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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 22 August 2016 9:41 am The best thing to do — the sane thing, the kind thing, the self-preserving thing — would be to focus solely on what happened in Sunday night’s Mets-Giants game.
It was taut, tight and well-played, but ultimately a tale of two pitchers: Jeff Samardzija and Noah Syndergaard. Samardzija rode his plus-plus fastball, a resurrected curve and a splitter to keep the Mets hitless into the seventh; Syndergaard rode his plus-plus-plus fastball, ungodly slider and a change-up that mortals would call a fastball to keep the Giants scoreless for as long as he needed to. It was a nifty showcase of pitching on both sides, one of those games you knew early was going to come down to someone’s mistake.
The mistake was Samardzija’s: he gave Yoenis Cespedes something to hit.
Samardzija had flirted with this particular disaster before: in the first he left a curveball in the middle of the plate to Cespedes, who all but rubbed his hands together with glee … and got the bat slightly under the optimum contact point, resulting in a harmless fly ball. (Hey, it happens.)
But come the seventh, Samardzija wasn’t so lucky. The much-lamented Curtis Granderson rifled a low fastball over the head of Gregor Blanco, whose choice of routes possibly prevented Samardzija’s no-hit bid from continuing. A batter later, Cespedes made that academic, blasting a splitter into the left-field stands for a 2-0 Met lead that would hold up.
For Syndergaard, it’s been an odd, sometimes worrisome summer: despite his arsenal looking as intimidating as ever, he’s has struggled to put hitters away and been bedeviled by runners on base. Maybe his struggles have been a product of the bone spur in his elbow; maybe they indicate Noah needs to foil hitters by making another adjustment to his pitching patterns; most likely it’s a little of both.
Assuming continued health, though (we’ll pause here to rap madly on all available wood), Syndergaard certainly has the brains and drive to learn and learn quickly, as he did at the end of a similarly iffy summer in his rookie season. And credit Rene Rivera for making the running game a non-issue: Rivera cut down both Giants who tried to run on Noah, and was his usual wise self behind the plate. In the eighth, Syndergaard walked Brandon Belt with one out; Rivera immediately made his way to the mound, there to check on his pitcher’s fuel level, talk pitch selection and make sure focus didn’t wander. Six pitches later, Brandon Crawford and his execrable hairdo had grounded into a double play.
(For those who didn’t keep track of the postgame, Terry Collins planned to let Syndergaard start the ninth; it was Noah who said he was done. So cancel the day’s controversy, and points to Syndergaard for not letting bravado risk both a fine outing and a Mets win. Though if you must aim at dart at Terry, having Syndergaard bunt in the eighth should give you an easy target — and I’d say so even if Noah hadn’t bunted into a double play.)
A neat, tidy Mets win — we ought to leave it at that and enjoy it for what it was. But, well, we’re Mets fans. And so there’s this: Cespedes hurt his quadriceps on July 8. There’s never a perfect time to put a player of Cespedes’ caliber on the DL, but the All-Star break is pretty darn close.
Rather than DL Cespedes, the Mets let him keep trying to play. The result: He went nine for 44 with one home run and wound up on the DL anyway, nearly a month after the original injury. The Mets turned two weeks without Cespedes into six seven, and mismanaging that injury quite possibly killed their season.
(That’s bad; what’s worse is that as with whispering campaigns about departed players, this is a Met malady that’s bedeviled the team since long before Collins or Sandy Alderson: recall Jerry Manuel‘s quip about “they’re calling it a cramp … surgery on Thursday.” I’ll let you review the cast of characters, their tenures and form your own suspicions about where the problem might lie.)
If the Mets make a 2001-style sprint at a wild-card berth, try just to enjoy it. Try not to think about what might have been if they’d had an additional month of Yoenis Cespedes doing what Yoenis Cespedes can do.
Oh, and good luck with that.
by Jason Fry on 20 August 2016 11:13 pm For at least one day the Mets, those egregious laughingstocks, were anything but: they stomped on the Giants to break their losing streak in convincing fashion. 9-5? That’s definitely a way to make a living.
Yoenis Cespedes led the charge, smacking two home runs and just missing a third, a just-missed that may or may not have led to me reacting too excitedly and slopping booze into the hair of my innocent child. (Sorry kid!) Bartolo Colon was his usual unflappable self, foiling both the Giants and Terry Collins‘s attempt to let the arson-prone wing of the bullpen loose at a perilously early hour. And tip the cap to Alejandro De Aza, whose three-run homer turned the game’s drama from potentially heart-stopping to merely entertaining.
Winning cures everything, it’s said, but it can’t stop time. It’s probably too late for the Mets to recover from what’s felled them. But watching today, I found I was OK with that — I’ve passed beyond denial and anger and bargaining and whatever the other stages are to find myself at acceptance, and to remember that acceptance can bring more happiness than you might guess.
It made me happy to watch Colon at work, doughily imperturbable as ever and doing the thing he’s mastered as many times as was necessary: throw subtle variants of a fastball. It seems so simple — add or subtract a bit of spin, a little sink, a mile per hour or so — until you remember that nobody else can do it. Heck, occasionally Bartolo can’t do it either.
It made me happy to watch Asdrubal Cabrera in his element at shortstop. No, Cabrera’s range isn’t astounding and his arm isn’t pure lightning. But like another non-darling of defensive statistics who got name-checked enough not to need another mention, Cabrera’s instincts are peerless. (At least afield — I’m not quite sure what happened on the basepaths in that all-too-Metsian first inning.)
I didn’t write down when the play happened, but I found myself smiling as Cabrera ranged into the hole to flag down a grounder, then turned without interrupting his momentum and hit Neil Walker‘s glove right at the second-base bag.
It didn’t make SportsCenter — heck, it’s not even an MLB video highlight from the game — but it was the kind of play that only seems routine because the man making it knows his craft and has honed it through dogged repetition. Cabrera knew where he was in relation to second base, where his momentum was taking him, how much time he had to get the runner, the angle needed for the throw, and how much he had to put on that throw. Except he processed all that in far less time than it took me to write it — it was already baked into muscle memory. See ball, run to it, throw, record out — that’s a quietly platinum-gloved play from a newly platinum-haired shortstop.
