The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Greg Prince on 3 July 2018 1:16 am The Mets have played exactly half their schedule. Congratulations to all of us on surviving. Let’s reward ourselves by having fun with halves. Let’s explore Mets history by way of our first halves, our second halves and the asterisky segments of seasons during which two halves haven’t necessarily fit neatly together.
Yes, this is my idea of fun. C’mon, halve some with me!
The 2018 first half wasn’t fun, we’ve noticed, but it could have been worse if we use other Met first halves for precedent. Our current record of 33-48 is ghastly on sight and even worse when you learn that the only other first half record that matched it exactly belonged to the 1979 Mets. Nineteen Seventy-Nine has its own shorthand: Mettle the Mule, Richie Hebner, Lorinda de Roulet, 788,905 customers paying their way into Shea when announced attendance jibed with turnstile count. It was all as awful as we remember and, 39 years later, we are on pace with it.
Having fun yet? Well, here’s a tidbit to make you feel if not better, then not quite worse — 1979 and 2018 have not produced the worst first-half records in Mets history. There are a whole mess of Mets lagging behind these two avatars of atrociousness (did we pick a great franchise to root for or what?).
Let’s go bottoms up. The worst of the worst first halves occurred right away, in 1962, a 23-58 test drive. The Mets liked the model so much, they went back to the dealer two years later and traded it on another just like it. The 1964 Mets ran their odometer to 23-58 after 81 games, too. Fast starts just weren’t in our DNA.
It never got worse coming out of the box, but it would come close roughly three decades later. Your friends on the 1993 Mets went 25-56 in prematurely burying all hope, taking down their manager in May and GM in June. It sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it? Except we still have our skipper, lucky us. Mickey Callaway notwithstanding (and not getting out of the way), our quarter-century tribute to the godforsaken 1993 season approximates the choppy lyrics accurately, but even the 2018 Mets can’t replicate that atonal melody.
Hey, you didn’t think we were done with the early days, did you? Don’t be thrown off by 1993 crowding its way into the rear of the train. Both 1965 (28-53) and 1963 (29-52) boarded long ago. The training wheels were still on and, judging by healthy attendance figures, the charm of lovably losing had yet to completely wear off. Still, what a way to start a baseball team.
And then we get to the mold dust twins of 1979 and 2018, right? Wrong, Mettlebreath! Other lousy first half team are gonna have their say in this discussion.
• The 1983 Mets were super subpar in their first half of play, compiling a record of 30-51. No shock a suddenly traded Keith Hernandez allegedly cried in the shower at the thought of joining the so-called Stems.
• The 1977 Mets, having cleverly rid themselves of their premier pitcher and stellar slugger, arrived at the halfway point in 31-50 style.
• And the 1967 Mets tripped all over themselves (and even their rookie pitcher Seaver), stumbling to a first-half mark of 32-49.
That’s the same record the 1995 Mets had after 81 games, but this is where we must get asterisky wit’ it, for the 1995 season was only 144 games long, and its halves thus measured 72 games apiece. Since you’re wondering, the 1995 Mets were 27-45 in their first half*, or a prorated 30-51, since I know you were also wondering about that.
Now? Yes, now we can slot 2018’s remake of Superbad where it belongs — not far from, yet not in the franchise basement. The first 81 of ’18 can look itself in the mirror and believe itself when it utters its mantra of self-affirmation. 2018’s not good enough, it’s not smart enough and none of us likes it…but nine Mets teams have been worse after their first halves.
It would be ten if we were counting 1981, but as I hope you recognize, 1981 is the most asterisky of all major league seasons, the only one split into two, albeit as a contingency plan after a lengthy labor dispute. There wasn’t so much a “first half” of 1981 as there was a retroactively conceived First Half, and in that first version of 1981, the Mets were 17-34. By the time an 81st game of ’81 was played, it was already the Second Half or second season or, for all intents and purposes (except individual statistics), another season. Confused yet? Don’t worry. However you count it, the first half of 1981 was also worse than the first half of 2018.
