the Mets came back, scoring four in the fifth with a little bit of everything, including a Dominic Smith triple aided by some strangely pacifistic Rockie defense and a bases-loaded walk. That lead threatened to make Paul Sewald a winning pitcher for the first time in his baseball career, which apparently offended the baseball gods: approximately five minutes later, Robert Gsellman gave up a three-run pinch-hit homer to someone named Ryan McMahon. Kevin Plawecki then came to the plate in the sixth with the bases loaded and one out, but swung at ball four and pulled it to Arenado at third, which is not a good idea. That was essentially the ballgame, minus the usual mile-high scratching and clawing.
Lord knows being a Mets fan is a constant slog through shadowed valleys, but I don’t understand how Rockies fans do it. Watching this brand of baseball is exhausting, the entertainment equivalent of plowing a field full of old munitions. When your team wins you feel like you got away with something, and when it loses you feel like a mark for showing up. I don’t know if I could take 81 games of this in any season, let alone a rebuilding one in which you know the local nine is going to get beaten to a pulp 50-odd times. I suppose my cap is tipped.
Bonus content, because I don’t want to leave you good folks with that: The three volumes of The Holy Books feature cards for not only every Mets player but also every Mets manager, and yes, that does include interim skippers Salty Parker, Roy McMillan and Mike Cubbage. Cubbage got a Topps TV card as a coach, which I deemed good enough for my purposes; because I’m insane, I made custom cards for Parker and McMillan, an undertaking that led to a belated but real appreciation for the thoroughly amazing baseball life led by Francis James Parker.
But this year presented a problem: Topps no longer seems to make manager cards, even in nostalgia-laden sets featuring designs from years when skippers received their cardboard due. There were no manager cards in last year’s Topps Heritage set, which recreated the burlap design of the ’68 series, and there are none in this year’s ’69-replica Heritage set, either. I know one Mets collector lunatic isn’t a market, but this is disappointing given the attention to detail that Topps has brought to Heritage.
A baseball-card story I love: 2011 Heritage was based on the ’62 design, and Topps went all in on the historical parallels where the Mets were concerned. As in the original ’62 set, there was no Mets team card, most of the Mets were photographed from the neck up, and many of them weren’t wearing caps. Topps even trotted out an “error” card featuring David Wright as a Red, mimicking Don Zimmer‘s post-trade card in which he’s wearing a Mets hat but correctly identified as Cincinnati property. (Seriously, the effort was extraordinary. See for yourself: Thanks to the good folks at The Trading Card Database, here’s the 2011 Topps Heritage gallery and here’s one of the original Mets.)
I tried to solve my missing-manager problem by pulling a fast one: I used Topps’s own custom-card service to try and order myself a Mickey Callaway utilizing the 2018 design, blowing through the website’s warning that copyrighted photos would be rejected in hopes that no one was really checking.
Narrator’s voice: Someone was checking.
Oh well, on to Plan B: a ’69-style Callaway I could make myself, like the one we should have gotten in Heritage. This turned out to be a bigger undertaking than I thought: I’d never noticed that those ’69 manager cards had really tricky backs, with pen-and-ink headshots of the managers, bespoke cartoons and names spelled out with overlapping letters.
But I persevered, and am proud to report that I’ve won through to the uncertain reward of having my very own Mickey Callaway card. Perhaps I will hold it up as a talisman next time a middle reliever hits in the seventh inning.
by Greg Prince on 20 June 2018 10:31 am You don’t bring a Jason Vargas to a slugfest if you wish to prevail in the slugfest. Then again, you might not have a full-fledged slugfest without Jason Vargas, for as offensive a bent as Coors Field possesses, it takes a Vargas to ensure at least one side’s scoring soars to mile-high levels.
A properly calibrated Iron Mike would serve the same basic purpose as the Mets lefty, but the club generally doesn’t travel with a NEW YORK road jersey quite so large. Vargas, on the other hand, fits into his uniform fine for as long as he wears it, which, when he starts, isn’t for very long. Judging from the postgame coverage SNY airs, no Met is ever quite so thoroughly showered, dried and dressed when facing the media as Vargas. Never pitching beyond the fifth inning at least earns you first dibs on the hot water.