And of course it’s always fun to see someone who’s good at demolishing baseballs do so. Oh how we’ve missed Cespedes, in the standings and in the lineup and in the pleasure centers of our baseball-wired brains. He looks whole again, dangerous again, and that means our battered team feels closer to being the same way.
And there are more esoteric pleasures too — like Josh Smoker finding his place in The Holy Books. Heck, that one even came in a loss. I’d gone to bed before Smoker’s debut Friday night, brought low by exhaustion and disgust, and in the morning the question I most wanted answered wasn’t whether the Mets had won — it seemed safe to bet that they hadn’t and it didn’t really matter if they somehow had — but whether Smoker had gotten the call.
Smoker was up earlier this year, activated for the second game of a doubleheader, but was only glimpsed occupying a perch in the Citi Field bullpen. When he went back down a few hours later, he joined the ranks of the Mets’ ghosts, a roster that … well, haunts me is both the glib thing to write and the accurate assessment.
For a time, Smoker had become the 10th man to be eligible to play for the Mets but exit the active roster before entering a game. That list begins with Jim Bibby (1969 and 1971) and also includes Randy Bobb (1970), Billy Cotton (1972), Jerry Moses (1975), Terrel Hansen (1992), Mac Suzuki (1999), Anderson Garcia (2006), Ruddy Lugo (2008) and Al Reyes (also 2008). If you’re wondering, guys who escaped ghost status by appearing as a Met in a later year don’t count. Nor do odd cases such as that of Justin Speier, who suited up but was never on the active roster. (Call Speier a ghost of a ghost if you like.)
For me, the guys who stand out on that list are Cotton and Hansen — as the lack of links hints, they’re the only Met ghosts who never played a big-league game for any other team. They’re the guys who would have given their eyeteeth to be Moonlight Graham — or, in Metsian terms, to be Joe Hietpas, the emergency backstop who never batted but caught the final half-inning of 2004, beginning and ending his big-league career over 10 minutes or so. (Which also means Hietpas recorded the second-to-last putout in the history of the Montreal Expos.) If you think Art Howe never did anything good, keep it to yourself in the Hietpas household.
Some of the Mets ghosts have baseball cards — Randy Bobb got half a rookie card, while Terrel Hansen grins out from a Stadium Club glossy. I’ve made a full card for Bobb and ones for Bibby and Moses — Moses has to be the oddest ghost, a veteran catcher who was active for nearly all of April 1975 yet somehow never got into a game.
And I’ve made a card for Billy Cotton, called up amid a torrent of backstop injuries at the end of ’72 but denied playing time in favor of Duffy Dyer and the equally wet-behind-the-ears Joe Nolan. I vaguely remember Terrel Hansen leaning on a dugout railing in ’92, unaware that was the closest he’d get to the Baseball Encyclopedia; according to rumor, Cotton got one maddening step further, reaching the on-deck circle one night in September ’72 only to watch as the batter ahead of him hit into an inning-ending — and for Cotton, a career-short-circuiting — double play. I can’t confirm that, and hope that it’s a story that grew in the telling. Because Cotton’s story is gloomy enough.
These days, I sigh in relief when the roster of Met ghosts shrinks back to nine. I rooted for Matt Reynolds to escape extra-special ghost status in the postseason, then waited anxiously for him to make his belated debut this season. When Smoker went down after his stint as the 26th man, I crossed my fingers that he’d come back up — that he wouldn’t hurt his elbow or become suddenly ineffective or suffer any of the other woes that can befall a pitcher, and which in his case might have kept him from ever returning.
Happily, none of those things happened. Josh Edgin went down and Josh Smoker came up, and while I was asleep he gave up two hits and an earned run while recording just one out. I’m sure that isn’t what Smoker visualized when he let himself think about his big-league debut, but I bet Billy Cotton or Terrel Hansen would have taken it. I awoke to learn Smoker had arrived, and that made me happy too.
by Greg Prince on 20 August 2016 5:30 am The Mets will play a game today in San Francisco. We will root for them. They might reverse prevailing trends and win. Perhaps the Cardinals will lose, and the Mets will move back to within 4½ games of the second Wild Card. It’s not inconceivable that this sequence of events will repeat itself on Sunday, at which point the Mets will be 3½ out. On Tuesday, the Mets will begin a three-game series in St. Louis. Should they stay hot and sweep all three — depending on what happens between Miami and Pittsburgh this weekend and whoever they play when they get done with each other, the Mets will have climbed into the thick of the playoff race. At that point, the 65-62 Mets will have 35 games remaining, a load of momentum and every reason to believe they can push toward a return date in the postseason.
“Might.” “Not inconceivable.” “Should they stay hot.” “Depending on what happens.” There are a lot of conditions implicit in the above scenario…and based on every available trace of evidence, conditions are not favorable. In real life, the Mets have lost 17 of their past 25 games, including Friday night’s tower of embarrassment to the Giants, 8-1. As platforms for growth go, that’s not gonna get ya six inches off the ground. By way of comparison, the patron saint of It-Ain’t-Over, the 1973 Mets, went 14-11 prior to getting on their fabled 21-of-29 roll. Those Mets were slowly coalescing in an uncommonly forgiving division. These Mets have continually crumbled while looking up at formidable competition.
What I guess I’m saying here is you play the You Gotta Believe card at your own credulous risk. If you’ve abused your internal clock as I have all this week only to watch the Mets sink from dismal to atrocious, you don’t see anything to believe in.
On Friday, Seth Lugo was splendid as the August version of what Logan Verrett was in April, giving the Mets 6⅔ innings of one-run ball. Seth and the Mets were tied in the seventh with Johnny Cueto and the Giants. There had been some clownish baserunning (Lugo’s, mostly) and other disconcerting blackout sketches delivered in the spirit of Love American Style, but the Mets were in this thing. Then they weren’t. Neither was Lugo, removed in a fit of matchup-inspired strategy after 69 effective pitches. It was as if the manager whispered in the rookie’s ear as he dismissed him from the mound, “Don’t worry kid, we’ll find a way to blow this for you.”
And so they did. Every reliever, including newcomer Josh Smoker, was culpable, as was everybody who wore a glove solely for decorative purposes, as well as everybody who carried a bat to ward off evil spirits, because they certainly weren’t using them to knock in runs. The best you could say about the Mets after Lugo left was they did indeed start to resemble the team we saw in the World Series last fall.
