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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 2 June 2015 3:41 am Sunday afternoon found me driving a rental car through deteriorating weather from Boston to New York, listening to the Mets try to salvage a game from the Marlins and their recently-civilian manager. The Mets were trying to escape their Miami enemies and what the weather would do to departures at New York’s airports. Between these two perils, I didn’t have a lot of hope for how they’d acquit themselves when they reappeared the next night on the other side of the continent to play the Padres.
In fact, I was dreading it. The smart money would have predicted … oh, I don’t know, three hits and some sleepy defense?
Which goes to show there’s a reason they play ’em.
It was the Padres who looked like they were sleepwalking, letting down Andrew Cashner with a lazy first-inning misplay that let Daniel Murphy score to put the Mets up 2-0. Cashner looked disgusted on the mound — Jon Niese‘s head would have exploded after such an affront — and he did the smart thing by resolving that he’d just get all the outs himself. He caught Juan Lagares looking for the final out of the inning, racked up three more backwards Ks in the second and kept rolling, amassing 12 strikeouts before his duties were through.
Sounds impressive, but Cashner was also giving up hits: He stranded runners on third in the third and fourth innings before the roof caved in, with Murph homering in the fifth and Darrell Ceciliani and Lagares following with run-scoring singles that pushed the Mets’ lead to 6-0. Before it was all done, Murph would have a 4-for-5 night and Ruben Tejada would have a 3-for-5 next to his name.
(I don’t want to alarm anybody, but it appears someone has kidnapped Tejada and replaced him with a lookalike who can hit. I think we can all agree that this crime should not be solved any time soon.)
And Jacob deGrom? He was pitching like he wanted to remind us what happened three June 1sts ago. Jake struck out the side in the first and looked simply unhittable, retiring the first 15 Padres without particularly breaking a sweat. Clint Barmes ended the dream with a clean single to lead off the sixth, but the Mets kept playing like a no-hitter was in the cards, making the kind of Baxterian plays that would have made you go hmm if not for that vertical line already in the San Diego H column. In the end, it was no contest — the Padres made the most noise barking at umpires, and were drowned out by the large contingent of West Coast Mets fans.
(This is not a new phenomenon for Petco, BTW: Last time I went there the Phillies were in town, and the park and surrounding streets were easily a third Philadelphia rooters. I don’t know if San Diego is a great place to relocate while retaining one’s sports loyalties, or if Padres fans are just laid back to the point of invisibility, but the out-of-town contingent seems larger and louder here than in most other parks.)
As for the Padres, granted it’s only one game, but they look like a mess. DeGrom dismantled them, and tomorrow night they get Noah Syndergaard, whose pitching prowess is so amazing he can lower his ERA by 0.73 without even stepping onto a mound.
Which means they’ll undoubtedly shell Noah, because baseball.
Before the game, Shannon Shark of MetsPolice and I got together for our latest I’d Just as Soon Kiss a Mookiee show, which we can confidently say is the world’s best Star Wars/Mets podcast, and discussed the dread of plunging into a West Coast trip. As we noted, West Coast games can be a blast if your team erupts with a bushel of hits — when that happens, the middle-of-the-night delights feel like a gift, like you’re a kid given free rein to gobble down candy when you should be in bed. Unfortunately, such sleepy-time laughers are rare — and there are few things worse than enduring a West Coast beating in which the East Coasters can’t wait to finish losing and crawl back to the hotel already.
(Other things on the IJASKAM agenda: No-Han revisited, Mike Piazza‘s post-9/11 home run, Tim McCarver, proper accounting for the no-no-hitters streak, and more. Give us a listen!)
The Mets, bless them, delivered that rarest of things — a West Coast laugher. And so they begin June as one of the more confusing Mets squads of recent memory. They’re capable of thumping the tar out of any team on the planet, and then lying down and offering an excellent imitation of a baseball corpse. It feels like we’re in the middle of the pack, biting and clawing with the mediocre teams and yearning of unattainable glory, but the standings say something else, and despite the late hour it isn’t a dream: The standings say that the Mets are in a flat-footed tie for first with the Nationals.
My reaction to that is more or less a bemused shrug. You can react with gleeful cackles, dour premonitions, or alternate madly between the two. Because both extremes have fit this Mets team so far in 2015, and there’s no reason to predict the weirdness will pass any time soon. Certainly not in the middle of the night.
by Greg Prince on 1 June 2015 1:16 am Shocking as it may have been to behold, Bartolo Colon doubling in Anthony Recker was less surprising than Ruben Tejada emerging as the Mets’ full-time third baseman. Anthony Recker being on second for Colon to double in was rather stunning in and of itself — Recker was 0-for-13 at Citi Field before the bottom of the second Sunday, whereas Colon was 1-for-8 — but not as surprising as Tejada being anointed permanent as can be caretaker of the position that was supposed to be taken care of through 2020.
Anthony Recker played third base for the Mets before Ruben Tejada ever did and Anthony Recker is a backup catcher. No wonder Colon connecting for extra bases seems the least surprising aspect of Sunday’s win over the Marlins.
Will wonders ever cease? In Ruben’s case, we can only hope not. We can only hope that the six-year veteran who still looks and sometimes plays as if he was recalled last week maintains his latest brush with competence. Saturday he appeared alternately capable and overmatched at the hot corner. Sunday his defense didn’t directly result in any calamitous activity. As of Monday, he’s what Daniel Murphy, Eric Campbell and Danny Muno aren’t after their respective auditions. He’s David Wright’s long-term fill-in.
Until he isn’t.