Tuesday night in Denver, even after an eighty-minute rain delay, Jason got to knock off extra early, leaving the game in the third, having surrendered three consecutive home runs (to Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story and Ian Desmond) before hitting a guy. The hitting a guy is what moved Mickey Callaway to remove him, reminding me of Baltimore Colts legend Art Donovan’s tale of teammate Don Joyce. Joyce devoured 38 pieces of fried chicken and every side dish on the table to win a gluttony contest, yet was still careful to add saccharin rather than sugar to his iced tea at the end because he didn’t want to overdo it.
It was 6-2, Rockies, when savvy veteran Vargas exited with more velocity than he throws, leaving Hansel Robles to clean up his mess — perhaps not the ideal match of personnel to assignment — and the Met hitters to add ballast to the bromide that no lead is safe at Coors Field. Colorado’s lead, inflated to 8-2 before the fourth and 9-2 by the fifth, proved safe. Hansel, like Jason, didn’t let his spate of recent positive pitching get in the way of testifying on behalf of the ballpark’s reputation. The most Callaway could fiddle while Robles burned was asking for a crew chief review of an RBI double that struck the yellow foul line high on the left field wall. There was not much doubt that it would be confirmed fair, but when your pitchers are letting you down, you can’t be blamed for hoping a second glance might prop you up.
Mickey would have been better off requesting a crew chief review of what he was thinking when he aligned his rotation in advance of this series. His starter from Tuesday has registered a 13.50 earned run average across four career outings inside the home of the Rockies. A stiff shot of Vargas followed by a Robles chaser may be the quintessential Coors cocktail. You can chug one of those babies in the dampest of humidors and you’ll still feel its kick.
The Mets’ newly honed ability to reach bases and cross plates eventually emerged, albeit for display purposes only. The visitors whittled their deficit at various intervals to 9-4, 10-6 and, most tantalizingly, 10-8 in the ninth inning, but recovering quickly and completely from a Vargas-Robles hangover is nearly impossible in thin air. The oddest of several Met missteps was Asdrubal Cabrera getting himself caught off second base with two out in the fifth after strike two on Todd Frazier got away from Rockies catcher Chris Iannetta. Cabrera could be seen urgently motioning the batter to run to first, apparently believing Frazier had just swung through strike three. With simple mathematics preventing Todd from advancing, Asdrubal engaged tentatively in a rundown that would be ultimately scored 2-5-6-5-4 for the third out, an outcome that certified Tuesday as not just an official game, but an official Mets game.
Perhaps the most encouraging development from the two-run loss was not the cosmetic compilation of runs registered versus the preternaturally generous Rockies relief corps but that the Mets slogging through the soggy evening while not blatantly exhausting their bullpen. Chris Beck and Tim Peterson soaked up the final four innings sans excess Sturm und Drang, Peterson demonstrating the most absorbency (six up, six down). Tim was added to the roster anew when Jay Bruce was dispatched to the disabled list, as inevitable a destination for him as an early shower is for Vargas. Poor Jay…bad foot, bad back, bad hip…bad season.
Because the Mets decided in favor of an extra arm to withstand the delights of Denver, they entered Tuesday’s game short of a spare outfielder. Given the presence of righthander German Marquez on the mound for Colorado, Callaway opted to start in left field lefty-swinging Dom Smith, heretofore almost exclusively a first baseman, but someone who had taken a handful of fly balls previously, if never amid the cow pasture that constitutes Coors Field’s most distant precincts.
When you play left field behind Jason Vargas and Hansel Robles, you should be all right. The only defensive skill critical to exhibit is the ability to jog to the track and sympathetically watch the ball clear the fence. Smith did that fine. Smith also injected the Mets outfield with more youth than we are accustomed to seeing. With 23-year-old Dom keeping company alongside 25-year-old Michael Conforto and 25-year-old Brandon Nimmo, Tuesday night marked the first Met lineup in which left, center and right were all manned by kids under 26 since September 24, 1997. Populating the outfield that long-ago Shea night — one game after the Mets had been eliminated from their valiant Wild Card chase — were Butch Huskey, Carlos Mendoza and Alex Ochoa.
