The blog for Mets fans
who like to read
ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)
Need our RSS feed? It's here.
Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.
Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.
|
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2017 3:58 am It sure gets orange early out beyond center field on the Met home dates The 7 Line Army comes to play. It’s looked that way from a distance. I can report it’s even more orange up close, radiating brightly from all those personalized jerseys sporting all those last names, nicknames and inside jokes. Good. Citi Field can always use a splash of color.
Also, more runs from its home team, fewer supporters for its visitors and, to shake up mundanity, another ball hit at its resident starting catcher turned third baseman/second baseman/third baseman/second baseman…and so on.
A Mets fan needed as much novelty as he could get his mitts on when the Mets were otherwise losing another awful game to the Yankees. I mean, I guess it was an awful game. Who can tell anymore? With Wednesday night’s third consecutive loss to this particular opponent, the Mets have fallen 12 games under .500 for the first time since 2013. Twenty Thirteen was briefly leavened by the Mets’ four-game sweep of the Yankees. The immediate goal of the 2017 Mets is to not be on the wrong end of a four-game sweep in the current edition of the Subway Series. I never thought we’d be so soon in the midst of a year that makes relentlessly hopeless 2013 look not so wretched by comparison.
Hence, we require all the sunniness we can gather as August descends to depths not recently plumbed. Let us thus drape ourselves in orange. Let us pound a pair of ThunderStix. Let us party like it’s 1999 in the standings, ignoring for the moment how deep No. 99 from the other side of town drove a ball into our stands. Let us high-five while our palms are free of calluses, for it’s not like we’ve had much to high-five about this week or this year.
The 7 Line Army as “a thing” picked up momentum in 2015 and 2016 when there was a plethora of Metsiness to be cheery about. When the Mets aren’t winning, The 7 Line Army seems a celebration in search of a reason. My night as an embed — arranged by a longtime Faith and Fear reader and full-time gentleman named Marc — revealed its devoted Met-loving troops don’t have to look hard. They’re at a baseball game with each other and almost all of them are decked out in the most primary of Met hues. How can you not effect ebullience when you turn Big Apple Reserved into a veritable orange grove? Besides, Marc and I agree we miss when you could identify specific ballpark levels by their distinct color schemes.
I wouldn’t necessarily say I miss the days of scorching Subway Series fever, those afternoons and evenings when Shea Stadium was a cauldron of genuine baseball hostility between neighbors, roiling from the orange seats downstairs to the red ones upstairs, but it sure is different at Citi Field. Have we all mellowed that much? That is, when we’re not chanting for chanting’s sake in center field because chanting makes for more fun than silence does? We chanted for as much as we could think of on Wednesday night. Hell, we chanted for a praying mantis (quickly dubbed “the Rally Mantis”). It didn’t get us a win, but it got us out of the house and in a reasonably good mood for a few hours.
It’s plenty different from the high summer drama of Matt Franco flipping an 8-7 loss to a 9-8 triumph, but it’s also different — for the better — from my last direct exposure to the once-ballyhooed intracity rivalry on which we instinctively staked our core identity. From 1998 to 2008, nothing mattered to me quite as much as the Mets beating the Yankees at Shea Stadium. I vowed to quit attending the Subway Series in 2009, Citi Field’s inaugural year, after Frankie Rodriguez walked Mariano Rivera with the bases loaded and I couldn’t tell whose spanking new ballpark I was in by the crowd reaction. The fact that Rivera was batting at all indicates it was the Mets’, but otherwise the game might as well have been played at a neutral site. That was probably the low point of my wherefore art thou, Shea? separation pangs. Whatever was wrong with Shea, at least I knew it was the home of the Mets. Every Subway Series game at Shea, regardless of outcome, made visceral sense to me. I didn’t see any purpose to it post-Shea.
Citi Field has since grown to fine and dandy status by me, but I’d felt no urgency to test its efficacy for Mets vs. Yankees maneuvers. Once Marc graciously got in touch, though, I figured, why not? Conclusion based on my first NYY@NYM night in eight years: there’s still too many of Them on the premises, but the vibe isn’t as holy war as it was at the turn of the century. I suppose that’s better from a civilization standpoint. We allow too many issues to divide us as human beings— why get hung up on who’s resplendent in orange and who’s obviously a creep in navy blue? My T7LA comrades and I certainly expressed antipathy for those whose existence we have conditioned ourselves to not care for, but it felt a bit like going through the motions. Of course Yankees Suck; of course Aaron Judge derives his power from an illicit substance; of course if you’re obnoxious enough to parade around in the wrong cap and the wrong jersey, your cup of beer deserves to meet an unfortunate fate.
Y’know, not really or should I say wholly, to any of the above, but some traditions need to be kept going in lean times. Gotta keep those emotions sharp for when these sets of games are fully competitive again.
Wednesday’s game was technically close, but inevitability hung over it from the outset, and no amount of chanting or ThunderStixing could drown it out. It’s not that the Yankees seemed unbeatable. It’s that the Mets seemed incapable. It didn’t help that the Mets lost two of their projected starting infielders, Wilmer Flores and Jose Reyes, to sore rib cages. How in the name of Ray Ramirez does that happen? With Neil Walker making friends and influencing people in the Cream City, Terry Collins was forced to improvise. Little did we know he’d been waiting more than four decades for the opportunity.
Because of the injuries to Flores and Reyes and the utter lack of infield alternatives, Travis d’Arnaud joined the ranks of Jerry Grote, Gary Carter and Anthony Recker among catchers serving as unlikely Met third basemen. Chicken salad out of chicken Salas for those of us who track the perpetually intriguing Mets Third Base Merry-Go-Round. In July, Asdrubal Cabrera became the 163rd Met to play the position (yet somehow resisted the impulse to demand a trade). Last week, Walker showcased his versatility by taking a spin at third, earned the “164” designation, and suddenly found himself a playoff-contending Brewer. Travis did not wake up Wednesday anticipating he’d be the 165th Met third baseman ever, but it was either him or an old Manhattan White Pages holding down the hot corner.
Collins wasn’t gonna totally hang d’Arnaud out to dry, however. Against batters more likely to hit in that direction, Terry shifted Asdrubal to third and attempted to hide Travis at second. Against the other kind of batters, the players reverted to the positions where they started the game. This went on for nine innings, just as Terry remembered it working when he was a minor league infielder scurrying back and forth with a similarly put-upon catcher in 1976. Elias had to build an annex to house all the 2B-3B-2Bs and 3B-2B-3Bs attached to d’Arnaud’s and Cabrera’s names in the box score, but the constant movement paid off. Or, at any rate, it didn’t directly cost the Mets anything on defense. And when d’Arnaud, stationed behind second base, reeled in a ninth-inning pop fly, it rated a standing ovation from those of us out in center. We’d been looking for a while for anything to applaud, even if it was semi-ironic. Td’A notching a simple “F 4” in the scorebook wasn’t quite the sensation as that praying mantis, but it definitely generated a buzz.