Jeurys Familia was undermined by shabby infield defense in the eighth and Yoenis Cespedes was mindlessly trapped off base in the ninth.
It was just brutal, or of a piece with how they’ve performed almost without interruption since July 26, the first time they played the Cardinals in 2016. They weren’t doing so hot prior to then either, but they were at least sort of holding their own, allowing a person to squint and discern the vague outlines of a contender that might get its act together sooner or later. Later has arrived. The Mets aren’t here to meet its plane.
In other summers when the air has leaked out of a season’s inner tube, I’ve been disgusted. Disgusted was the soup of the day for a half-dozen years before last year. But then came last year, and last year wiped the slate clean in my soul. I no longer know how to stay mad at the Mets. When they’re bad, they’re bad, and brother, they’ve been bad more than they haven’t been the bulk of 2016. I recognize situational bad. These situations suck. Yet the bit where we pile on this organization for knowing nothing and doing nothing and winning nothing?
I can’t do that at this juncture of the franchise’s timeline. They won a pennant within the last year. If it doesn’t quite rate them a pass as they descend down the drain pipe, it should earn them a bye out of the tournament in which we reflexively rank the worst, most godawful Met episodes, calamities and aggregations we’ve ever experienced. C’mon, I think when I serve as blogger-confessor for my fellow fans’ struggles with their faith (which happens a lot lately), this isn’t good, but lord, we’ve seen worse. I have links to six seasons of genuine disgust if your memory is too short to box with mine.
I’m not aggravated as much as I’m saddened. I’m saddened that the great year of 2015 will not be immediately twinned with a worthy successor. Of all the things 2015 was, it was fun. I literally wrote the book on the 2015 Mets, and I don’t think I fully grasped how much fun we were having while we were having it. It keeps coming back to me. In the “one year ago on this date” derby, we’re racing toward the really phenomenal stuff. The Mets go to Colorado and outscore the Rockies 28-18 over two nights, or by exactly as many as the Diamondbacks just outscored the Mets over three. The Mets go to Philadelphia and whack eight homers on a Monday, do infield acrobatics on a Thursday and sweep both games in between besides. The Mets gear up for September like September matters. September mattered. October mattered. A wee bit of November mattered.
Matters at the end of third week of this August aren’t inspiring. Some injured return. Other injured recede. Health seems irrelevant. Moves are made. Few of them click. Schedules are cited as favorable. Losses mount anyway. 2015 fails to replicate. 2016 fails to ignite. 2017…nah, too soon, if only in the chronological sense.
If Billy Loes were still with us, he might glance at the standings and conclude, “The second Wild Card is a very good thing. It gives everybody a chance. Just like the WPA.” The 60-62 Mets are 5½ behind the presently Wild Cardinals with 40 to play. They’re closer to the 59-63 Rockies and the 57-66 Phillies than they are to 65-56 St. Loo, though. If we weren’t laser-focused on their status and clinging to an iota of that ’15 feeling, there is little likelihood we’d view the Mets as any kind of contender. If I were an impartial newspaper editor pressed for space, I’d delete the New York line from the National League Playoff Picture box without a second thought.
I’m a highly partisan fan and my virtual X-Acto knife has already pretty much made the cut in my mind. But I’ll watch the next game anyway (of course) and I’ll even allow myself a purposeful peek at the out-of-town scoreboard. Even if you’re certain you already know, you never know.
***
Apropos of Justin Ruggiano’s grand slam Thursday night and my assertion that you have no business losing when one of your batters does the most he can do with an at-bat, I got curious and combed Baseball Reference to determine whether the Mets have ever benefited from such a turn of fortune. Have they ever come out ahead despite the other team hitting a grand salami? They have! Whereas the Mets have dropped thirteen games in which one of their hitters has brought home the Hebrew National, they’ve actually won twenty games in which one of their opponents’ hitters notched four runs on one extraordinary swing. Who knew things sometimes break in the Mets’ favor? It’s a helluva list, too, and I’ll share it with you somewhere down the road when I haven’t spent an entire week awake at hours decent people and frontrunners are sound asleep.
by Greg Prince on 19 August 2016 3:27 pm The Giants certainly know how to slot their promotions, scheduling their annual Jerry Garcia Tribute Night for when the Mets came to town Thursday. A friend of mine, not much of a Grateful Dead fan, liked to tell the joke, “What did the Deadhead say once the drugs wore off — ‘man, this music sucks.’”
I like the music of the Dead (the official band of the 2016 New York Mets’ playoff hopes) just fine, but the entirety of whatever trip the Mets were on last night must have looked a lot better through a hallucinogenic prism. Not that the part where I imagined Justin Ruggiano hit a grand slam off Madison Bumgarner wasn’t, well, far out, but Jacob deGrom and I kind of crashed when Bumgarner came up in the bottom of the very same inning, the fourth, and hit his own two-run homer to completely erase what was left of the lead Ruggiano built with a single four-run swing.
Trippy, right?
The eventual 10-7 defeat negates a core tenet of my baseball philosophy: you should never, ever lose a game in which one of your batters hits a grand slam. Yet it’s happened to the Mets an unlucky 13 times in their 55-year history. Most recent before last night, it was Chris Schwinden & Co. undoing Jason Bay’s slamdiwork at Citi Field in 2011 in what became a 6-5 loss to the Braves. Most horrifying was Carlos Delgado’s salami being cut down to size by Oliver Perez and the oily rags who followed him onto the mound during the last week of Shea Stadium’s existence in 2008. This was the infamous tie score, Murphy triples to lead off, Wright coming up, bottom of the ninth, all we need is a sacrifice fly game that did not result in Daniel coming home. Luis Ayala burned the place to the ground in the tenth, 9-6, and we soldiered on to Shea Goodbye, knowing damn well we’d blown our best chance to extend the ballpark’s life.
Saddest? Sadder than Ruggiano’s beautiful night (3-for-5 and a sweet, running catch) being sabotaged by deGrom enduring the worst outing of his and almost everybody’s career? I’d have to go with Jack Hamilton, Mets starting pitcher on May 20, 1967, blasting a four-bagger versus ex-Met Al Jackson, by then of the Cardinals, in the second inning at Shea. Hamilton proceeded to return to his hurling and promptly threw the lead back up; he was out of the game in the fourth and the Mets went on to lose, 11-9.
