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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 23 June 2017 6:51 am In case you didn’t stay up Thursday night, the Mets stayed down again in Los Angeles. They lost all four games they played there this week. They lost in such numbing fashion that when they appeared on the verge of losing in a fairly professional manner, it felt like victory. Then the professionalism seeped away in the seventh when, after Steven Matz had given them six fairly solid innings in service to a 3-3 tie, two of the better-reputationed members of the Mets bullpen turned the whole thing to mush.
Paul Sewald gave up the fifteenth Dodger home run of the series (a Brooklyn/L.A. record) on his first pitch, one whacked 433 feet to right by Joc Pederson, putting the home team ahead to stay. Logan Forsythe followed with a sharp single to center. Chris Taylor walked. Sewald in my mind had morphed into Dale Murray, the master of disaster from the 1979 Mets pen. I suppose Sewald could have been any dispenser of hits and walks you have blowing up an ERA in the recesses of your subconscious, but to me he was Murray. Maybe it was the oft-repeated cue that the Mets were on their way to being swept four by the Dodgers for the first time since 1979. Maybe it was that Dale Murray was terrible and so, at least on Thursday, was Paul Sewald.
With Justin Turner coming to bat, you braced for the worst. I did, I know, and I’d assume any Mets fan awake would. Turner’s slugging percentage against the Mets since joining the Dodgers is astronomical. Neil deGrasse Tyson is in awe of it. Somehow, Turner did not put the game away, as Sewald flied him to left instead of the moon. Exit Paul, enter Jerry. Jerry Blevins has been the Mets’ most consistent reliever all year. He was consistently used for two-and-a-half months. deployed practically every day. Lately he hasn’t been in evidence. Blevins is usually reserved for tight spots. The Mets had been loose in their losing all week until Thursday.
The assignment for Blevins was Cody Bellinger, the first baseman who isn’t on the All-Star ballot but should probably start, based on the numbers he’s generated all season against everybody, not just all week against the Mets. I was tempted to write in Bellinger when I decided to cast a token vote, but I don’t have nearly that much integrity to go out of my way to boost the electoral chances of somebody growing greater at my team’s expense. (I did, however, have enough integrity to resist clicking on behalf of almost every Met listed; I’m loyal, but I’m not undiscerning.) With anybody but Blevins in there, you’d assume it was about to be 7-3. I think Bellinger assumed it was about to be 7-3 — or should have been about to be 7-3 — when he made contact with Blevins’s second pitch, an offering that hung delectably in his happy zone. Bellinger just missed sending in into orbit and he knew it, spiking his bat in disgust that he let Blevins off the hook with a mere fly to right.
That meant two were still on, but two were out, and now all Jerry had to do was take care of Kiké Hernandez. Except Jerry walked Kiké to load the bases. Unfortunate, but probably no harm, no foul, because Dave Roberts opted to not pinch-hit for his next batter, reliever Pedro Baez. What’s the worst a reliever who’d batted one time previously in a four-year career could do against an accomplished veteran like Blevins?
From a Met perspective, standing and taking four pitches, every last one of them balls. Jerry Blevins walked Pedro Baez to force in the fifth Los Angeles run. Then Blevins walked the next batter, Austin Barnes, not a relief pitcher, to make it 6-3. It was the ninth walk Mets pitchers allowed, eight of them unintentional. For those who are fans of silver linings, a couple of strikes were involved in walk to Barnes.
Blevins gave way to Salas, who was tasked with facing aesthetic villain Yasiel Puig. I assumed the worst, but no, postmodern Fernandomania prevailed at Dodger Stadium, and the Mets stayed just close enough to allow you to hallucinate they could come back. I must’ve been getting very sleepy, because I thought I saw the Mets load the bases in the eighth for Michael Conforto. I know I was awake, however, because I definitely did see Conforto foul out on the very first pitch he saw. By then, Kenley Jansen was in the game, reminding me that when Terry Collins managed the NL All-Stars last summer, he eschewed the chance to use his own man, Jeurys Familia, in favor of Jansen, which meant the only National League team that didn’t have a player participate in the All-Star Game was the team whose manager was running the show.
Collins won’t be managing the All-Stars this July and under no fathomable circumstances will he be managing the All-Stars next July. What he’ll be doing by April of 2018, let alone early October of 2017, is a matter ripe for speculation. As this game ground on toward its inevitable 6-3 final, I thought back to another West Coast swing, from 1983. George Bamberger was the Mets’ manager when it began. He wasn’t when it ended. Bambi wanted out and resigned while in Los Angeles, explaining, “I probably suffered enough.” George quit when the Mets were 16-30. Since the last time Terry Collins had the chance to use Jeurys Familia in a game that counted, the Mets are 15-25. He gives no impression that he’d ever quit, but I wouldn’t rule out suffering getting the best of him.
“That’s one thing we have never done here in years,” Collins said after the Mets’ fourth consecutive loss to the same opponent, “We don’t walk guys and we don’t give up a lot of home runs. And right now, we’re doing both.” That’s as close to a cry for help as Terry will emit. The rest of us are letting out yawns. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we can only stay up for so much of this.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2017 3:51 pm The phrase “hey you kids, get off my lawn,” when used to mock someone’s stodgier instincts, has always bugged me, and not just because of my edging toward the demographic with which stodginess is reflexively associated. My stance isn’t in defense of stodge. It’s the literal interpretation I can’t hack. If somebody has a lawn, why should that person have to allow it to be trampled on by interlopers of any age?
It’s a different story, I suppose, if you’re talking about your own kids. Your own kids are probably welcome on your lawn. Probably. Maybe you love your lawn enough that you have to make the call on a case-by-case basis.
Pete Flynn loved his lawn. Our lawn — but it was his to tend. He made it a field of dreams and, given that awesome responsibility, was entitled to insist it not be trampled into a nightmarish state.
Pete was with the Mets just about forever, from sometime in 1962 until the franchise had turned in a half-century of operation. The bulk of that tenure was spent as head groundskeeper at Shea Stadium, the heart of it in 1986, when those of us who’d only heard his name in passing during rain delays and such, heard from Pete Flynn directly.