Before 2018’s first half gets too full of itself, it should be fully aware of the ignominy it has brought up on itself. After 81 games, not only are the 2018 Mets precisely as putrid as their infamous 1979 predecessors, they have failed to be as good as 1979’s somewhat less toxic neighbor 1978. Those Torreadors rushed to a 34-47 record. Olé! Quite the hat trick we’ve pulled off, settling halfway into a season that recalls, spiritually as well as statistically, the most depressing three-year stretch in Mets history.
Seeing as how we’re all good and depressed, how about something to lift our spirits? Let’s talk about great first halves. Let’s talk about the 1986 Mets and their champagne-sparkling 56-25 record. Let’s talk about 1988, when another set of vintage Mets went 52-29. Those are the only Met years wherein half-a-hundred wins were collected by the halfway point. Good stuff, right? You do that well, you know you’re gonna play more than 162 games.
You do almost that well, you’re probably in luck. Witness the 2006 Mets and their 48-33 record, the inverse of 2018 (although both editions have included a Jose Reyes, if not nearly the same one). The other 48-33 first-halfers are the reason we say “probably” regarding postseason. The 1990 Mets went 48-33, then home after 162. Great starts, alas, aren’t everything.
Oh, but they’re sometimes something. The 1969 Mets’ first-half mark of 47-34 was a revelation, especially when you consider the chronological proximity to some of those years we mentioned a few paragraphs ago. The ’69ers built quite a platform for what was to come in the second half, a feat unfortunately not duplicated by the three other Mets clubs who also finished 81 games at 47-34: 1984, 1991 and mini-asterisk bunch 1972. Nineteen Seventy-Two encompassed a 156-game schedule by de facto design, with the first six games lopped off by strike. Since you’re asking nicely, I’ll let you know that after their actual first half of 78 games, the 1972 Mets were 45-33, or comparable to what they’d be after 81 games (yet I wouldn’t have forgiven myself had I not been as specific as possible).
Shouldn’t being on pace for a 92-win campaign after half-a-season get you to the playoffs? One in four 46-35 Mets clubs says yes, namely the 2000 club. Sadly, three in four — 1971, 1985 and 2007 — say nay. Some perfectly fine starts (1999’s 45-36) proved ultimately more useful than some other perfectly fine starts (1970, 1997 and 2010 each launched with the same record as ’99). Sometimes 44-37 will lead you to just-missed heartache (1998); sometimes 44-37 will pave the road to oblivion (2012); and sometimes 44-37 will allow your ass to avert the jackpot and see at least a little of the bright lights of October (2016).
By now you should have developed an inkling that a robust first half is essential to forging an entire full season. Inkle away, but it ain’t necessarily so. How about those 2015 Mets and their so-so 41-40 first half? Theirs was the same record after 81 games as that fashioned by the 2004 and 2011 Mets. Let me know if you can find the National League pennants for the latter two. Oh, and how about those 36-45 Mets who were all but done for the year at the halfway juncture of their years? We’ve had six clubs post that highly unimpressive record after 81 games. Five (1966, 1974, 2001, 2003, 2013) are not represented along the left field Excelsior facade. But one is — 1973. Nineteen Seventy-Three gave us the worst first-half record of any Met postseason entry. It also gives us every reason to cling the slightest shred of belief that a team with as many as 46 defeats in its first 81 contests, particularly if it’s competing in a shall we say fluid division, can build upon the thinnest of successes once the second half gets serious.
Too bad the 2018 Mets have lost 48 games, otherwise we could kid ourselves just a little longer.
Fifty percent of precincts reporting often tell us all we need to know. No Mets team had a better record in its first half than 1986 and no Mets team had a better record when all was said and done. No Mets team was worse in its first half than 1962 and no Mets team had a worse record when all was said and done. But as you’ve likely noticed, some solid starts have been for naught. For example, dig that mention of 2010’s 45-36 start. Yeah, that didn’t last. Nor did the 44-37 ways of 2012, to say nothing of 1991 rocking the 47-34. You’ve just been introduced to the worst second-half thudders in Mets history.
