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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 Jason Fry on 29 May 2018 1:25 pm In the ninth inning of Monday’s nightcap, which if memory serves ended about an hour ago if it’s not in fact still going on, Braves pinch-hitter Dustin Peterson tried to take first base on ball three. The various onlookers laughed; so did I. It had been a long, often ridiculous day and night that by now was overstuffed with baseball. Hell, by then the day was the overinflated Mr. Creosote from the famous scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Even a wafer-thin final pitch seemed like an offer best declined.
But that was the day’s final course. Let’s start with the repast offered by the first game.
Better get a bucket.
That first game was just … so 2018 Mets.
I missed the entire Brewers series while at Phoenix Comic-Fest, following it chiefly through disbelieving double-takes at At Bat’s scoreboard long after disaster had ensued. So I was braced for impact during the first game’s twists and turns, grimly certain that the Mets would succumb to their inevitable Metsiness in some awful fashion, and the only questions to be settled were who, what and when. (We’ll forget the why for now, as I just don’t have the emotional fortitude.)
Another reason to brace for impact: that was Jacob deGrom out there. As Greg noted in his Miller Park postmortem, almost nothing has gone right for the Mets since deGrom exited in the eighth inning of Game 15, and he’s been at the center of the absurdity, repeatedly undone by his supporting cast. Since that ill-fated no-decision against the Nats, deGrom has pitched seven scoreless innings against Atlanta (Mets blew a 3-0 lead in the ninth); beaten the Padres; pitched four scoreless innings against Atlanta (left after hyperextending elbow, Mets lost 7-0); endured that weirdo 45-pitch scoreless inning against Philadelphia (Mets lost 4-2); allowed one run over seven in throttling the Diamondbacks; and pitched seven scoreless innings against the Marlins (Familia blew it, 2-1 loss).
It’s not his fault. In fact, he’s specialized in impossible escapes that only delayed the inevitable.
DeGrom took a 2-0 lead into the seventh, having endured a farcical semi-rain delay and his teammates’ baserunning misadventures. Tyler Flowers homered to center to cut the Mets’ lead in half, and a walk and a single essentially through Asdrubal Cabrera put the tying run on third with nobody out. So of course deGrom, being deGrom, coolly struck out Dansby Swanson, coaxed a pop-out from Kurt Suzuki, and enticed cold-blooded Met murderer Ender Inciarte to ground to Cabrera.
2-1 Mets, alas, became a tie game when Seth Lugo came on for the eighth. Lugo has done yeoman work, but reported for duty with a curve ball missing most of its curve. Still, the Mets were primed for a heroic ending when Devin Mesoraco homered off Shane Carle to lead off the ninth. Mickey Callaway stuck with Lugo for the ninth; Lugo walked Johan Camargo, retired Swanson and threw another flat curve ball to Charlie Culberson. Culberson doesn’t hit a lot of homers, but when he does he sure makes them count — his walk-off homer to clinch the NL West for the 2016 Dodgers was Vin Scully’s play-by-play farewell. This one wasn’t quite that dramatic, but it doomed the Mets. Lugo put his hands on his head and trudged off, and the day was done.
Except there was another game to be played … at some point.
The rain came down, the tarp stayed on, the Mets and Braves did whatever bored young athletes do when the elements don’t allow them to play baseball (take turns in the infamous meditation room?), Emily and I watched the good part of Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom and paid vague attention to old Mets Yearbooks (sorry to report that Dawes Hamilt and Bruce Fitzpatrick never quite worked out as Mets stars), and the second game finally began on approximate West Coast time.
P.J. Conlon, tabbed as a Rays-style “opener,” crumbled in the third and was replaced by Hansel Robles, taking the place of A.J. Ramos on the roster. Which, if we can stop for a moment, is really some next-level Cormac McCarthy shit even by the standards of Mets-fan all-encompassing existential despair. This is like choosing between having your insides eaten by a bird of prey while you’re alive and immortal, or drowning for all eternity without being allowed to die, or some other mythological torment.
Let the record show that Robles did OK-ish, which is not an apology. That’s what Hansel Robles does to make you think that maybe he’s useful, before the pointing at 500-foot homers begins again. The Mets took the lead, lost it, then ambushed A.J. Minter in the seventh, bringing Jose Reyes to the plate with the bases loaded and one out.
Reyes struck out looking on a pitch that was borderline but not unreasonable … after which Luis Guillorme blooped a two-run single into left and Amed Rosario smacked a single off Lucas Sims for a third run. Those runs, somehow, would hold up: Jacob Rhame pitched a spotless seventh and Jeurys Familia went two innings for a win that was much needed but exhausting.
The Mets sank to .500 with their loss in the first game before bobbing back up slightly above Official Mediocrity in the nightcap. It’s accurate to note that was the first time they’d been .500 this year, yet misses the point rather thoroughly. This team started the year 11-1 and has been horrible since then, undone by awful relief pitching, anemic hitting, inept defense, bad luck and the usual run of Metsian injuries.
Seasons are streaky beasts, but the truly maddening thing about the 2018 Mets is how they continue to give roster spots to guys who don’t deserve them. Robles and Ramos have been consistently awful without the track record of previous success that their teammate Jerry Blevins has accumulated. Jay Bruce has been terrible at the plate and can’t play the outfield; Brandon Nimmo has made major strides as a hitter and is the Mets’ best outfield defender. As for Jose Reyes, he has no business being on a big-league roster at this point. He has no range at short, plays third like a spooked horse, can no longer build a run on the bases, and can’t hit at all. Reyes should be a Mets Hall of Famer and has given us many happy memories, but it’s over and everyone knows it except his employers.
So: lock Ramos, Reyes and Robles in a hotel room and skip town. It’s not quite reading, (w)riting and (a)rithmetic, but it strikes me as a good foundation for higher learning — and maybe a better spot in the standings.
by Greg Prince on 28 May 2018 11:21 am I don’t consider myself particularly prescient, but I did have three recent thoughts that perhaps indicate I have a knack for sniffing out certain strands of Met debacle before they unspool.
