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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 12 June 2018 3:45 pm Fifteenth anniversaries don’t get much play in our milestone-mad media. Ones, Fives, Tens, Twenties and up the line, sure, they’re money. But with rare exception, nobody gets too worked up over the crystal anniversary, not named for Billy Crystal, though I can see where the potential association might be a turnoff. Yet I encountered a fifteenth anniversary the other day whose context demanded my attention once I realized I’d never heard such a thing mentioned before.
On Sunday, during the WOR pregame show, Wayne Randazzo mentioned that day’s date, June 10, marked the fifteenth anniversary of the major league debut of everybody’s favorite current Met, Jose Reyes (please, hold your applause). The longevity itself, fifteen years in the big leagues, is impressive no matter who we’re talking about, but the part that got me was Wayne was referring to someone who began his career as a Met fifteen years ago and was still playing. It wasn’t so much that Jose was marking fifteen years — I was conscious of the math in his case — it was that anybody who was a Met fifteen years ago would continue on in the majors.
The key in this equation is “a Met fifteen years ago”. Our organization occasionally helps itself to the services of players who were something else fifteen years ago, literally and skillfully. Some of them were on their way to the Hall of Fame when they dropped by. Spahn. Mays. Murray. Henderson. Others. Some of them were on their way out but came attached to one of those fliers that’s so appealing when rosters are being filled out. I’d refer to Adrian Gonzalez here, except Adrian Gonzalez, despite his reputation for being older than dirt, was actually less venerable than the good earth during his recently expired Met tenure. A-Gon wasn’t yet in the majors fifteen years ago. Nor was Jose Bautista, who may not be the only well-traveled type the 2018 Mets took a flier on but is the only 2018 Met who can claim to have been alive before the Philadelphia Phillies ever won a World Series (born the day of Game Five of the 1980 Fall Classic). Bobby Abreu — a major leaguer in 1996, a Met in 2014 — was a different, more experienced story. So, of course, was his 2014 Met teammate 1997 MLB debutante Bartolo Colon. Whether you tell it through numbers, letters or hieroglyphics, there is no story remotely like Bartolo Colon.
But those guys weren’t Mets early in their major league careers. Those are the guys I’m interested in. The guys who survived not just fifteen years of highest-level competition but did so after being born or at least nurtured under a Met sign. Putting aside whatever animus you might feel the need to express regarding the last favorite player I will ever have (all of which has been duly noted, thank you), it occurred to me that by enduring as long as he has, Reyes must have qualified for a select club.
He has. Very select. Only five players have found themselves Mets fifteen or more years after first having been Mets. Only two nailed their crystal anniversary by being Mets exactly fifteen years later. And only Jose Reyes played baseball for the Mets on the day he broke in — June 10, 2003 (2-for-4, two runs scored when the Mets lost by two to the Rangers in Arlington) — and fifteen years to the day he broke in — June 10, 2018 (1-for-2, a run scored when the Mets won by two over the Yankees in Flushing). The opposing shortstop when Jose introduced himself was Alex Rodriguez, ESPN’s analyst in the broadcast booth fifteen years later. The opposing second baseman was Michael Young. Judging by Jose’s play in the field Sunday, young is resolutely the opposite of Reyes these days.
You shouldn’t need a hint from anybody’s Perks Patrol to guess the lone other Met to celebrate what we shall call a Metropolitan Quinceañera. The only Met who started his baseball life as a Met, spent an entire Major League Baseball life of more than fifteen years as a Met and will never be anything but a Met is Ed Kranepool. Like Jose, Ed (feted by fans at a thoughtful fundraiser in Astoria on Sunday) was a teenage New York Met, all of seventeen years old when he made his debut at the Polo Grounds on September 22, 1962, replacing Gil Hodges at first base in the seventh inning versus the Cubs. The Mets were trailing, 8-1. Ed got one at-bat, grounding out against righthander Paul Toth. The Mets lost, 9-2.
But the Krane was airborne and would remain aloft fifteen years later. September 22, 1977, was an off day for the Mets (weren’t they all then?), but the next night Ed made it official, starting at first on September 23 — the fifteenth anniversary of his first big league hit — and singling off Bob Forsch as part of a three-run rally in the fifth inning at Shea that Friday evening. Alas, the crooked number only pulled the Mets to within 8-5 and they’d fall to the Cardinals, 10-6. No wonder they called him Steady Eddie. Mr. Kranepool’s path remained straight and narrow for another two seasons. He’s the only Met to have commemorated a seventeenth anniversary as a Met.
Not the only Met with a sixteenth anniversary, however. Three Mets who missed their quinceañeras as Mets did show up for their sweet sixteens. Unlike Kranepool, they had to step away from Flushing for a spell. Like Reyes, they eventually returned to the fold.
• Tom Seaver, whose Opening Day homecoming was instantly the stuff of legend, marked the sixteenth anniversary of his promising Met debut on April 13, 1983, presumably resting up from his start of April 12, when he gave George Bamberger seven solid innings (two runs, five hits) in what became a 4-3 extra-inning loss at the Vet. As occurred when Tom first showed his stuff on April 13, 1967, he received no decision, though on that auspicious occasion, the Mets were 3-2 winners versus Pittsburgh. Seaver’s first outing past his sweet sixteen came on April 20, 1983, and it couldn’t have been more Seaverian: a three-hit shutout of the Pirates at Shea, featuring nine strikeouts while Tom pitched and a triple while Tom hit. Even then the DH was a dopey idea.
• David Cone didn’t break in as a Met, but the former Royal (eleven relief appearances in 1986) certainly broke out in Queens. On April 11, 1987, Coney relieved the immortal Gene Walter in the seventh inning and threw three frames of one-run ball versus the Braves at Shea. Unfortunately, the one run was all Atlanta needed that Saturday, and David was saddled with the 4-3 defeat. It was his first loss as a Met and the Mets’ first loss as defending champions. Precisely sixteen years later — and one week after his triumphant return to the mound where he became a star — the 40-year-old version of Cone was the starter and loser in the Mets’ first-ever game in Puerto Rico, bowing to the same Expos he bested in Flushing, 10-0. Coney had been out of baseball during 2002 and would retire before 2003 was over.
• Jason Isringhausen was all the rage as part of the Generation K vanguard on July 17, 1995 (two runs in seven innings of an eventual 7-2 Mets win at Wrigley). He’d morph over the next sixteen years into a veteran reliever chasing 300 saves, leading Izzy the Recidivist Met to still be doing business with his right arm on July 17, 2011. As Terry Collins’s sixth pitcher on a Sunday afternoon at Citizens Bank Park, Jason produced a shutout ninth inning. The Mets, though, were already down four runs and they’d stay down four runs, losing, 8-4. Izzy would gain his 300th career save in August and, like Seaver, keep pitching after his second Met tenure ended, moving on to the Angels in 2012.
