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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 21 June 2015 12:58 am The bad taste of Friday night’s Mets disaster lingered into Saturday, with Twitter moaning and comment sniping and unhappiness all around.
Fortunately, I thought, there’s another ballgame today. Because one of the least-celebrated but most important aspects of baseball is that winning fixes things. A crisp win is like a cleansing breeze that airs out everything and leaves you feeling renewed.
And for a little while there, it looked like we’d get that cleansing breeze — why, the Mets immediately scored two runs, doubling their output from last night.
But the wind turned foul. And by the end, we were stuck — almost unimaginably — with a game that was worse than Friday’s.
Some of the things that happened were just bad luck, such as the fourth-inning Baltimore chop from Eury Perez that gave the Braves a 3-2 lead and left a sweat-drenched Noah Syndergaard to flail his hands in helpless dismay.
Or another unlucky play, one that initially looked far worse: In the sixth, Pedro Ciriaco lofted a fly ball to Michael Cuddyer in left. It didn’t look deep enough to score A. J. Pierzynski, but the 38-year-old catcher was sent anyway. Cuddyer’s throw beat him, but was up the line, and Pierzynski’s torso snapped Travis d’Arnaud‘s arm back, flipping the baseball into the dirt and spinning d’Arnaud onto his face with his elbow as a fulcrum. It looked Cliff Floyd bad at the beginning, bad enough that Pierzynski lingered by home plate to check on a fellow member of the backstop fraternity. X-rays revealed a hyperextended elbow instead of a break, which is bad but shouldn’t be disastrous — though no Met fan who remembers David Wright‘s exit because of what we thought was a mild hamstring strain should take much solace in “bad but shouldn’t be disastrous.”
Other things that happened were unfortunate but understandable. Syndergaard, for instance, had one of those nights that a 22-year-old pitcher will have — no command, no confidence in his pitches, and no answers after things went awry. Syndergaard is in the rotation to stay, and deservedly so, but he’s got things to learn and lumps to take during the lessons.
That, unfortunately, brings us to the end of the unlucky and understandable. Because the other things that went awry were the product of unacceptably stupid baseball.
Take Dilson Herrera not covering second on a steal attempt, leading to d’Arnaud firing a ball through the comically large space between Herrera and initial shortstop Ruben Tejada. That sent Jace Peterson to third, setting up a tie game.
Or take Juan Lagares inexplicably trying to barehand Andrelton Simmons‘ single to center an inning later, allowing two runners to advance and leading to two runs.
Or, perhaps most amazingly, take whatever it was Eric Campbell thought he was doing in the sixth: With the bases loaded and time to get Simmons at home, Campbell stepped on third for a force, letting an insurance run score. That one sent Jim Duquette into Ojeda Mode on the SNY postgame, pointing out (correctly) that a high-school player needs to know what to do in that situation.
I mean, the Mets had just intentionally walked the bases loaded!
On my couch, I was gaping at the screen like Dallas Green after the early-90s Mets did something so mind-bogglingly dumb that he couldn’t even manage to be angry about it.
It probably won’t be remembered, but the Mets actually did mount an eighth-inning rally, with Lucas Duda singling through the teeth of the shift and Cuddyer whacking a ball into the 5.5 hole. It looked like it was going to be first and third and nobody out, but Juan Uribe smothered the ball, starting a double play and killing whatever slim hopes were left to us. Instead of a rally, we got a hideous baseball morality play: Hey, look! Defense! It’s important!
So what to do now? The blithe answer is to review this little thing I posted yesterday. Failing that, wait until Tuesday. That’s when Daniel Murphy should return, presumably to take over third base.
Wilmer Flores isn’t going to move off short, so there’s no point asking — the Mets are sticking with that experiment. Which I reluctantly agree with: Flores is one of the only semi-capable bats in the lineup, and I wouldn’t disrupt his development at the plate or in the field (where he is progressing, albeit painfully) by moving him off the position.
That leaves second, which a few days ago I would have handed to Herrera for the duration. But no more: I think Dilson has a bright future, and we should remember he’s still very young, but he’s struggling at the plate and making dopey lapses in the field. He should fix those things in Vegas, with Tejada taking over. (Unless the Mets want to give Matt Reynolds a try, which would be fine with me.) Campbell, meanwhile, simply has to be kept away from third base, having repeatedly shown that he’s unreliable even on routine plays.
Yes, it really has come to believing that Daniel Murphy, avatar of baseball chaos, will stabilize the infield defense. Amazin’, as we used to say in better circumstances.
by Jason Fry on 20 June 2015 1:21 pm Ranked in order of importance:
1) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
2) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
3) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
4) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
5) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
6) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
7) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
8) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
9) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
10) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
11) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
12) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
13) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
14) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
15) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
16) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
17) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
18) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
19) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
20) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
21) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
22) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
23) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
24) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
25) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
26) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
27) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
28) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
29) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
30) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
31) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
32) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
33) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
34) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
35) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
36) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
37) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
38) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
39) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
40) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
41) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
42) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
43) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
44) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
45) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
46) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
47) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
48) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
49) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
50) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
51) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
52) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
53) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
54) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
55) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
56) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
57) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
58) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
59) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
60) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
61) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
62) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
63) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
64) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
65) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
66) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
67) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
68) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
69) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
70) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
71) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
72) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
73) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
74) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
75) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
76) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
77) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
78) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
79) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
80) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
81) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
82) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
83) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
84) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
85) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
86) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
87) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
88) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
89) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
90) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
91) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
92) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
93) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
94) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
95) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
96) The Wilpons are broke and MLB doesn’t care.
97) The current offense doesn’t score enough runs.
98) As a shortstop Wilmer Flores is both inexperienced and limited.
99) Terry Collins overmanages.
100) Anything related to lineup construction.
by Jason Fry on 20 June 2015 1:18 am Marv Throneberry, legend has it, was once crestfallen to discover that his birthday cake had been devoured by his Mets teammates before he got a piece — to which Casey Stengel cracked that “we wuz gonna give you a piece, Marv, but we wuz afraid you would drop it.”