His message: Get off my/our lawn.
This was the night of September 17, 1986, the night Mets fans had waited for since also just about forever. The Mets clinched the National League East that night. The title was a foregone conclusion all summer. The wait for the Mets to qualify again for anything beyond a high draft pick had been endless. Technically, it dated to 1973, but the years moved very slowly from 1974 forward. We just wanted to celebrate another day of clinching. It was nowhere in sight for an eternity. Then it was so close we could taste it. Finally, it was at hand.
The magic number was 1. The score was Mets 4 Cubs 2. The game was in the top of the ninth. There were two outs. Chico Walker grounded to Wally Backman. Backman flipped to Keith Hernandez. The Mets were champs. The Shea Stadium lawn represented, through informal institutional precedent, the spoils of victory. Mets fans piled on to it in 1969 with joyous abandon. Mets fans piled on again in 1973 with the abandon veering to the aggressive. Mets fans who remembered how it was done in the past went for it once more in 1986 — packing pent-up gusto and tubular tunnelvision. Here came the fans from Field Level. From Loge. From Mezzanine. From Upper Deck. From the outer reaches of the solar system from the looks of it. The Mets barely made it into the clubhouse. Some were scathed. The lawn was ravaged.
Pete Flynn was not happy. He let it be known that the fans who did this — not all almost-50,000 in the house, but more than enough to graze disastrously through the grass — did not deserve a winner. It was a harsh rebuke amid an evening of ebullience.
But he was right. The kids (and adults) should’ve stayed off his lawn. He and his crew were the ones who had to stay up all night to repair it, keeping at it the next morning, too, because the National League East champion Mets had another game to play against the Cubs early that afternoon. All of Pete’s sod and all of Pete’s men made it passable for another Mets win. The groundskeeper may not have thought we deserved a winner, but he made sure we had the chance to keep having one for the rest of that magical year, for the rest of September, for all of October.
The Mets became world champions on Pete Flynn’s lawn on October 27, 1986. The neighborhood kids were convinced to stay off it. The NYPD mounted patrol did the most obvious persuading, but I’d like to think Pete’s tone of disapproval resonated with its desired effect. Why would you want to get a good man like that mad at you?
For the rest of his groundskeeping career, until his passing on Wednesday at the age of 79, Pete Flynn was as famous as most Mets. He was the guy who shook his head and went to work after the first of three flags was won in that year to remember. The Mets wouldn’t again so easily win divisions, let alone pennants and World Series. Pete kept working, regardless. Pete was part of Shea. Pete was part of us. Pete enjoyed a well-deserved star turn for his long and meritorious service. He was featured in The Last Play at Shea, playing a supporting role alongside Paul McCartney. The two fellows from the UK shared a couple of car rides, the film noted. Pete drove the Beatles onto the field in 1965 and the Cutest among them onto the same field in 2008.
Pete came off as pretty adorable himself in that movie, but he was, in real life, a regular guy taking care of a significant lawn. I had the pleasure of a conversation with him once, well after 1986, well before 2008. A friend of a friend somehow got me to the cusp of the Shea field in advance of a DynaMets Dash so I could take part in something I never dreamed would be accessible to me. They didn’t have DynaMets dashes when I was a kid and I was never the kind to storm somebody else’s lawn, even in victory.
I can’t stress how far above the recommended age I was for the DynaMets Dash. I probably should have brought a note from my doctor. But there I was, in cahoots with another friend getting the same improbable opportunity, standing in that little staging area behind home plate, waiting for the Mets game to finish so my run of a lifetime could begin. That’s how it worked if someone was thoughtfully sneaking you ahead of the youngsters for your shot at rounding the bases.
I was there, my friend was there, our benefactor was there, members of the grounds crew were there and, yes, Pete Flynn was there. Introductions were made. Pete took a gander at my friend and me, oversized DynaMets Dashers to be that we were.
“Aren’t you two a little big for this?” Pete asked, gleam plainly visible in his smiling Irish eyes.
“No,” I replied with as much innocence as I could muster. “We’re just taking that stuff McGwire had in his locker.”
Pete Flynn laughed at something I said. That was about as good as getting to step foot on his lawn and run around his dirt. Before we could, though, we were explicitly told to be careful to not actually touch his grass. And you can bet we listened.
by Jason Fry on 22 June 2017 11:25 am One of the ads in regular Mets rotation right now is for rebranded cable company Spectrum, and features a pair of monsters under a little girl’s bed during the night. One monster is honked off about fees for some Spectrum competitor (I can’t remember which, because I don’t care) and complaining tendentiously and loudly about this state of affairs to his fellow boogeyman — loudly enough to wake up the child on the other side of the mattress.
It’s a funny concept, but it’s the little things that really make it work. Like the aggrieved monster getting so worked up that he can no longer articulate his roster of complaints, falling back on a helplessly frustrated, all-encompassing “it’s bad.” To which the other monster retorts: “you’re bad — at this!” They’re interrupted by the annoyed little girl, who tells them she can hear them, then throws her hands up when the complaining monster can’t let it go.
Last night those 30 seconds were vastly more entertaining than the three hours of dreadful, deeply boring baseball in which they were embedded. The Mets began the game with an uncharacteristic display of life as Curtis Granderson hit a leadoff homer, then had Rich Hill in their sights in the fourth inning, loading the bases with no one out for Jose Reyes.
You can probably guess what came next: Jose struck out. So did Gavin Cecchini. And so did Tyler Pill.The Mets had turned their golden opportunity into leaden reality. Womp-womp.
In the bottom of the inning a Logan Forsythe double gave the Dodgers the lead and a three-run homer from Yasiel Puig made the remaining innings academic, unless your tastes ran to watching Neil Ramirez do Neil Ramirez things. (If Neil were the boogeyman, the little girl from the ad would have doubled off the wall and gone back to sleep.)