The 1991 Mets plummeted without a net, going 30-50 in their second half (one game was cancelled when the roof fell in on Olympic Stadium, a pretty intense metaphor in the moment). It wasn’t the worst second-half record in Mets history — that, not surprisingly, belongs to 1962, at 17-62 — but it represented the worst second-half differential. The second half of 1991 finished 16½ games behind the first half of 1991, which makes our contemporary 11-1 turning into 33-48 seem almost humane. The 2012 Mets, despite the presence of a pitcher knuckling his way to twenty victories, plunged nearly as badly, losing 51 of 81, a fourteen-game swing in the decidedly wrong direction.
Those 2010 Mets, soaring so high in the first half, fell by eleven games in the second half, playing 34-47 ball and forever obscuring their promising start and matching two other years that started reasonably well and ended in Metropolitan hell. The respectable 2004 Mets of a 41-40 first half morphed into the dreadful 2004 Mets of a 30-51 second half, while the Magic is Back illusionists of 1980 abra-ca-dabra’d from 39-42 to 28-53. Poof! Two seasons later, 1982 manufactured an eerily similar vibe: a first half of “maybe they’re not so terrible” (38-43); a second half of “ohmigod, I can’t believe I fell for this again” (27-54).
Ah, but second halves can be redemptive. You remember 1973 from earlier, right? That 35-46 cacophony got its act together and penned a 47-33 symphony, an improvement of 12½ games. Only one Mets team turned around its dreary first half more stunningly, albeit with no legacy to show for it. The 1995 Mets, worse than the 2018 Mets in their first half, were better than every Mets team when it came to making second-half adjustments, leaping from resolutely crummy 27-45 to relatively sterling 42-30. The miserable first half, the shortened season and the presence of the divisionally dynastic Braves obscured the breathtaking 15-game progress achieved in Flushing that forgotten summer.
Some great second-half swings were similarly for naught in the standings, but made themselves felt in real time. The 2001 Mets were one of those dismal 35-46 first-half units, but they found their pennant-defending groove and went 47-34 in the second half, nearly capturing a division title in the too-little/too-late process (and wouldn’t have that been sweet that autumn?). The 1983 Mets, those Stems with the 30-51 record after the first half, upped their fortunes by eight games in the second half, going 38-43, which wasn’t Amazin’ on its own merits, but it did provide a hint of what was to come in 1984, 1985 and 1986. An eight-game swing was also notched by those middling 41-40 first-half Mets of 2015, transforming themselves into a 49-32 outfit celebrated for being not only Amazin’, but Amazin’ Again.
Context is critical in measuring progress. The 2008 Mets were the epitome of blah at their halfway point (40-41). They improved by nine games in the second half (49-32), which put them on the cusp of extending Shea Stadium’s life, a noble crusade perhaps not fully appreciated at the time given that Shea died right on schedule — but nice try, 2008. The 1993 Mets were the epitome of EEEK! at their halfway point (25-56). They improved by nine games in the second half (34-47), which enhanced their historical standing not one iota. They were still the 1993 Mets.
How do I keep coming back to horror shows? I said we were gonna have fun with halves, so let’s have fun before we get on with the second half of 2018.
• Respect must be paid to the 1994 Mets, who never had a proper second half. After starting saggy, at 36-45, they surged to 19-13 before the strike came along and shut them down. Prorated, that projected to an approximate twelve-game improvement. We’ll never know just how good the second-half ’94 Mets could have been. Maybe all those other teams voted to strike because they feared Rico Brogna & Co. were just getting started.
• Although, as noted above, you can’t accurately inject inherently misshapen 1981 into any of this, it deserves pointing out that the Second Half Mets of that misbegotten year (24-28) were 6½ games better than the First Half Mets (17-34). It was a bush league setup, but we were kind of a contender that September, and it was a blast the several weeks it lasted.
• Lest they seem merely melodramatic in retrospect, those crazy 1999 Mets could play some ball on either side of the midway point. Not only were they superb in their first half (45-36), they were outstanding in their second half (52-30, including the one-game playoff that pushed them into a more formal postseason). How they found the wherewithal to lose eight straight in the first half and seven in row down the stretch of the second half makes them only more admirable. And crazy.
• Hail to the 1969 Mets, the best second-half club in Mets history! Their 53-28 finish was one game better than that filed by their 1985 and 1986 successors, a game-and-a-half better than the ’99ers. Hail as well to the 1986 World Champions, the only Mets to win at least 50 games in each of their halves, which helps explain the 108 wins overall.