I don’t know if the Mets got Jacob deGrom a cake for his birthday last night in Atlanta, but if so here’s hoping his infielders were kept away from it.
Don’t blame deGrom, who scattered four hits over 7 1/3 terrific innings. Blame his feckless teammates, who didn’t hit all night and then undid the birthday boy’s work in a gag job of an eighth inning.
After Andrelton Simmons crushed a hanging curve for a leadoff double (OK, that one’s on Jake), Eury Perez bunted to the left of the mound. DeGrom grabbed the ball and had a play at third, but Ruben Tejada had broke in and the base was unguarded. DeGrom looked helplessly at Simmons for a moment and took the out at first. Afterwards, Terry Collins said Tejada made the right play and deGrom praised the bunt, which was good organizational omerta on both their parts and also bullshit: Tejada didn’t think about deGrom’s fielding ability and failed to react to the play as it developed, because he’s a lunkhead.
The next batter was Pedro Ciriaco, a punchless hitter who doesn’t know how to walk and looked overmatched against deGrom. He grounded weakly to short. Wilmer Flores looked Simmons back, but took too long while Ciriaco was doing the only thing he can do, which is run fast. He beat the play to first.
Collins removed deGrom, who’d thrown 97 pitches, in favor of Sean Gilmartin. Gilmartin, to nobody’s particular surprise, promptly gave up a double to Jace Peterson, and the Mets had turned their 1-0 lead into a 2-1 deficit and a loss. Overmanaging, I’d say — give me a tired deGrom over a perky Gilmartin any day — but the kind of overmanaging every manager does, and not worth losing your mind about.
(If you’re a glutton for punishment, here’s a further breakdown of the breakdowns penned by Adam Rubin. I don’t agree that there’s any blame to lay at Juan Lagares‘s feet, but it’s a damning read anyway.)
Afterwards, the amount of alibi-ing and teeth-gritting before the cameras was remarkable, and the Mets’ stories weren’t exactly straight. Poor deGrom’s interview was particularly painful to watch; our favorite Ford pitchman is a good teammate but a bad liar, repeatedly offering SNY a frozen smile and an all-too-quick look anywhere else as he was asked how frustrating it was to play in front of these clowns. (That’s a slight paraphrase.) I just laughed when Terry said Jeurys Familia cramped up and it was nothing serious, followed by the closer talking about a tight groin. God only knows what that means, but it was the perfect end to the evening.
What is there to say that hasn’t been said innumerable times already during this strange season? The only thing I can think of is to note that this season feels so off-kilter primarily because the Mets are simultaneously horrible and in first place.
Maybe that’s what we need to think about more. The key to understanding 2015 isn’t to conclude that the Mets are better than we think they are, because they’re not. It’s not to argue that the little black cloud of Met pessimism has made us unreliable chroniclers, though that’s probably true.
The key to understanding 2015 is that the Nationals suck. They should be in first place by a healthy margin and complaining about having to share a division with two horrible teams and two medicore ones. If that were happening, we wouldn’t be confused about what kind of year this is — we’d be arguing tepidly about whether the Mets are good mediocre or bad mediocre. Instead, the Nats are part of the tire fire that is the National League East — in fact, they’re its most disappointing and underwhelming club.
That’s the gift we’ve been given, whatever our birthday is. After we drop it and it breaks, we should remember that it was kind of a crappy gift anyway.
by Greg Prince on 19 June 2015 10:30 am In case you hadn’t heard, the Mets made a trade in December 2012. Nobody ever mentions it every five minutes, so it might be unfamiliar to you.
The Mets sent R.A. Dickey, the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, plus two catchers with very large mitts, to the Toronto Blue Jays. Here is who the Mets received in return, either directly or eventually, as a result of this trade:
Travis d’Arnaud
Noah Syndergaard
Wuilmer Becerra
John Buck
Dilson Herrera
Vic Black
Milt Pappas
Ernie Broglio
Danny Heep
Leroy Stanton
Francisco Estrada
Don Rose
Brian Rose
Howie Rose
Saul Katz
Saul Bellow
Dr. Alfred Bellows
Saul Goodman
Jimmy McGill
Kirk Nieuwenhuis
Logan Verrett
Jeff Tam
Frank Lary
Harry Chiti
Harry M. Stevens
Harry S Truman
Harry Morgan
Henry Morgan
Morgan Ensberg
Merriam-Webster
Marvin Webster
Webster Long
Wes Westrum
Wes Parker
Salty Parker
Harry Parker
Art Fern
Danny Kaye
Turhan Bey
Martha Raye
Faye Wray
Marvin Gaye
and Pellets the Nervous Rabbit
Yes, it was that productive a trade for the Mets. It is celebrated often, especially when d’Arnaud, Syndergaard and Herrera do something spectacular. The swap looks better and better with every passing second. The Mets sent a 38-year-old knuckleballer who was never going to be as amazing as he had just been to the Jays for everybody in their minor league system plus Buck. And Buck they paired with Marlon Byrd to turn into everybody in the Bucs’ minor league system.
Genius, absolute genius. Truly the stuff of mavericks. Sure, we had to surrender the most fascinating, complex and articulate 20-game winner since John Locke (who won 23 for the English Enlightenments twice), but how much more extensive was R.A. going to make our vocabulary? We learned to use words like “propensity,” “inconsequential” and “nuances” in a baseball context thanks to Dickey, but we also had to speak in phrases like, “Oy, who’s catching tonight — Thole or the other one?” Whatever we had to give up in syllables we’d make up for behind the plate.
Plus Syndergaard’s a pretty substantial mouthful himself.
Dickey in Toronto hasn’t been Dickey in New York and not just because of having to pass through customs. R.A. requires optimal circumstances to succeed. Everything clicked perfectly in Flushing in 2012. What were the odds they’d keep clicking with such precision, especially considering everything would have to be converted into metric? Still, it wasn’t necessarily a bad bet to go out and get him at hefty costs, even if the deal looks awfully lopsided now. It was a win-now trade for the Jays.