Terry Collins saw enough hitting from the former occasional starting second baseman (2010-2011) and generally ensconced starting shortstop (2012-2014) to pronounce him the best possible if not his final answer to the million-dollar question of who wants to be the starting third baseman. If anything, Ruben’s a lifeline. He brought in the most runs on Saturday and he accounted for the winning run Sunday. His .724 OPS is outpointing both Curtis Granderson’s and Michael Cuddyer’s, which says more about them than it does about him. Either way, that’s his bat. When wearing his glove, Ruben never officially planted a foot significantly to the right of short until May 14, but that’s good enough for these Mets who are trying to get by and surge ahead simultaneously.
A team with obvious playoff aspirations would be shaking every tree, bush and shrub in hopes of landing an experienced third baseman to pick up the enormous slack left behind by Wright’s bout with spinal stenosis. Perhaps that process is occurring below radar as we speak. Maybe Sandy Alderson has another Kelly Shoppach or Eric Young up his sleeve. But he probably doesn’t. So I’m just going to assume Collins isn’t kidding when he says Tejada is it.
Sounds familiar. Tejada is both always and rarely it. Always refers to the fact that he sticks around and inevitably gets a chance to show his stuff, which is sometimes tantalizing, eventually limited. Rarely refers to, well, wasn’t Ruben Tejada going to make us stop grumbling that Jose Reyes wasn’t here anymore? Wasn’t he the reason Wilmer Flores was taking up Triple-A studies at second base? Wasn’t he theoretically reborn as a defensive replacement?
Now he’s been Ray-Knighted the starting third baseman for a team that holds a Wild Card spot through nearly a third of a season and somehow remains but a half-game behind the Nationals for first place. It’s a credit to Tejada that he finds ways to make himself convincingly useful. It’s less so to the Mets that when one day is done and the next is about to begin, they rely on Ruben Tejada to more than temporarily succeed David Wright.
I’m reminded of the summer of 1989 when the Mets struggled to make a legitimate playoff push, held back by (among other disappointments) the failure of Gregg Jefferies to ignite. Jefferies was handed second base after a great September in 1988. They gave him every conceivable shot to keep it. He lost it anyway. The position fell to perpetual utilityman — and future David Wright agent — Keith Miller. Keith seemed steady; the Mets got hot. Praise be, Keith Miller was the answer! Keith Miller was the starting second baseman!
That lasted a little over two weeks, or roughly the extent of the Mets’ active participation in the 1989 pennant race. Which isn’t to say Tejada won’t give the Mets a longer-lasting solution. It’s Tejada’s track record that indicates this is nothing but the most graspable straw within Collins’s reach. It’s not like they’ve given Terry all that many tall straws to grasp at.
Ruben Tejada, you’re our starting third baseman. Congratulations old friend/young man. You’re it. Good luck to you. Good luck to us.
by Greg Prince on 31 May 2015 10:18 am Welcome to FAFIF Turns Ten, a not completely forgotten milestone-anniversary series in which we consider anew some of the topics that defined Mets baseball during our first decade of blogging. In this ninth of ten installments, we go to the only ballpark we’ve got.
Citi Field and I have had a strained relationship these past seven seasons. We grin and bear each other, all the while never truly feeling at mutual peace. It correctly senses deep down I’ve never forgiven it for succeeding Shea Stadium. Yet I’ve learned deep down that I can’t live contentedly without regular exposure to Shea Stadium’s successor.
As of Saturday it had been thirteen days between visits to this Gelbs/Figueroa of a ballpark. Thirteen days isn’t that much in human time. When you factor in the Mets’ road swing to Pittsburgh, it means all of eight home games had been played without my presence, which isn’t an interminable stretch. I’ve absented myself from Citi Field for longer terms than that. Under normal circumstances, it would be no big deal.
I’m not dealing with normal circumstances at the moment. Normal took a holiday on May 20, the day we got word that my father had to go to the hospital. On May 20 I was supposed to be granted my first exposure to the Party City Deck. My friends Sharon and Kevin were celebrating their wedding anniversary up there and graciously invited Stephanie and me, among others, to join them. I’d held the tickets since January. We looked forward to it. By game time May 20, nothing seemed less important or appropriate than cheering on the Mets from the Party City Deck. We had to bow out.
My father was in North Shore LIJ. The tickets became glossy bookmarks. Another friend, Brian, asked if I’d like to join him that Thursday for the matinee finale of the Cardinal series. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness and explained in brief why I couldn’t make it. Jacob deGrom pitched a gem that afternoon. I noticed it and appreciated some of it on TV, but it wasn’t a priority.
Friday the Mets went to Pittsburgh. My father went in for surgery. As luck would have it, Jason was out of town, so the weekend was mine to blog, which, quite frankly, was the last fucking thing I wanted to do, until the blog presented itself to me as the outlet it can be when I require one. I wrote an uncommonly brief recap that night, marveling at the skills and promise of Gerrit Cole and Noah Syndergaard. That wasn’t one of those “geez, I have nothing to say about this game” situations. Considering what my father was undergoing, I was struck by the power and the beauty of strong young arms in action. It honestly moved me. Also moving me that night: the successful operation to remove as much of the tumor that had been found on my father’s brain as possible.
I alluded to that procedure and its aftermath last weekend. The Mets were getting swept at PNC Park. You have to believe me when I tell you I didn’t mind, and not necessarily in that big picture vs. Mets picture. I was just happy the Mets were around. On the road, but available. I could commune with them if just for moments at a time. Don’t underestimate the pull of a baseball team in a time of personal crisis.