“Hey, Jack, how was your game today?”
“Oh, great, yeah, I hit a grand slam.”
“Wonderful! What did you and the guys do to celebrate afterwards?”
“SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!”
The rest of the fellas whose productive bats proved no more than ornaments to futility: Frank Thomas, 1962; Eddie Bressoud, 1966; Tommie Agee, 1971; Rusty Staub, 1973; Gary Carter, 1985; Joe Orsulak, 1995; Cliff Floyd, 2005; and Fernando Tatis, 2009. In a cruel twist of fate, Tatis was starting at first base a few days after Delgado had played his final game as a Met, though we didn’t know it was Delgado’s final game. He’ll probably just need a little rest, some rehab and he’ll be back as good as new before we know it. That was that year’s baseball equivalent of one of those marathon jams that made the Dead famous. Carlos’s injury turned out to be the canary in the walking boot in the coal mine from which the 2009 Met campaign could not be rescued. Everybody (just about) got hurt, every game (more or less) was lost.
What was wrong with Delgado again? I’m going to say it was a broken heart never properly healed from how the Mets lost to the Cubs the previous September.
No Dead tribute slated for tonight at Phone Company Park, but Seth Lugo will be filling in for Steven Matz, who reported shoulder soreness and was therefore scratched. Just a precaution, they say.
Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on us. But not often.
by Greg Prince on 18 August 2016 12:14 pm Thirteen thoughts after staying up late with the Mets and watching alongside them as their opponents crossed the plate thirteen times.
1. Jon Niese, per the late Dennis Green, is who we expected him to be. Three fine innings against those poisonous Arizona Diamondbacks, a dreadful fourth, gone in the fifth. You can’t say he didn’t provide distance, to judge by how far Rickie Weeks and Yasmany Tomas hit their home runs off him. To be fair to Niese, he was pitching in an unfamiliar time zone, in uniform tops that are described as alternate, on a Wednesday, which is a day that only occurs once a week, so how was he supposed to get comfortable?
2. The Mets did not cream Zack Godley. Whereas Alibi Yikes’ earned run average drifted upward from 5.20 to 5.30, Godley’s seven-and-a-third effective (or effectively scheduled) innings yoinked his ERA down from 5.24 to 4.85. Real clash of the titans there, huh? Neither had started a game recently, but on this desert evening, Godleyness hovered far above Nieseness.
3. Anybody remember Niese shutting out the Mets for seven innings in June? He hasn’t been remotely as good, neither as a Pirate nor a Met, since. Godley, on the other hand, had never before taken a start into the eighth inning in his major league career, but he did against the Mets. Cripes.
4. There are two Met bullpens. There is the one that keeps the Mets in ballgames that often (or used to) become wins. Then there’s the Seth Lugo Brigade, which should be ushered onto the field by the nearest Sym-Phony. Lugo didn’t give up any runs last night, so he’s excused. His compadres gave up a ton of them. Josh Edgin, the pitcher who has made it back from a year-plus of rehab, is a ghost of his former self. I could swear Edgin was a fresh face five minutes ago, but it’s closer to five years; he’s been around so long that he — like mid-’90s stalwarts Josias Manzanillo and Pete Harnisch — can say he’s given up a home run to Chipper Jones. For all you kids out there, Chipper Jones was the Yasmany Tomas of his day. Gabriel Ynoa, we hardly Ynoa ye and probably won’t get the chance to familiarize ourselves further for a while. Erik Goeddel, also not executing his best work of late, I hope sticks around until next weekend to pitch to Tyler Goeddel when the Mets play the Phillies, just so Ken Burns can direct and David McCullough can narrate how “the battle had again come down to brother against brother”.
5. Curtis Granderson broke out of his 0-for-2016 slump with a home run in the ninth inning, perhaps the most useless home run in the history of home runs. If I may borrow the phrase my blogging partner enjoys trotting out for such occasions, even the pig was rejecting lipstick at that point, opting for the natural look (“it may not be glamorous, but at least it’s who I am”). The Mets were losing by eleven runs when Curtis struck. Of course, nobody was on base. Nobody ever is when Curtis connects. Pitching for the Diamondbacks was the 88th caller to K-WOW, Where the Valley of the Sun Comes to ROCK. It was such an innocuous home run that Curtis had to remove his own helmet when he reached the dugout. To his credit, Grandy — always a standup guy — called the press box and requested it not count in his statistics.
6. René Rivera also homered off the contest-winner, which accounted for how the game wound up 13-5, despite the experiential score of a kajillion to zilch.
7. Keith Hernandez repeatedly sounded the theme that no lead is safe at Chase Field. The Diamondback leads in this series couldn’t have been more secure had they been assigned a crack Secret Service detail. Also, there was a graphic that suggested Arizona is twenty games below .500. Gotta be a typo. That’s the best team I’ve seen all year. Nationals better watch out for them in the playoffs.
8. Now a dollop of praise dispensed from an eyedropper: Ty Kelly hustles. Inserted in a fifth-inning double-switch — the same one in which bourbon replaced coffee in Terry Collins’s cup — he strung together an infield single, a walk and a double and made a helluva throw from left to nail Jean Segura at the plate. He took Travis d’Arnaud to block and circle got the square. It was truly the Met highlight of the game. Kelly may not survive the restoration of Justin Ruggiano to his rightful place at the far end of the Met bench, but geez this guy hustles on everything. He’s not much of a hitter and doesn’t seem to have a grasp on a particular position, but in seasons that are going, going, gone to hell, watching a Kelly or an Alejandro De Aza even run everything out like they mean it is sort of rewarding unto itself, especially after midnight as your team is losing by a cascade of runs to theoretically abysmal opposition. If this were a more fruitful year, we’d be praising guys like these as the Rod Gaspar or Kirk Nieuwenhuis of their moment
9. This isn’t a more fruitful year and the moment we hoped we’d live in for a spell has pulled over to the shoulder of the road while it waits for the truck the auto club is sending to give it a jump. Three-quarters done and the Mets have won exactly as many as they have lost. If Pythagorean is your thing, the Mets have been outscored by six runs across 120 games. That’s right, the Mets are playing above their statistically anticipated level. Isn’t it great rooting for a bunch of overachievers?