• Finally, let’s raise a glass to the 1976 and 1998 Mets, consistent buggers each. 1976 First Half: 43-38; 1976 Second Half: 43-38. 1998 First Half: 44-37; 1998 Second Half: 44-37. Those are the only Mets teams to post identical records in their first and second halves. True, it’s not the goal of any given season, and it didn’t do either of those also-rans the slightest bit of good (especially the ’98 Mets, who really could have used one goddamn extra win in their final five games), but at least we could have projected exactly where we were headed recordwise had we simply sat back and doubled 81 games in their years.
Not that we’re particularly anxious to do that in 2018. Check back in a shade under three months and see how much fun we halved the rest of the way.
by Greg Prince on 1 July 2018 7:28 pm If I hadn’t long ago disabled the feature, I wouldn’t be surprised if the smiling MS Word paper clip popped up on my screen ASAP and started asking me, “Do you mean to type ‘lose’ in place of ‘win’?” and “Would you like to use the word ‘suck’ after ‘Mets’?” It’s been a while since I sat down to write a game recap following a Mets victory. My last seventeen games on the beat have dealt me sixteen desultory defeats to review. The lone triumph in this period was so giddily absurd that it transcended standard exposition, so really, simply writing, “The Mets won their most recent game” might not flow so naturally from these fingertips.
Nevertheless, the Mets won their most recent game. There. Like falling off a bike. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, lest a Met fall off a bike and have to go on the disabled list…which isn’t the same as a Met actually going on the disabled list.
See? See how hard it is to stay on message amid the temporarily placid trees while the forest smolders? You watch this team daily, as I still do, and you expect setbacks on and off the field. Well, this steamy Sunday afternoon, as far as could be divined via television from Miami, nothing went any further up in flames that it already was. Nobody fell off a bike. Nobody grabbed at a body part, unless we’re counting effusive high-fives. Nobody appointed an additional general manager. Pending Customs’ machinations or a few too many Mooseheads, the Mets set themselves up for a smooth trip to Toronto. You never know what these happy flights will devolve into. An exhilarating win in St. Louis on Father’s Day 1982 didn’t prevent a delay in returning home to New York, which didn’t sit well with Craig Swan, which led to a shoving match with coach Frank Howard, the last guy a standard-sized human being would want to provoke.
Everybody’s tamer these days. With no game scheduled until Tuesday night, we can likely bask in some rare Met glow for a good 48 hours, assuming we still have basking encoded within our muscle memory.
The Mets recorded a scant six hits and committed three errors Sunday, yet enough balls bounced their way to create a 5-2 win. Perhaps the young, surging Marlins were due for a loss. Or perhaps, to borrow from Leo Durocher’s snide 1969 retort regarding a competitor he wished to not take overly seriously, those were the real Marlins we saw out there today. Across two days of watching the pesky pesci swim defiantly upstream and briefly into fourth place, I forgot that their record was essentially as bad as ours, for compared to us, they are a feisty, feelgood Fish story. Compared to us in June, every National League franchise was a whopper. Anybody using the Mets as a dockside tape measure should be warned it only appears they’ve caught a whale.
Steven Matz was solid for five-and-a-third innings. Seth Lugo was sharp in his reluctant return to relief. Jeurys Familia unspooled a perfect inning of saving. Asdrubal Cabrera homered. Todd Frazier scored three runs. Kevin Plawecki drove an RBI double into the gap. Michael Conforto dove to optimal effect in left field. Fine baseball stuff, all of it, the kind of precious detail that hasn’t been much in evidence this past month or two. It’s details like these I’ve missed, details like these that have hardly seemed worth mentioning lately, even when they’ve been detectable in the course of cascading catastrophe.