Those are your Mets who were Mets fifteen or more years after they were first Mets. Small gathering for a quinceañera, but there are a few others who at least rate an invitation to the cocktail hour.
• Mike Jorgensen came up to the Mets on September 22, 1968, pinch-hitting for Ron Taylor in an 8-1 loss to the Cubs in Chicago. Fifteen seasons later, he was on track for a crystal anniversary as a Met, but another defensively minded first baseman got in the way. Jorgy’s second go-round as a Met was interrupted on June 15, 1983, by the acquisition of that Keith Hernandez fellow. Much of Jorgensen’s portfolio by 1983 was coming in to field on behalf of Dave Kingman late in games. Once Hernandez came to the Mets, there was no need to start Kingman at first nor any need to replace Hernandez ever. The Mets sold Mike to Atlanta. He’d play through 1985.
• John Franco came really close to making Club Quinceañera, an especially remarkable feat in that he was already an established veteran closer when he first pitched for the Mets on April 11, 1990. Johnny from Bensonhurst debuted as a major leaguer in 1984, for goodness sake. That means he spent six seasons as a Red prior to the Mets swapping Randy Myers to Cincinnati to obtain his implicitly trusted left arm. They had to like what they received in his first Met appearance: an inning-and-a-third of solid relief to post a save behind fellow St. John’s alum Frank Viola. Franco would spend fifteen seasons with the Mets, with one of them lost to Tommy John surgery. Yet he spent his fifteenth anniversary in the uniform of the Houston Astros once the Mets decided they’d wrung all there was to wring from his surgically repaired elbow following the 2004 season. Appropriately, the 44-year-old southpaw found himself at Shea on April 11, 2005, as the ’Stros were playing the Mets. In a cognitively dissonant Met Home Opener during which he was associated with somebody other than the home team, Franco came on in the bottom of the eighth to face Cliff Floyd with runners on base. An RBI single ensued. The Mets won. John lasted with Houston until July. Today it’s like his time as anything but a Met never happened.
• Speaking of things that never happened, Jesse Orosco’s second term as a Met was pre-empted in Spring Training of 2000 before it could truly commence. Management went to the trouble of bringing back baseball’s premiere lefty specialist during the preceding offseason, meaning we were on our way to witnessing a Met career turn 21 years old right before our eyes. True, Jesse’d been wandering the highways and byways of baseball for more than a decade, but the important thing was that a pitcher who broke in as a Met on April 5, 1979, was in position to solider on as a Met on April 5, 2000. Think about it: a teammate of Ed Kranepool pitching for us in the new millennium! Except on March 18, the Mets concluded they needed a utility player more than they needed an extra portsider and they sent Orosco to St. Louis for Joe McEwing. Not a bad deal considering how far the Mets went before 2000 was over, but a bummer in terms of Jesse pitching for the Redbirds instead of the Metsies that April 5. He threw one-third of an inning in a Cardinal win over the Cubs at Busch Stadium while the Mets were blanked at home by San Diego. Karma probably insisted.
Orosco remained a major league pitcher until 2003. He earned the last of his 144 regular-season saves that May 9 in the same stadium where he secured the final out of the 1986 World Series. This time, in a more muted atmosphere, Jesse struck out Roberto Alomar of the Mets to end the game. A month and a day later, Alomar would be playing second base alongside a rookie shortstop just called up to the majors, a highly hyped prospect who was not quite twenty years old.
Fifteen years later…well, you know.
Your next Mets off night — Thursday, June 28 — should be spent with your fellow Mets fans at Two Boots Midtown East in Manhattan. Details here.
by Jason Fry on 11 June 2018 1:58 am Last month I quoted the old Earl Weaver maxim that momentum’s only as good as tomorrow’s starting pitcher, not knowing what a cruel joke that would turn out to be. The Mets managed the head-scratching accomplishment of losing eight in a row while getting brilliant starting pitching: in that stretch, no Mets starter allowed more than three runs, only to see their work undone by bad defense, lousy relief and an utter absence of hitting. Not once or twice — that happens — but every single time.
I mean, honestly. How is that even possible?
Enter Seth Lugo, called out of the bullpen for a spot start when Noah Syndergaard‘s finger proved uncooperative. Facing the horrors of the Yankee lineup, Lugo made us recall Dave Mlicki, who famously drew first blood way back when the Subway Series was a raucous novelty instead of something to be endured. Mlicki’s strikeout of the last batter (some guy named Jeter) completed a nine-hit shutout in a Yankee Stadium that had been abandoned by its usual infestation of pinstriped mooks to become a playground for jubilant Mets fans, and my oh my was that ever a glorious night. (Somehow it was 21 years ago. I’m as horrified as you are.)
Mlicki never managed to convert an impressive arsenal of pitches to lasting success, winding up with a decidedly journeyman career: a 66-80 record and an ERA close to 5. Lugo has arguably already done better than that, starting when he brought his knee-buckling curve to the 2016 Mets’ rescue — the team won his last seven starts. 2017, alas, was another story: Lugo came out of the World Baseball Classic (grrrr) with a partially torn UCL that shelved him until June, and lost further time in August. This year he wound up in the bullpen, where he’s simultaneously seemed miscast and been one of the few trustworthy Mets.
What to do with Lugo is an interesting question: during his career he’s been tattooed when facing batting orders a third time, and working out of the pen has added several miles an hour to his fastball. But it’s a question for another day: on Sunday night, all we wanted to know was if he could save us from further indignity, averting a sweep by the Yankees and an 0-9 homestead.
He could and did. He was phenomenal. So was the Yankees’ Luis Severino, with the difference a Severino slider that Todd Frazier served over the left-field fence. Phenomenal, but of course starting pitching hasn’t been the problem of late. There was no way Lugo could go the distance, and the mind quailed at what horrors might await once he departed.
Mickey Callaway squeezed six innings and 84 pitches out of Lugo, the last of them a fastball on the corner of the plate that left Giancarlo Stanton rolling his eyes in disgust. Robert Gsellman pitched a spotless seventh, which was good except for the fact that with Jeurys Familia injured and Lugo departed, Gsellman was the Met least unqualified to be pressed into service as a temporary closer.