1) “Miller Park is a stealth Mets disaster zone,” I wrote to my blog partner on May 7, looking ahead if not exactly looking forward to the Mets’ next series in Milwaukee. The Mets fan’s default selection for “we never win there” was long Turner Field, but there is no there there anymore. “We never win” at Marlins Park, either, except we swept at Marlins Park in April, so you can only complain about what is legitimately complainable. The Mets had won only one series at Petco Park in its first fourteen years of existence, but this year, also in April, we won another. One must update one’s perceptions as events dictate.
I haven’t missed an entire Mets game since July 29, 2010, a fact for which I deserve neither kudos nor pity. I bring it up to note the advantage inherent in not having missed an entire Mets game in nearly eight years: you tend to not miss telling trends as they develop. Though the Brewers are rarely on our radar, I noticed Miller Park trending in the wrong direction for a while, with the Mets having lost their last five games in the Land of the Overgrown Tube Steak entering 2018. That included a sweep in May of 2017 which, in my judgment, tore away the facade that the Mets would compete for anything other than a draft pick. There was also the strange pattern I’d detected in which the Mets never win the second-to-last game of their annual Miller Park series, dating back to 2009.
2) On Sunday, after the Mets had predictably lost two of their first three in their ongoing Miller Park series (including that pesky penultimate game), they were on the verge of splitting with the Brewers, no mean feat considering the environs and the opposition. Although SNY continually dwells on the same handful of facts about Wisconsin’s home team every trip in — they used to be the Pilots; they replaced the Braves; they won the American League pennant before losing to Keith Hernandez’s Cardinals in the 1982 World Series; they race enormous sausages to great acclaim; and they didn’t complete a trade for Wilmer Flores — the Brewers are as good a team as the National League team features right now. We don’t hear that much, but we should. They own the circuit’s best record and lead the Central Division by four games.
Yet there were the Mets, carrying a 5-4 lead to the seventh inning. Zack Wheeler seemed to be winding his way down Vargas Road in the first inning, but he put his troubles in reverse after giving up three hits to the first three batters. The Brewers got him for only one run in the first and the Mets mysteriously countered with four runs on five hits in the top of the second. True, Wheeler got bopped for a three-run bomb by Jesus Aguilar in the third, but Zack didn’t suddenly excuse himself to check on his parking lot tailgate. He hung in and hung tough, something not every Mets starting pitcher shows much predilection for (cough, VARGAS, cough). Zack buckled down and went six, delaying calls to the bullpen, which we could only hope was an area every telephone service provider extant refused to wire.
Then, in the top of the seventh, Asdrubal Cabrera homered to increase the Mets’ lead to 6-4. Great, right? Who doesn’t want an extra run? Who doesn’t love Asdrubal Cabrera? Sure, you can spell “MVP” without “Asdrubal,” but why would you bother? Except I immediately flashed back to April 16, the night the 12-2 Mets led the 7-9 Nationals, 4-1. So many numbers. The Mets got two more good ones, a fifth and sixth run, when Cabrera followed a Brandon Nimmo triple with a seventh-inning homer to put us up, 6-1. DeGrom was on the mound, we were unstoppable.
Everything has been almost unrelentingly awful since that moment, leading me to the instant conclusion, upon Asdrubal’s dinger in the seventh Sunday, “whenever Cabrera extends a lead with a late home run, something horrible will happen.”
3) Robert Gsellman, one of our more dependable relievers, took over in the bottom in the seventh. The Mets were still up, 6-4. Victorious parameters, you’d think. That’s not what I thought. Instead, I thought, with no malice toward Gsellman, “the only question now is whether we’re gonna be losing 7-6 or 8-6.” After I scolded myself for such reflexive cynicism, what happened?
The Brewers took a 7-6 lead. Then an 8-6 lead.
I don’t know if you could see it coming, but I did. I didn’t see details, just debacle. I didn’t know Robert would give up a one-out single to Lorenzo Cain or get squeezed unconscionably by Rob Drake to create a two-out walk to Aguilar, putting runners on first and second. I didn’t know Mickey Callaway would toss a cursed coin and make another damned-if-you-do choice by replacing Gsellman with Jerry Blevins, who, when it comes to retiring lefthanded batters this year, is a heckuva clubhouse presence. I didn’t know Blevins would give up a run-scoring single to Travis Shaw, who bats lefthanded. I didn’t know Paul Sewald (0-9 in his career) would bid to spread some of his distinct losing-decision mojo to Blevins (12-2 as a Met before Sunday) by surrendering consecutive doubles to Domingo Santana and Jonathan Villar.
To the Mets’ credit, the Mets didn’t lose, 8-6. They lost, 8-7, thanks to Devin Mesoraco pinch-homering in the ninth to briefly if falsely raise our hopes. I was at the Mets’ prior 8-7 loss this month, against the Rockies on May 4, an evening when the Mets also briefly if falsely raised our hopes, except we probably had more hopes to be falsely raised three weeks ago. I was at the Mets game the very next night, May 5, which was a 2-0 loss, a more typical Met losing score of late, at least until the visit to Milwaukee. For a while the Mets couldn’t score. Now the Mets score plenty — thirteen runs tallied in the past two games — but not nearly enough to overcome their pitching — twenty-five runs allowed in the past two games. You can’t say they’re not versatile.
Maybe it’s not Miller Park that’s the disaster zone.
by Greg Prince on 27 May 2018 1:52 am Saturday’s Mets game was one for the ages. I know I aged significantly during the three hours and thirty-six minutes it took for the Mets to lose the hell out of it.
When the game and I were comparatively wide-eyed and callow, I could imagine a world in which the Mets, behind Jason Vargas, could beat the Brewers. Vargas won a game as recently as Monday. The Mets won in Milwaukee as recently as Thursday. They held a 3-0 lead Saturday. A 5-3 lead, too.
Then we all aged like crazy as the Mets lost and lost some more. Hard to believe it counted as only one loss.