The Phillie series came and went. I was down and up during that better-angled sweep. On Monday, Memorial Day, there was a moment in the hospital room when my mental muscle memory was taking me back to 1988, when my mother was the patient and I was 25. I wanted to throw something at a wall, which I would have then. Now I’m 52 and throwing things is best left to the Syndergaards and the Coles. But I did have to duck out of that room before the room swallowed me. I had to escape the claustrophobic scene that was enveloping my inner self. I couldn’t say anything to the several people in there. I couldn’t say “this is all of a sudden difficult for me,” because in no way was it more difficult for anybody than it was for my dad, and what am I complaining about? I can stand up and walk out of here if I feel like it.
So I did. I walked outside the hospital, with my schlep bag over my shoulder. I dug through its contents and fished out my radio. I plugged its buds into my ears. I took a few deep breaths, emitted a whiny scream and listened to the final three innings of the Mets taming the Phillies before going back up. I figured I’d hear a half-inning and then turn it off.
OK, maybe another half-inning.
All right, the eighth, but that’s it.
The game’s probably in hand, so I can just leave it to Familia and…
Oh, what the hell, might as well stick around for the last out…
And the replay review that confirmed it.
The WOR detour did a person an iota of good on a day that otherwise produced little.
Tuesday worked better. I spent some time in the emotional cage, worked on my swing and ultimately contributed. I helped the team off the bench. I’m convinced of that.
By Thursday, by which time my dad had been moved to a rehab facility, something hit me. It hit me how much I wanted to go to Citi Field. The Mets weren’t playing that day, but they would over the weekend. Saturday 4:10 PM appealed to me. I’d been thinking about that game a few weeks earlier. I like 4:10 starts (and think the elimination of 1:10 starts on Saturdays is absurd). I like beach towel giveaways. I don’t go to the beach, but I have a thing for Mets beach towels, particularly those with beverage company logos. Folded neatly in our linen closet are the Coca-Cola Mets beach towel from 1992 and the Rheingold Mets beach towel from 1998. I wanted to add the Pepsi Beach Towel from 2015 to the pile.
But mostly I wanted to be at Citi Field, where I never feel fully at home, except I do more than I care to admit. Citi Field is where I go. In the frigid winter of 2014-15, when baseball seemed too far away to fathom, I began to reflexively dream of being at Citi Field, which was significant. Every winter of my life that dream had been of being at Shea Stadium, even in this now eternal post-Shea period. Shea was the offseason ideal. Citi Field was a summertime nuisance, where I went because there was no Shea. It took seven Decembers and seven Januarys to finally subconsciously accept that Citi Field was where I want to go.
And in late May of 2015, boy did I want to be there again. It had been too long. It had been almost two weeks and one life-redefining operation ago.
After consulting with my two most trusted day-to-day advisors, I decided three or four hours at a ballpark in the midst of a loved one’s recovery would a) not kill the patient and b) probably improve the spirits of the guy off the bench. Friday morning I checked StubHub, found a reasonably priced single ticket in a desirable portion of Promenade and went all in.
I was going to a Mets game at Citi Field. I had done that 187 times before. Rarely had I looked forward to it as much as I was now.
Saturday Stephanie and I visited the rehab facility. It was my third day in a row of making the not easy logistical trip. The time with my father, I’d like to think, has been good for both of us. It’s time we wouldn’t be spending together in better circumstances. I’d prefer better circumstances for him. He wants out of there. We all want out of there. In the interim, “there” is there. It’s a necessity. As long as he’s there, I’ll be there more often than not.
But on Saturday, when we said goodbye (and others had come by to say hello), I needed to be somewhere else. I needed to engage Game No. 188 at Citi Field. Stephanie headed home and I headed to the place you’ll usually find me when I’m not home.
By dint of prevailing logistics, it was a later approach than I usually take to go to a game, especially when a “First 15,000” giveaway is on the table. I believe everybody who buys a ticket to a promotional date is entitled to the promotional item. I believe it’s goodwill to your fans. I believe the reason the Mets don’t do it is because those who make those decisions and count your money rub their hands gleefully knowing they’ve compelled you into their facility to spend your money. You’re there, the game is an hour or more away, you’ll buy something. The sponsor picks up the promotional tab and it’s pure profit for the ballclub. You can almost hear them thinking, “Ka-CHING!”
This is all to say I didn’t get a towel. I was not among the First 15,000. In another season, even given the logistical complications, I would have been. In another season, the Mets would not necessarily attract the number of fans that equaled the number of items promoted. In 2015, on “Super Saturdays,” the equation works to the advantage of the gleeful hand-rubbing moneycounters and to the disadvantage of 24,000 fans who had other things to do before first pitch.
Oh well. It’s a nice towel, but it’s not a crying towel.
I did make it for first pitch. I did have a positive entry experience (sans towel), which was a challenge earlier in the season. I’ve relocated my entry point from the Rotunda to the Left Field Gate. Didn’t like the way I was treated at the Rotunda since my favorite guard moved on. I found a new favorite guard. It’s not a small thing after 188 games.
You should be treated well at every gate. But this is Citi Field. You, the customer, pick and choose your spots.
No towel, but one seat. Nobody on either side of me, which I appreciate. One jolly group to my left which kept needing me to get up to let them by because what’s nine innings of baseball without nine innings of beer and bathroom trips? That I don’t appreciate. I went from grinning to bearing to glaring.
I doubt I’ve bought three hot dogs in the stands since Citi Field since the place opened in 2009, but yesterday, without proper time to make a deliberate noshing decision, I went that convenient culinary route. Six-fifty for a Nathan’s frank. Kid lugs them up the steps, so I tipped generously. He was very nice. Gave me a pair of ketchups and a pair of mustards. I opened a ketchup. I attempted to open a mustard. I tried six ways to open a mustard. Then I tried to open the other mustard. They were unopenable to me. So it was a hot dog and ketchup for me in the first inning. My inner five-year-old was briefly sated.