With one out in the eighth, Gsellman surrendered a single to Miguel Andujar and faced pinch-hitter Aaron Judge, whose arrival at the plate sent the Yankee fans into a baying frenzy. Judge grounded to second, where Jose Reyes was filling in for Asdrubal Cabrera and his suddenly balky hamstring. (Yeah, I know.) It was a double play — until Reyes threw the ball midway between first and home. And until replay clearly showed that Reyes had neither foot touching second base.
Yeah, yeah, the neighborhood play. It would have been an out when Jose Reyes was any good. But that was a long time ago.
Anyway, Jose turned a double play into a double error, and here was the disaster we’d feared, delivered in a fashion that was even more cruel than we could have imagined. Except, somehow, the Mets slipped the noose. Gleyber Torres popped to Adrian Gonzalez in foul territory, and veteran Met-killer Brett Gardner hit a soft liner to Brandon Nimmo in left.
They’d slipped the noose, but it might be a temporary reprieve, because who was going to close? The answer was Anthony Swarzak, last seen giving up a titanic homer to Judge. Swarzak started the ninth by getting Stanton looking, an unexpected turn of events that seemed to startle him as much as it did the rest of us, for he promptly lost the ability to throw a strike. He walked Greg Bird, then missed low and away on the first two pitches to Gary Sanchez.
The third pitch was low and inside — and caught way too much plate. Sanchez smoked it, sending it screaming toward the left-field corner. Except first it met the glove of Frazier, standing squarely between Sanchez and disaster. Frazier threw over to Gonzalez to double off Bird and the ballgame was over, with Devin Mesoraco giving Swarzak a “holy shit” look at the mound and Swarzak giving him an “I know, right?” look in response. Which is pretty much the same exchange my kid and I had on our couch, and thousands of pairs of Met fans had at Citi Field and on couches of their own.
The Mets had escaped. Escaped, and apparently realized that what they’ve got now isn’t working. After the game, we learned that Gonzalez has been released, with Jose Lobaton ticketed for a DFA on Tuesday in Atlanta. (Why Tuesday? Unless Lobaton needs the frequent-flyer miles, this seems cruel.) Their replacements will be Dominic Smith and Ty Kelly.
Lobaton was a bad idea the first time around and a worse one the second, but Gonzalez was honestly better than I’d expected: he went about his business in a professional manner, made the most of his diminished skills, and never embarrassed himself. Still, Smith has reached the point where he needs to learn at the big-league level, and it’s pretty clear his growing pains won’t be the thing keeping the Mets from a title. So that’s progress … except for the fact that Reyes remains on the roster.
What was obvious Sunday afternoon has to be blindingly obvious after Sunday night. Reyes no longer has any demonstrable ability to hit, run, or field any infield position. And yet the Mets continue to tiptoe around even intimating that his skills might not be quite what they were during the Bush administration, negotiating the departure as if he’s Cal Ripken in the middle of The Streak instead of a .149 hitter, a wan shadow of the player we all once loved and all know is gone for good.
I guess he has one skill left: he’s certainly a survivor.
Anyway, good luck to the Mets as they continue to navigate these inexplicably delicate negotiations, and good luck to Dom Smith on the new job. Tuesday will be the first day of the rest of our lives and all that, so let’s go beat the Braves.
Still, I swear: if Reyes is playing first on Tuesday, I’m out.
by Jason Fry on 9 June 2018 11:25 pm The Mets lost. Again. As they have done throughout this stake-in-the-heart homestead. As they have done with numbing regularity since mid-April.
The details don’t particularly matter, so we’ll buzz through them quickly: they ambushed Yankees starter Domingo German for an unfathomable three runs in the first, on home runs by Todd Frazier and Asdrubal Cabrera.
If you tuned in late, sorry, that was the offense. The Mets were ahead, by the shocking score of 3-0, but you knew it wouldn’t last.
Lots of us have or have had that pal who’s a blast to hang out with until his fourth beer, at which point a trap door opens up beneath both of you and the next stop is hell and you wonder exactly how many times you’ll need to make this exact same mistake before you learn. That was the Mets with a 3-0 lead — feeling good about it was like looking over at your nitroglycerine-laced buddy and thinking, “Whew, he’s had one beer and hasn’t slugged anyone or propositioned the waitress!” Faint comfort three hours later, when you’re in the parking lot trying to play peacemaker amid flying epithets and wondering how you’re going to find a cabbie who’s too new to understand that your maniac friend won’t manage 10 minutes before deciding he needs to throw up, piss out the window or try both at once.
Anyway, Steven Matz gave up a solo shot to Gleyber Torres and a two-run homer to Miguel Andujar to surrender the lead, then departed. Yeah, 3-0 was a long time ago.
And then, at 3-3, we waited to see how they would lose.
The culprit was Anthony Swarzak, whose first pitch to Aaron Judge was a flat slider that Judge hit to the moon. But this is not to bury Swarzak; it was going to be some Met screwing up at some point, and on Saturday night it happened to be him. Tomorrow night it might be Swarzak again, or Jacob Rhame, or Seth Lugo. It’ll be someone.
This team’s in freefall, undone by injuries and poor play and roster spots given to zombie players. We’ll talk about that in the coming days and weeks and months. We’ll grouse and groan and occasionally have something to cheer about.
But it’ll be noise.
There’s only one story around the Mets, and it’s a depressingly old one: They’re owned by a family that cannot afford the payroll of a major-league franchise in Tampa Bay, let alone New York; is no longer expected by the city’s legions of beat reporters to be accountable for that; and is under no apparent pressure to sell the team it quite obviously can no longer afford.
The Mets actually have a decent collection of young talent — the kind of core teams try desperately to obtain as the foundation of a contender. But rather than surround that cheap young talent with high-priced stars and mid-priced complementary players, the Wilpons have supplemented it with zero-priced veterans on their last legs and occasional dips into the free-agent bargain bin when the market breaks their way. If you’ve been deemed expendable by the Atlanta Braves, welcome to Flushing. If you cost more than that, your agent best have the phone numbers of 29 other GMs.
And this is how it’s going to be for the foreseeable future, which you’d better get used to measuring in decades. Major League Baseball does not care that the Mets are once again baseball’s North Korea. You want to know when things will change? Don’t ask a baseball analyst, because he’ll just shrug and say it’s a shame. Get Jeff Wilpon’s health records and consult an actuary.
This doesn’t mean the Mets will never win. They’ll be in the occasional pennant race, particularly now that there are two wild-card slots. Once in a great while, as happened in 2015, they might even come close to winning — the postseason is an exercise in rolling dice. But most of the time they won’t do any of those things. They’ll be done in by injuries and lack of talent and poor decisions and ill luck and most of all by their threadbare ownership. Some years that fate will be apparent in March; other years it will be a September surprise. But it will be the outcome nearly every year, and the only one a sane fan will expect.