Judge’s home run to Promenade in the fourth, on the other hand, created a kind of hush not heard since Herman’s Hermits were in their heyday. There was genuine awe to be had not only in seeing where the eventual speck landed, but also in watching thousands of heads following the flight of the ball. One massive thought bubble floated above Citi Field: How far is that thing gonna go? It went where even Yoenis Cespedes’s mightiest blow dared not tread. Nobody was on base, so its impact was no greater than René Rivera’s relatively gravity-restrained home run in the fifth…except nobody years from now will be talking about that time they saw René Rivera homer off Jaime Garcia of the Yankees, while everybody will remember that time they saw Aaron Judge homer off Robert Gsellman of the Mets.
They might also remember Erik Goeddel striking out Judge in the ninth, not because it was critical to how the game turned out, but because Judge had just set a record for striking out in consecutive games; a million, I think. Small comfort to those of us in the orange grove (though we surely applauded when he whiffed). Hammerin’ Yank Aaron notwithstanding, the game was lost ultimately by Mets relief pitching being Mets relief pitching. Gsellman’s rust, the Mets’ indifferent hitting, and generally lousy calling of balls and strikes surely contributed to the 5-3 defeat, but the bullpen void glared as it so often does. Two separate conversations, conducted during and after the decisive seventh inning — Paul Sewald’s seasonlong tribute to Dale Murray continues unabated — led me to decide Met relief pitching has always been not healthy for children and other living things, save maybe for a few weeks in 1983 when Carlos Diaz, Doug Sisk and Jesse Orosco were simultaneously golden. The fine print on the tickets should include a warning to observe late innings at your own risk.
Yet we cheer, we chant and we take our chances that it will all be worth it. Orange-clad Army induction is optional, but it certainly adds a little flair.
by Jason Fry on 16 August 2017 12:28 pm At this stage of a lost season, it’s no longer about the standings or even particularly about the score. Baseball becomes a game of individual accomplishments, and the roster a collection of atomized pieces to be assessed for some future mosaic. Keep this one, dump that one, maybe we can swap that one for something that fits better.
Jacob deGrom isn’t going anywhere — he’s the only one of the Mets’ vaunted young guns who didn’t burst a barrel during this campaign. If someone can be said to pitch well despite giving up five earned runs, it’s deGrom, who was mostly unlucky in losing to the Yankees. In a low-wattage Subway Series, this was another mostly dull game, which Mets fans like me scattered through the stands seemed to find more perplexing than anything. DeGrom looked great, except the Yankees lofted all manner of dinks and dunks over the infield, a small number of deGrom pitches were less than great, and that combination was enough to beat the Mets.
The game was also my first look at the new Yankee Stadium through civilian eyes. I’d been twice before, but each time I’d lucked into exotic seats I had no business being in. For my first visit I was a few rows behind home plate (for the unveiling of George Steinbrenner’s plaque, no less), and ushers entreated me and my neighbors to not bother Jay-Z, which I thought was some kind of to-the-manor-born joke until I realized that oh, that really is Jay-Z sitting right there. (I didn’t bother him.) The second time, I was in a suite down the right-field line, on a work outing during which I endeared myself to my boss by telling credulous newcomers that Monument Park was a replacement for a statue of Moloch into whose fiery maw luckless Bronx orphans had been fed during secret midnight ceremonies. (Hey, it’s metaphorically true.)
Seen from a less exalted angle, the new Yankee Stadium is just … deeply underwhelming. I still need to give it a proper tour, but it’s like someone took the old white skeleton frieze, then sat down with the post-Camden Yards pattern book, put a big X through anything interesting, surrounded the premium seats with a moat and called it a day.
Citi Field arrived with some horrific sight lines and a woeful lack of affiliation with the team that actually played there, but from the beginning the park had both instantly recognizable pieces (the rotunda, the Shea Bridge, the Pepsi Porch, the home-run apple) and general-access areas (the left-field plaza and the promenade deck above the rotunda) where you could eat, hang out or stroll. Yankee Stadium’s Great Hall is a fitting showcase for the team (which is to say it’s big, expensive and cold), but there’s an absence of common areas, and looking around from a grandstand you mostly just see generic ballpark.
The frieze remains iconic, even if it still strikes me as set dressing that wouldn’t look out of place adorning Skeletor’s lair in He-Man. But Monument Park 3.0 is baffling.
The original Monument Park was actually in play, which I can accept wasn’t the greatest idea; its successor dominated the area beyond center field. The third iteration, however, looks like the backlot of Vinnie’s Used Cars — a sad space beyond the center-field fence, dimly visible under sagging netting. My pal Will and I spitballed new locations for it, finally concluding that anything anyone came up with would be better than what actually exists. I mean, this is Monument Park — something even Yankee haters instinctively look for — and it looks like a shabby afterthought. How do you screw that up?
Oh, when a Yankee hits a home run the stadium lights do a disco/vogue thing, followed by those irritating Yankee chimes. Much as I disliked the frequency of its use, the disco/vogue thing was pretty cool.
Anyway. Your takeaways from the night were exactly two: Dominic Smith hit his first career home run and Amed Rosario hit his second, the latter coming off Aroldis Chapman in the ninth and giving the Yankees a bit of a fright, at least. Here’s to many more Smith-Rosario pairings on the scoreboard in the future, and to their contributions coming in actual wins.
Oh, that asterisk: having concluded that the Mets’ presence in Yankee Stadium was essentially theoretical for the night, I gave up and went looking for a decent hot dog and beer. The Yankees pipe the radio feed into the bathroom, but TVs are lacking while waiting in concession lines. I returned with my expensive prizes to find that the score had gone from 4-0 to 4-2.
“What the hell happened?” I demanded, looking at the Mets suspiciously, and was told that Dominic Smith had hit his home run.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, disgusted with Yankee Stadium but also with myself.
But hey, I was there. Sort of.
by Jason Fry on 14 August 2017 11:47 pm As SNY spoke with Dave Mlicki Monday night about claiming first blood in a Mets-Yankees tilt that mattered, I found myself more than a little distracted. Mlicki had blanked the Yanks 20 years ago?
No, that couldn’t be right.
Surely it was five years ago.
OK, maybe 10.
But nope, you could look it up. The Mets and Yankees have been at this interleague thing a long time — a real generation that spans several baseball ones. Which is long enough for it to become something less than special.
Oh, I tuned in Monday night. But that was more because I’d spent nine days in the Met-unfriendly climes of Alaska and British Columbia, and so seen only snippets of action. I missed my Mets, despite this year being generally missable, and particularly wanted to see Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith on the same field and in the same lineup. Mets-Yankees just happened to be the first game where I’d get to do that.
Rosario’s not unfamiliar at this point, but Smith was new to me. The sleepy-eyed rookie strikes me as what you’d get if someone smushed Butch Huskey into a slightly smaller package, though I did also note of his soft hands and instinctive awareness of what to do with them during Monday night’s game.