Vargas was pounded for five runs in three innings, par for the course at which Jason usually golfs, that one solid start versus the Marlins notwithstanding. Jacob Rhame gave up runs at a slightly more accelerated clip, but was given only an inning to do so. AJ Ramos, who not so long ago was considered by experts a major league closer, a major league setup man and/or a major league pitcher, was called on next, perhaps as some sort of immersion therapy so he and we could face our worst fears. We all feared seeing Ramos facing the Brewers approximately ten psychic minutes after he walked them to victory the night before. Our fears couldn’t have been any more founded: three runs in a mere two-thirds of an inning. Ramos truly puts the frack in fraction.
Strangely enough, even as we swirled amid the dust of Ramos’s debris, the Mets were just one conceivable swing of the bat from tying Milwaukee. Granted, it was 10-6 after five, but that’s not an impossible mission. Load the bases, go for the downs, who knows? Brewer pitching hadn’t exactly choked off the Met attack. Nimmo had homered. Conforto had homered. We had a fighting chance.
Then we had Chris Flexen on the mound.
Chris Flexen from the fabled flaming trainwreck known as the 2017 Mets.
Chris Flexen from the mostly unnoticed roster move a week earlier that returned Buddy Baumann to the land of desert winds and towering ERAs.
Chris Flexen who’d languished out back of the bullpen where he was sneaking a smoke for all we knew because Mickey Callaway hadn’t seen fit to ask him to pitch, hit, run, field, pass, punt or kick.
Flexen started nine games for the Mets after being elevated from Binghamton last year. Few of his outings were encouraging, but the lot of them represented experience a pitcher not yet 24 could theoretically build on. Experience used to be enough to rate a starter with any kind of track record — Jae Seo, Dave Williams, Pat Misch — a day pass to join the rotation as needed and maybe stick around if he exhibited the slightest adequacy in a pinch. Experience blended with desperation was enough to snag Rafael Montero a clean slate every fifth day for a month in 2017. Yet when Callaway was asked who might start the nightcap of this Monday’s doubleheader in Atlanta, instead of volunteering, “Flexen, that’s my guy,” he hedged, innovatively suggesting it was more likely he’d employ a grab bag approach such as the kind favored by your trendsetting Tampa Bay Rays and such. (The Braves aren’t a division rival we’re trying to gain ground on in vital head-to-head competition, are they?) Flexen wasn’t out of the mix, but he didn’t loom as the lead ingredient.
After Saturday, one presumes he is toast for Monday, if not forever. Young Chris threw 57 pitches, almost of all them (at least the ones in the strike zone) scalded. Flexen entered at 10-6 in the fifth; he exited at 17-6 in the seventh. Only three of the seven runs he allowed were earned, but that seemed a technicality. Oh, and the Mets stopped scoring, transforming a potential slugfest into a standard-issue blowout of epic proportions, the kind in which you’re grateful nobody grabbed a lat muscle, yet you’re a little disappointed a catcher didn’t pitch.
I got old just watching it and I’ve gotten even older just now reliving it.
by Greg Prince on 26 May 2018 11:25 am Did ya see that thing? That thing with the Brew Crew? It didn’t end pretty. Not that it was all bad, though.
Joey Bats came through from outta nowhere, which is to say Canada by way of Georgia. We were ready to call it a night before he did.
Louie the Count proved an unanticipated asset, keepin’ it goin’ like he’d been doin’ it all his life.
The Sdroob…what can ya say about the Stroob, except ya wish he was born with faster feet?
Gonzo Who We’re Not Payin’ keeps diggin’ out from the dirt whatever needs to be dug. He’s all right.
Willie Flo was just glad we didn’t leave him in Milwaukee. He gets spooked by the thought of that place.
Bruce the Goose looked cooked. So, it saddens me to say, did Jose Cubed. Somebody’s probably gonna hafta have “a word” with Jose Cubed, if ya get my drift.
Nimmsie the Grin stretched himself out to make the big grab when that was practically the first thing any of us saw. It’s almost creepy how he’s always grinnin’, but there’s no reason to wipe it off his face.
Devin the Rock put down the fingers, Thor played along, everybody was happy. There’s only a problem when somebody decides to get cute and heist a bag. Then we got trouble.
Thor? Thor went as far as he was told. Thor was fine. Maybe he coulda gone farther, but he’s gotta stop when the bosses tell him to stop. Not even Thor can defy the bosses.
Quarter-Rican Seth as he likes to be known took it from there, with the Gazelle Man in hot pursuit. We never knew what we were gonna get from those two, but it’s usually been OK.
Rosey the Pup and Mikey the Fort also kicked in their share. I say they’re gonna do more soon. Maybe not now, but soon.
Big Daddy Blevins has clearly lost his touch, however, and AJ Balls threw way too many of his namesake. As a result, that mob in Milwaukee got what they came for. They didn’t even have to go against the Familia to do so.
Feels like we’ve been whacked this way too many times lately. Somebody’s gonna hafta make the Brew Crew pay before we leave town.
by Greg Prince on 25 May 2018 11:41 am The Mets who needed to hit hit Thursday night in Milwaukee. Every position player hit, actually, which is what the Mets needed most. The starting pitcher, Steven Matz, didn’t hit, but wasn’t hit. Steven went six innings, allowed no runs and handed the proceedings over to Paul Sewald and Jacob Rhame for the rest. Mickey Callaway had previously said the Mets can’t expect to win games 1-0 all the time. Maybe they couldn’t expect to win a 5-0 flogging of the Central-leading Brewers, but that’s what we got and gladly accepted.
You should be able to expect a victory when you get five-hit pitching, and if you can’t win after pounding out thirteen hits, maybe try another sport.
The clear choice for first star Thursday night was the first hitter of the game and lead man in the Mets offensive scheme both when it works and when it doesn’t, Brandon Nimmo. Nimmo has led off eleven of the last twelve games, times when the Mets have exploded for runs, times when their batting order has adhered to Gandhi’s tenets of passive resistance. When the salt is shaking and the pepper is grinding, there’s Nimmo getting it going. When nothing is coming out, there is Nimmo, too. With no Cespedes in sight and Lagares good as gone for 2018, Nimmo isn’t coming out, either.