This is two-Wilpon monte, and it’s a sucker’s game. Grouse all you want about bad bullpens and injured outfielders and not-ready-yet rookies and over-the-hill infielders. It’s all true, but it’s also street patter and rearranged cards. The real con happened before you even stepped up to the table. Keep that firmly in mind, and maybe you won’t be habitually and cruelly disappointed.
(Tip of the cap to Dan Lewis, who focused my attention on the real problem and kept me from hurling my in-laws’ remote through a wall.)
by Greg Prince on 9 June 2018 3:37 am When the Mets are mired deep in one of their patented extended funks, I tend to be asked — given that I’ve been around and remember things — some variation on the question, “Has it ever been this bad before?” The fact that the Mets have patented extended funks pretty much provides the answer. Yes, it’s been this bad before.
Most of the Sixties; the final segment of the Seventies; the dawn of the Eighties; the balance of the Nineties; chunks of the Ohs (I never cottoned to “Aughts”); and, in case you are afflicted with an incredibly short memory, all but a cherished fistful of months of the Tens or Teens or whatever historians will call the current decade. Within the lifespan of this blog, every single season from 2005 forward, with the possible exception of 2006, has encompassed an extended funk during which somebody was certain it couldn’t have been this bad before.
But it has been, often. It’s not always fatal to the season in which everything seems suddenly all funked up, but we do have a nearly perennial knack for being shoved by our beloved team into pits of despair, which I guess speaks both to our contemporary misery seeming surprisingly unremarkable to me and the rate of our recurring misery being more alarming than we might realize. But we’re Mets fans anyway. It’s not like we were blinded by the glare of countless championship baubles when we signed up for this.
Now don’t get me wrong. This portion of 2018 shouldn’t get a pass just because we’ve been some version of here before. Just as every pennant race brings its own unique joys, every season racing in the opposite direction deserves to be felt for all it’s worth. And this one may be singularly awful for just how ordinary it’s begun to feel.
On Friday night, the Mets lost their seventh game in a row, their fourteenth out of seventeen and their thirty-second out of forty-eight. Don’t gloss over that last set of numbers: the Mets are 16-32 since starting the season far better than that. I won’t even print what their record was after twelve games because it offers a patina of competence to their overall 2018 effort. That initial dynamic dozen, while certified as official and etched into the record books as legitimate and permanent, is no longer relevant to the campaign in progress. The team that lost only once in twelve initial outings is not the 2018 Mets anymore. The 2018 Mets are the team that has lost two of every three games for nearly a third of the season and hasn’t won consecutive games in nearly three weeks.
The seven losses in a row, on the other hand, don’t seem like they constitute a significant losing streak. They do, numerically, but experientially, it has come off, to my view at least, has just what the Mets do. The Mets play, the Mets score next to nothing or perhaps nothing and the Mets lose. How many is it now? Are we still counting?
Seriously. I’ve lived through scorching seven-game losing streaks that have scarred my soul from top to bottom. I have lay awake nights tortured by seven-game losing streaks. Usually the Z’s take a powder when the L’s reach three. Here, this homestand, in which the Mets dropped all four to the Cubs, both of two to the Orioles and now their first to the crosstown rivals, I had to stop and add it up when it got to seven.
My god, we’ve lost seven in a row. This should feel more urgent than it does. It just feels like another night without a win.
That the seventh consecutive defeat came at the hands of the team we are conditioned to despise and resent more than any on the planet (spare me your haughty “I don’t hate the Yankees” folderol if you’re one of those people) seems incidental. Had I been at Citi Field, it probably wouldn’t. But I watched on TV, with a migraine. I guess that’s sort of like being surrounded by Yankees fans.
Jacob deGrom was great for eight innings except for one pitch. Joke’s on Jake — you can’t throw one bad pitch in eight innings and expect everything to be simply, well, jake. Brett Gardner got hold of that one pitch and stroked it over the right field fence. A runner was on base. Silly deGrom, mistakes are for Yanks. Or Nats. Or whoever will be in the postseason this fall. Jake will have to make do with consolation Cy Young runner-up votes (unless somebody makes the Mets an offer they can’t refuse, and we’re getting to the point where phone lines are open).
It had been 1-1 when Gardner — who I think came up from the minors under Ralph Houk — homered. The Yankees had scored an unearned run a couple of innings earlier. Again, deGrom’s fault for not striking out every batter he faced. At the risk of being unsporting, that run wasn’t so bad because the Yankee who scored it, Masahiro Tanaka, had to leave the game as a result of having to use his legs to transport himself from one base to another until he came home on Jay Bruce’s throw to nowhere in particular. Tanaka had been stymieing the Mets’ offense since the first inning. He’d given up a leadoff home run to Brandon Nimmo — who is now tied with Jason Bay for eighteenth on the all-time Citi Field Met home run list with ten — but then literally nothing at all through five.
Learn to play baseball, American League pitchers. Then I’ll be sporting about your mishaps.
Tanaka left, Jonathan Holder entered. “Take your time warming up,” he was told, as all relievers are when injuries arise. The Mets took advantage of Holder’s unpreparedness and heightened case of nerves to go down in order in the sixth. Same as it ever was. The seventh, eighth and ninth were given over to Yankee relievers I’d heard of. The Mets gathered three hits in those three innings off those three pitchers, none for extra bases, none in particularly useful proximity to one another, certainly none that caused a run to register. Not that it was needed by the nominal visitors, but Giancarlo Stanton added one for his side by belting a barely fair, barely gone solo homer off Paul Sewald. The Marlins are having a throwback weekend in Miami. Stanton honored his old franchise by slugging at Citi like he always has. The erstwhile Floridian has more homers in the Mets’ park (22) than Bay and Nimmo combined (20).
The 4-1 loss that perfectly complemented my headache was preceded by news that Noah Syndergaard won’t start Sunday as planned (his finger’s swollen) and Jeurys Familia won’t relieve for at least ten days (his shoulder’s sore). After the routine wounds of defeat were listlessly licked, word came that Yoenis Cespedes rehabbed with Binghamton and talked to reporters. He’s looking forward to returning to the Mets in Atlanta on Tuesday. Actually, “looking forward” may be an exaggeration. He said, “If the team remains playing this way, I don’t think it’s going to help, but I’m eager to get back.”