Puig’s homer came with a side of stupid: he admired it and Cadillac’ed, Wilmer Flores took exception, Puig took exception to the exception, Travis d’Arnaud muttered something that was ignored, Puig had a between-innings colloquy with Reyes and Yoenis Cespedes and that was pretty much it until the postgame, when … you know what, I’ve wasted too much time on this one as it is. If you see a cloud that your inner Gossage needs to yell at, load up Google and knock yourself out.
Anyway, I was thinking about the monsters under the bed, the little girl on top of it, the Mets, us and who’s who.
My first thought was that the monsters are your recappers, trapped beneath the weight of a season gone awry and so besieged by terribleness that all we can do is sputter that “it’s bad.” But that doesn’t quite fit: we haven’t done anything wrong, except root for a team put on this Earth to suck the joy out of baseball.
Maybe the monsters are the Mets — because they certainly are bad at this, and going nowhere.
Yeah, that fits better. Which would mean the little girl is all of us, lying there witnessing failure when we should be sleeping. Like her, at this point all we can do is shrug and wait for morning.
by Greg Prince on 21 June 2017 12:49 pm The problem when your team has given up double-digit runs in ten different games in a season that is only seventy games old — and five times in a month that still has ten days to go — is keeping track of which of those losses is the worst. It’s tough, I suppose, to top (or bottom) the 23-5 farce at the hands of the Nationals from April 30, the one that featured three Anthony Rendon home runs, Kevin Plawecki’s pitching debut and Noah Syndergaard’s probable 2017 farewell. The lightning-quick burial of Tommy Milone by the Angels in a 12-5 romp on May 21 also springs to mind. Oh, and what about the Mother’s Day Massacre in Milwaukee, wherein a 7-1 midgame Mets lead dissolved into a 11-9 loss to the Brewers? Personally, I retain a sore spot for that flaming pile of baseball.
The Mets can pack plenty of pain into a defeat that doesn’t tilt the scoreboard quite so dramatically. There was 7-5 to the Braves on April 27, when Yoenis Cespedes strained a hamstring and Syndergaard turned down his employer’s gracious offer of an MRI. There was the afternoon of May 7, when Adam Wilk came and went at Matt Harvey’s inadvertent behest, leaving behind a 7-0 whitewashing by which to vaguely remember him. Way back when the Mets were a .500 ballclub, on May 10, you had the Mets carrying a 3-2 edge over the Giants into the ninth at home only to call it a day by losing, 6-5 — and then they lost the pitcher who lost the lead, Jeurys Familia, for the bulk of the year.
There was also a string of late and close losses to the Marlins in Miami that combined to tear out our then thick, luscious hair in the middle of April. And the wrong end of a three-game sweep in Arizona that ended with an eleventh-inning home run struck by a Diamondback (it doesn’t matter who anymore). And two consecutive nights playing down to and below the Padres. And the night Mr. Met’s finger pointed out how bad the Mets were. And the next afternoon when Mr. Met was proven correct yet again.
And so on.
You can see the problem. You’ve lived the problem. Your team, like mine, is 31-39, and you, like me, are moved to recall the exchange between manager and coach from Bull Durham (revised to reflect our bush league entry’s current statistical circumstances):
“What’s our record, Larry?”
“Thirty-one and thirty-nine.”
“Thirty-one…and thirty-nine. How’d we ever win thirty-one?”
“It’s a miracle.”
“It’s a miracle.”
As Met miracles go, this realization is as sad as it gets, which is to say as sad as Tuesday night’s 12-0 loss in Los Angeles, which, in the moment, I was convinced was the absolute worst Mets loss of 2017. Perhaps it was the onset of the summer solstice that helped convince me. With the start being late and the night being short, it was literally darkest before the dawn. The literal dawn, that is. Met-aphorically, there seems little danger the darkness will be lifting anytime soon.
Upon further review, I realize the competition is too complex to bestow such a weighty title as Worst Mets Loss of the Year so cavalierly. Maybe the relentless clobbering of Robert Gsellman & Co. at Dodger Stadium represents just another night at the ballpark. Maybe it embodied the new if depressing normal. After all, exactly a week before we lost, 14-3, and it barely registers within the realm of anything I’ve cited above. Yet as I was watching Dodger hit after Dodger hit; Dodger walk after Dodger walk; Dodger run after Dodger run; Dodger home run after Dodger home run; and Met after Met ceaselessly suck, I honestly couldn’t think of any 2017 Mets loss that was worse. Thus, I stand by my assertion.
Ninety-two games, however, remain scheduled. The committee to determine which Mets loss is worst this season shall remain open for nominations as necessary.
***
Much better news on the Mets front emerged Tuesday if you include news about Mets fans, and, as Mets fans, why wouldn’t we? Our dear friend Kevin Chapman went into the Hospital for Special Surgery and, contrary to popular belief where anything Metsian about that facility is concerned, he came out in one piece. With his shoulder socket expertly repaired (and his morale thoroughly supported by his loving wife Sharon), we look forward to his complete recovery and to seeing him — should the Mets miraculously cooperate — raise two good arms in victory real soon.
by Greg Prince on 20 June 2017 1:52 pm Zack Wheeler, 27; first major league appearance, June 18, 2013
His Monday night numbers of note: 2 IP, 7 ER, 8 H
What it means at this stage of his career: Nothing good, though “this stage of his career” doesn’t sync with the arithmetic that his major league debut was just over four years ago. We know Wheeler missed what should have been his third and fourth seasons and is only in his third season now. Perhaps a batting practice line or two was to be expected in his comeback campaign. He’s had two in a row after pitching for several starts like there’d never been anything wrong with him except a propensity to run up pitch counts. The saying that you have to get to some pitchers early if you want to get them at all seems to apply to Wheeler, but not for the usual complimentary reasons, for there has been no later for Zack of late. This might be an optimal time to pause him, except the Mets don’t have an optimal time in their rotation. Let’s hope Zack’s OK and that the Dodgers were simply hotter than hot when his pitches ran into their bats.