On the nights Brandon Nimmo is the reincarnation of Tommie Agee, the Mets are a walking miracle. A hitting, running, scoring and emoting miracle, too. All of that is Brandon’s game, no more so than on Thursday as Brandonmania erupted for two doubles, a triple, a single, a base on balls and a hit-eating grin worthy of a four-for-four, two-run tour de force. Nimmo prepared the cocktail, stirred the drink, added the seasoning and of course served it with a smile. Through my grogginess, I even heard him thank Steve Gelbs for inviting him to take part in SNY’s on-field postgame interview — a small touch, but so very characteristic and so very delightful.
Thing is, as exciting as Brandon was, I was a little more caught up in two more mundane performances: the Met who went 1-for-4 with a walk and a run scored; the Met who went 2-for-4 with a run scored. If you don’t have your stats handy, those were the lines put up by Michael Conforto and Amed Rosario, the closest examples we have to entries in the young star genre.
You hear a lot about young stars of a position-playing nature these days. Teams we can’t stand seem to feature them. Conversely, the team we love and obsess on doesn’t get mentioned much in this context. Perhaps it’s because our most prominent young star, Conforto, isn’t quite so new anymore, and our youngest potential star, Rosario, hasn’t really starred. Honestly, Conforto has done so mostly in flashes. It was enough to get him an All-Star berth in 2017, though I’m pretty sure Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope and were meant to announce “deGrom’ as the Mets’ representative.
Young is half the definition of young star. Rosario is 22. He’s Youth of America material, to be sure. Conforto is 25. Young enough, I believe, especially when you consider none of his previous three major league seasons have been complete. He was promoted ahead schedule in July 2015 out of necessity (the mother of pennant-winning invention) After a scalding start in 2016, he slumped and was sent down to Vegas to regain his confidence, his stroke, whatever it was that kept Terry Collins from just letting him play. Last season, his second injury of the year halted his catching further fire. He’s in his fourth year, but it seems like he’s still got plenty of runway, which is great. You want to sense you haven’t seen a talent like his truly take off. You want “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” in heavy rotation every time Conforto does something swell.
We don’t have much experience with legitimate young everyday stars, especially in twos. The previous pair the Mets produced — basically the only pair in their first half-century — consisted of David Wright and Jose Reyes. They were young stars together for so long that it was surprising to turn around and realize the “young” descriptor at some point started to wear off. I remember reading an article about the best young shortstops around 2010 and was aghast that Jose was left off the list…until I counted backwards and concluded that a 27-year-old in his eighth big league season probably didn’t belong in that category.
The star part will take some doing to be more than a technicality on Conforto’s résumé. When he’s been good, he’s been thrilling. When he’s been less, you wonder what’s wrong. Michael has had a handful of starry games in 2018, but not much more. Much as he arrived from Binghamton early, he returned from his separated shoulder rehabilitation before he was expected. It was great to greet him as soon as we could, yet as with several of the Mets who spent a significant chunk of 2017 on the DL, we should probably remind ourselves that a player doesn’t necessarily get all the way back up to speed just because he’s on the active roster.
Speed is not a problem for Rosario. If they’d let him, he’d give the Freeze a pretty good race in Atlanta. But he won’t be in the same conversation as the fast risers the Braves are featuring to much acclaim until he can show some consistency. Twenty-two is twenty-two, and a first full season is still something akin to freshman year, even for a heretofore top prospect. I’m not particularly impatient when it comes to Amed. Rare is the top Met non-pitching prospect who sprints from the box to stardom. Wright, who came up in 2004, came closest. Reyes, class of ’03, once his legs found their footing, wasn’t far behind. Each was legitimately the cream of the National League crop at his respective position by the middle of 2006. Darryl Strawberry wasn’t polished when he won the Rookie of the Year award in 1983, but there was no doubting his power or budding star power. Nearly every other homegrown Met position player of note has developed out of view of the boiling pot.
Amed is several strides from joining the conversation that within the senior circuit has revolved around Brave wunderkinder Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña this year and Dodger junior achievers Cody Bellinger and Corey Seager last year. Michael hasn’t quite gotten in on that kind of chatter, either. All that our brightest kids can do is work at getting better and hopefully help the otherwise distressingly creaky Mets win. I tell ya what, though — when they have gotten better together, the Mets have won.
They just haven’t gotten better enough in tandem.
Consider that the Mets have played 46 games. In exactly one of those, both Rosario and Conforto have recorded at least two hits apiece, May 7 at Cincinnati. The Mets won that night. In four other games in 2018, we’ve seen each half of the occasionally dynamic duo get at least one hit apiece while one of them in the same game has managed at least a second hit. One of those games was Thursday night in Milwaukee, one was last Friday night versus Arizona and two were in April at Miami. All four were Met wins. So when I say the Mets who needed to hit hit last night,that’s what I’m talkin’ about. We need Conforto to hit. We need Rosario to hit. We need them to do it in the same batting order over and over.
Small sample size, I grant you; dubious cause-and-effect, perhaps; but a glimpse of what we all yearn for: two avatars of athleticism leading us to victory. Conforto who can rocket the ball to all fields. Rosario who can send them into the gap and take extra bases. Their defense has been solid, but their offense has been spotty. Get both youngsters to coalesce their skill sets and now you’re talking about the Mets’ young stars. At 25 and 22, respectively, they’re quite capable of igniting an elevated level of buzz.
In the meantime, we’re happy to keep mentioning how well Nimmo’s game is speaking for itself. He’s only 25, a first-round draft choice in this very decade and barely established as a no-doubt big leaguer. When the Mets had a roster squeeze last month, they sent him down almost out of habit. Fortunately they recalled him almost immediately, and fortunately he’s covered more than his share of otherwise unoccupied outfield ground. We don’t know how his playing time will shake out if/when Yoenis is declared fully mobile, but a plethora of nights like Thursday will make the question somewhat academic. Brandon’s the one young Met who’s truly playing like a star on a going basis.