10. The Mets are only four games out of that second Wild Card spot that we keep hearing so much about; we have to hear about it, because it’s getting harder and harder to see. Depending on your worldview, that’s either our saving grace or loathsome burden. As long as you’re sort of in it, you’re sort of in it, and if you’re sort of in it, I believe (though you don’t gotta) you have to treat that as something approaching legitimate. Then again, three nights in the desert can make a person prone to mirages.
11. Nine games against the Western Division dregs yielded three wins. Perhaps seven games against the two current National League Wild Card occupants — four versus the slumping Giants, then three at depleted St. Louis — will be the second cartoon conk on the head that revives the guy who’s out cold after the first blow left him with stars and such circling his noggin. Sure, why not? Jacob deGrom tonight, Madison Bumgarner notwithstanding, represents as good as a chance to zoom an entire game above .500 as there is.
12. Things weren’t exactly sizzling with Asdrubal Cabrera and Yoenis Cespedes on board (plus Ruggiano, who you had no idea was here to begin with), but they’re good players and they’ll be playing this weekend, plus Michael Conforto is rumored to be scalding the ball in Nevada. Maybe he’ll be sprung from Las Vegas purgatory sooner than September 1, though I’d prefer he get everything out of his system before ascending to New York once and for all. I’m not selling this roster-reshaping as hope, simply possibility. It’s possible that more better players lead to more better games. Then again, I was kind of excited to get Jay Bruce…and not wholly discouraged when we got Justin Ruggiano.
13. For 42 more games, there’s Mets baseball. Do with that thought what you will.
by Greg Prince on 17 August 2016 10:13 am Though Noah Syndergaard delivered the biggest blow at Chase Field Tuesday night, Jerry Blevins prevented a bigger blow. Syndergaard homered in no-doubt fashion in the fifth to give himself and his team a 3-1 lead. A pitcher going yard will always grab your attention, even if the concept of Thor homering is no longer novel; it was his third of the year and the fourth of his career. Noah’s closing in on making us wonder what’s wrong when he doesn’t hit one out.
The very big shot was part of a four-run inning that seemed incredibly unMetlike within the context of their 2016 experience with the Arizona Diamondbacks, rumored to be a horrible last-place team, though we can’t tell. The Diamondbacks swept our boys last week at Citi Field and then throttled them Monday night at Phoenix. The can-go/did-go wrongness quotient was freaking off the charts in every encounter between the two, right up to the batter before Syndergaard, René Rivera, walloping a Braden Shipley pitch to deepest center, only to have it hauled in by 2013 Never Met Michael Bourn. It should have been a two-run double, maybe triple (even with the catcher running). Instead, it was a sac fly that scored T.J. Rivera from third, hallelujah, yet left a suitably cautious Alejandro De Aza stuck on second.
That the Mets had two baserunners preceding a long fly ball should have seemed like a victory unto itself. These are the Arizona Diamondbacks we’re talking about. They are as lethal as their uniforms are abysmal. Yet how typical, within the four-plus games of this season series — two on, nobody out, one Rivera muscles up, yet only one Rivera can score…and the first Rivera can’t even get on base.
Syndergaard made that turn of events relatively moot when he brought De Aza home with his blast, and Shipley gave up another run besides on Jose Reyes’s ensuing three-bagger and Curtis Granderson’s shockingly productive flyout. The Mets led, 4-1, going to the bottom of the fifth, and padded their margin in their half of the sixth when Kelly Johnson homered, peripatetic T.J. Rivera (with four hits and two errors, he was all over this game) singled and De Aza doubled. The D’Backs even made up for the Bourn larceny when nobody on the left side of their infield could make heads or tails out of a Reyes ground ball that went for a two-out RBI single.
Mets up, 7-1. What could possibly go wrong?
Youngish Rivera, starting at third at the last minute due to Neil Walker’s lower back pain (a condition prone to flaring up when you’ve been carrying the offense for weeks), commenced the bottom of the sixth with a bad throw to first. A wild pitch moved the baserunner, Jake Lamb, to second. Welington Castillo’s single with one out moved him to third. Mitch Haniger, who had just replaced Socrates Brito on the roster, cleared the bases with his first big league hit, a triple, and trimmed the Mets’ lead to 7-3. Every Diamondback is a Met-killer from birth, apparently.
Thor, who had been more or less cruising through the first five, popped up his next batter, but then was undermined by another Rivera miscue, this one requiring replay review to confirm. When an out call on pinch-hitter Phil Gosselin rightly turned safe, the Diamondbacks had another run. Then they had another stolen base, because NS + AZ = SB. One more hit drew Terry Gosselin onto the mound to fetch his smoldering starter, who had struck out eight but now wouldn’t make it through six. Syndergaard proceeded to fling his glove with characteristic velocity at the nearest wall, which was the second-most disconcerting sight within the Met dugout at that moment, next to noticing Jon Niese is still among us.
Enter Blevins to face Bourn. Bourn had earlier doubled, and the night before notched two hits. Perhaps he’s still sore that his free agent dance with the Mets from several winters before had tangoed into nothingness. Having robbed Rene Rivera in the fifth, he seemed primed to do more damage. I don’t have a stat to back up that assertion, but given what the Mets have had on their hands with the Diamondbacks last week and this, I can confidently cite minority owner Bill Maher’s recurring HBO segment: I don’t know it for a fact, I just know it’s true.
Blevins and Bourn battled for eight pitches. The count reached three-and-two. The Mets led by three. The Diamondbacks had two on. Sixteen runs had scored on Monday. Eleven runs were in on Tuesday. I didn’t know it for a fact that Bourn was going to drive in anywhere between one and three runs imminently. I just knew it was true.
Here’s some truth: Blevins struck out Bourn on the eighth pitch. Three innings later, Jeurys Familia would come on to record his fortieth save of the season by pitching a one-two-three ninth and officially preserving a nervous 7-5 Met victory — their first over these demons of the desert — but, really, Jerry saved the day. Syndergaard’s swing was more glamorous, but the one Blevins coaxed from Bourn proved the most vital.