The rest of the Mets were more familiar and so less compelling. Curtis Granderson jerked one of his patented Yankee Stadium home runs into that ludicrously close right-field porch. (Seriously, why did they ever let him leave?) Yoenis Cespedes had a very Cespedian game: a home run, a poor throw home that let a runner score, a disclination to run to first after a third strike escaped the catcher. Rafael Montero was better than expected except for one inning in which he retreated into all-too-typical timidity. Hansel Robles was good for an inning, which of course got him another inning, during which he was predictably bad, surrendering a massive Aaron Hicks home run that doomed the Mets.
Oh, and Hansel pointed to the sky again, as if the ball were going a quarter of the distance budgeted. Since not giving up home runs seems to be a bridge too far, he could at least stop doing that.
As for the new-look Yankees, they have an assembly line of hard-throwing, competent relievers, the gigantic Aaron Judge and a bunch of dudes I haven’t bothered paying attention to. I can’t work up any animosity for this edition except Brett Gardner, and even he’s only irritating if you’re determined to be mad at someone.
Maybe it’s the old age talking, but that’s fine with me. I didn’t like interleague play in the first place, but for years I was helpless to avoid getting whipped into a lather by the typically understated coverage heralding the return of the Subway Series. Still, as Dave Mlicki might tell you, it’s been a long time. On Monday I muttered and fussed out of instinctive tribalism, but that’s all I could muster. When Rosario looked at a called strike three, neither the borderline call nor the end of the game particularly bothered me.
I’m sure that will change. The Mets will have something to play for, these new Yankees will reveal old loathsomeness that I will beseech the baseball gods to punish, and it’ll be on again. But Monday night was just another game in a lost season — and a dull game at that, if you want to know the truth. It’s good to be back, but as this season dwindles my reaction isn’t to mourn but to shrug. And in a way, that’s sadder than any pop-up to Luis Castillo could be.
by Greg Prince on 14 August 2017 10:49 am When you’ve heard your team won a game by the score of 2-0, you assume there was very good pitching. When you’ve heard your team won a game by the score of 9-5, you assume there was a good bit of hitting. When you’ve heard your team won a game by the score of 6-2, you assume…what? Your team was probably in control, they pitched well enough, they hit well enough, there was likely an inning that definitively separated the two teams from a more nerve-wracking outcome. Somebody must have scored some runs to put the game away. Somebody must have prevented some runs that would have made things tighter. Mostly you assume it wasn’t the most compelling of games. You won by four. Good. Next!
The Mets beat the Phillies on Sunday, 6-2. It wasn’t the most compelling of games. Chris Flexen and four relievers pitched well enough. Curtis Granderson and Michael Conforto in particular (a homer each, five RBIs between them), hit well enough. The Phillies — mostly Odubel Herrera, attempting to tag up to an occupied base — ran themselves out of a potentially bountiful fifth. The Mets scored six. The Phillies scored two. It took three hours and thirty minutes, but it got the job done. A 6-2 win, three out of four in the series, on to the bus, and off to the Bronx.
And I wouldn’t dwell too much on the final, except, because I keep track of how often the Mets win by whatever score they win by, I discovered that Sunday’s 6-2 win was the Mets’ 100th 6-2 regular-season win in their history.
Happy Hundredth!
Yeah, I don’t know what to make of it either, but a round number is a round number, even when applied to a score that isn’t round and doesn’t instantly imply much beyond eight runs were distributed in a satisfying manner. Earlier this season, the Mets also notched the 100th 6-3 regular-season win in their history, and while it wasn’t a terribly memorable game, a scan of the scrolls showed the Mets had made plenty of their previous 99 6-3 wins indelible.
Bartolo Colon’s lone home run was in service to a 6-3 Mets win. So was Jeremy Hefner’s. The first time a Met hit three home runs in one game — Jim Hickman in 1965 — the Mets beat the Cardinals, 6-3. When the Mets tied their team record for most consecutive wins, eleven, in 2015, it was on a 6-3 victory over the Braves. Frank Viola’s 20th win was 6-3. Matt Harvey’s return from Tommy John surgery was 6-3. The first Met ever taken in an amateur draft, Les Rohr, got his professional career off to a promising start by defeating the Dodgers, 6-3, at the tail end of 1967. Ike Davis’s last great Met moment, his ninth-inning, come-from-behind, pinch-hit grand slam that shocked the Reds, resulted in a 6-3 triumph. Darryl Strawberry’s last great Met moment, when he blasted Doug Drabek and the Pirates practically out of Shea Stadium in September 1990’s end-of-an-era pennant race, presaged a 6-3 final. And perhaps the most mind-bogglingly craziest game the Mets ever played that didn’t end at 3:55 in the morning, the one in Cincinnati on July 22, 1986, with Dave Parker dropping the presumptive last out, Eric Davis and Ray Knight exchanging punches, Jesse Orosco and Roger McDowell swapping right field, Gary Carter playing third, Keith Hernandez fielding a bunt about six inches in front of the plate and Howard Johnson blasting a three-run homer in the fourteenth…that was a 6-3 Mets win.
Even the first 6-3 win the Mets ever managed was pretty Amazin’. They downed Don Drysdale and the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds on August 24, 1962, the first time they beat the former Brooklynites in New York. Drysdale won 25 games and the Cy Young that season, and the Dodgers wound up tied with the Giants after 162 games, setting the stage for the three-game playoff that gave San Francisco the pennant. If those Original Mets, who were 40-120 overall and 2-16 against their otherwise most overwhelming opponent, hadn’t decided to uncharacteristically jump up and bite L.A. with a 6-3 nip, the Dodgers (theoretically) would have gone to the World Series instead. The 1962 Mets weren’t so much Giant-killers as they were Dodger-doomers.
Six-Three encompasses a world of Met wonder. Six-Two, by comparison, lacks regular-season historical intrigue. The Mets won the fourth game of the 1986 World Series, 6-2, and the first game of the 2000 NLCS, 6-2, but in the regular season, I would nominate, as most anomalously exciting 6-2 win, Mets 6 Dodgers 2, June 11, 1980, better known as the Mike Jorgensen Game.
The Mike Jorgensen Game? You probably had to be there, or at least have been watching it or listening to it to understand its significance. The game was at Shea and it ran ten innings, and if you don’t mind indulging in a little arithmetic, you will thus infer the game ended on a grand slam if the margin of victory was four runs at home in extras. It dramatically concluded off the bat of Jorgensen, a Met then in his second Flushing go-round. Jorgy graduated from nearby Frances Lewis High School and the Mets, that particular week (as New York State regents exams loomed), were matriculating toward .500, a.k.a. the unreachable star. This was the week when The Magic Is Back, up to that point a silly advertising slogan, became the mantra of Mets fans everywhere. The eternally crummy Mets had begun the season 9-18. Comebacks like this one — engineered against teams considered far better than ours — had pulled us to the edge of respectability. The Mets climbed to 25-27 on Mike’s four-run four-bagger off future tormentor Rick Sutcliffe. It was, quite seriously, Magical.