The New York Mets and their three potential young everyday stars? We’re not there yet, but the more we have reason to hear of that kind of grouping, the merrier we shall be.
by Greg Prince on 24 May 2018 9:24 am Gary Cohen called Wednesday night’s 2-1 loss “stunning” the moment after it happened. Gary Cohen makes mostly accurate statements. This wasn’t among them.
The Mets had led the Marlins, 1-0, since the fifth inning. Brandon Nimmo had put us on the board with a home run. Whatever distance it traveled, Jacob deGrom propelled it exponentially further. With deGrom in the game, a 1-0 lead feels more than adequate. It feels impenetrable. Give Jake a run, Jake will do the rest. Jake carries a league-leading 1.54 ERA.
It’s low enough to be the Mets’ team batting average.
In that era of yore to which we continually and fondly refer no matter how inoperative it is within the current parameters of baseball, deGrom would have taken that 1-0 lead into the eighth and ninth and, quite possibly, been the pitcher of record on behalf of the 132nd 1-0 win in Mets history. We don’t live in that era any longer. Jake was removed after seven deGrominant innings. He had thrown more than 100 pitches. There’s nothing unusual about that anymore. You’re not suddenly going to hyperextend deGrom beyond any starting pitcher’s normal limit, not even a starting pitcher who resides high above the norm.
But when you take out your best pitcher, the chances that somebody else will give up a run would seem to rise dramatically. Afterwards, when deGrom’s phenomenal seven innings were no more than a vaguely pleasant footnote to the horrifying ninth, Mickey Callaway said, “You can’t expect to win games 1-0 all the time.” I doubt anybody expects that, just as I doubt many of us moderately deep down expected the Mets to win Wednesday night after deGrom exited. We should have been able to even if you wouldn’t think we should have to. Winning 1-0 has happened 131 times, though not since 2016. We were due for a 1-0 lead to hold clear to the final out.
Conversely, perhaps Jeurys Familia was due for a ninth like he and we experienced, one in which he doesn’t strike out the side (as he did last Friday night in attaining his twelfth save), one in which a close final play goes the Mets way (which happened Monday night, his thirteenth save). Figuratively burying your accomplished closer on the heels of his not accomplishing what you wished is an understandable and incredibly familiar impulse, but Familia isn’t normally incapable of getting three outs without allowing a run or more. His career has been built on preserving slim leads. That is the definition of his career.
But jeez, Jeurys, how about getting three outs without giving up a run last night? Blow another lead another time. We won’t be happy about it when you do, but this was the one to hold onto. Hold onto it for deGrom, who deserved the dopey W starting pitchers still compete for. Hold onto it for your team, which was enjoying a pretty fine homestand until very recently. The Mets are off to Milwaukee for four versus the first-place Brewers, then Atlanta for four more versus the first-place Braves. Losing a three-game set to the last place Marlins in Flushing is not advisable in the big picture.
You can’t expect to win games 1-0 all the time. You can’t expect Familia to save games all the time. Our anxieties expected the outcome we got. Familia’s sinker didn’t sink. Four Marlins got hits in the ninth. Two Mets, Gonzalez and Conforto, made clutch defensive plays around them, but you can only choke off so much rallying before you’ve been rallied into falling behind.
DeGrom wasn’t going to stay in. Lugo could have. He pitched a scoreless eighth. Theoretically, any number of relievers could have pitched the ninth if Seth the former starter was mysteriously deemed one inning and out. But, y’know, Familia is the closer. Like pitcher wins and losses, we still have saves and pitchers who are assigned most of the obvious opportunities. Even allegedly innovative pitching-savvy managers are susceptible to the gravitational pull of traditional roles. Besides, if you’re not going to use your generally successful closer — third-most saves in the National League this season — to protect a slight ninth-inning advantage, when are you going to use him?
Oh, by the by, the Mets scored only that one run, one of four they registered in this distressingly punchless three-game series. Let’s not let everybody else who isn’t deGrom and Nimmo off the hook for the defeat we and the official scorer have no compunction about hanging squarely on Familia. Dan Straily pitched pretty well, as did the three Marlin relievers who followed him. Were they deGrominantly impenetrable? For all intents and purposes, they were practically unhittable. The Mets collected six hits, with only Nimmo’s worth a damn. The other five were singles that led nowhere except to an outcome that, in retrospect, wasn’t remotely stunning.
Disappointing, devastating, disgusting…all of that. But not particularly surprising. You’d like to expect something different.
by Jason Fry on 23 May 2018 7:56 am The deal came together with startling speed – in far less time than even one of today’s foot-on-the-accelerator news cycles, Jose Bautista went from possible New York Mets target to likely signee to announced acquisition to standing on the field wearing No. 11.
No day or two to get his affairs in order, no needing to find a flight from wherever – he arrived with the speed of the delivery order that leaves you wondering if the guy was circling the block with a miniaturized kitchen between the handlebars of his bike, waiting impatiently for you to figure out that yeah, you were getting the General Tso’s this time too.
All of this is ignoring the question of whether or not Jose Bautista, New York Met, is in fact a good idea.
The Braves had no use for Bautista, calling him up for a fortnight’s look-see and deciding that they could do better with what they had – a similar decision to the one they made about another superannuated Met, Adrian Gonzalez. One might make a joke about not being good enough to make the Braves, except have you seen the standings lately? Maybe the Braves were the first ones to get the memo about the value of what they have.
Bautista’s a new old Met in multiple ways – because fans of a certain vintage will recall that he was once technically Met property, laundered by the team on July 30, 2004 on his way from the Royals back to his original employer, the Pirates, as part of the deal that brought back Kris Benson and Jeff Keppinger but somehow not a title.