Yo may not make it as a motivational speaker, but he’s got a helluva future as a scout if he wants it.
by Greg Prince on 8 June 2018 3:56 pm It was a rally or as close to a rally as the 2018 Mets could have conjured in the first week of June 2018. Wednesday afternoon against the Orioles, Todd Frazier singled to lead off the bottom of the ninth. Recently returned from a hamstring injury and representing the tying run, a pinch-runner was in order. One sprinted from the home dugout. Todd, with his back to his manager’s machinations, didn’t realize he as being replaced until his substitute put both of his hands on Frazier’s helmet. It was more direct than a tap on the shoulder. I’ve seen baserunners look disturbed to be informed they’re leaving the game. Not Todd. The man who brought salt and pepper to Queens got the flavor of the moment immediately. He and his successor high-fived and switched places. Frazier headed for the dugout. Jose Reyes took over at first base.
Jose Reyes, my favorite player. I was thrilled to see him in action and, from where I sat in right, applauded vigorously.
Jose Reyes, my favorite player. I was horrified that he’d get picked off and, in a voice not loud enough for him to hear, told him not to.
Brad Brach, the Orioles’ closer, threw to first immediately. Jose was safe. After a ball to Jay Bruce and then a foul, Brach threw again to Chris Davis, who did not tag out Reyes. Jose tried another lead, Brach tried another pickoff to no avail. Refocusing his concentration on Bruce, Brach threw two more pitches out of the strike zone. At three-and-one, Jay connected for a long fly to deep left field. If it traveled as far as it looked like it could, I’d have the best of all worlds: a Mets walkoff win with my favorite player not only scoring the tying run but not doing anything to keep the Mets from winning.
As Roger Angell wrote, he “has so far resisted the clear evidence that he should retire. He plays sporadically, whenever he is well and rested, and gives his best, but his batting reflexes are gone, and so is his arm.” Except Angell wasn’t writing about Jose Reyes in June of 2018. He was writing about Willie Mays in June of 1973, specifically a night when Mays chased down a double and, realizing he wasn’t up to making a sufficiently strong throw to the infield, flipped the ball to left fielder George Theodore, who was not expecting to be called upon in that situation. Who would? Who would think Willie Mays would need a cutoff man to hit the cutoff man? “The horrible truth of the matter,” Angell continued, “was that Mays was simply incapable of making the play.”
That was in the top of the fourth at Shea, against Willie’s old team, the Giants. In the bottom of the fourth, he grounded out to short, pulling his average below .100 for the year. “He has subsequently done a little better,” Angell reflected weeks later, “but his failings are now so cruel to watch that I am relieved when he is not in the lineup.”
This is what a Jose Reyes sighting is like for me these days.
The player whose promotion so delighted me this week fifteen years ago; whose reign as the Mets’ best-ever all-around shortstop elevated my spirits for nine seasons; whose absence from the Mets gnawed at me for the four seasons after that; and whose reacquisition in 2016 I embraced reluctantly but eventually…I’m thrilled to see him in action…and I’m horrified that he’ll get picked off. Or strike out. Or pop up. Or ground into a DP. Or be thrown out stealing. Or otherwise run us out of an inning. Or let a ball skitter under his glove. Or bobble a ball. Or drop one as it descends from the sky.
Yet I am instinctively thrilled to see him. When I saw him emerge from the dugout to run for Frazier, I definitely put my hands together, a little out of amazement that Mickey Callaway knew enough to take out a guy who’s not a burner even on sturdy hamstrings, mostly because the guy he put in is my favorite player. He was my favorite player almost immediately in 2003 and stayed my favorite player through 2011 and served as my favorite player in absentia until 2016. I never fully restored him to his most exalted place of pre-eminence after the circumstance that deposited him on our doorstep a second time, but I also never found another Met to fully supplant him. Nobody’s ever pinch-run for Reyes in my heart. He’s still my favorite player in the active sense, for as long as he remains active.
Which is no longer an open-ended proposition. I caught a flurry of tweets en route to the game Wednesday that reported an exit strategy was being concocted. “Mets officials,” according to the Post’s Mike Puma, had “discussed releasing Jose Reyes, but are conflicted given Reyes’ roots in the organization. Mets want Reyes receiving a proper sendoff.”
In the realm of Twitter, a medium into which patience was never programmed, the news was greeted by fast-fingered Mets fans with disbelief. Not disbelief that the Mets would be offing Reyes — Jose was routinely being typed out onto 126th Street when the club was 11-1 — but incredulity that the Mets were, for once, concerning themselves with making a player’s swan song as graceful as possible. This player’s swan song. This player who has been overmatched at bat, underskilled in the field and not much of an asset on the basepaths. Faster than Todd Frazier is basically the portfolio Jose brings to the table in June of 2018.
Had Bruce’s ball kept carrying, it would all be moot. Reyes would be running and, unless he allowed Jay to pass him, he’d be scoring. The Mets would be winning for a change. Nobody would have anything to complain about with Jose for a change. People have every right to complain, but encountering their complaints has bothered me all season. I’m not saying the complaints — that he shouldn’t still have a spot on the roster; that he shouldn’t have had a spot on the roster to begin with in ’18; that he shouldn’t have been invited back in ’16 considering the event that made him available — are without validity. I’m just saying they bothered me. Jose Reyes has been my favorite player for fifteen years. Once he’s done, I realized recently, that’ll be it. I will never again have a favorite player in the active sense.
I’ll like players. I like lots of them now. I like most everybody on the Mets. Several of them I wear t-shirts for. But none of the other current Mets has ever generated the kind of personal passion required for me to call him my favorite. Few Mets ever have. Tom Seaver did. Doc Gooden did. Rico Brogna and Edgardo Alfonzo did. Then Jose Reyes. Five players spanning fifty seasons, the first starting when I was six, the last lasting until I’m fifty-five. At forty, which is what I was when Jose was nineteen about to turn twenty, it was probably a stretch to select a favorite player. But the chemistry was just right and I went with it. I don’t see myself getting revved up for another in the latter half of my fifties or beyond.
Having a favorite player doesn’t mean blanket dispensation for what I might not like at a given interval. No. 41 will always be my No. 1 to me, but I cringe every time somebody tells me of a chance meeting in which the Franchise bristled at them. Doc is a case study in not putting too much faith in an idol. Brogna never did anything wrong other than wear the uniforms of teams I didn’t like, but the bad back that ostensibly motivated the Mets to trade him did indeed end his career prematurely and I acknowledge that (though swapping him for Ricardo Jordan and Toby Borland was hardly a solution). I’ve never forgiven the Mets for letting Fonzie walk as a free agent in December 2002, but I’ll grudgingly admit he was probably done being a superstar at that point.