So why haven’t you heard more about this most massive 6-2 moment in Mets history? Because three nights later, Steve Henderson would hit an even more Magical home run — for three runs off Allen Ripley — capping a ninth-inning comeback from five runs down to beat the Giants, 7-6, and it became the emblematic victory of a generation. Seven-Six automatically tells you something spectacular occurred. Six-Two suggests you need to take a closer look and bring a calculator.
There have been a few other 6-2 wins of surpassing situational interest over the past 56 seasons. Joe Torre’s first managerial outing, an oasis of optimism amid the ongoing desert of Queens crumminess, was won by that score on May 31, 1977. When the Mets clinched their second consecutive Wild Card, on September 27, 2000, it was by beating the Braves, 6-2. The win unleashed the most ambivalent clinching celebration in Met history given that we really wanted to win the division from the Braves in 2000…and the Braves had won the division directly from us the night before. But we were in the playoffs again and 6-2 did it.
Six-Two was also the score attached to an outcome that was either emblematic of its time or just a triviality. On April 5, 1994, the day after the exponentially more famous Tuffy Rhodes Game, the Mets won, for the first time, a game in which they fielded a starting lineup consisting of nine players who were each born after April 11, 1962, which is to say after the franchise itself was born. Seeing as how the Mets’ image desperately required rehabilitation after 1993 was marked by a tendency to play with parking lot firecrackers and bleach-filled Super Soakers, it was nice to know the Mets were sort of growing up at last. Behind Jose Vizcaino, David Segui, Joe Orsulak, Bobby Bonilla, Jeff Kent, Jeromy Burnitz, Kelly Stinnett, Ryan Thompson and Pete Smith, the Mets beat the Cubs at Wrigley Field, 6-2. The next time the Mets won by that score was August 10, 1994. The next day, the Mets played their last game of the season as a strike cancelled the rest of the schedule.
Six-Two is a shy kind of score, apparently. It doesn’t always want to come out to play. The Mets didn’t win a 6-2 game until they’d won 103 other games. Its first appearance on behalf of a Mets victory came Saturday, May 30, 1964, at Shea Stadium against the Giants. Jack Fisher went nine. Charley Smith went deep. Willie Mays went to third on a triple, but he was with the other team then. Buoyed by the 6-2 sensation, the Mets rushed right back to Shea the next afternoon for a Sunday doubleheader and wouldn’t surrender the field until it was nearly Monday morning. They played 32 innings, the final 23 in the nightcap. The Mets scored six off San Francisco pitching again, but gave up eight. Willie Mays played shortstop for the other team.
From 1966 to 1974, the Mets won only one 6-2 game, over Atlanta on May 21, 1971. It was also at Shea. Nolan Ryan gave up a home run to Hank Aaron but was otherwise good enough to raise his record to 5-1, lower his ERA to 1.32 and attract the interest of California Angels scouts. Once Ryan bloomed in Anaheim, the Mets may have decided winning 6-2 only led to bad trades, thus explaining the one such victory in an eight-year span. Since the mid-1970s, however, 6-2 wins have been a recurring feature of Met seasons. Only in 2011 and 2013 have the Mets not won a 6-2 game. As recently as 2009 they won four of them. The first was achieved in rather mundane fashion versus the Yankees the day after the Mets lost on Luis Castillo’s one-handed grab at infamy. That was a 9-8 loss. You can tell by 9-8 that it was exciting. Some days you prefer mundane. Tonight at Yankee Stadium a mundane 6-2 win would be just fine. The use of two hands on pop flies would also be appreciated. It always is.
by Greg Prince on 13 August 2017 8:45 am Steven Matz looked all right for a change for four innings Saturday night; looked a little too much like Jonathon Niese in the fifth inning; and never made it out of the sixth. Unlike Niese, the Mets’ latest vexingly underperforming lefty stalwart didn’t blame anybody but himself for his shortfall. He never does. Yoenis Cespedes hit a monstrous home run in his club’s best at-bat, versus the otherwise masterful Aaron Nola in the fourth, yet struck out with two on and two out to dash his club’s best hope, versus Ricardo Pinto in the eighth. By then, the Mets were down to the Phillies, 2-1. Chasen Bradford (1.1 IP, 0 R) had kept the Mets within a run after Matz’s departure. Erik Goeddel (1 IP, 1 R) pushed them back by two runs, which is where the game ended, at 3-1, the actual home team of Citizens Bank Park finally topping the home away from home team from New York. Somewhere in all of this, Amed Rosario showed off his backhand, his throwing arm and his bat — the first two to rob Ryan Hoskins of his potential first major league hit, the last to land himself on second with his own first double. His feet, however, did him no favor as he got himself thrown out at home on the back end of a delayed double-steal attempt in the second.
That was the game. It was a loss flecked with moments of encouragement and frustration. There figures to be ample amounts of both as the Mets continue to break in youngsters and shed veterans. Rosario is now a fixture. Dom (or Dominic) Smith started again at first. Brandon Nimmo was elevated from extended in-game interview duty to lead off and play right. And perpetually youthful if not exactly fresh-faced Jose Reyes was the late-announced starter at second, taking over for Neil Walker. Walker joined the exodus of experienced players who are no longer of use to a team out of a race but, in one of those cognitively dissonant realities of the sport, is judged useful by a team in a race.
The destination for Walker is Milwaukee, where Neil is headed in exchange for a player who already has a name, but it will be learned by us later. The Mets are also sending the Brewers cash, which seems at odds with their way of executing trades, but every deal is different in detail if not tone. The tone here, as it was in the respective dispatchings of Lucas Duda, Addison Reed and Jay Bruce, was we need to figure out who we are for next year, and whoever we will be almost certainly won’t include you and your salary, so if you don’t mind clearing out your locker a little early to make our decisionmaking process a wee bit less complicated…yeah, thanks.
Neil Walker, who is from Pittsburgh, was pretty much who we thought he’d be when he came over from Pittsburgh in exchange for the unlamented Niese (who also came over or at least back from Pittsburgh, come to think of it). He hit pretty well. He fielded decently. He was, by all accounts, a heckuva guy. He just didn’t avoid injury and he forgot to morph into Rogers Hornsby, which is what his Met second base predecessor did the second he left New York. By not keeping offensive pace with Daniel Murphy, Neil Walker’s Met legacy became not having been Daniel Murphy.
This is where I’d love to interject, “But being Neil Walker was good enough.” Well, they did get to the playoffs in 2016 without Daniel Murphy, but also without Neil Walker when it mattered most. Neil certainly helped keep the Mets aloft amidst their fallow period last summer, but just as they were revving up, he went down with a bad back and never played after late August, thus excusing himself from direct Wild Card association. He sat out more time this year, though his partially torn left hamstring was hardly the difference between another run to postseason and wherever the current campaign winds up. By moving on to Milwaukee, Neil will miss another September in New York, leaving him what I’m going to assume is a club record. Neil hit 33 home runs as a Met, the 61st-most in franchise history (tied with Ramon Castro and Jay Payton) and likely the most by any Met who never hit one in September. Was he that unclutch? No, just that absent. Neil never had a Met at-bat in September, which thoroughly explains his complete lack of power down the stretch.