There’s a lot of that on the field these days. Jay Bruce is a recidivist Met. So is Jason Vargas, who gets the added currency of having been a Shea Met. Ditto for Jose Reyes, Bautista’s fellow Jose and fellow former Blue Jay. (I’m probably forgetting one or two. Sorry — frantically typing in the airport on very little sleep.)
Reyes remembers Bautista from his glory days north of the border, when Bautista was a feared home-run hitter and playoff hero, the man whose joyous lumber launch sparked a brief inferno of bat-flip hot takes. (Between Bautista, Yoenis Cespedes and Asdrubal Cabrera, the Mets can lay claim to three stalwarts of the genre.)
So does Bautista have anything left? Well, for the short-term he’s a hard-to-argue-with shrug, a chance at counteracting left-handed pitching and filling in for Cespedes and Todd Frazier, Yo’s counterpart in the very Metsian club of Guys Who Will Be Missing Longer Than First Thought.
And he’d certainly seem to have more left than his aforementioned fellow Jose. Which is where I got a little annoyed.
Bautista replacing Reyes on the roster would have been a lottery ticket with a side of sweet relief, as Reyes continues to make us painfully aware on a daily basis that he is no longer even a shadow of what he was. He’s dreadful at third, not much better at short, punchless and inept at the plate and nothing special on the bases. Given all that, unless his mentorship of Amed Rosario includes necessary life-saving instruction in the body’s normally autonomic systems, it’s difficult to see what anybody’s getting out of the deal.
But no, Reyes remained and Bautista took the place of Phillip Evans, who honestly would probably be the wisest of the three players to employ on a semi-regular basis. Which leads me to a recent criticism of the Mets from baseball analyst Joe Sheehan, plucked from his very smart newsletter. To paraphrase. Sheehan noted that the Mets have had some recent success in developing young talent but seem determined not to trust it: Dom Smith is trying to stay thin in Triple-A and Brandon Nimmo is fighting for playing time while their at-bats go to Gonzalez and Bruce. Why not throw Evans into that mix for good measure?
Anyway, Bautista doubled in his first Mets AB, which could be a good sign or could prove he’s recycling Jose Lobaton’s material, but didn’t do much else Tuesday night. He had plenty of company in that, as the Mets were stymied by Caleb Smith.
Smith threw one of those easy oh-fors at the Mets lineup, looking ordinary while mowing down hitter after hitter with a well-placed and well-chosen mix of pitches. His opponent, a newly unhirsute Zack Wheeler, had one of his more encouraging outings, walking no one and working six innings.
But encouraging isn’t the same as a win. Wheeler was undone by the second inning, in which everybody had a part: Wheeler gave up several rockets, but Reyes muffed a Smith bunt and another run came in on a perfectly placed Luis Sojo special up the middle by J.T. Realmuto. That gave the Marlins a 3-0 lead that proved more than enough, particularly when AJ Ramos’s relief work looked more like the Ramos who’s had us bracing for impact this year.
Look, you’re gonna lose baseball games – a good 60 of them are ticketed for that column even in pinch-me campaigns. Day One of the Bautista regime isn’t a fair referendum on him, or anybody else. It takes longer than that to form a judgment. But judgments do arrive. And sometimes, like Met injuries, they linger far longer than one would think necessary.
by Greg Prince on 22 May 2018 2:35 am I noticed an SNY banner displayed by the bourbon-branded club on the Promenade level, which I found odd (the banner, not the bourbon) until I remembered Gary Cohen mentioned something Sunday about broadcasting Monday night’s game alfresco. Our announcers were out of doors, and so were Stephanie and I, along with assorted colleagues of hers. The Queens-based social services agency for which my wife does wonderful work receives from a benefactor a batch of tickets for at least one game every year and conducts a drawing for all interested employees. She always enters and she always wins a pair. I’d like to believe the fix is in, given her status as one of the office’s Mets superfans, albeit on a prorated basis. Being married to me may not be worth much in other contexts, but it will get you inextricably associated with the baseball team eleven local stops away.
Stephanie’s name was called and I continue to be her guest of choice for these games, which makes me very happy on multiple levels. Aside from my implicit fondness for my spouse, I like a ticket to a Mets game as much as the next tasteful New Yorker. And I kind of dig being dropped into a Promenade Box of people at a Mets game who are genuinely enthused to be there without much investment in the outcome. Some get a chance to bring a kid. Some are into the refreshments. Some probably relish having gotten a little something extra out of the job. None is ever on Twitter demanding to know when somebody will be designated for assignment. Good moods abound before the novelty wears off. Eventually it’s Monday night with the Mets and Marlins and you realize such a gathering is not everybody’s bottomless cup of tea. (Crazy, I know.) The ranking member of the agency’s delegation admitted, quite good-naturedly, “you know, I’d forgotten how boring baseball can be,” before bolting in the sixth for a long commute home. Actually, pretty much everybody from the agency bolted by the sixth.
Of course Stephanie and I and a handful of others stayed to the chilly but not at all bitter end, and we were not at all sorry. We got to see the Mets win. Stephanie and I would have seen it on SNY had these tickets never materialized, but that’s a TV show. A great TV show — the best nightly programming our cable subscription offers — but I discovered in April, when I avoided Citi Field in deference to the cold, that I didn’t quite feel like the fan I allegedly am without a little Flushing exposure.
So I’ve exposed myself (phrasing!) six times during the past two Met homestands. My first three visits were losses, which makes mathematical sense considering the Mets failed to win any of their games that week. The second three have all been wins, which is much, much, much more fun. Winning allows me to not say something like, “I had a great time anyway.” Not that great times are to be taken for granted, but how great can a time be if it encompasses a Met defeat?
That’s an intriguing philosophical puzzle, yet I don’t need to solve it after being on hand to see the Mets beat the Marlins on Monday, three nights after I was on hand to see the Mets beat the Diamondbacks on Friday, three nights after I was on hand to see the Mets beat the Blue Jays last Tuesday. The every-three-night plan seems like a winner, but schedules and luck don’t really function that way.