This 33-48 season, the product of a first half that went off the rails and into the woods, has robbed us of not just a chance to contend for a playoff spot, but has taken from us the ability to appreciate the simple things. The well-executed start. The effective middle relief stint. A couple of hits off the same bat. A splendid catch. That sense that you’re not a sucker for remaining engaged in the outcome. Amid all the losing, acknowledging let alone celebrating blips of competence seems a misplaced priority. If you’re contending, every play is potentially part of a big, beautiful story you’ll be retelling into eternity. If you’re on the periphery of contention, the sunny signs seem to point you in the right direction if you let them. If you’re just barely good enough to dream, at least you can dream that — ooh child — things’ll get brighter, and the nice plays and performances you’ve seen might be your stairsteps to the stars.
When you’re 33-48, especially when you’re 33-48 the way we’ve gotten to 33-48, you don’t have it in you to dwell on the infrequent things that haven’t gone wrong. Positives barely qualify as positives. You’re wary that one of your several general managers might get carried away from the aberrant instance of a cutoff man making an accurate relay and not complete a trade that will delete the current year and direct us to a more fruitful future.
In a season like this, norms are no longer normal. All those little hallmarks of patience you develop as a fan become inoperative. You don’t reflexively reason “let’s see how it goes tomorrow” because you’re convinced tomorrow is gone beyond redemption. “Just a loss” becomes “yet another loss”. Wins serve only to inconveniently interrupt stubborn narratives of despair, dismay and disgust. Individual games aren’t absorbed on their own merits. You don’t react to the action in front of you because the big picture overwhelms everything in sight. Every game, every inning, every grounder not cleanly handled, every box not busted out of, every pitching change that makes matters worse morphs into a reflection on all that is awry and a referendum on all who are overmatched.
That’s not the way to consume baseball, but it’s the way we’ve been consuming this baseball. It’s understandable. This baseball has been indigestible. For one day, though, we got baseball that didn’t make us gag, baseball that didn’t have us demanding satisfaction that we know isn’t coming, baseball that didn’t leave us not wanting another bite. Compared to what we’ve been getting, it was practically baseball like it oughta be. Just baseball, just a win…almost as if getting one of those now and then is totally the norm.
by Jason Fry on 30 June 2018 7:18 pm You’ve heard the old expression “the inmates are running the asylum.” Well, that would be an improvement for the 2018 Mets.
Because nobody is running this asylum. Too many of the players can’t handle the basics of major league baseball. The manager doesn’t seem equipped to juggle the bedrock strategies and in-game preparation required. The front office — now an unwieldy triumvirate — wastes roster spots on old players with no future while letting young players rot on the bench. The new people in charge of injury prevention are as bad at their jobs as the old people were. Anonymous quotes continue to be stuck in unsuspecting backs. The face of ownership is a feckless, interfering twit who’s been given a license for negligence by his industry and is likely to outlive a good chunk of the fanbase.
The Mets just completed the third-worst month in franchise history. They are the worst team in the National League. There is no particular reason to believe things won’t get worse from here, and no reason whatsoever to think that anyone connected with this franchise is doing anything to address the top-to-bottom organizational rot.
I’ve lived through some bleak, bleak times as a Mets fan: the Lorinda de Roulet years when the Mets were baseball’s North Korea; the leaderless calamity of the early 90s; the undermanned embarrassment of the mid-aughts. All those teams were embarrassing and pathetic. I hated some of them and took a perverse delight in their chronic failures; others I just wanted to go away.
But I can’t remember a more toxic brew of underperformance, incompetence and negligence than what this team serves up each and every day — or feeling less hope that anything will change.
by Jason Fry on 29 June 2018 10:50 pm This was how I watched everything go wrong for Corey Oswalt and the Mets tonight: I looked down at the floor, slightly to the left of my foot, stealing glimpses between bites of chicken and potatoes.
The floor was where my phone was, with MLB At Bat set to Gameday. Could I tell exactly what was going on? No — I’m nearly 50 and a phone is a relatively small rectangle. But I could see enough: the red circles of strikes, the green circles of balls, the blue circles of an at-bat decided.
And I could see this note: IN PLAY, RUN(S).
Yeah, I could see that one over and over and over again.
In truth, I wasn’t fooling my dinner companions and nobody much minded — my family members knew I was on recap duty. But it felt right for watching this dismal, effortlessly futile incarnation of the Mets fail at their craft. There should be something shameful about continuing to pay the slightest bit of attention to this shambolic dysfunction. You should lower your eyes and hope nobody notices what you’re doing.