They haven’t won yet. They’re in the thick of the American League East race despite being no more than North American, but they’re still waiting for their first postseason appearance since Joe Carter touched ’em all in 1993, when Syndergaard was one and Herrera was not at all. Maybe Dickey will help get them where they long to go. Or maybe all Dickey will leave them with is a dog-eared Thesaurus, allowing the Ontario fans to look up synonyms for “frustrating” in the years ahead while they watch Noah and Travis lead the Mets to October after October.
In the interim, perhaps the one game that will wind up telling the respective final-standings tales of the 2015 Mets (36-32) and Jays (36-32) took place Thursday night at Rogers Centre, when R.A. Dickey thoroughly extinguished his former club to help his current club to a 7-1 victory that couldn’t have been any easier to attain had the hosts opted to play it in Barcaloungers. Dickey was his old self (despite dealing with some very fresh, very tough personal hurt). We know what that can be. He threw seven-and-a-third innings. He didn’t give up a hit until the fifth or a run until the eighth. He did walk the bases loaded in the second, setting up the perfect opportunity for Curtis Granderson, but R.A. struck him out. It was one of seven K’s for Dickey on the night — and one of 4,000 for Curtis on the year. After the game, R.A. even rolled out one of his favorite terms for his performance; he deemed it “trustworthy”.
He used both his pitching skills and his language skills to remind the Mets what they gave up when they sent him packing. If that’s not an R.A. Dickey “in your face!” I don’t know what is.
One loss by no means invalidates the greatest trade ever made. The Mets gave up something and got a lot of good things in return. Sometimes, though, something can come back to briefly bite you — as well as temporarily gnaw, momentarily masticate and fleetingly chomp you — if just to remind you pulling off enormous heists are possible, but messy getaways tend to be inevitable.
I didn’t get a chance to include this in yesterday’s consideration of Nelson Doubleday, so I’ll present a link to it here: Marty Noble offers a characteristically wonderful collection of recollections regarding the late owner’s time with the Mets. Treat yourself and read it.
by Greg Prince on 18 June 2015 10:15 am “In ‘reel’ life,” Jeff Merron noted in an ESPN critique of Bull Durham’s depiction of how baseball actually works, “[Nuke] LaLoosh is promoted from A ball to the majors in the span of a few months.” But in reality, “It’s almost unheard of — especially for a pitcher who struggled part of the season in A ball — to make such a jump.”
Nuke LaLoosh was portrayed by Tim Robbins, a real-life Mets fan and the closest I could come up with as a precedent for what 22-year-old Akeel Morris tried to do Wednesday night in Toronto. The differences in their tales, beyond fiction and what actually happened, were stark. For example, LaLoosh walked 18 and struck out 18 in his Bulls debut, the cinematic Carolina League being notorious for its disregard of pitch counts. Morris, meanwhile, wasn’t having such control problems down at St. Lucie. He was having a whale of a season when the bullpen-stressed Mets reached down and called him up for what seemed like the hell of it.
The Mets, trailing by three in the eighth, gave Morris a chance at Rogers Centre. Everybody deserves a chance. The view to Akeel, however, obliterated any chance the Mets had of coming back on the Blue Jays. The kid faced eight batters and retired two. Five of his runners scored. His earned run average, a spiffy 1.69 in 24 Single-A appearances, sits at 997.
Sorry, that’s his chronological rank in the countup toward One Thousand Mets. Morris’s MLB ERA is impolite to mention in public. Hopefully when he comes back — he was dispatched to Double-A Binghamton after the 8-0 loss went final — he’ll cash in on the chance to lower it. (If it goes any higher, he ain’t getting too many more chances.)
The lesson to be derived from the two-thirds of an inning Akeel Morris pitched in the bigs may be pitching in the bigs isn’t as easy as it looks. He’s a young man with good stuff and it got lit up by batters who knew what they were doing against a pitcher who had every reason to develop nervous knots, let alone heebie-jeebies. Perhaps Ron Shelton should have been brought on to consult.
Yes, the movies can make narratives flow with ease. Perhaps a screenwriter as accomplished as Shelton would have a simple time portraying the Met tenure of former chairman of the board Nelson Doubleday, who died yesterday at 81.
The treatment wouldn’t be a problem. We’d pitch as our leading character a rich guy. GWM — Guy With Money, as the joke went in Kiss Me Guido. The hook is he has a famous last name, maybe the most famous last name in baseball. The most mythic, at any rate. The catch is he’s generations removed from his great, great, however many great uncles it was who made the name famous. Our affably clubby leading man is running a company that’s very successful, but he gets involved in baseball despite not having much obvious inclination toward it.
“This is New York,” he declares, “and New York is a bigger deal than any other city. This is a National League city just waiting to be tapped. We feel we are going to do very well with it.”
So he decides to buy a team. To buy the team, he needs a partner. The partner is his diametric opposite. Didn’t come from money, made his own. One has the wealth and bearing. The other fancies himself a scrapper, a hustler. Together they have just enough to take over this team, which is a real fixer-upper. Our protagonist is the front man, the man with most of the scratch, but his partner keeps his hands on the wheel, too. They don’t always get along, but they get things done. They not only begin to fix up their depressed property, but they start to get the goat of their rival across town.
Did I mention there was a rival? There has to be. The antagonist also has money — you need a lot to play at their level — but he’s full of bluster. Our guy doesn’t operate that way. Our guy stays out of the spotlight, but he knows how to write the checks. He hires a sharp fellow to improve his product, he lets his partner do whatever it is he does and he proves to whoever doubted him that he’s a worthy heir to his legendary baseball ancestor.
In the climactic scene, Our Hero has accomplished what he set out to do. His blustery rival has been vanquished. His depressed property has been beautified. His product is the best in the land. He and his partner raise a trophy in unison. They have indeed, as promised at the beginning of the movie, done very well with it. Crowds cheer, confetti falls…roll credits.