I’ve had my issues with my last favorite player. Two months after I tingled that Jose of all All-Stars was the All-Star chosen to catch a ceremonial first pitch from Willie Mays in San Francisco, I thought he ran recklessly and stupidly in September 2007 and accelerated the worst collapse ever. I thought a couple of times at his peak that his maturity was maddeningly slow to develop. I didn’t mind him ferrying his batting crown to the bench ASAP on the last day of 2011, but I thought he didn’t have to take the right turn to the dugout so suddenly. What happened after that day — signing with an unpleasant division rival — I considered business. I’d have preferred the Mets had made him an offer. Maybe they weren’t crazy not to, seeing as how the Jose of Miami and Toronto was never quite the Jose of Flushing.
There was nothing to defend or rationalize when it was reported Jose threw his wife into a glass door in Hawaii, which led to his suspension from the Rockies and his reunion with the Mets. Talk about damaged goods. In retrospect, as long as his name keeps filtering through my consciousness, it reminds me of my first year collecting baseball cards, 1970. I really wanted to open a pack and find a Willie Mays. I never did. Five or six years later at a card show, I came across a 1970 Mays. Except it was a cut card. The top was lopped off and the bottom was the top of some mere mortal’s portrait. It wasn’t the Willie Mays I’d wanted when I was younger.
But it was there, it was affordable and I grabbed it. It was still Willie Mays.
And the free agent the Mets signed for the major league minimum in the middle of 2016 was still Jose Reyes. Jose Reyes with a domestic violence rap soldered to his reputation, but Jose Reyes. I still had him listed as my favorite player, same as I had Gooden when he tested positive for cocaine. Second chances. Compartmentalization. Deeply embedded sports fan loyalty. Wright was out for the year. We needed a third baseman. I had deleted some but not all of my REYES 7 shirts from rotation. And, business being business notwithstanding, he looked so happy to be home.
I got a kick out of Syndergaard. I grew fond of Cabrera. I admired deGrom. I loved that Cespedes decided to stay. But none of them was really my favorite Met by the summer of 2016. Reyes filled the role. Maybe not as he had from 2003 to 2011, but close enough. Though he wasn’t really a third baseman, he played the position as asked. He wasn’t the speedster he once was, but he ran as needed. The 2016 Mets sputtered and frustrated but, with REYES 7 again atop their batting order, they took off in late August, roared through September and, as they did with Willie Mays on their team in 1973, made the playoffs.
It’s not generally mentioned when people glibly refer to Willie Mays falling down in center field during the 1973 World Series and reflexively use him as their example of a player who resisted retirement to his own detriment that Willie was as good a player as the 1972 Mets had after he came home to New York in May. The team was riddled with injuries and falling apart, but Mays was rejuvenated. Nobody got on base more than Willie. Had he gone out as a 1972 Met, the New York coda to his career would have been sweet, hold the bitter.
But then we wouldn’t have had the night Willie said goodbye to America, despite hitting .211, despite Angell wishing he wasn’t still pushing himself onto the field a shadow of his formerly brilliant self. I was ten years old in 1973. I could decipher batting averages. But it never occurred to me to not want to see Willie Mays.
Jose Reyes, once the dust settled, helped the Mets win something in 2016. He batted more than any Met did in 2017. The results weren’t spectacular, but they steadily improved as the year went on. There were some stray good Jose moments in an otherwise dismal Met year. On the night of their final home game, some of us chanted the Jose chant as if a decade hadn’t passed. Had he gone out as a 2017 Met, the New York coda to his career would have been completed quietly and with minimal hard feelings. Those who didn’t want him back wouldn’t have been happy that he’d been here again at all, but those who were happy that he’d been here again could have finished their active relationship with him on a modestly upbeat note.
Instead, the Mets asked him back again, Jose said sure, and I’m channeling Roger Angell in that I’m relieved when my favorite player isn’t in the lineup. Never mind what impact he has on a given game. I just don’t want to see him fail and feed more fodder to those who never cease pointing out his myriad shortcomings. I love my Jose Reyes from when he was nineteen about to turn twenty. I love my Jose Reyes who set every speed-based record in Mets history. I love my Jose Reyes from when he caught a first pitch from Willie Mays. I love my Jose Reyes who batted .337. I love my Jose Reyes who homered to tie the Phillies late in an epic contest in 2006 and did the same in 2016. The Jose Reyes of today, the one whose age is about to be five times his uniform number, the one whose OPS is basically what you get for attaching your signature to the SAT, doesn’t perform remotely like that. But I saw how he greeted Frazier when he replaced him on Wednesday. I’ve seen how he high-fives teammates after they score when he’s in the on-deck circle. I’ve seen how once in a great while, when he has reason to smile on a baseball field, he brings it like few others have.
He doesn’t bring it much with his bat or arm or legs anymore. I held out hope in April, but in April he had only five hits. I looked for signs in May, but in May he had only five hits. He’s had none in June. Few at-bats, either, and little reason to be given them. Jose Reyes is more done than I’ve cared to admit. I will admit that he’s done, no matter that I haven’t cared to admit it whatsoever.
The last favorite player I’ll ever have didn’t get to cross the plate on Jay Bruce’s home run off Brad Brach, because Jay Bruce’s fly ball didn’t land over the fence. It was caught in left field for the first out of the ninth. Jose was back to being a baserunner at first, trying not to get picked off. For his sake. For the Mets’ sake. Though he’s never met me, for my sake.
Don’t get picked off, Jose.
He didn’t. He drew two more throws — once while Kevin Plawecki batted, once while Adrian Gonzalez was up. They made the second and third outs, not Jose. The Mets lost, 1-0. While pinch-running for his baseball life on June 6, 2018, Reyes didn’t further facilitate his own demise.
It’s coming. It’s racing around third like Jose used to. I know that. Maybe it doesn’t matter how it’s arranged. Maybe the concept of a “proper sendoff” is tonally out of sync with these harsh what has he done for us lately? 27-32 times. If I had my way, the player with the second-most hits any Met has ever recorded, Reyes, would leave the field one final time alongside the player with the most hits any Met has ever recorded, Wright. They played next to each other for a lot of years, you might recall. I do.
It was a while ago.
by Greg Prince on 7 June 2018 3:39 pm As we will be reminded this evening and then again on Monday, the only thing worse than the Mets not winning is the Mets not playing. That’s the problem with a baseball season, even one like this: it includes off nights.
But we’re gonna try to make one of them better.