Not quite the right man in the right place at the right time. But a heckuva guy. And did we mention he’s from Pittsburgh?
by Greg Prince on 12 August 2017 11:12 am One of the things I’ve enjoyed about this Mets era — 2015, 2016, 2017 — is the sense that even when these guys aren’t quite playing good ball, they know how to be good ballplayers, particularly good teammates. That probably comes from a proliferation of decent fellas playing the game for a decent interval. Live and learn and pass along what you’ve learned seems to be the prevailing ethos, and it’s heartening to watch it in action. For example, after the top of the fourth was over Friday night, and Dominic Smith was converting from baserunner to fielder in the wake of his having collected his first major league hit, you could see the warm veteran influence blanket the newest Met. There was Yoenis Cespedes congratulating him, elder to youngster. And Neil Walker doing the same. And three-time All-Star Curtis Granderson, who’s in his fourteenth season. And one-time All-Star (so far) Michael Conforto, who’s in his third. And, of course, good old Amed Rosario.
Amed Rosario is a veteran of ten games, but I’m pretty sure he came into the world a big leaguer.
Friday night against the fifth-place Phillies was exciting on principle because it was Smith’s major league debut. Dominic (or Dom — somebody will have to clear up his Chase/Chasen issue) was born on June 15, 1995. Joe Orsulak won the game the Mets played at Shea against the Marlins on that date, singling home pinch-runner Tim Bogar in the tenth after helping along a three-run rally in the ninth with an RBI double that plated young Edgardo Alfonzo. I once heard Joe Orsulak referred to as “the club pro,” the epitome of calm, cool, sweet-swinging veteran presence wherever he alighted, including his three seasons as a Met. I could think of worse things for a future Met than to have been born under the Sign of Orsulak.
Someday, maybe, Smith will be spoken of in such terms. If he lasts as long as he should — first-round Met draft choice of 2013, second-rated Met prospect of 2017 — and remains as ebullient as he appeared just from the sensation of being here, he’ll be the one knocking in winning runs and delivering brotherly hugs. It won’t necessarily take long for Smith to begin building that kind of sterling reputation. Based on what we witnessed Friday night, it took Rosario a week-and-a-half.
Every player needs to be viewed as an individual, and no two trajectories are going to run precisely parallel, but it’s difficult to resist suggesting that if first baseman Smith follows shortstop Rosario’s example, he will be a heckuva Met soon. The only thing biologically young Amed — born five months after Smith (and seven months after Orsulak took his last Met swing) — hadn’t done much since rising from Triple-A was hit consistently. On Friday night, he at least temporarily took care of that perception with a pair of singles and, oh yeah, the ninth-inning home run that broke a 6-6 tie and positioned the Mets to win an intermittently sloppy slog of a ballgame at home away from home Citizens Bank Park, 7-6.
Conforto went deep for one in the second. Cespedes went deep for three in the third. Seth Lugo went not quite six, shaky early, stable eventually, departing ahead by two. Wilmer Flores attempted to go from second to third in the eighth, apparently uncertain of how many outs there were. When René Rivera struck out, there were two; when Flores inexplicably took off toward the next available base, there’d be three, leaving the Mets clinging to a one-run lead, a tenuous edge about to be wiped out by Cesar Hernandez’s one-out solo shot in the bottom of the inning off Jerry Blevins.
We’ve all tacitly agreed that wins and losses at this stage of 2017 aren’t imbued with the garment-rending importance we attached to results during the previous two Augusts, but the games do get played, and while they’re getting played, it’s way preferable to win. You didn’t want to lose on the night of Dominic or Dom Smith’s major league debut. You didn’t want to lose on the night Dom’s mom beamed so darn hard for her 1-for-3 son (he was double-switched out with Lugo in the sixth). You also didn’t want to lose on the night Brandon Nimmo, still in his extended initiation phase of big league life, heroically withstood a half-inning deluge of sunflower seeds and assorted other projectiles while conducting the longest legitimate in-game interview regarding pinch-hitting preparation anybody has ever seen. Brandon sat with SNY headphones on, helpfully dissecting every detailed question Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez suddenly had to have answered in the bottom of the second. Asdrubal Cabrera flung everything but the on-deck circle in his general vicinity. Tom Goodwin floated by with an impressive videobomb. The shoulders of Nimmo’s jersey grew suspiciously damp. Yet he sat and he smiled and he explained how critical Kelly Johnson and Jay Bruce — veteran presence! — were to his development as a hitter off the bench and, six innings later, he made like Le Brand Orange and delivered the pinch-single that sent Flores to second, from whence Wilmer would take off obliviously for third.
Hmmm. Maybe that was part of the gag.
Blevins, so dependable for so much of the season, surrendered two more singles. Jerry had to be rescued by Hansel Robles, which is not usually how Met relief proceeds, but baseball dares you to make assumptions. Hansel retired the last two Phillies of the eighth, setting the stage for Rosario to become the 59th Mets position player to have hit exactly one home run in his Met career. That’s a list that encompasses short-timers and “in there for his glove” types. It’s a list that will probably say goodbye to Rosario soon, perhaps as quickly as the ball Amed launched off Hector Neris landed in the right-center field stands. We knew Rosario could field. We knew Rosario could run. We’re getting the idea Rosario can hit and hit with power.
With AJ Ramos showing us he can indeed cleanly save a game, Robles garnered his seventh win (second on the club to Jacob deGrom in that make-of-it-what you-will statistic) and the Mets emerged victorious where they almost always emerge victorious, but if there was going to be a night when they didn’t, this one looked like it. They fell behind early, gave up the tying run late, wasted a golden add-on opportunity…but nah. Not in Philadelphia. Not with Smith joining the cast. Not on Rosario’s watch.
by Greg Prince on 11 August 2017 9:06 am The Mets can’t beat the Dodgers, the best team in baseball. The Dodgers have been beating everybody regularly, though they’ve looked human against the Braves. The Braves can’t beat the Phillies. The Phillies, particularly at home, can’t beat the Mets.
Hey — did we just become the best team in baseball?
Pythagoras called and said I’m deriving a faulty conclusion from random quirks. I told him to not to be such a buzzkill. Mets Squared plus Phillies Squared divided by Citizens Bank Park equals an uncommonly satisfying result. Or a commonly satisfying result if we pretend we never play anywhere else.
Any way we can play 81 games there without becoming a Philadelphia team? Hell, can we play our entire schedule there? It’s the one place where the Mets are nearly infallible.