If you’re not one for details, that’s more or less how it worked for Nelson Doubleday, who was the lead man in buying the Mets in 1980 and oversaw a complete turnaround of the franchise that culminated in a world championship in his seventh season at the helm. If he did anything wrong prior to that magic moment in October of 1986, we never heard about it. He and Fred Wilpon were, to the rest of us, polite presences who gave Frank Cashen the resources he needed to build a winner, and otherwise won our affection by not doing anything to lose it. Together they weren’t George Steinbrenner, which was considered an enormous asset in those days.
In the popular imagination, it was Doubleday’s team. Doubleday was the name that drew attention in 1980. Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball, but since when did baseball care to separate myth from history? The fact that somebody named Doubleday rode in and rescued the Mets made his participation just that much juicier. The fact that he and Wilpon, however they divided their responsibilities, succeeded ensured we’d always view the two of them as heroic.
Always doesn’t always last. The sequel to the Doubleday story didn’t yield a plot so easily followed. The Mets fell apart in the early 1990s. If it wasn’t necessarily Doubleday’s fault, it’s not like he didn’t own half the team when it happened. It’s also not like there weren’t rather unsavory statements attributed to him behind the scenes. “Behind the scenes” was a compliment in the context of not being Steinbrenner. It also allowed his alleged impolitic words to be sort of wished away. Oh, that’s just Nelson after a cocktail or two, his partner was willing to rationalize. And by then, his partner couldn’t stand him, so how bad could what was said to have been said been?
Doubleday and Wilpon stayed together even as it became well known they wanted no part of one another. They attempted to sell the team to an outside entity, Cablevision, in the late 1990s, but it didn’t happen. Nelson also made improving the team while he owned it a priority. It is the stuff of Abner-ian legend that it was Doubleday, not Wilpon, who demanded every effort be made to acquire a suddenly available Mike Piazza in 1998. Mike was acquired, the Mets moved up accordingly and the next we saw of Nelson Doubleday, he was hoisting a league championship trophy in 2000.
Soon thereafter, the tension between partners became too much to bear. Nelson didn’t want to hang in there. Fred had no intention of going away. Nelson sold to Fred in 2002. Nelson said some more memorable things a little later. These were fun to repeat in mixed company, the best of them being, “Run for the hills, boys,” as his way of warning that his former partner’s son’s increased role in operating the New York Mets might not be good news for all concerned.
Doubleday’s stature grew in proportion to the length of his absence from the club he left. Nobody viewed Wilpon as heroic by the 2010s. If only Doubleday still owned the team was the collective wishful thinking of Mets fans. If was an understandable impulse. Nelson didn’t have to go to a Bernie Madoff. Nelson didn’t seem to place his childhood Dodgers in front of the team he actually owned. Nelson saved the day twice, once by buying the team, once by securing Piazza. Once he was gone, Nelson Doubleday could do no wrong.
I’m not sure how accurate that was in real life, but for today, I’m willing to go with that story.
by Greg Prince on 17 June 2015 10:52 am And then I fell in love
With the most wonderful boy in the world
We would take long walks by the river
Or just sit for hours
Gazing into each other’s eyes
We were so very much in love
Then one day
He went away
And I thought I’d die
But I didn’t
And when I didn’t
I said to myself
“Is that all there is to love?”
—Peggy Lee, with a little help from Leiber & Stoller
When I learned Dillon Gee was designated for assignment, I felt genuine sorrow. Gee, I declared to anybody who was listening, had been among my favorite Mets of recent years, which wasn’t an easy status to attain. The recent years of Mets baseball haven’t been among my favorite to experience.
Still, you gotta have a soft spot for somebody. One of mine, when pressed to think about it, was for Dillon, the bulldog competitor, smart pitcher, menschy Met who took the ball every fifth day when healthy, even if he couldn’t quite take being bounced into a nonexistent role in the current rotation. The apparent end of his line here shouldn’t represent Gee’s dot on the Mets time-space continuum. He was better than our last sightings of him would indicate.
The moment I’m moved to remember where Gee is concerned came last May. Dillon was on the DL, but hanging around before a game against the Dodgers. It was one of those Blogger Nights when at some point Mets PR folks realize they have a couple of fistfuls of quasi-media types on their hands and nothing to do with them once home BP ends. Inevitably, somebody grabs an injured Met who doesn’t have to get ready for the action just ahead. On this night, Dillon was available and willing to stand in the tunnel between the clubhouse and the dugout and chat.
We surrounded the righty and let loose our general cascade of casually informed questions. You know, how’s the rehab coming, how do you like New York, what are you doing for dinner (OK, nobody asked that). Gee was amenable and articulate, but it was the way he answered a semi-throwaway that got my attention. I asked, in light of Jacob deGrom’s recent promotion, if the kid had been giving you guys any hitting tips, ha ha. You might recall that as 2014 got underway, no Met pitcher had done anything at bat until the unheralded rookie came up and got Mets hurlers off their collective schneid more than six weeks into the season.
“We just suck at it,” Dillon said of Met pitchers hitting. He wasn’t chuckling, he wasn’t going for shock value. He was expressing the obvious honestly, then expounding a bit on the subject before being ushered offstage.
Dillon most definitely did not suck at what he did, save for his awkward final appearances as a Met, final assuming the DFA takes and he winds up somewhere else. You never know with these designations for assignment. Kirk Nieuwenhuis was recently DFA’d, yet after a brief sojourn to Anaheim to check in on Collin Cowgill, he’s once again headquartered in Las Vegas behind the “activate in case of emergency” glass. But it doesn’t feel like Dillon Gee will be back with the Mets, so it feels right to remember him as something of a personal favorite while he’s still more or less top of mind.