Huskey and Ochoa enjoyed respectable if briefer than projected major league tenures. Mendoza, whom presumably few remember broke up Dustin Hermanson’s no-hit bid in what innings later became known to aficionados as the Carl Everett Game, sipped one cup of coffee with the ’97 Mets and another with the 2000 Rockies. Between those stints, he was drafted by the fledgling Tampa Bay Devil Rays in a team-building exercise gone awry. The composite Flushing staying power of the Huskey-Mendoza-Ochoa unit never added up to more than this mention in this blog.
Conforto has already been a National League All-Star. Nimmo, despite a couple of foibles in right Wednesday night, could be on the road to becoming one extremely soon. Smith is still finding himself, an occupational hazard for 23-year-olds regardless of profession. Dom’s first base competence didn’t inspire anybody’s additional confidence in the ninth inning on Sunday in Arizona when he flipped a seemingly caught ball between his legs and provided umpire Bruce Dreckman every inclination to call an out baserunner (Alex Avila) safe once he dropped it like he was Marv Throneberry handling a slice of birthday cake. As Casey Stengel might have suggested, if you wanna be an acrobat, join the Flying Wallendas — and if you wanna be the Mets’ regular first baseman, transfer the ball from your glove to your hand like a regular first baseman.
Smith is a decidedly irregular left fielder, considering it’s never been his position until this season, and then just for the sake of experiment. With Bruce on the DL and Yoenis Cespedes suspected in certain quarters as something akin to spiritual AWOL, experiments can suddenly take on a life of their own. The Mets’ third outfielder these days is Jose Bautista, better suited for pinch-hitting as he strives to extend the twilight of what remains of his major league career. Dom has thus been thrust up the outfield depth chart. The cringe factor at seeing “Smith” penciled in next to “LF” might have been as high as Coors’s elevation, but the young man did nothing blatantly wrong in the field (if nothing particularly encouraging at the plate). Giving his bat every chance to connect is a reasonable goal on a team that, snapped three-game winning streak notwithstanding, probably isn’t about to begin valiantly chasing a Wild Card. Let’s just say it won’t be the occasional Dom Smith start in left that figures to hold the 2018 Mets back.
Besides, if some other team stuck their version of Dom Smith in the outfield, we’d envy their flair for versatility, admire how they cunningly infused their lineup with an extra dose of potential power and yearn for the brand of Mets manager who gaudily dared to insert Kevin Mitchell at shortstop. Assuming the worst of the contemporary Mets is understandable, often justified, but now and then giving something unorthodox a chance to succeed — or even not succeed — isn’t the worst thing a ballclub can do.
Starting Jason Vargas at Coors Field is the worst thing a ballclub can do.
Vargas won’t give up any runs on Thursday, June 28, because the Mets won’t be playing. But you will have something to do, thanks to OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS, a literary-leaning get-together at Two Boots Midtown East in Manhattan. Check out the details here. We hope to see you there.
by Jason Fry on 19 June 2018 1:50 am I didn’t want to look up the last time the Mets won a laugher, because I knew the answer would be startling at first and then depressing. (It was May 15, when they beat the Blue Jays by 10.) Kind of like this season has been.
Anyway, Monday night’s tilt in Colorado was only a laugher in retrospect: the Rockies crept within 4-2 in the 7th thanks to some dopey Met defense, which had the normally stoic Jacob deGrom glowering out at his teammates, a show of emotion that was both rare and thoroughly understandable. Giving up six runs in five starts and seeing your team go 0-5 gives you the right to side-eye anyone even vaguely related to what’s befallen you.
DeGrom didn’t look terrific, but that was probably the lack of Colorado air nipping some of the wrinkle off his pitches — Charlie Blackmon offered an interesting perspective on hitting a mile above sea level that I hadn’t heard before, opining that fastballs kept more of their velocity but lost some of their movement. But he was certainly good enough. I had to chuckle at how he finished off the seventh by throwing a 97 MPH fastball past Tom Murphy at the top of the zone, as if to say (or at least to mentally mutter) “let’s see one of those other idiots drop this one.” Devin Mesoraco was the only other Met involved with the pitch, and he didn’t drop anything. DeGrom and the Mets were out of trouble, and two in the 8th and six in the 9th made trouble a dot in the rearview mirror.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, there was actual hitting. Brandon Nimmo, still wreathed in Arizona laurels, hit the fourth pitch of the game off the right-field fence, discombobulating Carlos Gonzalez and leaving Nimmo to outrun everything except his smile for an inside-the-park homer. Nimmo would add a conventional round-tripper later and two hits besides, delighting his family and what seemed like a good chunk of the population of Cheyenne. Other Mets chipped in, too: Mesoraco and Wilmer Flores homered, while Michael Conforto and Amed Rosario had three hits apiece. Heck, not even the Joses were completely useless.