Later, when the satisfaction was waning and the Mets were trailing, I made a beeline to the Pat LaFrieda stand on Promenade. I hadn’t visited either Pat location since last year. I had a small Citi Field gift card in my pocket. It was translatable to the Steak Frittes, exactly what I didn’t need, but I’ve learned if I don’t try the intriguing new thing once and get it over with, I’ll build it all out of proportion into my life’s desire. These were just waffle fries with bits of cheese, onion and steak melted into them. Not worth an obsession. It’s not like it’s a Mets beach towel with a beverage logo.
I ordered the Frittes. I handed over my card. It actually registered (I never believe anything at Citi Field will). Then I was told it would take “three or four minutes”. I had hoped to get back to my seat to watch Lucas Duda bat. Lucas Duda is as close as we get to a can’t-miss at-bat these days. I wouldn’t have gotten up to grab Frittes or whatever existed in Darryl Strawberry’s day. (I saw somebody in a STRAWBERRY 18 jersey yesterday and pinched myself that we used to have a team with him, Carter and Hernandez playing for us every day, with Gooden pitching every fifth day. The food was terrible in those days, but the baseball was beautiful.)
I asked the nice young man at the LaFrieda concession if the sandwich was readily available. I’d take that instead, pay the difference and move on so I could get back to the game I’d really, really wanted and, yes, needed to see. This frightened the hell out of the guy. “The order’s already in,” he said, almost shaking.
Ah, process. Can’t screw with that. So I waited. I waited only a moment, really, when someone came back from the kitchen with an order of Steak Frittes. OK, I thought, that’s not so long a wait after all.
As I was walking away, I heard frantic cries of “SIR! SIR!” Turns out that wasn’t my order. It didn’t have onions. I wouldn’t have noticed. Thus, I turned around, gave back the incomplete Frittes so it could go to its onion-averse owner and watched the Mets bat on the monitor at the counter. The monitor is a very handy device when you’re waiting for your order, but when you carefully choose the line with the fewest people and complete your transaction, and you aren’t handed your food in a timely fashion, you’re left to deduce, “I could be watching this game on a monitor at home, which wasn’t the idea of being here.”
It took far longer than three or four minutes for my Frittes. I curbed my instinct to throw a Fritte fit when the wait wound past six or seven minutes and the entire half-inning (featuring Duda flying out) ensued without my personal eyewitness. I was a little short with the nice young man when I was finally handed my order, and that I felt bad about because my parents taught me to be polite and I’d like to think I’ve always followed through on that. My father’s been nothing but polite to every doctor, nurse, aide, therapist and social worker he’s encountered. A little of that’s a coping mechanism, I’m pretty sure — if he collects enough points, maybe he’ll be released earlier. Most of that is he’s a good person who treats others well. I shouldn’t have snarled at the guy who took too long to hand me the Frittes.
The guy should’ve told me it was going to be six or seven or more minutes before I went with the Frittes and missed Duda. The Frittes were, like all snacks of that nature, delicious upon first bites, too salty by the time you’re in the middle of them and a regretful decision by the end. But I’ve had them and now I won’t obsess on them again.
I can obsess on things, you might have noticed.
Though I was full, the Mets were starved for runs (nothing new) and competent starting pitching (something unexpected). I came to Citi Field intending to offer my full-throated support to Jon Niese. By the fourth, it was all I could do to maintain politeness. The Marlins were up 5-1 in the fourth and making an excellent case for a five-man, all-righty rotation once Dillon Gee returns. The Marlins play insipidly, manage accidentally, float through the league without obvious wires keeping them aloft. Yet they were sticking it to Niese with relative ease. The Marlins don’t deserve to get to tee off on Jon Niese, who will never again be asked to endorse the Nissan Altima if I have anything to say about it.
Surprisingly, the Mets scored four in the bottom of the fourth to tie the game off Tom Koehler, whom they tried to behead in the process. I was at the game in April when the Mets were doing nothing at bat until they clobbered Koehler. The Mets won easily while losing d’Arnaud and Blevins. Saturday they lost the game but maintained their health. As my father will politely tell you these days, that’s the important thing. “Don’t ever get sick,” he says. From what I’ve observed over the past week-and-a-half, that’s great advice.
Somebody must’ve told the Mets to “don’t ever get runs after the fourth,” because they didn’t. They hung around to string us along. It was only when Giancarlo Stanton walloped one deep into Coogan’s Landing and Jeff Baker followed with a more conventional roundtripper that 9-5 inevitability was surrendered to. We 39,0000 — towelful and otherwise — piped up when there was hope and mostly held our tongues when hope was dashed. We made a pretty decent amount of noise, something I’m still getting used to at Citi Field. It’s been so quiet and lightly attended since the novelty of 2009 wore off well ahead of 2010. That’s the quiet place I think I was thinking of when I decided I needed to be at a ballgame Saturday. The atmosphere Saturday (which I opted to drown out with the help of my pals Howie and Josh) didn’t give one over to serene contemplation as the weeknights of Septembers past have as a matter of course.
It’s a good sign for the overall health of the franchise. It’s kind of grating when you just want to sit where you want to sit and get away from everything else. As with the invisible towel and the unopenable mustard and the languidly ladled Frittes and the eleven Met baserunners not driven in, you can’t always get what you want.
But sometimes, you might have heard, you get what you need. I did need a late afternoon at Citi Field yesterday. I needed that, specifically. Not a day at the ballpark in the generic sense and not even one at Shea Stadium (which I can’t ever get). Citi Field was my chosen destination, just as it was in my wintertime ruminations. We’ve finally come together in some sort of spiritual bond.