Jason Vargas didn’t seem to function at all during his reimmersion into Metsdom. Has a 9.87 ERA ever appeared more impressive? That’s what Vargas sports after throwing five shutout innings Monday. What was once stratospheric (13.86) is now merely vertiginous. The Marlins, who signed him as an amateur, couldn’t touch him as a professional. Viva Jace Vargas!
The only drawback to Vargas’s five frames of zeroes is the decision by Mickey Callaway to not send him back out to the mound for the sixth. Yes, we live in a world where we occasionally crave more Jason Vargas. Perhaps Gary, Keith and/or Ron explained the decision to go the bullpen, but I was at the game, so I could only guess it was because Jason threw 86 pitches in his first start in thirteen days. Or maybe Mickey doesn’t like not imprinting a game for very long.
On came Sewald to not quite optimal results (two outs, two baserunners).
On came Blevins to no good effect (one walk, no outs).
On came Ramos, who somehow pulled us through the sixth intact.
I can say “us” because I, like my wife and a few others in our section, was still with the Mets by then.
AJ Ramos makes us all nervous, and sure enough, he began the seventh by walking a Marlin. Then there was some standing around that was hard to discern from 428. It turned out to be Met savior Devin Mesoraco being inspected for dings from a backswing. I learned that later. The worst place to glean details from a ballgame is by going to that ballgame. I could have availed myself of technology (or even my trusty little radio), but I decided to hope the meeting of manager, trainer and catcher on the foul side of the white line was a clever method of avoiding being charged for a mound meeting. When all concerned dispersed, Mesoraco was still deemed squatworthy and Ramos survived the seventh.
Then all three of us who remained where we were sitting stood and stretched. I’m amazed how few people around me (when there are people around me) stand and stretch in the middle of the seventh inning these days. All six games this season and every game the last few years I find this tenet of the national pastime’s tradition is withering. It’s as if nobody knows what the seventh-inning stretch is anymore. Baseball and this country are going to hell.
Now back to our game.
The Mets were winning 1-0 to this point. The Amed-Asdrubal connection clicked Monday as it had Sunday, though without going over walls. Rosario singled in the third. Cabrera doubled. Rosario ran. That was a run That was the only run until the seventh. Fortunately Mesoraco the upright proceeded to double, Martin Prado clanked a grounder from Luis Guillorme (sweet instincts from whoever assigned the rookie “Brother Louie” as walkup music) and the indefatigable Wilmer Flores pinch-singled Devin home to make it 2-0.
That’s right, Marlins. We will, we will Meso-rock you. And we will hold on to beat you despite squeezing only two runs from nine hits. Guillorme will leap and grab a liner headed to left field. Nimmo will dive and grab another destined for grass. And when you think you can be all Marlin about it, Rosario will go into the hole and throw out your final hope to keep the game going. Sure, challenge the call; interrupt the ritual blaring of “New York Groove”. Your runner slid headfirst into the base where that never helps avert a forceout. Replay review will confirm Lewis Brinson is out and Ace Frehley will resume kvelling instantaneously.
From back in the New York groove to strolling down those left field ramps that slope gently onto Field Level, through the Rotunda and into that good night. Four in a row for our team. Three in a row for your correspondent. We won a drawing, we won a game, we won a Monday. Nice going, everybody.
by Jason Fry on 21 May 2018 12:16 am Every year we have a horse-racing party, which is pretty fun. Then, the next day, we have to clean up, which is less fun. You realize just how many bits of chip have been crushed into carpets. You find quarter-glasses of booze in unexpected, even baffling places. All the stuff that got stowed downstairs needs to be put back where it belongs. Garbage has to go to the curb, recycling needs to go to the bins, the dishwasher and the vacuum need to be run repeatedly, the floor has to be mopped, and all day you’re heading up and down the stairs trying to get all these things done in a moderately efficient fashion.
As a kid trekking in to Shea from the wilds of Suffolk County, I learned pretty quickly that the Mets didn’t respect the quirks of my personal calendar. Tom Seaver was not a guarantee to pitch on whatever day my parents agreed to take me to a game. Dave Kingman might not homer. Mike Phillips — my favorite player once Rusty Staub was exiled to Detroit — probably wouldn’t even play.
I got used to this idea back when Jimmy Carter was president. But still, the day after the horse-race party always sees me offer a plea that the Mets rouse themselves to be reasonably entertaining and good company.
Sunday’s game was promising, what with Noah Syndergaard on the mound, the Diamondbacks on the ropes and an unfamiliar sight up there in the sky … why yes, it was the actual sun, returning from its apparent stay on the 10-day DL.
And the early doings were interesting enough, as taken in while hauling trash and pushing mops and trying to figure out if the vacuum cleaner was broken or had just become inadequate for handling its one essential task. Eventually the distinction was ruled to be meaningless; ironically, the vacuum has been DFA’ed for failing to do what the still-employed Jose Reyes now does reliably.
Syndergaard is having a perplexing year, one in which we’re all faintly cross with him but can’t figure out why. He’s being less efficient with his pitches and seems to be lacking that Asgardian something … yet you look at the numbers and see he’s 4-1 with a sub-3.00 ERA, fanning more than a hitter an inning and walking basically nobody. Honestly, Syndergaard’s biggest problem this year has been being a Met — he’s been undone by crap defense, lousy relief and anemic hitting, and could easily be 7-1 with less Metsiness around him. If only the rest of our rotation had such flaws.
At least on the scoreboard, Syndergaard was outdone for a while by Clay Buchholz, last seen throwing a big-league pitch in anger more than a year ago. Buchholz mixed his pitches well and was the recipient of a lone run, the product of consecutive singles from reliable annoyance Jarrod Dyson and Nick Ahmed and a modest little grounder from Jeff Mathis that Wilmer Flores correctly saw couldn’t be turned into an out at home or second. But he went unscathed after that, with Jay Bruce throwing out Mathis at home to prevent further trouble.
Amed Rosario got Syndergaard even with a solo shot in the sixth, but it looked like Noah would once again come away with nothing for his efforts — at least until Asdrubal Cabrera connected as a pinch-hitter off Jorge De La Rosa. That was immediately followed by Rosario’s second homer of the day (and year), and both the Mets and their starter were ticketed for wins.