Think of everything you could do to improve the world — or at least yourself — if you weren’t wasting three hours a night watching a beautiful game wantonly disfigured. You could be exercising. Picking up trash. Teaching people to read. Making birdhouses. Perfecting cold fusion. (Hey, why not? It’s not like we’re imagining Mickey Callaway figuring out the double switch.)
After dinner I washed dishes, a 20-minute stretch in which I was not tortured by the Mets. (It was great!) I then turned on the TV and watched them lose, except I kept drifting off. They put a couple of guys on, I drifted off, awoke with a start and watched things come to nothing. That happened a couple of times until finally Asdrubal Cabrera had struck out, they had lost and of course I was awake.
I’m barely at 300 words and I’ve already used a number of them to belittle and denigrate the Mets. Which they thoroughly deserve. As they deserve this: watching them, discussing them and even thinking about them has become a chore. That’s about the worst thing one can say about a sports team, but then “the worst” and “the 2018 Mets” go together perfectly.
by Greg Prince on 28 June 2018 12:40 pm If the Mets were a sitcom — and who is to say they aren’t? — the presence of Mickey Callaway would be explained away in the third act.
RICCO: I gotta tell ya, Mickey…you’re not a very good manager.
CALLAWAY: I’ve always been before.
RICCO: Before? This is your first managerial job.
CALLAWAY: I’ve been managing for years. Why, I’ve managed a whole string of ’em.
RICCO: A whole string of what?
CALLAWAY: Bakeries. We call more than one “a string of ’em” on account of the string we use to tie the boxes. That’s bakery humor.
RICCO: This isn’t a bakery! This is a baseball team!
CALLAWAY: It is? Well, I’ll be darned. You know, I was wondering where you kept the flour.
RICCO: Excuse me, but WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?
CALLAWAY: Say, I know what happened — you wanted my brother DICKIE Callaway. HE’S the baseball guy. Real good at it, from what I can tell. I’ll bet he can make those “pitching changes” and “double switches” everybody keeps asking me about like it’s second nature.
RICCO: So you don’t know anything about baseball?
CALLAWAY: Does it look like I know anything about baseball?
RICCO: Oh dear. I better call Omar. And J.P. And Jeff. Definitely Jeff.
CALLAWAY: Hey, there’s the flour! You sit down and relax, John, and I’ll fix ya up some crullers. I’ll bake a batch big enough for ALL the GMs. Now where do you keep the oven?
RICCO: And it’s not even the All-Star break.
On the chance that the Mets aren’t a sitcom, and that there is no Dickie Callaway ready to emerge from the wings, then I have no idea what Mickey Callaway is doing managing them. Nor does Callaway have any kind of a clue.
When you’ve lived with a team a long time, you try to be reasonable toward each of its components. You try to have a memory and keep in mind that this guy who sucks right now maybe didn’t suck so much before and maybe he won’t suck in the moment. You cut slack accordingly. Jeurys Familia has a big slice of slack from me for all he did to win the Mets a pennant and push them toward the playoffs again, but he’s pretty much nibbled through it. I no longer have a lot of faith that Familia won’t suck (whether it’s from wear or tear or both) and when he does, my memories of the 96 saves that embellished two golden seasons and the several celebrations that ensued upon his final pitches fog over. He’s the guy who sucks right now. When he doesn’t, which he didn’t on Tuesday night in nailing down five outs to help enable a rare Citi Field Mets win, I am pleasantly surprised.
But he’s still kind of the guy who sucks right now, which is why I didn’t want to see him come right back out there for the ninth inning on Wednesday night to protect a two-run lead that immediately felt endangered by his mandated participation in the proceedings. Zack Wheeler had been so good against the Pirates for seven scoreless innings and, more relevantly, Tim Peterson had been sharp for nine economical pitches in relief of a faltering Robert Gsellman one night after five zippy deliveries the night before. Peterson was already in, and he’s been in the zone in a way no emerging setup man has been since perhaps Jeurys Familia in 2014. Familia, on the other hand, threw 28 pitches the night before, barked at a baserunner who had done nothing wrong and has aged plenty over the past four years.