Citi Field can be a stupid place. But it’s my stupid place.
by Greg Prince on 30 May 2015 9:20 am Early on, it was the kind of game you watched with eyes wide open. By the time the postgame show rolled around, you didn’t mind that you were nodding off to the sounds of Gary Apple and Nelson Figueroa telling you what went wrong. You already knew what went wrong. The Mets didn’t hit enough and Matt Harvey was all too human.
We knew the Mets don’t hit enough. We didn’t think Matt Harvey was just another person, let alone just another ballplayer. What fun is that? Do regular ballplayers get invited onto The Daily Show for a full segment of fawning? Do regular ballplayers motivate lovely young ladies to blow off their senior prom because Harvey Day is the true social event of the spring? Do regular ballplayers encourage in-house marketers to construct a Matt Kave?
Do regular ballplayers take the mound in the top of the first as Matt Harvey did on Friday night and strike out three Marlins on ten pitches?
That’s Matt Harvey. He’s not just another ballplayer. He’s not instinctively eligible for “The If Told You Blues,” the ones whose refrain exists to buck you up when you’re moping the Mets haven’t been ten games over .500 in a month; the Mets are no longer in first place; the Mets no longer have a mammoth lead over the Nationals; the Mets have to scuffle for a Wild Card like almost everybody else; the Mets are getting by extraordinarily well in light of all the Mets they are missing. (Have you noticed no Met ever comes off a disabled list? I think George Theodore is still on the 60-day.)
“If I Told You” imagines you’re Rip Van Winkle emerging from a Hot Stove snooze just now finding out where the Mets are. But you haven’t been sleeping. You’ve been up and around and experienced an adrenaline shot of highs and you’ve developed an allergic reaction to the lows, which doctors would identify as simple regression to the mean, take two deGroms and call me in the morning. Not everybody responds so ideally.
And it’s totally tough to take a dose of “If I Told You” at the end of a Harvey Day in which not every inning he worked resembled the first…or the second…or the third. Through three, Matt Harvey was perfect. Through three, I think it’s fair to say we weren’t wondering if maybe Matt had the stuff and the demeanor (and the opponent) to throw a perfect game. I think it’s fair to say we were expecting it.
Expect nothing, Mets fans, not even Matt Harvey excelling while Matt Harvey excels. The fourth inning went totally awry. A bunt single to and steal by Dee Gordon, who was born to be a Miami Marlin, it turns out. A walk to Martin Prado. A flyout of Giancarlo Stanton, because it’s Stanton you worry about so you’re lulled into thinking, “OK, no-hitter’s gone, but the real fun is watching a master like Harvey disentangle himself from what to other pitchers would be a jam, but for Harvey is a mere bag of shells — and he just got Stanton to fly out!”
Then Justin Bour homers and it’s 3-0, Marlins, and your world is never again the same, at least not on Friday night. You’re pretty sure you hear that across Harvey’s career (which you forget hasn’t been that long) he’s given up only one three-run homer, to Cody Ross. You remember Ross’s home run. You couldn’t believe it then. You can’t believe it now. Who wants to believe anything that evokes Cody Ross?
The Mets get a run back when Lucas Duda blasts a solo job. The Marlins find another run, somehow. Curtis Granderson cuts their enhanced lead with a solo shot. In the ninth, the Mets put on the trappings of a game-tying rally except for the game-tying part. They come up short and lose, 4-3. Harvey has no doubt tried his best but not pitched his best, despite striking out eleven and walking only one in eight innings. Subtract the fourth and he’s a winning pitcher. Subtract the last seventeen games of Septembers 2007 and 2008 and think of the pennants we might have flown.
If I told you that after ten starts, one of the Mets’ key pitchers would be 5-3 with an ERA just a bit over three — and you didn’t ask “which one?” — you would have been as happy as you’d have conceivably been with 27-22 and no further questions. But knowing it’s Matt Harvey…and knowing how Matt Harvey started 2015…and balancing who Matt Harvey is with what Matt Harvey went through to get back to 2015…
You know, if it’s Matt Harvey and not just a hypothetical Mets starter, 5-3 and an ERA of 3.11 doesn’t do it for you on any level, even if you rightfully dismiss won-lost records and figure the earned run average might be puffed up by one really bad start in Pittsburgh. That really bad start came before this one. Then there was this one, which left him with a record comparable to Dan Haren (5-2, 3.03), who beat the Mets on Friday night. Nothing wrong with Dan Haren, nothing at all, but a) wasn’t Dan Haren threatening to retire over the winter? and b) nobody not named Max, Madison or Clayton is supposed to compare with Matt Harvey.
I stirred a few moments after drifting off during the postgame show. I saw Matt surrounded by reporters. He was trying to articulate what went wrong. He wasn’t much more encouraging than he was enlightening with an enraptured Jon Stewart the night before. It was a bad pitch to Bour, but otherwise, “The big thing was trying to keep the pitch count down and go as long as we could. I was happy that I got to eight innings and kind of kept the game somewhat within reach.”
That sentiment is not unreasonable. But it was unHarveylike. It’s what other pitchers say. The whole idea is that Matt Harvey is not just another pitcher.
I hope that’s more than just an idea.
by Jason Fry on 28 May 2015 1:52 am I first laid eyes on Noah Syndergaard in July 2013, when he pitched for the USA in the All-Star Futures Game at Citi Field. (His opponent: Rafael Montero.) The Futures Game was lightly attended, and I wound up sitting with my pal Will in the luxe seats, the ones with padding where people will bring you Shake Shack. Unfortunately, it was also approximately 9 billion degrees; I remember little about the day except a hazy dread that I was liquefying and would vanish into a puddle beneath my fancy seat.