Because if you ask me in a few weeks when he’s safely and I sincerely hope (unless he lands with a team I can’t stand) productively ensconced elsewhere, I probably won’t be thinking all that much about Dillon Gee. If the Mets continue to win in heartening fashion, as they’ve done three games in a row, then Dillon will have faded quickly from our Met consciousness. And if the Mets revert to the form that’s annoyed us intermittently since things began otherwise promisingly this season, then I imagine the subject of Dillon Gee will arise only in the idealized hypothetical, as in “…and they let Dillon Gee go, too!” Either way, we’re not likely to sit here and dwell on Dillon.
We’re not miserable human beings. We’re just being fans. The game moves too fast to dwell on those who fall away in quest of better things. If we’re fully invested in our team, business always edges emotion, sort of like the Mets edged the Blue Jays by one run Tuesday night. I’m a fairly emotional fan given to endless spells of dwelling on certain personally beloved Mets who are taken away from me without my implied consent — sometimes dwelling for decades on end — but ultimately I check the standings, check the score and root like hell for whoever’s wearing the uniform today.
I’ve had five “favorite” Mets in my now 47 seasons of fandom. I’ve had hundreds of guys I’ve liked or liked a lot, but only five I’ve identified strongly as My Favorite Player in a given period of play. None of them is a Met as we speak. None of them was when I took a phone call this past Spring Training from a ticket rep trying to sell me a package. Part of his script was to engage me as if he knew what he was talking about.
“So when was the last time you were out at Citi Field?” he asked.
“September 28,” I answered cheerily.
Silence.
“You know, Closing Day…the last game of last season?”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I’ve only been working here since November.”
Anyway, the ticket rep asked me how long I’ve been a Mets fan and I gave him a condensed version of my origin story: 1969, six years old, world champions, still with them. He asked me who my favorite player was. Tom Seaver, I told him. Of course it’s Tom Seaver. You pick a favorite player at six and are still rooting for his team when you’re 52, you don’t automatically turn him in for a newer model just because his warranty expired.
He wanted to know who my favorite player was on the current team. That I had to think about. I realized, as of March 2015, I didn’t necessarily have one. I groped about the roster in my mind. I said I liked Gee (he was pitching on SNY while we spoke, so that probably helped) and I was excited about Harvey coming back, and “of course you can’t go wrong with David Wright,” which got no response from the guy, who was then on to the variety of ticket packages that could meet my needs and budget.
I interrupted him: “Oh, Juan Lagares — he’s my favorite.”
That also got no response, because we were deep into the selling portion of the conversation. While there was no transaction completed between us, I did realize that I must not really be that into Lagares if it didn’t occur to me to mention him right off the bat (or glove). I love his defense and I am affectionate toward his potential, but the title of Favorite Met remains vacant.
Unless you count Jose Reyes, who’s been my Favorite Met since 2003, and my Favorite Met in exile since 2012.
Don’t let the past
Remind us of what we are not now
I am not dreaming
— Crosby, Stills & Nash…mostly Stephen Stills
Yeah, this isn’t about Dillon Gee. This is about Jose Reyes, who visited Citi Field this week for the first time since he was a Miami Marlin, which was a bad dream that didn’t discourage my ardor for the shortstop of my subconscious. I still can’t look at Reyes as a Blue Jay and not see a Met, the same way I couldn’t look at Seaver as a Red, Gooden as an I forget what, Brogna as a Phillie or Alfonzo as a Giant and not see a Met. Those were my other Favorite Mets, the guys between Seaver and Reyes. Those were the ones whose removals without my say-so irked me the most. Those were the ones who took a long time to be replaced in my heart of hearts.
But they’re also the ones I functionally got over because I had to. Because I was a Mets fan. Because I needed the Mets to win tonight and convince me that they might win come October, whichever October it was. There were only a few Octobers in which that seemed like a realistic goal when Reyes was here, but he was square in the middle of it. Jose and David and the Carloses and Pedro and some other Mets I couldn’t get enough of, but Jose more than the rest. He was my guy. He helped me get over Fonzie, who helped me get over Rico, who helped me get over Doc, who helped me get over Tom’s second departure (I’m still not quite past the first one from 38 years ago this week).
Then he wasn’t here and I moped throughout 2012, not particularly caring if the Mets without Reyes prevailed when they played the Marlins with Reyes that year. I hated the Marlins, but I couldn’t root against Reyes. I wanted him to go 5-for-5 and score five runs every time we faced them. If we happened to win 6-5, that would be nominally preferable, but mostly, give or take an R.A. Dickey decision, I wanted Jose to succeed.
This does not mean
I don’t love you
I do
That’s forever
Yes, and for always
—CSN
These days I want the Mets to succeed. I want the Mets to be what the Chicago Blackhawks and Golden State Warriors have been on successive evenings, evenings when the most I hoped Jose would generate at Citi Field were two triples, two singles, four stolen bases and absolutely no runs scored. I want champions in Flushing again. We’re going on 29 years without, you might have noticed.
Watching the awarding of championship trophies to championship teams who aren’t the New York Mets was, as it has been since October 27, 1986, bracing. There have been 113 titles earned in the four major North American team sports following the 1986 World Series. I’ve seen 53 different franchises toast ultimate victory since the Mets last did. I’ve seen champagne gush, parades jam downtowns, commemorative caps go on sale, trophies passed from hand to gleeful hand. The Mets were part of none of it (except for that one time they were the runner-up).
I’ve been wanting to be a part of that scene again for 29 years. Victories like the one over the Blue Jays — Matt Harvey returning to Dark Knight dominance; Bobby Parnell materializing from out of the shadows to save Matt’s W; Wilmer Flores continuing to muscle the ball if not do everything else certain other shortstops used to do with élan — are giving me hope that I might get my wish in the present era, maybe even before the wish turns 30. My hopes might be dangerously out of control after a three-game winning streak, but what a trilogy it’s been. The Mets could have very easily lost on Sunday, on Monday and on Tuesday. The Mets lost on none of those days. It’s not so much, per the middle of April, that this feels different. This feels warmly familiar to the way it was when the way it was was the way it was supposed to be. These are the Mets I know and love in my soul. These are the Mets I love when I know they are capable of coming from behind and just as capable of not blowing from ahead.