At some point during SNY’s telecast of Thursday night’s thoroughly enjoyable beatdown, a Reds-Padres score flitted across the bottom of the screen. “Wow,” I thought, “you’d really have to love baseball to want to watch the Reds and Padres.” I thought this while watching the Mets and Phillies, the kind of game people committedly watching the Reds and Padres would think, “Wow, you’d really have to love baseball to want to watch the Mets and Phillies.” Yet what’s not to love when the Mets play the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park?
You might not have dared venture such a thought ten years ago this month, but it ain’t ten years ago anymore, certainly not in Philadelphia. SNY ran a promotional spot hyping the next game between these fierce “rivals”. Geography aside, the Met-Phillie rivalry, which tilted mainly in the wrong direction at its brief peak, is a conceit more accurately consigned to the previous decade. We see the Mets enough to know their biggest rival/worst enemy is themselves. In glances at the Phillies, we see absolutely nothing reminiscent of their long-shattered National League East preeminence.
On August 24, 2011, in the last game they played at Citizens Bank Park that year, the visiting Mets defeated the Phillies, 7-2. It hardly mattered in the scheme of the season, which was running according to the era’s prevailing norms. The Phillies were 83-45, the Mets 61-68. The Phillies were cruising toward their fifth consecutive division title. Having fortified their rotation with every formidable Roy in sight — Halladay, Oswalt, Rogers probably — they were a lock to go to their third World Series in four years and parade another trophy through the City of Utleyish Love.
A funny thing happened on the way to Market Street. The Phillies were tripped up by the unlikely Wild Card club of 2011, the periodically animal-rallied Cardinals, and were eliminated from the NLDS in five games. The only parade route mapped for them since has been downward. Perhaps the harbinger of their fortunes was embedded in that innocent loss to the Mets on August 24 a half-dozen years ago. Mike Pelfrey went six innings, Nick Evans drove in four runs and the tables turned imperceptibly but definitively. Starting with that game, the Mets have won 38 of 52 in Philadelphia. Four of the fourteen losses came after the Mets had clinched playoff spots, which is the ultimate expression of dominance: winning so much that losing makes you no nevermind. Prorated to 162 games, the 38-14 stretch — added on to Thursday night when the Mets whomped the Phillies, 10-0 — translates to a full season’s record of 118-44, even better than the pace being set by the mostly unstoppable 2017 Dodgers.
Hold on…Pythagoras is texting me, telling me to knock it off. I’ll ignore him.
The commute would be a hassle, but “the New York Mets of South Philadelphia” might be worth considering for the greater good. The Mets play like champions adjacent to the intersection of Broad and Pattison. It doesn’t hurt that the 42-70 Phillies (31-68 when not mysteriously sticking it to the Braves) play like the Phillies, so we’d have to figure out a way to keep them on the payroll. The Mets are more about shedding payroll at the moment, so this away-from-home home park scheme is as full of holes as Swiss cheese, and almost everybody knows you don’t order a Philadelphia cheesesteak with Swiss
Let’s just stick with the current mode of scheduling and try to extend the good times at Citizens Bank for as long as we’re in residence. Jacob deGrom was having a very good time, sailing toward his thirteenth win with two out in the seventh when a Nick Williams liner Citizens Banked off his right triceps muscle. Out went deGrom, who would later insist he felt fine, contusion notwithstanding. Every Met starting pitcher feels fine until he disappears to Dr. James Andrews’s waiting room, but if we’re going to believe any Met starting pitcher, we’ll take the word of deGrom, who surely spoke the truth postgame when he said “trying to locate well” accounted for his six-and-two-third innings of four-hit shutout ball (9 SO, 0 BB). Jake knows there’s no better place for a Met to locate to for an evening than Citizens Bank Park.
The Phriendly Confines even encompassed a touch of tantalizing transactional news, as Sandy Alderson announced pregame that Dom Smith will join the crew on Friday night. To make room for the first baseman of tomorrow (technically today), Fernando Salas was DFA’d. Human decency won’t permit me to lump a person being disinvited from the ranks of his profession as a necessarily happy development, so let’s wish Fernando well and hope the Phillies pick him up ASAP.
When the Mets traded Jay Bruce, I was briefly disappointed in that he wouldn’t have an immediate opportunity to hit more home runs at Citizens Bank Park. In two series there as a Met, he went deep three times. Then I remembered every Met hits home runs at Citizens Bank Park, so what’s one slugger fewer? Sure enough, four Met bashers had no problem discovering the other side of the fence Thursday: Michael Conforto as newly anointed cleanup hitter; Wilmer Flores as first baseman of the transitory present; and Neil Walker (4-for-5) and Curtis Granderson as potential enhancers of trade value.
Wait a sec…we’re still in the business of looking to trade guys away? But we just won a ballgame ten-nothing! Oh yeah, that’s right, we’re not really a .731 juggernaut. Alas, we are moved to remember that for all the walloping the Mets do to the Phillies in this one particular phacility, the locationally invincible Mets remain the 51-61 Mets everywhere else.
But the Mets aren’t anywhere else this weekend. They’re at Citizens Bank Park. Hence, a small request to the Mets who are just arriving, the Mets who might soon be departing and the Mets who figure to stick around for a while: please keep taking advantage of that Philadelphia hospitality before it goes out of style.
Never out of style: the ALL-NEW Faith and Fear t-shirt, commemorating the retired numbers 31, 41, 14, 37 and 42. This blue baby is available in ladies’ sizes here and gentlemen’s sizes here. For more information on the fellow whose exploits made a revised edition of the classic FAFIF tee necessary, I humbly suggest this book here.
by Greg Prince on 10 August 2017 12:40 pm The season is lost. The Mets are lost. We as Mets fans are lost. A dark forest surrounds us. It is wilderness out there.
Who’s going to lead us somewhere worth going? Judging by Wednesday afternoon’s thuddingly morose loss to Texas, probably not Rafael Montero. Judging by Wednesday night’s trade, definitely not Jay Bruce. Montero has been a Met starting pitcher longer than anybody could have imagined or would reason to suggest. Bruce has stopped being a Met outfielder and slugger at about the August 2017 juncture we might have guessed. Montero has accomplished little in a Mets uniform and will continue to be invited to do so for the foreseeable future (not that we who are lost can foresee much). Bruce was having a surprisingly good year, the “surprise” part stemming from how Monteroish he became shortly after he got here in August of 2016. Before he was a Met, he wasn’t bad. Once he stayed a Met, he was pretty good. Very good, at times.
That Bruce confounded the general expectations for him was in line with how he went about being a Met in 2017. I called him the Contrarian. He wouldn’t give reporters the answers they seemed ready to jot down, whether it was about having surely been uncomfortable playing in New York initially, or arriving in St. Lucie haunted by the knowledge that he wasn’t truly wanted there, or if he was surprised that he was hitting or fielding or coping as well as he was. He was fine being a New York Met was his story, and he stuck to it. Played like he meant it, too.