Except Peterson is just some rookie and Familia is an established closer, and when you have an old, set-in-his-ways manager who has always hewed closely to roles…no, wait a second, that’s not Mickey Callaway, at least not the Mickey Callaway who was sold to us as an avatar of new age situational progressivism specifically where the bullpen was concerned. This Callaway wouldn’t just default to his closer because he was the closer. He’d go with who made the most sense in the right spot, giving his club and his pitcher the best chance to succeed.
Peterson made the most sense in the ninth inning Wednesday night. He went with Familia. Familia went downhill immediately, as did any chance the pitcher and the club would succeed. Nobody in a Mets uniform demonstrated much concern. No catcher, no infielder, no pitching coach, no manager. No reliever was visibly nudged to get loose ASAP. Maybe concern boiled beneath the surface, but nobody availed themselves of a mound visit (the Mets had some left) to lend the closer a hand. They just let him keep pitching and creating baserunners.
Then, suddenly, Anthony Swarzak got up and, almost just as suddenly, Anthony Swarzak was in the game. Nobody fast-forwarded to skip over the boring warming process. They got him in there just before it was too late. A couple of instants later, it was too late. The stilted two-pitcher process that permitted four Pittsburgh runs required 25 pitches in all. The eventual result approached our rainy shoreline with the relentlessness of Superstorm Sandy. You could see it in the forecast. You knew it was coming. You braced for the worst.
There went the trees.
When the moderately paced torture was over, the Mets were behind, 5-3, en route to a wholly unnecessary loss in a wholly unfathomable season. The manager tried to help us fathom it postgame by kindly Metsplaining, “Yeah, so how it works in baseball…” It doesn’t really matter what he said thereafter (it wasn’t anything useful). It was the most condescending managerial tutorial regarding fundamentals since Mr. Burns informed Darryl Strawberry he was pinch-hitting Homer Simpson for him in a righty-lefty matchup because, “It’s what smart managers to do win ballgames.”
I could cut Familia slack until very recently because he’d earned it. I hope he comes around and elicits a few decent trade offers; I’ll always appreciate the Familia of 2015 and 2016. Swarzak hasn’t earned any slack, at least not with the Mets, yet he was thrown into a bases-loaded, nobody out maelstrom. Swarzak has come off as a bit snippy when peppered around his locker in less than ideal (a.k.a. losing) circumstances, but if he was being asked questions after getting key outs, maybe that would translate as “boy, that guy sure has a winning edge to him.” Either way, Swarzak wasn’t signed for his personality, whatever it is. He was signed to get key outs.
Callaway’s good will was all based on talk and theory. In theory, he was gonna be a great manager. In theory, he was gonna make a great difference. Oh, he’s made a difference, all right. Whatever the metrics are on managerial impact, you can’t watch this team on a going basis and not infer they are a reflection of a first-time manager who had no idea what he was getting himself into and has yet to come up with one.
Listen to him talk, we told ourselves between October and March. He sure sounds good. Or sounded good. He sounded good before there was a season. Every night I tell myself he sounded good before the game. Honestly, he sounds great whenever I hear him interviewed in the early evening. At that point, nothing has gone wrong yet, and he’s affable as all get out. Then, after another game/loss, the vibe shifts to just get out.
And it’s not even the All-Star break.
Now that we have confirmed the Mets are being their worst selves, come hang out with some writers and fans who talk about them anyway. We’ll be at Two Boots Midtown East — 337 Lexington Avenue, between 39th and 40th Streets in Manhattan — tonight at 7. Jon Springer (“Once Upon A Team”), Dave Jordan (“Fastball John”) and I will talk about our team, our books and one of our idols, Rusty Staub. Two Boots proprietor Phil Hartman is offering up, as ever, some sublime pizza, including the Le Grand Orange, created specially for this occasion. OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS, as we’re calling it, is more likely to be fun than any given Mets game in the Mickey Callaway era. So is somebody accidentally stepping on your foot, but this will be better than that, too. Hope to see you there.
by Jason Fry on 27 June 2018 12:23 am For most of Tuesday night, the Mets stuck to their horrific 2018 script. After the evening began with grim real-world news, as opposed to the ultimately meaningless baseball variety, the team went out and scored two early runs against the Pirates, who seemed so comically discombobulated that you wondered if you’d stumbled into some MLB wacky skit: The fans are here for a baseball game, but what they don’t know is that we took the Pirates and switched them with the Mets! Let’s see if anyone notices!