After that Syndergaard was in Las Vegas, where the organizational guys said he had things to learn while the advanced stats suggested what he should learn was not to pay attention to PCL numbers. He didn’t get a September callup, which was one of those Big Deal in New York stories. Then he showed he was more than ready this year. He came up and sure doesn’t look like he’s leaving any time soon.
Syndergaard annihilated the Phillies today, sending high-90s heat in on their hands and away across the outer edges of the plate and mixing in a devious, borderline cruel curve and a serviceable change-up. He got all the help he’d need from Lucas Duda, who hit two more laser-beam home runs to continue his recent barrage; the rejuvenated Michael Cuddyer, who cracked a long drive into the second deck; and himself.
Duda’s first home run was a bolt off Phillie ham-n-egger Sean O’Sullivan that left the ballpark in approximately a tenth of a second; his second, also off the luckless O’Sullivan, nearly nailed a hapless Philadelphia reliever minding his own business in the bullpen. Yet it was Syndergaard who was the Mets’ most impressive slugger.
Syndergaard went 3-for-3, but nobody was talking about his two singles. What grabbed the attention, and justifiably so, was his fourth-inning blast off O’Sullivan. It was a pretty good pitch, actually — a fastball that tailed away over the outside of the plate. It didn’t matter — Syndergaard extended his long arms and drove it to the opposite field, just left of the apple 430 feet away. It was the kind of home run you take notice of no matter who hits it.
Syndergaard is just 22 and looks like he’s about 15, with a certain deer-in-the-headlights expression. It’s easy to forget that he’s 6′ 7″ and 245 pounds. Well, easy to forget from the couch: I guarantee opposing hitters are well aware, particularly since he can throw 100 miles an hour.
His hitting prowess was buzzworthy before he reached New York too — he hit .270 in the minors, and his final Las Vegas start (this year? ever?) was a 3-for-4 day with another mammoth homer.
Which got me thinking about the history of Mets’ pitchers as hitters.
The annals aren’t particularly glittering. The first home run hit by a Mets pitcher was a grand slam off the bat of Carlton Willey on July 15, 1963, helping beat Ken Johnson and the Colt .45’s. Lest fans get any ideas, Willey hit .111 that year. Jay Hook was a decent hitter among early Met hurlers, but couldn’t pitch. Galen Cisco, Al Jackson and Bob Shaw acquitted themselves reasonably well with the bat in the team’s early days, as did Don Cardwell.
Tom Seaver gets high marks as a hitter, but mostly that’s because he had a bit of power — Seaver hit .154 for his career but did have 12 home runs, and was good for nine or 10 RBIs a year. Dwight Gooden was a better hitter — he hit .197 as a Met, with eight homers, which makes you imagine what he could have done if allowed to hit from his natural side.
From the later years, Craig Swan could hit a bit, as could Hank Webb and Ray Sadecki. Walt Terrell broke in with a bang, hitting .182 with three homers in ’83, but then hit .080 the next year. Jason Isringhausen hit .255 with two homers in ’93. Rick Aguilera could hit, as could Sid Fernandez. Rick Reed wasn’t inept with the bat; neither was R.A. Dickey or T@m Gl@v!ne.
Among current Met hurlers, Matt Harvey‘s still living off memories of his big-league debut and his reputation as a mean hombre — he’s a career .129 hitter. Jacob deGrom‘s better, at .224 for his career. Jon Niese‘s career average is an uninspiring .155, but he’s hit over .200 three of the last four seasons.
The best years by a Met pitcher? George Stone hit .271 in 48 at-bats in ’72, driving in five. (Stone was a career .212 hitter.) But Mike Hampton was better: He didn’t hit a home run in 2000, but he lived up to his billing as a hitter, with 10 RBIs and a .274 average. Hampton’s career mark as a hitter was .246 with 16 homers, including seven for Colorado and its fine schools in 2001.
Can Syndergaard be better than that? The specter of Walt Terrell suggests not getting too excited. But it’s hard not to dream big when you see a 22-year-old kid drive a ball 430 feet to the opposite field. That stuff’s fun. But then right now everything Noah Syndergaard does is fun.
by Greg Prince on 26 May 2015 11:28 pm I love those interludes when a given Met can do no wrong. Wilmer Flores is in smack in the midst of one of them right now. It is his golden hour.
Nobody’s calling him a stiff after the last two games against the Phillies. I still think he looks stiff in the field, but has he done anything fatal with his glove in these last 36 hours? I haven’t noticed it. I’ve noticed the three-run homer that won Monday’s game, the sac fly that tied Tuesday’s game in the eighth and the line drive that won Tuesday’s game in the tenth.
Plus there’s Mark Simon writing up data and observation that says you could do worse for a defensive shortstop, which, let’s face it, is about as Andreltonian a scouting report as you’ll ever get on this kid.
It’s the sunny side of the street, no clouds allowed, when you’re on a winning streak, even a tiny winning streak of the two-game variety. Let us hail Wilmer’s minimally competent glove! Let us toast Wilmer’s fiery bat! Let us be very nice to that very nice young man!
And let us remember Jacob deGrom, who was about as unbeatable as unbeatable could be at Citi Field, which is his thing. The only detriment that can do deGrom in at home is the hook and the pen. I saw it for myself last September. I saw it again on TV tonight. I know we’re preserve arms for the future, and I don’t disagree with the impulse, but somehow you knew the unburied Phillies would kick up just enough dirt to no-decision deGrom once he exited in the eighth.