This is Mets baseball at its spiritually finest. This, maybe, could be the stuff of The Year The Mets Lost Last Place. Never once, in my last seven years of cheering for the Mets, have I felt so good.
For the first time, I don’t miss Jose Reyes quite so much.
by Greg Prince on 16 June 2015 9:44 am Blue Jays came a-courtin’ Monday night. They know how to woo the Mets on the Mets’ home turf, especially as the hour grows late. As they had on nine previous Shea-based occasions, they brought a ripe opportunity for the Mets to win. The Mets graciously accepted what the Jays presented them and said “thank you very much yet again, kind birdies.”
It was kind of the Jays, wasn’t it? They could have extended their own winning streak to an unimaginable (to us) twelve; instead they enabled to the Mets to create a streak of their own: two wins in a row, two exhilarating comebacks in a row.
Everything they say about Canadians being so nice is apparently true.
The Jays weren’t necessarily so generous all night. Mark Buehrle was stingy and Jose Bautista was greedy. Noah Syndergaard was everything a Jays fan could have hoped for when Toronto drafted him in 2010…and everything that same Jays fan might have rued when his team sent him to our team in 2012.
Noah went six, struck out eleven, allowed but two hits and laid down a bunt even. When he finished pitching, he and the Mets trailed, 1-0. When Carlos Torres followed him to the mound, he and the Mets led, 2-1. Buehrle might have dolloped out few baserunners but eventually quit being perfect. A helpful throwing error from another wonderful if geographically misplaced Canadian (Jose Reyes) set up consecutive doubles and the two six-inning runs that put Noah in position to win the game.
Bautista, the five-minute Met from 2004, had other ideas, tagging Jeurys Familia in the ninth for a very sneaky home run just over the fence in the left field corner. Earlier Bautista hit one to Astoria, meaning it was 2-2 and the Mets and Jays were bound for extras.
Extras in Queens is usually where the Mets shine when they take on this particular opponent, though it should be admitted that “usually” equals that game in 1999 in which Bobby V donned the fake mustache. That one went fourteen, foiled David Wells, featured Pat Mahomes and the Mets won, 4-3. This one got to eleven and appeared futile when Curtis Granderson couldn’t throw out Ezequiel Carrera at the plate. Of course he couldn’t. You know what they say in the battery business: some run on Energizer, some run on Duracell, but all run on Granderson.
That likely would’ve been most of that, except the Jays wouldn’t let the Mets go gently into that good night. In the bottom of the eleventh, after Juan Lagares was nabbed on a brilliant play by second baseman Danny Valencia, Ruben Tejada walked. Michael Cuddyer then hit the double play ground ball that was about to end the Mets evening when Valencia undid his good from two batters before and didn’t bother throwing to second. If he had, it’s 4-6-3, good night New York, let’s see if we can catch the end of the Stanley Cup (Canadians love that stuff). Instead, Valencia got it in his mind to tag Tejada, while Tejada — not lately anybody’s idea of heady — got it in his mind to make himself untaggable.
Ruben wiggled and jiggled and wriggled and Valencia was easily distracted. Eventually he got some combination of mitt and ball on the baserunner’s body, but it took so long that it provided ample running time for Cuddyer to cross the first base bag. In the fifth, when the Mets had their very first baserunner, I noticed something similar. Lucas Duda was on second with two out. Dilson Herrera grounded to third baseman Josh Donaldson. All Donaldson had to do was throw to first. Instead, he saw Duda trundling in his vicinity and thought tagging him would be a better option. He missed Lucas. He was able to get Dilson, but it was a waste of motion. The same team impulse to tag instead of throw came back to bite them six innings later.
Fellas, a word of friendly advice for when you go back to playing everybody else (because we’d be plenty happy if you won the A.L. East): leave the tagging to Bautista.
With a two-out baserunner, the Mets had a chance. They had Duda up. John Gibbons had an idea. Duda traditionally pulls the ball, so let’s take every Jay fielder dating back to Barry Bonnell and shift them so far to the right they can shake hands with the ghost of William F. Buckley. This clever defensive strategy put Jays closer Brett Cecil squarely on the firing line when Duda — who is not nearly as predictable as opposing managers tend to think — flared a 3-2 pitch to left that probably could have been caught or at least contained by a reasonably positioned glove.
Instead, the shift wound up handing Cecil his beanie. Cuddyer got to racing around the bases and scored all the way from first on what was ruled a single. Duda lumbered to second on the futile throw to the plate and, lo and behold, the camouflaged Mets revealed themselves in a 3-3 tie.
Exit Cecil. Enter the next victim, Liam Hendriks, who threw one pitch. Wilmer Flores stroked it directly up the middle to score Duda with the winning run. The Mets won, 4-3, just as they had on June 9, 1999. No facial hair constructed from eyeblack. No sunglasses at night. Just 25 Mets not named Dillon Gee who were dressed to go Jay hunting and did so very successfully.
Of course they didn’t have to exert themselves all that much toward the end of the hunt. The Jays jumped in a barrel and invited their hosts to take aim and fire. It would have been undiplomatic to have refused.
by Greg Prince on 15 June 2015 9:39 am This, too, was the game we’d been waiting for, the game we’d been subconsciously groping for, the game embedded in our DNA. This was the game that signaled perhaps prosperity is neither illusory nor fleeting. This was the game that allowed us to quit looking over our shoulders to see if the worst was gaining on us.
This was the game in which deficits were limited after a harrowing start, in which there was enough talent on the field to make a hypothetical stand definite, in which a comeback moved inexorably from possible to probable to having actually happened, in which the Mets not only roared from behind but remained secure while ahead.