But we don’t know where we’re going, so holding on to someone of Bruce’s ilk — experienced lefthanded right fielder with an expiring contract of some heft — is itself contrary to the sense of wherever it is we’re eventually going. Twenty-nine home runs and seventy-five runs batted in became thickets that needed clearing so we could get a better picture of what lies ahead. We’re so lost that we no longer have practical use for Jay’s brand of production.
Bruce numbers aren’t worth much to a solidly out-of-contention fourth-place enterprise. They were worth something to the AL Central-leading Cleveland Indians, though. You’d figure more than a Single-A relief pitcher who was drafted low and has yet to be rated high, but this August’s trade market is another place where we get lost. Jay Bruce for Ryder Ryan? That doesn’t quite look right, but it got dark early here, so it’s tough to see clearly. The Tribe took on the remainder of Bruce’s salary, letting the Mets off the hook for several million dollars.
Ah, I can see clearly now.
Having not been in on the negotiations among the Mets and their various suitors — only the Indians and the Yankees have been identified as interested — I don’t know for sure there was a better all-around deal to be had for Bruce. “All-around” implies the Mets not having to eat any of Bruce’s contract. That’s probably important in the uppermost echelons of Mets decisionmaking, and you can probably read “probably” there the same way you read “probably” above regarding Montero’s ability to lead the Mets anywhere worth going. No, the Mets definitely wanted someone else to pay Bruce all he was due. Any prospect-level minor leaguers who got bundled in from there were presumably considered a bonus.
We’re still lost. What remains to be found in this season’s final fifty-one games is compelling evidence of who can do what for 2018. No matter how many home runs, no matter how many RBIs, thirty-year-old Bruce wasn’t likely to be a part of that. Others whose names will circle the rumorsphere won’t, either. You know who you’ll be looking to show us at least a little of the way between now and Game 162. You hope that along the wilderness trail we won’t trail too often or too much. The short-term journey to nowhere in particular is more enjoyable when we win now and then.
by Greg Prince on 9 August 2017 6:44 am No matter how many ballgames you go to, it is often mentioned, you’ll see something you haven’t seen before. Sure enough, I experienced a plethora of firsts on Tuesday night, which was by no means my first ballgame.
Let’s see what I saw that I hadn’t seen previously…
• The pat-you-down security guy hassling me about my open bottle of water. Usually you’re free and clear once the search-your-bag security guy misses it, but I was probably a little cocky in my handling of it between their respective stations, or at least didn’t show my usual paranoia that Citi Field’s entire security theater apparatus isn’t designed to deprive me of between four and eight ounces of undrunk packaged hydro. Tuesday it was. Mouths attached to fingers on buttons make fast and loose with comments about fire and fury, but it’s my water that’s gonna kill us all. Sure.
• The gravy not ready at Mama’s of Corona in the World’s Fare Market. The Turkey and Mozzarella with gravy and mushrooms is the essence of Citi Field dependability, yet one of the components was not prepared for my rendezvous with it. I’d say, “go figure,” but I don’t even know how to calculate the chances Mama’s would make me wait. Or make anybody wait. Was a network stooge not giving Mama’s gravy the go-ahead? Everybody who came after me was struck with the same befuddlement. The gravy isn’t ready? But the gravy’s always ready! Befuddled is one thing, but If you’ve remained loyal to Mama’s since Shea (when she and fellow World’s Fare stalwart Daruma of Great Neck were basically all you could count on), you don’t betray the local instinct for impatience. You wait a couple of minutes for Mama’s to finish the gravy. She’s worth it.
• Chris Flexen. I saw him on TV, but never in person, never for The Log II purposes. Now he has been inked and penciled in — Flexen (ink) 1 (pencil) — and he’s on the same line as the W 5-4 indicating the Mets’ victory Tuesday night. The kid from Binghamton bent but didn’t break, carrying that ethic clear into the sixth inning, or four innings further than I assumed he would. Remake my assumptions, Chris. If I can wait for gravy, I can wait for you.
• The ball flying OUTTA THERE as if air traffic control at LaGuardia was giving multiple thumbs-up. Three Met homers (including the first for Travis d’Arnaud at home this year), three for the Rangers (including one from presumptive future Hall of Famer Adrian Beltre, whose recent ascension to the 3,000-hit club I meant to honor with a round of first at-bat applause, but I forgot to). Nine runs scored total, eight of them on round-trippers. We’ve come a long way since the daunting dimensions of 2009, haven’t we?
• Amed Rosario. It wasn’t the savior’s first Flushing appearance, but it was mine with him in my Citi Field of vision. He was the only Met infielder playing his actual position. He played it noticeably well, catching my attention once on a slick double play, once scooping up a grounder on the grass. A sprint down the line that didn’t amount to anything made for a few fun seconds as well. Mostly I liked looking down during a pitching change and watching ROSARIO 1 loitering behind the mound like a big leaguer, clearly belonging amid his environs.
• ROSARIO 1 on the back of a t-shirt. There were probably several of those in the house, but I spotted just one (or 1) in the stands so far. Also caught sight of a CHURCH 19 in the same section. I’m gonna go out on a limb and project that the ROSARIO 1 to CHURCH 19 ratio will never again be so even in any portion of Citi Field ever again.
• Neil Walker starting at first base. The Mets don’t have a first baseman since they sent Lucas Duda away, so everybody’s getting a little more versatile. Neil had never started at first in the majors, not for Pittsburgh (where he’s from), not for New York, not anywhere. The only thing I noticed — and it had to be pointed out to me — that when Neil finished the ritual pre-inning round of catch with his third baseman (Asdrubal Cabrera, not a third baseman), his shortstop (Rosario) and his second baseman (Jose Reyes, not a second baseman), he turned to toss the ball to the fans behind the Mets dugout. Except the new almost-invisible netting shields the fans from such projectiles, so all that happens is the ball hits the net and rolls down into the dugout. Was Neil taunting the fans? Or is the netting so invisible that he just doesn’t know where the ball is going? He’s new to first, so who knows? When a double-switch ensued and Wilmer Flores (not a first baseman) came into play first, Wilmer did the same thing, so there must be an extra layer of ritual I need explained to me.
• Cabrera not exactly stealing third base. Asdrubal’s idea seemed interesting when it materialized in the seventh. There was a shift on, so the bag was basically uncovered, so Asdrubal, having recently doubled, took off, while Jay Bruce batted. Beltre pivoted back into position, received the throw from catcher Robinson Chirinos, caught up to Cabrera, tagged him out and got him again when Asdrubal overslid the bag by many, many feet. Since Cabrera had just doubled home what proved to be the all-important insurance run, we’ll overlook what we saw. But yeesh.
• AJ Ramos getting a save for the Mets. His first for us anywhere. He gave up a home run to make it seem less than worth noting, but they keep track of such things. But also yeesh.
• A win over the Rangers to inscribe in The Log II. I’d seen Texas play the Mets only once before, in 2014, when the Mets were busy dipping to eleven games below .500 for the last time that year and the last time until this year. The final wasn’t as fine then as it was this time.