Thankfully the Phillies are the Phillies and Jeurys Familia isn’t the rest of the relievers and Wilmer Flores…we’re thankful for Wilmer Flores?
Sure, why not?
A tip of the walkoff cap, too, to Charles Prince and his admonition from our brief late-game conversation.
Dad from hospital: “How’s the game going?”
Me: “They’re losing.”
Dad: “Tell the Mets to buck up.”
Shortly thereafter, tie score. Not long after that, a friend whose father is in the midst of a similar battle offered hope that “their shared trajectories resemble a frozen rope off of Wilmer Flores’s bat”. That was after Wilmer’s sac fly tied it but before Wilmer’s line drive won it. Once that happened, we agreed we wanted to chip in and send Dr. Flores to medical school.
He’s making us all feel better.
by Jason Fry on 26 May 2015 1:30 am It’s an odd feeling when you’re away from your team and they’re doing poorly. You’re a bit relieved, because in your normal life you’d have flushed three hours down the drain but instead you get the bad news via a glance at a phone, paper or distant TV and then get on with whatever it is you’re doing instead. But hot on the heels of that comes guilt: You’re AWOL, a member of the faithful not pulling your weight, and someday some yet-to-be-revealed law of physics may establish what that little voice in your head keeps saying, which is that what’s gone wrong is, in fact, your fault.
I left early Thursday for Star Wars Weekends down in Orlando. This isn’t always bad news for the Mets — I was in the same place when Johan Santana no-hit the Cardinals, a happening I took in via At Bat while on rollercoasters and ferries and finally in the ESPN Club on the boardwalk. Thursday Jacob deGrom was Johanesque in dismantling those same Cardinals (or, more properly, other Cardinals), but nothing else went right for the Mets: They got mauled in Pittsburgh and introduced to the condition “spinal stenosis,” crawling back home Sunday about the same time I did. But even down in the Happiest Place on Earth the Mets’ misery was inescapable: On Saturday night I had a drink in the Boardwalk Inn’s lounge before heading out to dinner with Joshua, and noticed one guy at the bar who was practically radiating depression. When I drew closer to grab the bartender’s attention, I heard him talking about spinal stenosis and Dilson Herrera‘s finger and Wilmer Flores‘s errors, and it all made sense. As a Met fan, he’d brought his own little black cloud.
Anyway, back to New York I came. My parents are visiting this week, helping with the usual mess of half-conceived household projects and newly discovered disasters we foist upon them every few months. For Memorial Day Emily and I had decreed an outing to Citi Field. It would be my folks’ first — long-overdue compensation for having made me a Mets fan.
Well, unless it turned out to be revenge for saddling me with this mostly doomed obsession. The current Mets aren’t good — perhaps you’ve noticed — but we decided to hope for the best. They were playing the Phillies, after all, and even if things went poorly we’d get a day at the ballpark and eat at El Verano Taqueria, which is pretty good even when nothing else is.
As it turned out, the day was splendid and so were the Mets. They handled the Memorial Day observances with aplomb — I’m a bit suspicious of military rah-rah in ballparks these days, but the parachute jumpers from West Point were admirably precise, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was superbly rendered and the moment of silence for the fallen was presented and received with somber dignity.
I was curious to see if my folks would like the park, and they did. It’s interesting seeing a regular haunt through someone else’s eyes: My parents keep up with the Mets and this blog while not being diehards (it’s tough to be one in central Virginia), and they thought Citi Field was well-constructed and pleasant, with nice architectural touches and good food. Would they have changed their minds if lectured about the imbalance between Dodgers’ and Giants’ touches, the problems of sight lines and the late arrival of Mets images? Perhaps, but it’s also possible that some of these things are agate-type problems blown up to banner headlines by those of us for whom there is no small matter connected to the Mets.
It was a nice day and the Mets won, powered by a laser-beam home run from Lucas Duda, a convincing blast from not-dead-after-all Michael Cuddyer and a decisive corner-finder from Flores. It was a nice day and the Mets won. That’s more than enough for any day.
by Greg Prince on 24 May 2015 11:28 pm A 9-1 game in Pittsburgh. It sounded familiar. It should have. It was the score and scene of the first game the Mets ever won.
Oh, those Original Mets. Such infamy is attached to their shortcomings, but when the Mets played that first 9-1 game in Pittsburgh on April 23, 1962, and upped their record to 1-9, they proved a tough time-lapse act to follow.
Fifty-three years, one month and one day later, the Mets returned to Pittsburgh and participated in another 9-1 game against the Pirates. But it came out all wrong, and no wonder. They had the wrong personnel going for them.
The starting pitcher on 4/23/1962: Jay Hook, who scattered five hits for the complete game victory.
The starting pitcher on 5/24/2015: Jon Niese, who allowed eleven baserunners in less than five innings.
Mets starter you’d rather have? Jay Hook.
The top of the order on 4/23/1962: Felix Mantilla and Elio Chacon, who combined for six hits, four runs and three RBIs.
The top of the order on 5/24/2015: Curtis Granderson and Wilmer Flores, who combined for one hit and one RBI.
Players you’d rather have batting one and two for the Mets? Felix Mantilla and Elio Chacon.
Coming off the bench on 4/23/1962: Bobby Gene Smith and Gil Hodges, who collected three hits between them.
Coming off the bench on 5/24/2015: Eric Campbell, Johnny Monell and Kevin Plawecki, who went a collective 0-for-3.
The stronger Met reserves? Bobby Gene Smith and Gil Hodges.
On April 23, 1962, the Mets swung successfully versus four Pirate pitchers. Two of them — Tom Sturdivant and Jack Lamabe — would eventually join the Mets. A third — Harvey Haddix — was a future Mets pitching coach.