This was the game we imagined when we began letting baseball overtake our imaginations. There was a game at some critical point in our development as fans that told us a scenario like this could and thus would unfold when we needed it. It might have occurred in a pennant race or a postseason series or some seemingly random Saturday night exactly three-and-a-half decades before, but deep down — though we’ve trained ourselves to hide it well — we know how to believe. “To be a Mets fan is to exist in tension between hope and the muscle memory of much disappointment,” Mets fan and Times columnist Michael Powell wrote in Saturday’s paper. On Sunday, we catapulted in the direction of hope.
There was a solid enough lineup to take on a less than stellar starter on the other side. There was a home team bullpen to apply sealant when our first Sunday pitcher leaked runs. There was a shortstop for whom tomorrow was the ideal antidote to the day before. The second baseman, a pretty competent fellow at his position normally, looked pretty slick besides.
There was Dillon Gee definitively permitting almost every Brave batter’s run-generating intention to come to fruition for a brief, painful interlude. Almost every Atlantan scalded the Mets’ fifth-and-a-half starter, a designation that seemed appropriate, considering Gee has not seemed fully himself since returning from the disabled list. He’s neither a starter nor a reliever, yet he’s not exactly a swingman. Gee is a free-floating anxiety for the organization to continually project onto the starting rotation. His utility seems like a better idea than it is reality. Dillon was a stalwart in his day. His day wasn’t long ago, but it might as well have taken place in another Met epoch.
Gee buried the Mets twice, at 5-1 and then 8-3. He was gone before the fourth was done. The excavating grace was provided by his opposite number, Mike Foltynewicz, previously seen at Citi Field surrendering Lucas Duda’s 30th home run on Closing Day 2014. I see the name “Foltynewicz” and I think Paul Foytack and Dave Lemanczyk were mashed up by some clever Baseball Reference DJ. I saw the pitcher Foltynewicz and I didn’t think of Shelby Miller or Alex Wood, the two capable Atlanta arms from the previous pair of games. We might not be able to easily spell Foltynewicz, I decided, but maybe we can come back on him a little.
We came back on him (and his successors) a lot. We came back with extreme force. It made for a delightfully bracing gust in a ballpark and season during which the Mets can go for days without plugging in the power. Darrell Ceciliani homered in the bottom of the fourth to make it 8-4. It could have been taken as a tease or it could have been interpreted as a surmountable score. One out later, the surmounting continued apace when Dilson Herrera went deep. Being down 8-5 isn’t easy, but it’s not crazy, not when you’re facing Foytack-Lemanczyk.
By the fifth, it was no longer a Braves kind of day. After Alex Torres finished the fourth for Gee, Terry Collins turned to Sean Gilmartin, the 25th man on the roster most days. Most days when I try to remember who’s available, I count to 24, wonder who I’m missing and then…“oh right, Gilmartin. When did he last pitch?” Gilmartin warms up more than he pitches. He’d warmed up so much in the past week that Collins couldn’t use him Saturday when he really could have used another pitcher.
He used Gilmartin Sunday and the tide kept turning. Mr. Rule 5 Lefty was fresh and untouched by Brave bats. The same crew that raked Gee was shown to its seats by Sean. Nobody reached in the fifth. Only a walk was issued in the sixth. In between, Travis d’Arnaud belted the two-run shot off Brandon Cunniff that made the score 8-7. It was a one-run game now. Atlanta was ahead, but their edge felt less tangible than the Mets’ divisional lead has over Washington.
Yet the Mets are still in first place, even with Max Scherzer dropping complete game, sixteen-strikeout, one-hitters at will. That’s because in the bottom of the sixth Juan Lagares (who looked distressingly human on two plays in center) walloped the necessary blow in the bottom of the sixth, a three-run job that added an extra ‘L’ to Luis Avilan’s name. The Mets now led, 10-8, barely two innings after they trailed, 8-3. Seven unanswered tallies lit the Citi scoreboard, all of them on the wings of young men’s home runs, the most desirable flights the LaGuardia area has to offer.
It could have still become one of those games, one in which the next Met reliever undoes all that good work and you’re left peering down the tunnel and praying Mike Piazza is swinging in the cages, preparing for when Terry Mulholland enters, but nothing that dramatic was needed. The Mets crafted their little miracle like it was no big deal in the middle of the game. In the innings that followed, Bobby Parnell resumed his reacclimation, Herrera reminded us what a true second baseman is capable of (robbing horrifying Freddie Freeman with a sparkling dive and glove flip to end the eighth), Wilmer Flores redeemed his Saturday misadventure by fielding perfectly adequately, Danny Muno graciously kept Anthony Recker company on their business trip to Nevada and Jeurys Familia shortened the game considerably. Once the Mets nosed ahead, my thoughts turned to the closer: Just get it to the ninth and we’ll be all right. Jeurys came on with two out in the eighth, setting up Herrera’s magic act, but the effect was the same.
I don’t know what was more remarkable: the Mets coming back from five down or being confident the Mets closer wasn’t necessarily going to screw it up. The Mets got to 10 runs and the Braves were kept at 8 and the psychic damage inflicted by Saturday’s debacle was, if not erased, then at least negated. Instead of losing one you were sure they were about to win, they won one you could have reasonably assumed they were destined to lose. If hitters can keep homering and the closer can keep closing and somebody settles in at third, we might actually convince ourselves a team that was good enough to win in unlikely fashion on Sunday is good enough to win any day.
It was just one game. But, oh my, what a game!
by Greg Prince on 14 June 2015 8:15 am This was the game we’d been waiting for, the game we’d been dreading, the game we knew in our bones was coming. This was the game that you couldn’t hide inside the supposedly reassuring (and likely temporary) confines of first place. This was the game that came tumbling forcefully out of the closet of Metropolitan anxieties.
This was the game in which the infield defense of our nightmares was on full display, in which organizational depth felt like a pipe dream, in which the bullpen defied management, in which magnificent starting pitching was wasted, in which a last-stand rally crumbled in the face of fundamentally unsound instincts.