On Thursday, June 28, the Mets will be idle, but a few of us got together and recognized that Mets fans like us never are. Thus, we’ve found a way to help each other get through the off night. We’re calling it…
OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS:
READIN’, WRITIN’ & RUSTY
…and we’re having it at Two Boots Midtown East, 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, 337 Lexington Ave., between 39th and 40th Streets in Manhattan, convenient to Grand Central Terminal.
OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS will be part spotlight for some prime baseball writing, part tribute to one of our idols and, if things continue as they have since the middle of April, part group therapy session.
On hand to discuss their recent books will be three writers whose devotion to the orange and blue colors so much of what they do.
• Dave Jordan, who founded Instream Sports, co-authored Fastball John with former MLB pitcher John D’Acquisto and contributes to The Sporting News.
• Jon Springer, who injected the Mets into the Internet’s bloodstream in the 1990s when he created the Mets By The Numbers site and just released his exploration of an 1880s phenomenon, Once Upon a Team: The Epic Rise and Historic Fall of Baseball’s Wilmington Quicksteps.
• And me, who you know from here and perhaps stuff like Piazza and Amazin’ Again.
Books will be available for purchase and signing. No obligation or admission, but you’ll probably want to grab an armload.
Besides delving into Met and Met-adjacent Lit, we look forward to sharing our memories of one of the greatest and most beloved Mets ever, Rusty Staub, and of course invite you to do the same. Two Boots proprietor Phil Hartman — a Mets fan and restaurateur so Amazin’ he sells his slices at Citi Field’s Promenade food court — plans a pizza most Grand for the occasion.
It’s been a while since we convened a night of this nature, but these Two Boots events have always been fun. Phil makes great food, baseball makes great conversation and, what the hell, there’s no game that night.
Hope to see you there.
by Greg Prince on 7 June 2018 6:51 am Little is more ideal than a midweek afternoon game, a pitchers’ duel unfolding in the sun and the whole affair playing out quickly enough to not bog anybody down in the worst of a rush hour commute. Of course baseball’s ideals take a pounding when left in the hands of the New York Mets, formerly considered a contending baseball team, then a competitive baseball team, then just a baseball team. The first two descriptions are currently inoperative. The last one is up for debate.
The Mets did host a ballgame on a lovely midweek afternoon Wednesday, one I was fortunate enough to attend at the invitation of my friend Sharon. It wasn’t particularly sunny overhead, but considering the Mets, that’s appropriate; shades of gray suit the orange and blue mood best of late. It was also a little shy of warm for the first week in June. Given how cold the Mets have been, that, too, felt right. Might as well mix it up a bit for Weather Education Day, that dubious curriculum addendum dreamed up to annually populate Citi Field’s Promenade with kids who I can’t imagine complain about taking part in what amounts to state-sponsored hooky.
Weather Education Day? Kids, if it’s not raining, they play ball. Taking part in any ruse that offers a valid excuse to get you out of school and into a ballpark surely encompasses a lesson worth learning.
I don’t know if an inquisitive child raised a hand to ask why an American League team was visiting a National League team more than four months ahead of the World Series. Twenty-two seasons into Interleague play, I don’t have a good or at least moral answer. Wednesday’s starting pitchers, Zack Wheeler and Dylan Bundy, did however carry on in the best tradition of Jerry Koosman and Dave McNally, the starters from the second game the first time the Mets and Orioles faced off in a series that counted. In that Game Two, a scant forty-nine years ago, the Mets prevailed, 2-1. Kooz went eight-and-two-thirds, giving up two hits. Ron Taylor finished up for Jerry, retiring Brooks Robinson on a grounder to Ed Charles. The victory erased the allegedly indomitable Birds’ advantage from the opener and set the stage for three midweek afternoon games in Flushing that I assume are covered thoroughly in Regents-level history classes to this day.
Except for the uniforms, there isn’t much to evoke a World Series matchup when the Mets and Orioles meet in the present. Yet despite their respective franchises’ current fortunes and the decided lack of drama surrounding their performances, Wheeler and Bundy pitched to dueling standards. It didn’t feel like a pitchers’ duel because these Mets are these Mets, and these Orioles are technically not even that, but the statistics fit the parameters. Wheeler gave up three hits and no runs over seven innings. Bundy did exactly the same. It no doubt helped to be facing the lineup each of them was facing.
Eventually, the Orioles eked out a run off Jeurys Familia and the Mets eked out nothing off either of two Baltimore relievers. A questionably conceived bunt devolved into a double play in the eighth. A deep fly ball died at the track in the ninth. Then so did the Mets. Our beloved Amazins totaled one run in the two-game set. Sadly for Zack, the run came the night before he pitched, when it wasn’t enough to support the similarly admirable efforts of Jason Vargas, Seth Lugo and erstwhile optical illusion Anthony Swarzak (spotted for an instant in March and then practically never again). Thus, a 1-0 loss, a series sweep out of step with the example set in 1969 and a six-game losing streak to serve as prelude to another wholly unnecessary Interleague engagement this weekend.
If you’re scoring at home, the Mets desperately want to know how you do it. In their last six games/losses at Citi Field, the Mets have crossed the plate seven times. In their last four games, they’ve done it twice. Their starting pitchers have been outstanding — Wheeler has never looked sharper than he did on Wednesday — but little notice gets paid to the branches of the tree that don’t fall on your head.
One ideal that has emerged unscathed in this latest iteration of Met offensive ineptitude is how quickly they’re completing their daily defeats. Wednesday afternoon’s required a mere 2:27, only seven minutes longer than it took Koosman and Taylor to outduel McNally in the age when men were men who didn’t fiddle with batting gloves and stepped into the box without Jay-Z blaring an intention to reintroduce himself on their behalf. Tuesday night they needed 2:33, on Sunday only 2:30. Recent results may be hard to take, but the postgame commutes are suddenly a breeze.
by Jason Fry on 6 June 2018 12:20 am … we present Sunday afternoon’s.
Or Saturday night’s.
Or Friday’s.
Or Thursday’s.
Honestly, they’re all pretty much the same. Decent starting pitching + no offense, pulse, or clue = no chance. The good news, for the second night in a row, was that the Mets managed a squeak of protest in the middle innings and didn’t get no-hit.
So when’s this going to change? Beats the fuck out of me. When Jarred Kelenic becomes a star? When Jarred Kelenic Jr. becomes a star? When Jeff Wilpon sells the team? Never?
I just know I’m pretty freaking tired of it.
by Greg Prince on 5 June 2018 4:12 pm How historic is the ongoing fall from grace the Mets will seek to halt this evening versus the Orioles (at 17-41, as ideal an opponent for that sort of task as one could request at this moment)? Consider that the 2018 Mets were ten games above .500 fourteen games into their season, wielding a menacing 12-2 record and lording it over the National League East. Now consider they are 27-30 and are not only ensconced in fourth place in their division but saddled with the fourth-worst mark in the National League.