Cabrera’s having a quietly amazing season, the kind that turns a player from fondly remembered to eternally beloved. I enjoy how furious he gets with himself when he fails to execute the way he believes he can, flinging bats into the earth and stomping toward first with jets of steam whistling out of his ears, like some unholy mingling of Paul Lo Duca, Al Leiter, and primeval human rage. You can’t really be mad at Cabrera for failing at a baseball-related task because he’s already so comically furious with himself. There was no need for any of that today, happily — Cabrera waited for his pitch, unloaded on it, coolly admired the result, trotted 360 feet and returned to a now even more enjoyable day spent mostly off.
Rosario’s offensive outburst, of course, is potentially of greater import — if things go right, he’ll still be stationed on the Citi Field infield when Cabrera’s being chatted up by Steve Gelbs or some successor. The Mets are clearly trying to teach Rosario plate discipline, but he’d mostly processed that as “don’t immediately swing at the first pitch,” pitchers knew it, and Rosario was left with a lot of 0-1 counts and creeping dismay. Not today — he crushed De La Rosa’s get-me-over four-seamer instead of waiting for a better pitch that might never come. (While we’re applauding the youth, props also to Robert Gsellman, who looked thoroughly in command in recording his first career save.)
By the time the afternoon was waning, the house was clean, the Mets had won and hope abounded. That’s a pretty good day.
by Greg Prince on 20 May 2018 10:49 am When the Mets struck for two tying runs in the eighth inning and then the winning run in the ninth Saturday night, I thought of the ghoulish if sort of logical question that gets asked after aviation disasters and applied it to our at least temporarily aloft carrier of choice:
Why don’t they make the Mets’ offense out of the same material they make the black boxes that manage to survive wreckage and preserve flight data recordings?
To put it in a baseball-specific context, if the Mets can generate runs as desperately needed in the eighth and ninth, why can’t they just do that in the other innings and spare us the suspense, the angst and the general sense that we’re going down yet again? It probably has something to do with human beings competing with other human beings and some buzzkill “regression to the mean” pedantry. After all, if the Mets could just score at will, why couldn’t the Diamondbacks?
Because that would be no fun to theorize over, not from our standpoint. The fun was mostly packed into the final two frames Saturday, first on the two-run, eighth-inning homer swing Devin Mesoraco put on an Archie Bradley four-seam fastball to cut through the fog that hung over Citi Field all night, then on a succession of clutch connections made by the top of the order in the bottom of the ninth. Bradley had given way to Andrew Chafin, and Chafin gave way to standin’, cheerin’ and rejoicin’ as Brandon Nimmo doubled to right; Asdrubal Cabrera bunted for a base hit that placed Nimmo on third, and Wilmer Flores put enough wood on enough horsehide to send Brandon home via sacrifice fly.
It wasn’t quite Justify slogging through the mud at the Preakness, but our race was won, 5-4. Toss in the two-run homer from Michael Conforto in the fourth and the five post-Matz innings of shutout ball the bullpen threw, and you had a result that resisted gravity for a change. The Mets took a one-game winning streak and extended it for the first time since they won nine in a row in essentially another era. Getting on this minimal roll means we can sublimate our daily catalogue of Metsian gripes, including East Setauket Steve’s inability to reach the fifth; the battery of umpires who refused to see erstwhile Royals pest Jarrod Dyson should’ve been called out stealing in the fourth; the Mets producing no runs from a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the sixth; and the front office having cobbled together, for these DL-intensive times, the shortest and least useful of allegedly major league benches.
Instead, we can celebrate the most obvious factors that contributed to victory. A walkoff is never not fun, and nobody’s more fun to pound on the back and drench with liquid than Wilmer. Certainly no current Met has been the cause/object of more walkoff affection. Saturday’s was the eighth game in Wilmer’s six-season career that he was directly responsible for ending in the best way possible. We can also high-five over Mesoraco’s continued revival. There’s no figure baseball treasures more than an old catcher in a new locale, provided the catcher has a track record of success (he was an All-Star in 2014), was set back by circumstances for several years (he was injured and on the Reds) and is now considered reasonably healthy, preternaturally wise and the kind of hard worker directors of pickup truck commercials linger on lovingly. We adore unsung professionalism and sing its praises to the high heavens when it gets our attention. Nobody is more of an unsung professional than a veteran backstop who coaxes the young pitchers, mentors the young catchers and socks a few dingers. Too often our Kelly Shoppachs and Jose Lobatons don’t rise to narrative-quality performance. Mesoraco has already attained René Rivera knows-what-he’s-doing-back-there status behind the plate and is verging on John Buck territory when it comes to sudden, surprising power.
True, Devin couldn’t nurse Matz past trouble (irony of ironies, it was Diamondbacks catcher John Ryan Murphy Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt who put the most hurt on Steven), but the Cincinnati import put down all the right fingers for Lugo, Sewald, Ramos and Familia. Mickey Callaway said prior to Saturday’s game that Tomás Nido — up for the DFA’d Lobaton — was recalled so he could study under Prof. Mesoraco. The manager and his coaches value the way Devin prepares and they want their main catching prospect to absorb some lessons. Jacob deGrom, fresh off his thirteen-strikeout masterpiece Friday night, gave his new receiver all kinds of credit, too: “You come in and he’s already got a full scouting report written out.”
That the Tao of Mesoraco is so impressing the Mets underscores what they must not have been getting from their sidelined platoon of Travin d’Arwicki, which can be interpreted as a telling commentary on the state of contemporary Mets catching. For as long as Travis d’Arnaud and Kevin Plawecki have been fixtures around here (albeit of the easily detachable variety), they’ve never particularly emitted the air of knowing what they’re doing back there. Perhaps they never had a Mesoraco mentoring them. Perhaps not every catcher is constructed the same way, inside or out, just like not every inning can give us all the runs we need.
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