Rafael Montero, 26; first major league appearance, May 14, 2014
His Monday night numbers of note: 3.2 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 2 BB, 5 SO
What it means at this stage of his career: Ah, who the hell knows? Rafael pitched a second consecutive competent long-relief stint inside of a week in his…I’m gonna say eighty-fourth trial with the Mets. His timing was keen in the short term, keeping the Mets sort of viable, and terrible in the slightly longer term, likely eliminating himself from a chance to start on Wednesday night. I’d say his back-to-back solid outings are encouraging, but I’ve probably said stuff like that before and I’m not prone to believe it based on the myriad mushy outings Montero has turned in during his other eighty-three trials. But he did earn the Bigelow Tease award for his role in getting our hopes up ever so marginally. We were down 7-0 and even the sleepy among us wouldn’t so quickly submit to the demands of our eyelids because we weren’t down more. (God, we’re dullards that way.)
Jose Reyes, 34; first major league appearance, June 11, 2003
His Monday night numbers of note: 2 HR, 3 RBI
What it means at this stage of his career: Some life remains detectable in the Mets’ temporary starting shortstop, previously the Mets’ default starting third baseman, theoretically the superutilityman of Spring Training chatter. Jose’s .198 average doesn’t speak very loudly, and I certainly expected to hear it say nothing versus Clayton Kershaw. Once it was 7-0, L.A., I expected a serious flirtation with a perfect game. The Dodger Stadium mound…the comps to Sandy Koufax…the Mets being the Mets…yet Jose broke it up to lead off the third by homering, and he pushed the Mets into nipping at the ace’s impenetrable advantage when he homered again in the seventh to close the gap to 8-6. Not that it did the Mets any good in the end, an end that would be spelled 10-6, Dodgers, but with Asdrubal Cabrera several days away and Amed Rosario’s ETA TBD, I was happy to see Reyes add to the numbers he’s been compiling since 2003, save for a gap between 2012 and 2015. He passed Keith Hernandez for sole possession of ninth place on the Mets career RBI chart (471) and he edged to within four of Ed Kranepool for second place on the Mets career hit list (1,414). I don’t know how much Mets baseball Jose has left, but I’d like him to do as much as he can with however much he can get his bat on.
Jay Bruce, 30; first major league appearance, May 27, 2008
His Monday night numbers of note: 1 HR, 1 RBI
What it means at this stage of his career: We as a people entered 2017 dismissing Jay as superfluous, yet who’s the only Met who has been power-hitting on their behalf regularly since this season started? Bruce has 19 home runs, five more than any other Met and 48 runs batted in, ten ahead of his nearest teammate. Tell me home runs are flying everywhere these days and school me about how RBIs don’t indicate as much as we grew up assuming they did, but home runs and runs batted in sure are helpful in the course of a game. Bruce, like Reyes, seems to have a talent for eliciting gophers out of Kershaw (as a Red he’d taken Clayton deep twice). That alone is impressive. So is his 131 OPS+, second on the team to Michael Conforto. For all the squeezing in of outfielders it was thought Terry Collins was going to have to do, Jay hasn’t surrendered right field nor a spot in the batting order.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. He’s been hitting balls out of ballparks since Shea Stadium stood. Our first exposure to him was directly following the 2008 All-Star Game. The Mets were in Cincinnati for a four-game set. Billy Joel was in Flushing, presenting The Last Play at Shea. On the night Paul McCartney jetted in to musically close the old place down at Billy’s behest, Bruce was letting it be against John Maine, hitting the seventh home run of his rookie season in his second game ever versus the Mets. The visiting New Yorkers lost, 5-2, snapping their contention-reviving ten-game winning streak and dropping them one game behind the fearsome Phillies for first place. A couple of handfuls of players from that box score of July 18, 2008, still roam the MLB earth or at least sit tight on its disabled lists: Reyes, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Joe Smith, Brandon Phillips, Joey Votto, Edwin Encarnacion, Bronson Arroyo. Ken Griffey, Jr., is in the Hall of Fame. Carlos Delgado fell off the Hall ballot after one vote. We haven’t heard much lately from the likes of Maine, Fernando Tatis, Damion Easley or Met reserve turned Red shortstop Jeff Keppinger. Jay we know has walloped 253 more home runs since Billy and Paul said good night. If we do math, we know he’s on pace to pass Beltran and Todd Hundley for the Mets’ single-season home run mark of 41. “On pace” is tricky calculation — fairly easy to discern, not necessarily simple to maintain. Ten-year veteran Jay Bruce maintains a starting job based on consistent production. The Mets are in fourth with him, might be much closer to the no longer fearsome Phillies in fifth without him. Bruce is probably gone before 2018 comes around. Until further notice, let him be, let him be.
Gavin Cecchini, 23; first major league appearance, September 11, 2016
His Monday night numbers of note: 1 HR, 2 RBI
What it means at this stage of his career: Cecchini has started one game in the big leagues, and in it he homered off Clayton Bleeping Kershaw. That would be enough of a career for most of us. Cecchini probably would like more. He probably also projected more games and more starts by now when the Mets made him their first draft choice of 2013. He was eager and ready to go, I can say from personal observation, having been at the kid’s introductory press conference four years ago. The Mets were giddy with All-Star Game preparation fever and invited some bloggers into their lair (something they got out of the habit of doing by 2015). We met Cecchini and Kevin Plawecki, also chosen in that year’s first round. They seemed like fine young men, except for Cecchini revealing he liked wearing No. 2 out of appreciation for a certain shortstop who played in a nearby borough. Even Sandy Alderson groaned at that revelation.