This was the game we imagined when we imagined the worst. We imagine the worst quite a lot. “To be a Mets fan is to exist in tension between hope and the muscle memory of much disappointment,” Mets fan and Times columnist Michael Powell wrote in Saturday’s paper. For two days, we had drifted back to hope. Later Saturday, we spiraled into the disappointment we remembered.
There was no certifiable closer to save the day. There was no major league-caliber third baseman to make the day easy to begin with. There was a shortstop who’s a helluva power hitter or perhaps just a helluva power hitter who plays shortstop and he didn’t play it well at the moment it mattered most. The second baseman, a pretty competent fellow at his position normally, didn’t look terribly slick either.
There was Jacob deGrom definitively squelching almost every Brave batter’s run-generating intention for a good, long while, except for Freddie Freeman, which isn’t unusual in these New York-Atlanta matchups. There was Darrell Ceciliani making one hell of a throw to cut down Cameron Maybin, the last villain of Shea, at the plate in the eighth, which would go down as the play of the game in a kinder, gentler game. The Mets had just taken the lead for deGrom in the seventh, finally getting to equally squelchsome Shelby Miller for two runs and old friend Dana Eveland for another. They had survived the comprehensively overmatched — batting average .083; fielding percentage .727 — Danny Muno’s three third base miscues. They had survived Miller’s brilliance amid the Citi Field shadows. They had survived Jack Leathersich’s learning curve and would survive Bobby Parnell’s creakiness. All they needed to make a day of it was to survive the ninth.
They didn’t. Hansel Robles, in for unavailable papa Jeurys Familia, couldn’t keep runners from boarding the bases. Wilmer Flores couldn’t quickly corral a grounder that was neither routine nor impossible to turn into a game-ending 6-4-3 double play. Flores’s uncertainty of movement gave Robles one out when he really, really needed two. Maybin, whose cradling of the final out ever at Shea still rankles, singled in the run that transformed a 3-1 Mets win into a 3-2 nailbiter still in progress. Alex Torres was brought on as the next best Terry Collins option. Freeman opted to single to tie the game and ultimately send it to extras.
The Mets provided no offense in the bottoms of the ninth and tenth. In the top of the eleventh, Carlos Torres, starting his second inning, allowed two singles, the second of which clanked of Dilson Herrera’s otherwise steady glove. Fredi Gonzalez asked Jace Peterson to bunt on Torres’s first pitch. He did so badly, but it got the job done because Eric Campbell a) grabbed it before it could bounce foul and b) thought about a play at third from his unwieldly locale between third and home despite no Met fielder being on or heading for third (and Campbell, mind you, was the defensive replacement for Muno). Second and third, nobody out, might as well get it over with. Maybin, of course, singled in the go-ahead run and another for good measure.
It’s 5-3 in the bottom of the eleventh when hope reared its silly head. Earlier defensive stalwart Ceciliani singles. Recent defensive liability Herrera singles. John Mayberry, heating up like June, is the pinch-hitter. The cynical 21st-century Mets fan actually believes something wonderful is about to happen.
It does. For Braves fans. Mayberry lines to Andrelton Simmons. Simmons sees Ceciliani caught in the chasm between second and himself. Simmons tosses to Peterson at second. Ceciliani is nabbed off base for the second out. It basically negates the double play Darrell turned three innings earlier when he fired Freeman’s foulout to Travis d’Arnaud to nail Maybin at home. It might as well have been three weeks earlier. The game ended exactly one pitch later when Juan Lagares grounded to Peterson to force Herrera. There was no redemption. There was just the loss you knew was coming at some point in this season of depletion when the Mets continually trot out a depressing procession of undersized, inexperienced ponies and ask them, while they’re feeling their way around the track, if they can pretty please go win the Belmont. They don’t, natch, because that’s what happens when you don’t have the horses and are lavishly deliberate in reinforcing the paddock with adequate replacements.
It was just one game. But, oof, what a game.
by Greg Prince on 13 June 2015 9:15 am Bartolo Colon has 9 wins. Jeurys Familia has 18 saves. Those are some pretty cool numbers, even for our sophisticated statistical times.
Wins have been discredited as a leading indicator of starting pitcher effectiveness and are all but useless for measuring anything a reliever does, but when the starter always earns the decision, I don’t think you can completely dismiss its conclusions. Colon has started 13 games in 2015 and is 9-4. He’s been doing the heavy lifting every time he’s won. In each of those 9 starts, he’s gone at least 6 innings. Only one of them wasn’t a “quality” start, and we can swap out his having won 7-4 on that occasion for his hard-luck losing (2-1) to Arizona in his most recent start prior to last night.
As for last night, he kept his own luck together, distributing but 2 hits, 2 walks and 2 runs to Atlanta over 6 frames. The Mets led when he exited, which would explain the 9th win.
Also contributing Friday in an explanatory nature: Wilmer Flores’s 10th home run; the 3 late-game double plays begun by Dilson Herrera; the 2nd game in a row in which Michael Cuddyer came through with a key RBI; and John Mayberry’s 1st Citi Field home run.
Oh, and don’t forget that 18th save out of Familia. I was surprised to learn, despite watching him all season, that Jeurys had 17 saves coming in. They’ve quietly and effectively accumulated, which isn’t a bad way for saves to collect.
Saves are also a limited stat, having been jury-rigged for the benefits of agents and their clients and perhaps to increase the royalties paid to groups like Metallica and AC/DC. You can’t say the Tsuris brothers, Alex and Carlos, didn’t help save the Mets’ bacon-flavored strips by throwing the ground balls that became 2 of those Herrera-engineered twin-killings in the 7th and 8th (never mind that they placed the runners on base to give Dilson so much to work with). Still, you get to the 9th, and you get there ahead by 2 runs, you want to get out alive.
Familia kept us vital. It was a less simple process than usual — two walks sandwiched a base hit — but when Jeurys, who might have had other things on his mind, had to get Nick Markakis to cooperate, he succeeded. It went 4-6-3 and ensured a 5-3 victory.
Scoff at saves if you like, but you’ll never reject them when you receive them.
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