It was a relatively normal game, a welcome thing given the near-Biblical rain of horrors that’s pelted this team for two months. Yes, there was that late-inning quaver in the knees that sometimes portends a Coors Field collapse and leaves you remembering how everything seemed in hand until the other guys put up that beastly crooked number. But, well, you should see the other guy. The Mets hit often, ran the bases tolerably, pitched terrific and fielded just well enough to finally give their most talented pitcher the support he deserves. Twelve runs a night is good; that number being more runs than they’d scored in deGrom’s eight previous starts is a travesty.
But hey, our ragamuffin team has somehow won three in a row. Here’s to Nimmo’s smile being the Mets’ summertime equivalent of Rudolph’s red nose, a beacon to guide them anywhere other than where they’ve been.
by Greg Prince on 18 June 2018 11:08 am “Dinner’s waiting, hon’.”
“One minute. Game’s almost over.”
“Is that still on? Haven’t they lost already?”
“Hey, have some faith here. Wheeler pitched great, even Robles pitched well and, besides, they won last night.”
“Yes, dear, but the kids and I hate to see you disappointed on Father’s Day.”
“Daddy, dinner’s ready!”
“One minute, sweetie. Daddy’s team is still playing.”
“Is Daddy’s team losing again?”
“Daddy’s team is playing. That’s the important thing. If they’re playing, what does that mean?”
“Um, that they’re gonna lose?”
“No, sweetie. That it’s not over and that they can still win.”
“Dad! Mom says dinner’s getting cold and she’s got that look again.”
“One minute. It’s almost over. Wanna watch with your old man?”
“Watch WHAT? I’m doing something.”
“The Mets game.”
“Baseball? That’s so BORING.”
“It’s not boring. You just haven’t given it a chance.”
“Ugh.”
“C’mon, watch with your old man. It’s Father’s Day.”
“Whatever.”
“Daddy, what’s going on on the TV?”
“Well, sweetie, the Mets are batting.”
“Which Mets is that?”
“Met, sweetie. One Met.”
“Which Met is that?”
“That’s Jose Reyes.”
“He looks like a raccoon!”
“He’s wearing eye black, sweetie. It helps him block out the sun.”
“But it already looks dark in there on the TV.”
“They’re playing indoors because it’s hot in Arizona.”
“Then why does the raccoon eyes man have to block out the sun?”
“I don’t know, he just likes to do that.”
“This is so SLOW.”
“Settle down, champ. It’s almost over.”
“If it’s almost over, then why do we have to keep watching? You already know how it’s gonna end. They’re gonna LOSE.”
“You don’t know until it actually happens. Five years ago on Father’s Day, Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit a home run to win the game when it looked like the Mets would lose. You watched with me. You were a lot cuter then.”
“Kirk WHOENHEIS? God, that’s a stupid name.”
“Stay quiet for a minute, would you?”
“Daddy, what’s the raccoon eyes man doing?”
“He’s bunting, sweetie.”
“Bunting? What’s bunting?”
“Bunting is when you hit the ball just a little.”
“Aren’t you supposed to hit the ball a lot?”
“See, Jose is fast…well, he used to be…and if he hits it just a little and nobody on the other team can get to the ball, then he gets to be on base, except this bunt is probably going to roll…OH MY GOD!”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetie. The ball didn’t roll foul and the catcher picked it up too soon and Jose is safe!”
“So is this is over yet? I’m HUNGRY.”
“Watch, would you? You’ll learn to appreciate something.”
“Hon’, dinner’s been sitting on the table for like ten minutes now.”
“Hold on, we have a rally going.”
“Daddy, what’s a rally?”
“It’s when Daddy’s team has a chance to score.”
“Does that ever happen?”
“Sometimes. It happened in the first inning.”