• A honest-to-god postgame brawl on the Long Island Rail Road, between Woodside and Jamaica. Best as could be discerned, this was young, drunken Mets fan on young, drunken Mets fan violence, perhaps stemming from the realization that a one-run win like we all just witnessed would have been more satisfying in service to a playoff chase, thus steam simply had to be blown off. Or probably it had more to do with youth and drinking. A change at Jamaica was in order anyway.
Those were the firsts. There was also an eighth. It was Stephanie’s and my eighth annual Tuesday night in August game with Rob and Ryder Chasin, our friends of many a Citi Field summer. It was Ryder who alerted me to Walker’s and Flores’s mysterious net-flinging. He was also the one who clarified for me that I wasn’t watching Andrew Cashner give up home runs to Michael Conforto, Yoenis Cespedes and d’Arnaud. I hadn’t heard Cashner was scratched or that A.J. Griffin would be starting for the Rangers on short notice. I just thought Cashner had grown his hair really long. Ryder, whom I met when he was 13, is about to enter his senior year at Northwestern. I assume he’s majoring in being observant. He and his dad Rob (not to mention his mom Holly, texting updates from home) already have advanced degrees in thoughtfulness. They thought to make the Tuesday night in August game an annual event, one Stephanie and I still look forward to every year. This could be a better Met season. We couldn’t have asked for a better Met night.
Well, maybe I could have held on to my bottle of water, but that’s on me.
by Greg Prince on 7 August 2017 2:58 pm Thanks to Baseball Reference, everybody’s an ace researcher today, hence data points that previously only obsessives like me were aware of become instantly disseminated fact. On Sunday night, after the Mets lost to the Dodgers — and I should have a key on my computer that will type out “the Mets lost to the Dodgers” via a single keystroke — it was widely reported that the Mets had fallen to eleven games below .500 for the first time since July 5, 2014.
In a warped way, I’d been waiting for this particular depressing shoe to drop, as I keep a list of the last junctures at which the Mets were exactly this or that many games above or below .500. The last couple of seasons had been about upward motion. As the Mets forged a winning record in 2015, they set new recent standards clear up to 22 Games Over .500 (last hit on September 27, 2015, at 89-67). This was exciting to track. Prior to 2015, the Mets hadn’t spent a day as many as 12 games over .500 since residing at Shea Stadium in 2008. 2015’s progress allowed me to delete and replace stubborn entries from 2012, 2010, 2008, even a couple from the semi-sainted year of 2006.
The 2016 season didn’t soar quite as high as 2015’s, but it made headway, providing most-recents up to 13 Games Over .500 (87-74 last October 1). I figured that once 2017 got going, it would steamroll 2016’s relatively small potatoes, take aim at 2015’s impressive margins and, should the Mets be on the roll almost universally predicted for them, make further inroads into the numbers still on the books from 2006, everything from exactly 23 Games Over .500 on August 16 to the ’06 peak of exactly 35 Games Over .500, last reached on September 13.
Ten games into 2017, the Mets climbed to 7-3, permitting the record to show the last time the Mets were 4 Games Over .500 was April 13. Child’s play for a contender like the ’17 Mets. Soon I’d be updating the listings for 5 Games Over .500 and 6 Games Over .500 and…well, you can do the math.
That is if you are up to date on subtraction. The Mets lost on April 14, meaning we had a new most recent 3 Games Over .500 at 7-4. Fine. We’ll just make up for it by winning the next game. No, actually, the Mets lost their next game, so we had a new most recent 2 Games Over .500 at 7-5. A couple more losses followed, but then a win let me type that the last time the Mets were 1 Game Over .500 was April 19, 2017 (8-7).
Enough screwing around, fellas. We have ground to make up here.
We did, except in the wrong direction. My file has been telling me for nearly the past four months that the last time the Mets were exactly 1 Game Over .500 was April 19, 2017 (8-7). It continues to tell me that. And that the last time they were At .500 was May 9, 2017 (16-16). And that that they haven’t been as few as three games under .500 since May 13 (16-19). Several times they’ve struggled to 4 Games Under .500, most recently on July 25 (47-51).
And since then, it’s been the wrong end of a thrill ride. On Saturday, the Mets matched their low-water mark for the season, replacing the 10 Games Under .500 record of 31-41 from June 22 (“achieved,” if you will, when the Mets lost to the Dodgers), with 49-59 on August 5.
Sitting directly beneath it, right where it had been lounging blissfully undisturbed for three years and a month, was 38-49, July 5, 2014. It wasn’t just a statistical notation to me. It was a reminder that you never can precisely tell when things are going to start getting better for your team. In the wake of July 5, 2014, I assumed the Mets would soon be exactly 12 Games Under .500 for the first time since September 25, 2013 (73-85) and then exactly 13 Games Under .500 for the first time since September 26, 2013 (73-86) and…well, you can do the math.
That was if you were up to date on addition. The Mets ignored my expectations and went in the preferred direction during the rest of 2014. It wasn’t a straight upward trajectory, but they revealed that they had reached a bottoming out, at least where that year was concerned. Their record for the final 75 games of ’14 was 41-34. Winning baseball. A hint, perhaps, of good things to come. We weren’t headed for 2013. We were headed for 2015 and all it would come to imply. We were on our way.
You couldn’t have known that on July 5, 2014, after the Mets lost to Texas, 5-3, at Citi Field, but we found out in a matter of days. The Mets started winning more than they lost, and we left all but the uppermost reaches of Under .500 in the dust until 2017. Now it’s all 2017 until you get to 12 Games Under .500, which I wouldn’t bet against becoming 2017’s too.
The unmourned Met campaign of 2013, sadly, is on notice. That season bottomed out at 17 Games Under .500 on September 14 (65-82; first game of a doubleheader). Everything from 18 Games Under .500 on September 13 (63-81, night half of a doubleheader) to 25 Games Under .500 on September 30 (67-92) is property of injury-riddled, karma-targeted 2009, and, based on how the Mets have looked since the middle of the San Diego series when they last touched 4 Games Under .500, almost any descent seems possible.
Beyond 2009, is 2003, from 26 Games Under .500 (63-89 on September 18) to 29 Games Under .500 (season-ending 66-95 on September 28). Then comes the dreaded year of 1993, a place that I, in every sense of the word, don’t want to go, and I doubt the 2017 Mets will visit. To brush up — or down — against as many as 30 games under .500, the Mets would have to be as ceaselessly dreadful against almost everybody as they were against the Dodgers. Thank heavens, they’re done playing the Dodgers for 2017.
Their next game is against Texas at Citi Field, just like it was when they plunged to 11 Games Under .500 on July 5, 2014. I was there that night. I’ll be there tomorrow night. I’d say I’ll do what I can to stem the downward tide, but I don’t determine these outcomes. I just keep lists of them.
|
|