If you stayed up to watch the entire three hours and twenty-four minutes Tuesday, on top of the three hours and twenty-nine minutes from Monday, perhaps you heard Gary Cohen list as one of the sponsors of Mets baseball on SNY Tito’s Handmade Vodka. Makes sense. You definitely need something stronger than good old Rheingold to get you through these games. By next week, it’ll be morphine.
by Greg Prince on 16 August 2016 3:39 pm “Hey, thanks for agreeing to do this on such short notice. We know you just got up here, but when Ralph heard you were in town, he really wanted to have you back on.”
“Sure.”
“Even better, we got sort of lucky with the game tonight. Welington Castillo had four hits, Travis d’Arnaud had three. We wanted to have a catcher on to talk about it.”
“Right.”
“We usually have Gary on when catchers are the star of the game, but Mr. Carter’s throat is bothering him a little. You wouldn’t think you could come down with that up here, but sometimes Kid gets carried away talking. We’re all prone to do that no matter where we are, especially after an exciting ballgame. You must know how that is.”
“Yup.”
“OK, you’ve got your mic on. I just need to get a level on you. Can you say something like you’d normally say so we can make sure you can be heard clearly?”
“Bub.”
“Uh…good, good. Oh, our host is here! You two know each other from the first season of the show, so I’ll let you two conduct your business. Cue music…Ralph, on three. One, two…three…”
“Welcome everybody to Kiner’s Korner, brought to you without commercial interruption by White Owl Cigars. White Owl Cigars, smoke ’em if you got ’em, they can’t do you any harm up here. I’m your host Ralph Kiner. The New York Mets lost tonight to the Arizona Diamondblacks, ten to six, and here to talk about it with us is a fella who was on his share of losing scores for the Mets back at the Polo Grounds, Choo Choo Coleman. Choo Choo, glad to have you on.”
“Thank you, Ralph. It’s an extraordinary pleasure to be on your television program again.”
“You know, Choo Choo, I’m pretty sure that’s the most you’ve ever said to me.”
“A pronounced reticence to speak publicly was one of my defining traits in my playing days, that is indeed an accurate assessment. But I’ve been enthusiastically anticipating a sequel of sorts to my initial appearance on your postgame broadcast. I have always regretted not providing you with a more extensive, let alone intricate series of responses to your thoughtful inquiries.”
“Wow, Choo Choo, did you pick up that cold Gary Cooper has, because you’re suddenly talking almost as much as him.”
“Carter.”
“Huh?”
“Gary Carter. I believe that’s who you meant. Sometimes you err in stating his name.”
“I suppose I do.”
“And it’s Diamondbacks, not Diamondblacks, though with their dizzying array of uniform combinations, I agree their unfortunate apparel presents a confusing conundrum of colors.”
“Right. Why don’t we look at some highlights from tonight’s game?”
“Gladly.”
“Choo Choo, there’s Wellington Beef in his first at-bat…”
“Welington Castillo, Ralph.”
“Well, Choo Choo, he certainly has no beef with the pitches of Bartolo Colon as he drives in the second run in the first inning to put Arizona ahead. Choo Choo, you must have caught Colon, who worked out the very first walk of his professional career tonight, a few times.”
“Number Forty? I think we just missed each other, Ralph, but he’s certainly been plying his craft for multiple decades.”
“And here’s Luis Castillo again…”
“Welington, Ralph.”
“It’s a double in the third, and he’ll come around to score on another double here, putting the Mets in a four-one hole. Choo Choo, what do you remember about hitting?”
“That I probably didn’t do enough of it, or I might have joined you on Kiner’s Korner more often.”
“Now Choo Choo, you shouldn’t be too hard for yourself. It says here you batted .250 in your first year with the Mets, which was the first year of the Mets, 1962. That’s not a bad average for a catcher better known for his speed and defense.”
“You’re too kind, Ralph. I’m afraid Roger Angell may have portrayed my skill set fairly when he suggested my quickness on the basepaths ‘is an attribute […] about as essential for catchers as neat handwriting’. And wasn’t Angell the scribe who compared my handling of certain pitches behind the plate to that of ‘a man fighting bees’?”
“Roger also you called you ‘eager and combative,’ which is pretty good when you’re on a team losing way more than a hundred games every season, though I have to admit you didn’t seem terribly eager to be a guest on my show back then.”
“I hope you didn’t take that personally, Ralph. Larry Burright pretty much summed up my approach to dialogue when he told the author Bill Ryczek, ‘He’d carry on a conversation with you, but to keep it going, you had to do most of the talking.’”
“That was fine for him, Choo Choo, but Larry Burright wasn’t hosting a TV interview show.”
“As I mentioned before, it just wasn’t my inclination to be voluble when I was in New York.”
“Well, your teammates certainly liked you. Little Al Jackson once said of you, ‘They always teased him for not knowing anybody’s name, but if you gave him a number and the team he played on, he would tell you what the guy hit and what he couldn’t hit. He was one of the better catchers I’ve ever had.’”
“I tried Ralph. On that I can be succinct.”
“You did more than try, Choo Choo. Sometimes you downright succeeded. In the first game you started for the Mets, shortly after you were called up from Syracuse in July of 1962, you caught a one-nothing shutout victory from Jackson in St. Louis, and you scored the only run of that game when you led off the third inning with a bunt single to third off none other than Bob Gibson. Al bunted you to second and, after Richie Ashburn struck out, you came around on Julio Gotay’s error.”
“You remember all that, Ralph?”
“I remember 1962 better than what I had for breakfast this morning, but the wins really stick out. The Mets winning a ballgame in 1962 was rare, almost as rare as the Beef Wellington I once had at a hot stove banquet in Pittsburgh. I think it was undercooked. But Beef Wellington Castillo was really cooking in Arizona tonight with those four hits.”
“Number Seven? He had a great game, absolutely.”
“Meanwhile, on the Met side, Travis d’Arnaud had three hits, though he’s still having some problems catching the ball.”
“I’m sorry, Ralph, which one is d’Arnaud again?”
“Number Eighteen.”
“Oh, Number Eighteen! Yes, he’s changed his numerical identity quite a bit of late. Well, Ralph, I think we have to be patient with catchers. I didn’t have a very good second season by all objective measurement.”