The Mets sought attention for another youngster that night, 2011 first pick Brandon Nimmo. With enough online votes, Nimmo could join the Futures game that would be played ahead of the Midsummer Classic that Matt Harvey was a near-lock to start. They put Brandon on a conference call with us and he sounded like a young (younger) David Wright. Nimmo made that game — along with Montero and Noah Syndergaard — but not the majors until 2016. Nimmo had a pinch-hit last night, his first hit of this year. He had one homer all of last year. Plawecki’s been up and down across three years. Dom Smith was the club’s No. 1 pick in 2012 and he’s generally the second name we mention when we mention Met prospects most of us have barely seen. It’s 2017. These things can take a while and they carry no guarantees. Cecchini was a shortstop when he was drafted, was a second baseman in Terry’s lineup Monday night, will be something for somebody eventually, you’d figure. The Mets’ infield, despite its chronic aches, seems crowded. We’ll see if there’s space available for this still fine young man for whom I constructed the private nickname Gavin MacClout once he slaughtered a pitch from Kershaw. A guy who can say he homered off Clayton Kershaw practically the first chance he got shouldn’t have to ask too loudly for another opportunity.
by Greg Prince on 19 June 2017 11:13 am A pitcher homering is baseball porn, pure and simple. A pitcher pitching eight innings and giving up no earned runs is more exotic than it used to be, maybe more exotic than it oughta be. Which would you rather have?
You’d rather have both if you can, and we could on Sunday afternoon at Citi Field. Sunday afternoons at Citi Field this season have generally encompassed Mets starting pitchers barely lasting past The Star-Spangled Banner and the vast majority of taters being mashed by visiting chefs. On Father’s Day 2017, however, Jacob deGrom was big daddy to us all in every way, putting up all those zeroes from the mound and sending one baseball over the left field fence from the plate.
I was so excited when deGrom’s 379-foot fly ball off Joe Ross launched at an angle of 32 degrees and exited at a velocity of 95.1 miles per hour (someday those metrics will mean something to us) that I might have missed Commissioner Rob Manfred’s unilateral edict that the designated hitter was instantaneously abolished. The moment Jacob gave those fans in the M&M seats the sweetest of treats was the moment to act. “The DH?” Manfred could have elaborated. “Eff that noise! Did ya see deGrom go deep? Did ya see and hear the reaction? Pitchers hitting homers…effin’ A!”
Imagine the Mets had used a DH yesterday. Admittedly, it’s a Man in the High Castle type of premise designed to chill your spine, but play along. Yoenis Cespedes didn’t start on Sunday, so let’s say Cespy was the DH and he homered in the third inning as deGrom did to tie the score versus the Nationals at one. That would have been fine. That would have been dandy. But unless Yoenis’s theoretical home run whacked the gigantic floating M&M piñata squarely on the nose to release candy that melts in your mouth and not in your hands to children of all ages throughout the ballpark (which, by the way, is definitely something Citi Field should install), it would be one more early home run in one more 5-1 Mets win over Washington in Flushing. Granted, Met wins of any size over Washington anywhere seem the rarest of candy-coated goodies, but a home run by a guy who is designated to hit, on balance, is a relatively routine affair. It’s also an affront to all that is true and decent about baseball, but that’s another matter altogether.
DeGrom was razor-sharp in the less glamorous facet of his Sunday assignment: three hits and two walks over eight innings, the only run at his expense facilitated by shaky Met defense. His performance was praiseworthy and, after the Mets had lost three in a row to their ostensible archrivals, noteworthy, but it’s what an ace does. Or should do and, in Jake’s case, is doing again. If Cespedes was the designated pitcher and put up a line like that, it would be gargantuan. For deGrom, the emperor of afternoon baseball (1.71 ERA in 32 such career starts), it was another day in the sun: warm and welcome, but nothing you hadn’t seen before.
A home run from Jacob deGrom is something you hadn’t seen before. A home run from a Mets pitcher is something you see rarely. Jake’s was the 55th in 55½ years of Mets history, which makes it less of an infrequent happening than some other unicornish offensive occurrences. There have been roughly half as many Met inside-the-park home runs (27 — none by a pitcher), not quite a quarter as many Met three-homer games (13 — none by a pitcher), less than a fifth as many Met cycles (10 — none by a pitcher) and about one-eighth as many pinch-hits by pitchers (7 — all by pitchers). Met pitchers hit home runs 150% more often than Met lineups give birth to Unicorn Scores (though pitchers have surely lent a hand in delivering those 22 blessed events). Perhaps a feat accomplished on average annually shouldn’t seem so absolutely extraordinary, but have you ever not reacted wildly to a pitcher homering? The unlikely slugger doesn’t have to be Bartolo Colon for the home run to enchant you. When deGrom’s dinger cleared the 370 mark in left, I found myself applauding loudly enough at the TV upstairs that it attracted my wife’s interest from downstairs. She came up, poked her head in to where I was watching and let me know she saw it, too, affirming what a special bolt it was. Very few third-inning swings grab Stephanie’s attention. A pitcher homering grabs everybody’s attention.
The same pitcher cruising to a win from pitching almost an entire game is also good. A starter going that kind of deep carried us eight-ninths of the way to a much-needed victory. It just doesn’t carry us away like a pitcher going the other kind of deep. Every now and then in the course of a long season, our systems crave a lift like that. The rush eventually wears off, but it’s definitely healthier for us than M&Ms.
Thanks to Lori Rubinson of WFAN for having me on her show to discuss my book Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star on Sunday night. You can listen to about two-thirds of our conversation here. The other third must have been crushed by deGrom: pitcher, slugger, etcetera, etcetera.
by Greg Prince on 17 June 2017 9:18 pm I thought the Nationals would score at least nine runs on Saturday, probably more. They started with a single run in each of the first four innings, 44.44% of the way to what is known as a picket fence. The Mets couldn’t put up 97%-invisible netting fast enough to veil it.
Somehow, the Mets halted the Nationals’ forward progress on the fifth-yard line, for a while anyway. Eventually, Stephen Strasburg revealed himself as not quite as untouchable as his predecessors in the Washington rotation. Yoenis Cespedes (4-for-5 and a homer) swung the bat real well and ran unencumbered. Jay Bruce did some fine hitting, Jose Reyes showed some offensive life, Travis d’Arnaud delivered a pinch-single that kind of mattered. Up and down the order, the Mets worked some impressive at-bats, regardless of results.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. The Mets lost and did loads wrong to lose. But falling 7-4 instead of the approximately 12-2 I was anticipating, while not providing any cause for optimism in a standings sense, made the game a darn sight more watchable than I figured it would be. Seth Lugo hung in after burying his team. Jerry Blevins got one critical out. A couple of balls that I was sure were going to fly out of Citi Field as Nationals homers went foul. There was a scintilla of a chance of a comeback in the ninth.