“What inning is this?”
“It’s the ninth.”
“Is that a lot since the first inning?”
“Yes.”
“Which Mets is that?”
“Met.”
“Which Met is that?”
“Jose Bautista.”
“What happened to his raccoon eyes?”
“That was Jose Reyes, sweetie. He’s a different Jose and he’s on base now. This is Jose Bautista.”
“Jose WHATISTA? Your team has so many stupid names.”
“How is that a stupid name?”
“I don’t know. It just is.”
“Go help your mother.”
“Ugh.”
“Daddy, what’s the different Jose man doing?”
“He’s flying to right field…”
“Without an airplane?”
“It’s an expression, sweetie…it’s deep, going to the corner and…OH MY GOD!”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetie. Bautista’s ball fell in for a double for the Mets, Reyes scored and the Mets are within one run of tying the other team. Why do you always think something’s wrong?”
“Because you always go OH MY GOD when the Mets play and you always seem so upset.”
“Daddy’s not upset, sweetie. Daddy’s almost happy.”
“Mom’s getting annoyed in the kitchen.”
“Tell her to come in here. You too.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s Father’s Day and I said so.”
“Ugh. That’s stupid, too.”
“Just do it, OK?”
“Whatever.”
“Who’s the smiley man, Daddy?”
“That’s Brandon Nimmo. He’s very happy all the time.”
“Why is he so happy?”
“Because he’s on the Mets.”
“How come nobody else on the Mets looks that happy?”
“Brandon has a different personality.”
“Person…”
“Personality, sweetie. It’s like how a person is usually. Your brother is sullen, your mother is impatient and you’re…”
“What am I, Daddy?”
“You’re unnaturally inquisitive.”
“I thought you said we’d be sitting down in a minute.”
“We will be.”
“That was fifteen minutes ago.”
“It’s baseball.”
“I like when you get caught up in the sports that have a clock. At least I can time dinner that way.”
“I’m getting some bread. This is stupid.”
“Just sit down. You can all watch the end of the Mets game with me on what’s supposed to be my day.”
“Dinner’s basically frozen now, you know.”
“I’ll put it in the microwave.”
“We could have just had Lean Cuisine. Would have saved me a lot of trouble.”
“Lean Cuisine SUCKS. Ugh.”
“Can you all just give me a minute to watch Brandon Nimmo bat?”
“The smiley man!”
“Yes, sweetie. The smiley man…OH MY GOD!”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“Yes, dear, what’s wrong? Of all the noises you make during Mets games, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one lately.”
“Is Dad sick? Do we have to take him to the emergency room? Ugh, hospitals are so BORING!”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m not sick. You haven’t heard that noise during Mets games because it’s the noise I make when the Mets snatch potential victory from the jaws of defeat, and they almost never do that anymore — but they just did, I think.”
“The smiley man did it, Daddy?”
“That’s right, sweetie. The smiley man, Brandon Nimmo, just hit a two-run homer to put the Mets ahead four to three and…OH MY GOD!”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“What’s right, sweetie, you mean!”
“What’s right, Daddy?”
“Asdrubal Cabrera just hit a home run, too! The Mets are up five to three!”
“Yay Astoobull!”
“Yes, sweetie. Yay Astoobull!”
“That’s another stupid name.”
“How have you not picked up an iota of my cultural sensitivity?”
“UGH. I have to pick up everything around here!”
“Congratulations, dear. I’m very happy the Mets won for you on Father’s Day. And now we can go heat up dinner and…”
“Um, we still have to watch the bottom of the ninth. But as soon as Gsellman gets the last three outs, we’ll be fine. See, the first out is right there, an easy ground ball, Dom Smith has it and he’s going to take it out of his glove and…OH MY GOD!!!”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“Nothing, sweetie. Hon’, take the kids out of the room. Go start eating without me. I think I need to be alone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be along in three outs. They will get the three outs. I just have to sit here a little longer, by myself, with the lights off, and everything will be fine. Just fine.”
“Mommy, is Daddy OK? Why is he talking to himself? Why did that man toss the ball between his legs? Is he a circus man? And which one is the gazelle man? Was he the one riding on the back of the big baseball hat?”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Your father does some version of this every night after you go to bed.”
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