“Since you brought it up, Choo Choo, you began the Mets’ second year, 1963, as Casey Stengel’s starting catcher on Opening Day, and the Mets commenced to lose their first eight games, which was an improvement on 1962, when they lost their first nine.”
“If you wish to label me a co-conspirator in our collective difficulties, I plead guilty, Ralph, as I batted a paltry .178 in 1963, which probably explains why I wasn’t with the Mets on Opening Day 1964.”
“Choo Choo, another of your teammates, Ted Schreiber, said you could pull the ball, which was a good thing in the Polo Grounds, but as Ted put it, ‘Choo Choo used to hit balls to right field, not just foul balls, but very foul balls.’”
“I guess they all counted the same in the box score, huh, Ralph?”
“In tonight’s box score, the Mets were ten-six losers in Arizona, with the DiamondBACKS stealing two more bases off one of your successors. Any advice for Number Eighteen, Choo Choo?”
“Just keep at it, I’d say. I kept at it.”
“One of your teammates from that first Spring Training in St. Petersburg, Clem Labine, told Ryczek, ‘Nobody could try any harder than this guy,’ referring to you. That’s quite a testimony coming from a pitcher who threw to Roy Campanella.”
“That was nice of Clem, though it didn’t do me much good, I suppose, since except for a handful of at-bats in 1966, I was done in the majors after 1963. Still, I kept playing. I was at Tidewater in 1969 and would have loved the chance like d’Arnaud had last year to play in a World Series, but never got back. I even kept playing in the Mexican League as late as 1972. Heck, I barnstormed with the Indianapolis Clowns in the ’50s. Who wouldn’t want to play baseball if given the opportunity?”
“You’re right about that, Choo Choo. I had to retire early because of a bad back. Maybe if I had been able to hang on, I could’ve played with you in New York. You know, I was only 39 in 1962. I might have fit right in with you fellas.”
“We could have used your bat, Ralph, though our left fielder did hit 34 home runs.”
“That, of course, was Frank Thomas, not the second one, but the other one, who was the first one before the other one came along. You had all kinds of fascinating personalities on that club, Choo Choo. Marvelous Marv Throneberry was there, along with Hot Rod Kanehl, Elio Chacon, Charlie Neal…”
“Who?”
“Number Four.”
“Oh, my old roomie! I hear he’s up here.”
“We had him on recently. Sadly, a lot of your old teammates are up here.”
“That’s life, Ralph.”
“You’re a pretty philosophical guy for a catcher of your size, Choo Choo.”
“You have to be, Ralph. We lost 120 games in 1962, another 111 in 1963, but not only am I a guest on your program up here, people still talk about us down there. We’ve lived on in memory long after you’d think anybody in their right mind would stop giving any thought to a bunch of old ballplayers who got their brains beat in on a regular basis. I know you had fun telling the story of what a taciturn interview subject I was, but really, Ralph, I should thank you. You gave me a longer run in the Mets fan consciousness than any catcher with a lifetime batting average of .197 deserved.”
“Well, Choo Choo, it seems your brain is in good shape and you should be ready to go for any and all challenges you meet up here. The Mets fans loved you and always will, especially since nobody will be stealing any bases off you from here on out.”
“It’s the pitcher’s job to keep them on, too, Ralph.”
“That’s true. Our guest tonight has been Mets catcher Choo Choo Coleman, and before we go, I have one final question: how’s your wife doing?”
“Mrs. Coleman? Why, splendidly! If you have time, Ralph, I can share the details with you and your viewers.”
“Choo Choo, that’s not going to be a problem for us. Tell Joe Franklin we’re going to be running long tonight.”
by Greg Prince on 15 August 2016 12:30 pm Had Steven Matz carried his Sunday no-hitter attempt at Citi Field two outs further and into the ninth inning, it would have been fascinating to have seen how Terry Collins would have balanced the not necessarily meshing interests of history (or HI32ORY) and preservation…preservation of Matz’s bone-spurred left elbow. But since Matz gave up his first hit, a single down the first base line to Alexei Ramirez, with one out in the eighth, there was no issue to bandy about with Collins regarding his handling of his lefty.
Bandying commenced in the postgame press briefing nonetheless. The postgame story wasn’t, wow, Matz pitched a wonderful game against the Padres (7.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 8 SO), but what would have Terry done had Terry had to make a call on a youngster who had thrown well over 100 pitches on a hot day five days after throwing 120.
Here’s my question: why? Other than, yeah, Johan Santana and 134 pitches and Terry periodically beating himself up over Santana’s curtailed career following the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History, why harp on the manager’s hypothetical decision when there was just a splendid pitching performance and, not incidentally, a second consecutive Mets win when such a creature was considered on the verge of extinction?
I guess good news isn’t good enough anymore. Terry, nothing went wrong today — can you get into what could have gone wrong? And is knowing that something could have gone wrong eating away at your insides? Can you contort your face to show what it would have looked like in the ninth inning had Steven gone to a full count on the leadoff batter?
It struck a discordant note to a symphony of a Sunday when Matz was brilliant, Wilmer Flores and Neil Walker were powerful, Jose Reyes was rascally and victory was achieved with a relative lack of the usual angst. Matz went only as far as he did because once Ramirez’s hit was delivered, he had done all he was going to be reasonably asked to do. Complete-game one-hitters when 105 pitches are already in the books with five outs to go are no longer a thing as they might have been in the days when nobody knew how many pitches a pitcher pitched. Terry pulled the kid with a two-run lead, placed the ball and his confidence in Addison Reed’s right hand and that was that.
But Terry, if Matz had gotten Ramirez and the next batter, what then? How much Maalox do you keep in your desk drawer? Can you hang your head to replicate how much the decision would have weighed on you?
The manager, after baring his soul upon request, gave what I considered to be the sound response when he got around to it: he would have let Matz start the ninth and kept an eye on him. Fine. First, though, the angle had to be about how hard all of this was on the skipper, not how tough the pitcher was on the Padres, as if the media (a monolithic description, but it seemed to fit on this day) couldn’t handle exquisite pitching for exquisite pitching’s sake.