It didn’t happen. And it augurs little to nothing for Sunday. But I didn’t feel like a total chump staying tuned to the end. So there’s that.
As for those special Father’s Day weekend uniforms, they achieved their goal of raising awareness, if, in fact, they are intended to raise awareness for bad taste.
by Greg Prince on 17 June 2017 6:40 am I heard myself stick up for Kenny Rogers and Timo Perez the other night. Yeah, they left their fingerprints all over two of the most notorious moments in Mets postseason history, but, I said, the Mets wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did without them.
Being so generous of spirit, you’d figure I’d apply the same retroactive mercy rule to someone who was a Met a lot longer, did a lot more as a Met, and was, in his checkered postseason time, the epitome of wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did without him.
Yet I don’t. It’s not conscious. I just haven’t effectively compartmentalized on his behalf. All the good stuff he did is apparently crammed into a mental storage locker somewhere off the highway. The one particularly gruesome thing in his past is present whenever he is.
I see Daniel Murphy, I see that error from Game Four of the 2015 World Series. I also see a Washington National who clubs the crap out of the 2017 Mets, but there are too many of those to keep track of. Murphy’s just doing his job, which, to judge by the curly W on his work clothes, is either hitting a ton at the expense of Met pitching or directing customers in the lengthy checkout line to the register at cosmetics that just opened. In the business sense, Murphy’s simply another Harper, Zimmerman, Rendon, Wieters or, to use the most trenchant example, Max Scherzer. Scherzer beat the Mets’ brains in on Friday night, dominating them for eight innings en route to a most convincing 7-2 victory. Unlike his teammates, Scherzer did his damage without a bat. The Mets did no damage. They also needn’t have bothered with bats.
As a rule, Murphy could leave his glove at home and nobody would notice the difference. On October 31, 2015, Daniel’s glove avoided contact with a ground ball that scooted directly underneath it. The acute case of grasplessness converted a tenuous lead into a demoralizing tie, nudging open the door for the loss that pushed the World Series three-quarters of the way into Kansas City’s annoyingly aggressive arms. The Mets had been up 3-2 in the eighth and down 2-1 in the series. Eric Hosmer grounded to Murphy with two on and one out. Next thing you knew: E-4 and 3-3. Next thing after that: 5-3; 3-1; doom harbingered.
Sitting in Promenade almost directly behind home plate, I had an excellent view of the miserable play, at least until all those EMTs came up to administer oxygen after all the air was sucked out of our section. Maybe that onsite sightline contributed to the indelibility of the debacle. It was such a definitive turning point, too. Hold that 3-2 lead and the Mets compress the Series down to a best-of-three. Give it up, as they did, then the margin for error disappears. And if there was anything we learned about Daniel Murphy between 2008 and 2015, it was if you gave him margin, he’d give you error.
That’s what I remember about him as a Met. His glove, or lack thereof, in a crucial moment.
Here’s what I don’t remember without a nudge: Daniel Murphy slugged us into that World Series. He slugged us into the National League Championship Series. Stole us there, too. For two rounds, he was the most brilliant hitter the Mets ever had in any October. He homered off practically everybody who ever won a Cy Young. He outwitted the Dodgers. He dismantled the Cubs. The M in MVP surely stood for Murphy.
It’s not like I’ve forgotten that. It’s just that I forget it when I see him. When I see him, I see someone who’s hit .393 against the Mets across 2016 and 2017…and someone who fielded .000 for the Mets at the most critical crossroads of their extended 2015. If I think hard, I remember a likable chap who was never a natural at any position but filled in everywhere as asked and generally hit well for years, if not like he does today.
I don’t think of the nightly autumnal home run barrage that powered the Mets to a pennant. I know it happened, I know I reveled in it, I just don’t think about it. Maybe it’s because my view of those clouts wasn’t as clear as it was for that miscue. Maybe it’s because losing stings more than winning satisfies. Maybe it’s because there’s no emotional upside in assigning pleasant memories to current Nationals.
I somehow remember the 1999 Mets won all of Kenny Rogers’s home starts (seven) prior to his revealing a disconcerting allergy to the strike zone away from Shea. I somehow remember all the runs Timo Perez scored in the 2000 NLCS (eight) before he developed an affinity for presumptuous trotting. I know they committed sins that ultimately and decisively outweighed their good deeds, but I can easily access the good deeds. I’m intensely granular when it comes to what individual Mets have done, for better or for worse.
Daniel Murphy did far more for the Mets in the fall of 2015 than he did to them, but that memory tends to elude me, kind of like a ground ball once eluded a second baseman’s glove at the worst possible instant.
If you like a good Piazza-oriented podcast — and who doesn’t? — I have two for you: me and Pete McCarthy from WOR here; me and Jay Goldberg from the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse here. My thanks to each of them for having me over to their respective venues.
by Greg Prince on 16 June 2017 1:32 am Thursday night found me at Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in Manhattan for my talk on Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star. It was a wonderful — or 31derful — time, and I thank proprietor and all-around ace human being Jay Goldberg for inviting and hosting me. I also appreciate all who showed up to listen in and add their two cents on the Mets of Mike and related topics. I hope some day or night soon finds you at Bergino, especially if you’ve never been. It’s as baseball a place as there is without an actual baseball game going on around you.
Actually, just before we got started on our program, there was a baseball game going on nearby, as Jay had the Mets on the Clubhouse TV just long enough for me to witness a few token pitches, thus allowing me to continue my nearly seven-year streak of witnessing at least a little of every game the Mets play. Then Jay clicked off the television and we traveled back to the Age of Piazza, with a detour to the Age of Seaver and some stops in between. Eventually, the TV came back on. I only glanced at the action while engrossed in a series of scintillating conversations and never really focused on any of it, but did manage to absorb a handful of images.