Uh, we noticed. The Pirates committed three errors (and could easily have been charged with a fourth), and contributed four wild pitches to the fray, meaning they basically gifted the Mets half a week’s worth of offense just for showing up. Was that enough to win? Don’t be silly: if the Mets can lose on consecutive nights marked by late-inning three-run homers, a bushelful of extra bases is no guarantee of anything. Steven Matz pitched well, aside from a Leiteresque few minutes where it seemed like he’d forgotten how to pitch, yielding a single, double and two more singles in a head-scratching sequence that erased the Mets’ early lead. The Mets being the Mets, that was enough to leave him stuck with a 2-2 tie.
All right out of the dreadful playbook the Mets really ought to burn already, along with Matz hanging around over 100 pitches and giving up what sure looked like a fatal home run to Gregory Polanco. Except the Pirates weren’t covering themselves with glory, either: with the good guys down by one in the bottom of the seventh, Michael Conforto connected to tie the score again.
Foolishness followed: Josh Harrison broke up a double play with a hard but clean slide into Asdrubal Cabrera, an encounter that seemed to incense Jeurys Familia. The real issue was likely Jeurys’s recent inability to throw strikes, stay healthy or escape the putrid mire of this season, but Harrison made for an easier target, so Familia started barking at him. Harrison, who’s voluble to the point that one suspects he carries on a running conversation in his sleep, took objection to the taking objection, and there was yelling and semi-pushing and a vague amount of posturing, complete with the bullpen catchers arriving a minute later, wheezing and hoping there was no chance they’d have to actually hit anyone.
There wasn’t, because Cabrera had recorded his opinion by embracing Harrison out there in the scrum. That caused Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling to grumble old-man things about today’s game — honestly, it wasn’t a good night for anybody — but Cabrera’s peaceable gesture prevented further nonsense. Perhaps he figured the Mets couldn’t fight either, which strikes me as wise. This season’s bad enough without having to extract meaning from, say, Kevin Plawecki slipping mid-haymaker and breaking Brandon Nimmo‘s orbital bone, causing him to fall on Noah Syndergaard‘s elbow.
Familia somehow escaped harm after everyone got all worked up, and the game ground into extra innings, which made me sigh. Free baseball isn’t exactly a blessing this year; rather, it suggests additional indignities must be endured. The question remaining was how, exactly, the Mets would lose and how much it would sting. That’s a question with no good answer: “a lot” is obviously no fun, while “not at all” is actually worse, and this season has given us ample supplies of both.
Except this is where the Mets somehow departed from the script.
Oh, they tried to mump it up. With Conforto on second and Todd Frazier on first, Cabrera either decided to bunt or was ordered to do so. He popped his first attempt up to catcher Elias Diaz, who dropped it as part of one of the worse days I’ve seen for a catcher in a good long time. Given new life, Cabrera managed to bunt even less effectively, lollipopping the ball out to pitcher (and sometimes singer of our national anthem) Steven Brault. Brault could have let the ball drop for a double play, a triple play or possibly some as-yet-unheard-of play where all 25 Mets were declared out, giving the Pirates another 7 2/3 free innings to score a run. He settled for merely catching it, and faced Wilmer Flores.
Flores whistled a liner down the third-base line. First it looked foul. Then it looked like it had clipped Brian O’Nora, who’d earlier forgotten there was a force at that same base. (Seriously, I wasn’t kidding when I said no one had a good night.) It definitely wasn’t foul and it may or may not have grazed O’Nora’s pant leg — by the time everything was sorted out Conforto had scampered home and Flores was being attaboyed out beyond first and the Mets, somehow, hadn’t lost, which was an outcome both unfamiliar and a lot more pleasant than that to which we’ve become accustomed.
There’s no game Thursday, but chalk up a victory by attending 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 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.
|
|