I guess my next question is, why do we worry so much about what people think versus what people do? Even here, as I rail at the line of inquiry, I’m indulging that unfortunate instinct. I’m down on the reporters I followed on Twitter and listened to in the briefing for obsessing on Collins’s theoretical reaction to something that didn’t happen. Instead, if I live by my own code, I should still be reveling in how good Matz is looking lately in actuality. What do I care what these people think? We’re long past the age of the filter and gatekeeper. I don’t need headlines to explain yesterday’s game to me, yet the headlines, including…
“Steven Matz’s No-Hit Bid Is Broken Up, to Terry Collins’s Relief”
“Steven Matz’s pitch count a worry as Mets’ starter flirted with no-hitter”
“Matz’s no-hit bid nearly gives Collins another Santana scenario”
…strike me as, at best, ancillary to the point. The point is Matz kept San Diego hitters off balance, the Mets rose above .500 and the flickering light of the Wild Card chase grew a teensy bit brighter. Why not ask Terry what he would have thought had Flores tripped over third base on his home run trot? Would you still encourage your players to hit the ball far, or are they better off drawing walks? Would you prefer stress-free losses to wins that encompass moves whose character you might someday be asked to express public regret about?
There must be something addicting about Collins to those who cover the team. He’s been there practically forever, his heart is visible on his sleeve and he answers questions without euphemisms. Even in a sport where the manager provides a twice-daily point of access, however, it seems Terry is approached as sun, moon and stars combined. I can appreciate his importance to the overall picture. Sunday I didn’t appreciate that a choice he didn’t have to make was treated as the overall picture.
Matz probably deserved that framing.
by Jason Fry on 14 August 2016 12:10 am Ryan Schimpf can blast home runs, but I’m not quite sure what he was doing in the bottom of the 11th, when Wilmer Flores hit a ground ball his way with runners on first and third and one out. James Loney, who moves at the approximate speed of a continental shelf, was the runner on first. Flores, whose foot speed is also best measured in global epochs, was headed that way. Schimpf fielded the ball and did what the textbook advised: get the lead runner at home. But the textbook’s author hadn’t imagined a plodding Pangaea of Mets in the neighborhood. Schimpf threw a Lucas Duda October strike homeward, nearly hitting a startled Neil Walker, and the Mets had won.
I don’t know, maybe Schimpf just wanted to see Styx.
This unexpected turn of events took the sting out of what had been another one of those nights for the Mets. They got off to a decent start, with newly re-returned Jose Reyes walking and scampering to third on a errant throw by the catcher and then scoring on Walker’s single. That looked like it might actually be enough for Jacob deGrom, who made us dream of a no-hitter before Schimpf ruined the fun in the fifth, and then surrendered the skinny lead on a Yangervis Solarte homer in the seventh.
In the bottom of the inning, the Mets did something they’ve rarely do: they picked up the shaggy pitcher who’s reclaimed the title of staff ace. Flores singled, Alejandro De Aza walked, and Travis d’Arnaud was called upon to bunt. One can argue about the wisdom of asking d’Arnaud to do so, but the base-out matrix does make the sac bunt a numerically defensible strategy in that situation — it increases the chance of scoring at least one run in the inning by a small but real 6.6 percent.
Anyway, d’Arnaud laid down a beautiful bunt, Kelly Johnson hit a sac fly, and the Mets seemed to be in business.
Except now it was Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia in the usual bind of Mets’ pitchers, needing to be perfect. Reed was, but Familia gave up a two-out blast to Wil Myers. Not so fast, Tommy Shaw and … um, you other current members of Styx. There was free baseball to be played.
Free baseball that somehow went the Mets’ way. Disaster seemed to be in the cards, with Gabriel Ynoa asked to make his big-league debut on a sticky night before a restive crowd that was tired of bad baseball. Shoved out in front of a firing squad, Ynoa earned a whatever-gun salute instead, with his first big-league strikeout capping a 1-2-3 inning. A few minutes later, Schimpf had happened and Ynoa had his first W.
It’s eminently possible Ynoa will never have another win that easy, but hey, they all count. And what’s true for pitchers is true of teams too. Schimpf should have thrown the ball to the shortstop, but he didn’t and the Mets won. When teams are going well we treat wins like that as signs of opportunism and relentlessness, the hallmarks of winning clubs. The Mets aren’t going well, but let’s not poor-mouth an honest-to-goodness victory because of that. They were due having the little black cloud take up residence over someone else’s head for a change.
by Jason Fry on 13 August 2016 12:11 am Here’s your roundup of another thrilling day rooting for the incredible shrinking National League champs:
- Zack Wheeler‘s return to the mound was followed by not being able to throw because of elbow pain, so he’s off to see Dr. James Andrews. We’re all sure this will turn out great.
- The Mets sent Michael Conforto down to Vegas again, where he will hit .300. He’ll hit .300 either because a) in Triple-A he isn’t “pressing” or b) in Triple-A he’s away from a manager seemingly hell-bent on destroying his development via irregular playing time and self-fulfilling prophecies.
- Logan Verrett was horrible yet again, as he has been for four months, and was booed off the mound. Not to worry, as he’ll be replaced in the starting rotation by underachieving alibi-prone malcontent Jon Niese, last seen out-Verretting Verrett by giving up six runs in one inning. A steady diet of shit like this makes nihilism seem like a practical life philosophy.
- The rest of tonight’s game saw the Mets annoy a pig by smearing lipstick all over it. I’m genuinely baffled by those in attendance who remained. And so I salute you. You are the true diehards, the bleeders of orange and blue who remind us all that despite trying times … oh, enough of that bullshit. You’re crazy people twice over — crazy for joining a sadistic tropical death march in the first place and crazier for staying to watch the ship sink and sharks take down the survivors.
- The 2016 Mets are now officially below .500 at 57-58. Over their last 81 games — that’s a full half-season if you’re sighing at home — they’re 36-45. That gaudy-by-comparison 57-58 record is an illusion based on things done long ago by a team that no longer exists. You’re witnessing a 76-86 club finding its level. It hasn’t reached it yet.
I think that’s all the deplorable stuff that happened today, but if I missed anything, fear not: the Mehs will be back tomorrow to muddle around uselessly and depress us further. You’ve got 19 hours to do something life-affirming and not completely futile. Make the most of it.
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