1) Robert Gsellman giving up runs. So he’s doing that again, huh?
2) Terry Collins and Ray Ramirez visiting Juan Lagares, and not at his beach house, but in center field, leading me to correctly assume the worst.
3) Gavin Cecchini striking out. Nice to have him back, I guess.
4) René Rivera homering. René has grabbed the bull by the horns when presented with playing time. Travis d’Arnaud is apparently allergic to bull’s horns.
When I left Bergino, we were losing, 8-2. On my way I home, I learned we lost, 8-3. Lagares, who’s been playing some of the best ball of his big league career, will be out a while with a thumb that deserves a figurative rather than literal break, but why should Juan be any different from Neil Walker, Matt Harvey, Josh Smoker…I was going to list all the Met disabled, but I don’t know if my computer can handle the stress.
Sandy Alderson issued an injury report pre-Lagares. Basically, everybody you figured was hurt is hurt; nobody is really getting any better; and quit asking about Amed Rosario, he’ll be brought up when he’s good and ready. Clarification: when Alderson is good and ready to bring him up. I’m mostly on the patience train where Rosario is concerned — it’s not like the organization’s plan is to have him top out at Vegas — but I’m beginning to believe we’re edging into “what’s the harm?” territory. Should Amed come up and bat under .200 and play less than airtight defense, then he’s already as good as the current shortstop. Highly touted rookies get chances. Sometimes they make the most of them. Sometimes they don’t immediately, they return to the minors for a spell, and they don’t necessarily suffer irreparable psychic damage. I’m willing to trust Alderson knows a little more about Rosario than I do, but my trust is growing fragile enough that it will have to sit out a few days and, if it doesn’t look any better by then, it’s gonna need an MRI.
The Mets missed an opportunity to pick up ground on the first-place club, which is too bad, since the first-place club was on the same field as them and it would be nice to keep them in the same universe. It might be an illusion to juxtapose these two entities as being in direct competition with one another for the same division title, but it’s the middle of June. Illusions should be allowed to bloom clear to July, if not longer.
You know about Piazza. You should know about Yells For Ourselves by Matthew Callan. It’s the 1999 and 2000 Mets framed in a unique style and context. Marvelously conceived, brilliantly executed, incredible fun. Get in on the ground floor of the Mets teams that circled the penthouse instead of the drain. Check out YFO here.
by Greg Prince on 15 June 2017 11:04 am Gladys Knight wasn’t wrong when she concluded, over radios everywhere as 1973 became 1974, that she really had to use her imagination to keep on keepin’ on. Yet her compadres the Pips couldn’t have been more right when they offered her this message of positive reinforcement:
You’re too strong not to keep on keepin’ on.
If you’ve been watching these Mets since April and you haven’t given up hope, you’ve probably really had to use your imagination. The statistics, the setbacks, the pervasive sense that anything that could go Mets would go Mets…staring down reality wouldn’t do you no good, double-negative notwithstanding. Per the lyrics Gerry Goffin penned with songwriting partner Barry Goldberg, darkness was all around us, blockin’ out the sun; emptiness had found us and it just wouldn’t let us go; and we had no choice but to make the best of (best of, best of) a bad situation.
On Wednesday night, the Mets faced several bad situations. Matt Harvey gave up home runs to the first two batters he encountered. His velocity on hiatus, he made due with offspeed stuff for four innings. One of his pitches, to Kyle Schwarber, crossed Shea Bridge when it came to it. The 467-foot shot seemed a death blow to the Mets’ slight chances in this particular rematch of 2015 NLCS combatants. The score was 4-1, Harvey couldn’t throw hard, and he wouldn’t stick around. Soon, Matt would join as out of action for the evening Neil Walker, the second baseman who attempted to bunt his way on in the third inning only to do something unspecified but obviously horrible to his left leg between home and first. An MRI awaited Neil and, if appearances weren’t deceiving, a trip to the DL, too, where he projects to keep company with his double play partner and t-shirt buddy Asdrubal Cabrera and Josh Smoker. Smoker was deployed for four innings during the previous night’s blowout, looked absolutely gassed at the end of his yeoman stint, and revealed in its wake a strained left shoulder.
Smoker was replaced on the roster by Rafael Montero, the pitcher who’ll never be mistaken for a Hallmark card, a Hallmark card billed as being what you send when you care to send the very best. Montero lands in our mailbox again and again postage due from Las Vegas. You toss him on the pile next to Neil Ramirez and wonder why you keep receiving so much junk. Meanwhile, nominally active were Yoenis Cespedes, except he is bubble-wrapped for his own protection every third night, and Michael Conforto, whose stiff back couldn’t possibly be a concern despite it preventing the Mets’ #WriteInConforto campaign from gathering much momentum. Michael, ostensibly the Mets’ best player if you take your cue from the club’s wishful All-Star hyping, didn’t start any of the three games against the defending world champions. As candidates who forget to visit Wisconsin might remind you, that’s no way to win an election.
The defending world champions aren’t accomplishing much amidst their breathlessly anticipated incumbency. The power — Anthony Rizzo and Ian Happ in the first, Schwarber in the Bullpen Plaza — was certainly on for the Cubs versus the Diminished Knight, but the part where they put their gloves on and attempted to catch baseballs vexed the heck out of them. Their visible discomfort with fundamentals was the Mets’ lone saving grace for a while. In the second, Kris Bryant fumbled a third out and allowed the Mets’ first run. Still, with Harvey unable to find the fifth one night after Zack Wheeler didn’t see the third; the Mets’ bench depleted to its splinters; and Schwarber presumably preparing to break ground on a condominium complex where the 126th Street chop shops used to stand, you’d have thought Chicago could get away with a few yips.
Chicago would get away with nothing, because the Mets…yes, these Mets…they’re too strong not to keep on keepin’ on.