It’s not out of the question that somewhere in Maryland, an Orioles blogger is delighted that the Birds have a chance to get well or at least a little better in New York tonight. The Mets haven’t been making anybody — besides the then-faltering Diamondbacks a couple of weeks ago — look bad by comparison to themselves since the middle of April. We know they’ve steadily explored the tubes via downward trajectory for a while, but just how far have they plunged?
Far enough to evoke some unflattering precedents. Only twice before in their history have the Mets soared to at least ten games over .500 only to dip to at least three games under .500 later that same season.
In 1991, a ten-game winning streak propelled Buddy Harrelson’s Mets toward the kind of dizzying heights to which we’d become accustomed: a place in the pennant race, a victory total whose baseline was the high eighties, general adoration…then the bottom fell out. The Mets went from a peak of 53-38 on July 21, to their last glimpse of Ten Over at 55-45 on July 31, to Three Under — 57-60 — on August 18. That’s the franchise air speed record for a freefall of the nature our current Mets are going through. Losing 15 of 17 to travel 13 games south will get you there in no time at all.
A longer journey downward occurred nineteen years later. In 2010, the Mets were as many as eleven games over .500 at one point (43-32 on June 27) and still Ten Over as of July 6, when they were 47-37. It was hard to imagine while they were confounding expectations that Jerry Manuel’s band of merry Mets would plummet so decisively in the not too distant future. But plummet they did, though it took a good longer than it taken in ’91. Come September 3, the 2010 Mets were a 66-69 outfit, the result of going 19-32 in their previous 51 games.
The stretch we are in at present, during which we’ve ridden the absolutely wrong escalator, has run somewhere between the warp speed of 1991 and the stately descent of 2010. Our 2018 Mets are 15-28 in their past 43 contests. More 2010 than 1991, but mostly not good no matter how you count it.
Neither of the Ten Over/Three Under 2018 predecessors, incidentally, continued to fall through the earth’s surface at quite so an alarming rate. The 1991 Mets finished their year at a sad 77-84, which is to say that once they reached Three Under for the first time, they didn’t stray altogether far from respectability the rest of the way, going 20-24 in their final 44. The 2010 Mets were even better at not being even worse. In their last 27 games, they went 13-14, settling in the books at 79-83.
And then everything was fine…right? Well, no. 1991 begat 1992 and 1993 and, eventually, six consecutive losing seasons clear through 1996. 2010 paved the route for 2011-2014, four more years when .500 was aspirational and ultimately out of reach. Not that the future is told in our worst moments, but let’s just say you don’t want to fall from Ten Over to Three Under in the space of one season if you can help it.
I guess if the Mets could help it, they wouldn’t do it.
There’ve been a couple of other similar if not exact in-season plops from well over to uncomfortably under. The 1971 Mets were a powerhouse for a while: on June 30, they crested at 45-29, a bulging sixteen games over .500. Then summer really kicked in and kicked our asses. By August 15, we were 58-60; 13-31, under Gil Hodges, no less. Not Three Under, but perilously close enough. The ’71 Mets rallied to end their year 83-79 and return to the brand of mediocrity that defined most of their post-1969 existence.
Five years later, the 1976 Mets raced out to an 18-9 start — one shy of Ten Over on May 8. Joe Frazier was Mickey Callaway without the initial rush of New Age savoir faire about him. Then he was simply Joe Frazier (which Mickey Callaway has been himself a little too much recently). In a blink, the Mets of ’76 were Three Under, hitting 24-27 on June 3 after losing 18 of 24 following their impressive if illusory start. There’d be a long, futile .500 slog that would land them at 52-55 on August 2, then an insane surge that lifted them to 86-71 on September 28, before an 0-5 coda warned us to not get carried away by their final mark of 86-76. It was their best won-lost total since ’69, yet seven horrific seasons awaited on deck.
The fate of the 2018 Mets, let alone the Mets of 2019, 2020 and so on, will be determined by many factors. Logically, none of them figures to involve how previous iterations of Mets handled falls from Ten Over to Three Under. The Mets just activated Todd Frazier and Anthony Swarzak from the disabled list and just selected Jarred Kelenic and Simeon Woods-Richardson in the first rounds of the amateur draft. None of them or anybody else taking the field tonight or in the decade to come had anything to do with 1971 or 1976 or 1991 or 2010. (Well, Jose Reyes from 2010 remains extant on the 2018 roster, and David Wright from 2010 is signed through 2020, but never mind that for now). Still, statistically similar precedent wouldn’t lurk so close to top of mind if the Mets didn’t seem to be in the process of bottoming out.
Actually, it would be great if that’s what the 2018 Mets were doing at Three Under. Sinking any further below is really asking for trouble.
by Jason Fry on 4 June 2018 11:45 am Steven Matz pitched well on Sunday afternoon, showing no signs of any woes from an injured finger.
This concludes the good-news portion of the recap.
Everything else was trash, and familiar trash at that: bad defense, zero offense, a certain fatal sleepiness. The Cubs beat the Mets, 2-0, completing a four-game sweep in which they never seemed seriously threatened.
The game turned on two plays at home plate, a locale the Mets never glimpsed during their cameos as baserunners.
The first came in the seventh. Javier Baez singled but looked gimpy at first, to put it mildly. Baez looked like he’d need a limb amputated, and was just remaining in the game out of doggedness. This was eyewash: Baez managed to reach third on a single by Willson Contreras, then took an enormous lead off third as Matz — apparently wearing blinders — tried to keep Contreras close. As Matz turned towards first, Baez jetted home. Adrian Gonzalez took the pickoff and threw home, but it was far too late. 1-0 Cubs.
That lone run was enough to beat Matz, but the Cubs weren’t done. With one out and runners again on the corners, Ben Zobrist spun a little pop fly behind second, drifting towards right. As Luis Guillorme twisted and backpedaled, Jay Bruce passed up a far easier path to the ball, regarding it as if he was a signatory to a nonaggression pact. Guillorme made the play — he makes most plays — but was in no position to throw to anyone except the ballboy, last seen doing more for the 2018 Mets than Jose Reyes. Contreras trotted home and the Cubs had an unnecessary insurance run.
That was it. A Cubs team doing everything right, a Mets team doing enough wrong, a loss, a sweep, a once-promising season grinding deeper into the dust. Something has to change, but there’s precious little indication that it will.
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