The first sign that this wouldn’t be the night New York died was when the Mets loaded the bases in the bottom of the fourth en route to the floor of their order. Harvey was due up with one out, but Harvey was done. Terry Collins could have pinch-hit Cespedes here, except Cespedes’s rigorously timed leg-preparation routine didn’t sync with the sudden arrival of the critical juncture at hand. He could have pinch-hit Conforto here if the prospective People’s Choice had a back that would allow Michael to be ever so briefly written into the nine-hole. #NoDiceNotYet. With Walker already removed and Lucas Duda having entered the fray in his stead — T.J. Rivera shifting from first to second to take over defensively for Neil — René Rivera, the backup catcher, was left as Collins’s only conventionally conceivable pinch-hitting option. Yet Terry couldn’t conceive of using René here, and with decent reason. As Casey Stengel cannily suggested, if you don’t have a backup catcher, you’re reduced to praying a meteor doesn’t hobble Hobie Landrith (something like that; you could look it up).
So Terry opted for Steven Matz, pitcher, to pinch-hit in the fourth inning. The oddity was unorthodox enough to likely make Joe Maddon contemplate sending one of his catchers into pitch, but Collins wasn’t seeking genius credentials in this spot. No Mets pitcher had ever successfully pinch-hit any earlier than the seventh inning. Not too many Mets pitchers pinch-hit in general. When they do, the situation borders on desperate. Who has desperate situations in the fourth inning?
This team. Also, this team has a pitcher who has now successfully pinch-hit in the fourth inning. Matz generated a ground ball tailor-made to confound Cub fielding and then ran his Long Island ass off until he and it reached first base safely. Steven’s unlikely PH line in the box score thus encompassed an RBI, and the Mets were within two runs of the lead. Then they were within one when Juan Lagares — pretty good player you sort of forgot existed for a couple of years — lifted a sac fly.
This team. Too strong not to keep on keepin’ on. Seriously. Here came Paul Sewald, back to being a savior in relief, giving the Mets a scoreless fifth and sixth. Here came that Juan again, tripling in Curtis Granderson to knot the night at four in the bottom of the sixth. Here came Jerry Blevins, taking over for Fernando Salas with one on and two out in the seventh, striking out Rizzo. Here stayed ostensible lefty specialist Blevins for a mind-boggling frame-and-a-third, fooling Bryant the righty for the eighth inning’s second out and freezing righty pinch-hitter Willson Contreras for its third.
A ballgame tilting inexorably toward the Cubs and decidedly away from the Mets as recently as the top of the fourth hung in the balance as the bottom of the eighth commenced. When Granderson stepped to the plate to lead it off, he had 299 big league longballs to his credit. When he next saw the plate, he was stepping on it. Grandy took Carl Edwards, Jr., on a trip deep down the right field line and collected a milestone along the way, home run No. 300. It didn’t fly nearly as far as Schwarber’s, but it couldn’t have been any more effective in influencing the course of Wednesday events. The Mets — post-Walker, post-Harvey, post ipso facto undermanned and overwhelmed — were ahead, 5-4. The Mets portion of the Citi Field audience, ascendant at last, applauded enough to recalibrate Granderson’s steady businesslike demeanor from sportsmanlike to crowdpleasing. He took the quickest of Curtis Calls. It was Grandly deserved.
Keepin’ on begat more keepin’ on. Jose Reyes walked. Cespedes was carefully unwrapped for a pinch-single. Robert Gsellman pinch-ran for Yoenis in a sentence you didn’t expect to read as long as you lived. Edwards left. Hector Rondon entered. Reyes swiped third, nearing his own milestone with 498 bases stolen since June 15, 2003, fourteen years ago today. Gsellman resisted the temptation to add an SB notation to his fine print on the back end of Jose’s daring dash. But Robert would have the chance to trot in short order, for Duda took care of a three-run insurance premium payment, depositing it convincingly in the vicinity of where Grandy had recently dropped off his homer. The Mets led, 8-4, and chose to increase their coverage a little more. The Cubs may not have been the good hands people on Wednesday, yet the Mets wisely insured against a catastrophic slam by adding a fifth eighth-inning run on singles from Wilmer Flores, Jay Bruce and Rivera…T.J., that is. René remained in reserve. You can’t be too careful these days.
All that was left at 9-4 in the ninth was for Addison Reed, who’d been warming up when it was 4-4 in the eighth, to come in and throw more pitches than one would care for him to throw, nineteen in all. The Cubs loaded the bases, but unloaded none of them. The Mets won by five after trailing by three and refusing to wallow in the least. Normally, you’d term it the greatest of nights.
The Mets, you may have divined, aren’t normal. Sometimes the glass is half-full. Often the glass is chipped and a pitcher gashes an index finger picking it up to innocently take a sip and, next thing you know, Rafael Montero is booking his favorite seat on JetBlue. Sure, the Mets thrillingly won a game you wouldn’t have suspected they weren’t slated to lose. Just as sure: they’re still 8½ to the rear of the Nationals (and further behind the Wild Card bunch out west), and no, we don’t know how bad Walker’s leg is, nor can we be certain when we’ll see Conforto starting or Cespedes regularly. Oh, and Harvey — how did he diagnose his outing? “My arm was not working at all,” Matt cheerlessly reported afterwards. A doctor’s visit was scheduled. The next sound you heard was Montero creeping inevitably up the rotation depth chart.
You’ve really got to use your imagination to envision the 30-34 Mets rising to legitimate contention, yet they were the 25-33 Mets less than a week ago. The Washingtons, assumed by consensus to be as impregnable as the Chicagos, are coming to Flushing with a battered bullpen, a bruised psyche and a margin over the Mets that is 3½ games slimmer than it was last Friday. The Nats have lost five of six, the Mets have won five of six, and maybe you don’t have to press all that hard to think of good reasons to keep on keepin’ on.
Hope to see you at Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in Manhattan tonight at 7 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Mike Piazza’s June 15, 2002, home run off Roger Clemens, some other Met anniversary involving some other Met Hall of Famer, and a little book-signing besides. If you can’t be there, please tell the Mets to resist the temptation to fall behind in the first couple of innings. I’d like to catch them from ahead for a change.
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