On May 24, 2015, Francisco Liriano struck out a dozen Mets in six innings. And the Pirates are welcome to Jon Niese anytime they’d like him.
Casey Stengel’s team was dead in the water pretty much from the word go in 1962, but he kept everybody’s spirits high no matter how many leagues under the sea they plunged.
Terry Collins’s team looked great from the word go in 2015. Sunday, after a three-game sweep at the hands of the Pirates, he felt compelled to declare, “We are not dead. We’re not dead in the water by any stretch of the imagination.” Not just “not dead,” mind you, but “not dead in the water”.
Whose spirits wouldn’t be high after that kind of pep talk?
Collins is right in theory. His Mets have already achieved 60% of the win total Stengel’s Mets managed across an entire year. They’re over .500 and statistically in the thick of a playoff battle.
But with Lucas Duda grabbing his hamstring, Juan Lagares sore in two spots, no kind of depth in evidence and momentum having disappeared, let’s just say if you find a horse named Dead In The Water running at Belmont this week, bet on him.
Bet on him before you bet on these Mets as currently constituted.
***
Vignette that maybe you had to be there for, but here goes…
Stephanie and I were driving home from visiting my father in the hospital. She noticed a robin perched in a tree for the second time today. When she saw the first one, when we were on our way up to see Dad, I broke into a jaunty chorus of “Rockin’ Robin” (because I’m adorable that way around my wife). When the second robin came into view, the radio was playing “All Right Now” by Free, a song I associate with trips around the bases by third baseman David Wright. They’d play it for him at Shea when he hit home runs…when he used to hit home runs, I added with a bit of bite…when he used to play, I felt necessary to emphasize.
I didn’t recall “Rockin’ Robin” ever playing for Robin Ventura, I said, but I was happy to compare and contrast third basemen and their times. “Remember how when Robin Ventura hit the grand slam single and I tackled you?” I asked, as I do about once a year. Stephanie, true to form, did not. “You sure I was there?” she replied sweetly. The fact that I hold tight to all kinds of mental minutiae (baseball and otherwise) while she efficiently purges nonessential data is a running gag with us.
Yes, I said, you were there. I recounted how once that ball left Shea on October 17, 1999, merely whooping and screaming and whatnot wasn’t enough. I saw her there on the floor, in front of the TV where we’d been watching that 3-3 tie in the 15th inning (trying to get close enough to the screen to help, I suppose), and I just let myself lunge all over her. Never did it before, never did it again.
In the present, “All Right Now” was still on the radio. David Wright was still on the disabled list, but now subject to the whims of a malady few of us had heard of until the day before. All of us Mets fans had earned medical degrees overnight and were diagnosing the worst spinal stenosis had to offer, even though all of us Mets fans are talking out our ascots. Nevertheless, no Wright; several third base options, none of them remotely adequate. The robin was long gone from our line of sight, but I couldn’t stop myself from framing Ventura’s moment in the context of Wright’s absence.
“Man,” I said to Stephanie, “that was when Mets third basemen came through. That was when the Mets came through. What a fun team that was. You remember that team, don’t you?”
She did.
Sometime in April I thought we were in another one of those years, with another one of those teams. Maybe we were then. Maybe we will be again. We are decidedly not now.
I miss those 1999 Mets, but not nearly as much as I miss those 2015 Mets.
***
Bless each and every one of you who — whether in the comments section or through other means — has sent best wishes, hopes, prayers and encouragement to my family after I shared what’s going on with my father. It means a ton to me.
Dad’s recovery continues apace, even as the Mets’ weekend foibles unfolded in the background on the hospital room TV. There was a brief juncture in the middle of Sunday afternoon when the game had everybody’s attention. Flores had driven in the tying run, the bases were loaded…and attention scattered. A couple of hours and four disappointing innings later, Florence, my father’s longtime significant other, asked “how’d they do?”
Not good, I said.
“But they had the bases loaded!” she said, with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. “They still couldn’t do anything?”
That might have been the time to invoke Robin Ventura. Or activate him.
by Greg Prince on 23 May 2015 11:11 pm I’m one of the few Mets fans to have had an uplifting Harvey Day Saturday. You might say I had a Charlie Day.
Charlie’s my father. Charles, really. Dad to me. Dad doesn’t care about baseball, which is why he doesn’t show up often in these pages. But this week Dad has been front and center in my thoughts because on Wednesday something was found on a CAT scan that necessitated his being hospitalized immediately and being operated on in an extraordinarily serious manner by Friday.
How did he come through it? Let’s just say I have a hunch Charles Prince will be playing rehab games before David Wright and his stenosis are cleared again for a single baseball activity.
This is Bonnie Franklin territory: one day at a time. Yet the first day — Harvey Day in Pittsburgh — was a winner for the Prince home team. My dad was about as recovered as a person could ask for during his first full day of recovery from what amounted to life-saving surgery. What he had removed from his brain you shouldn’t know from. What he’ll be going through from here on out you shouldn’t know from. But you should know from championship form. We haven’t seen any in the Metsian sense since 1986; I’m seeing it this weekend from my 86-year-old father.
I also saw the Mets get Pirated on the TV in his hospital room, albeit with the sound mostly down and my attention mostly diverted. I tuned in to SNY while he was napping. We watched the last couple of innings of the 8-2 defeat together. I’m tempted to call the game a disaster. I know it was in competitive terms.
Truth be told, though, I’m relatively happy, even with our ace’s best stuff having last been seen floating somewhere between the Allegheny and the Monongahela. My father eked out his first post-op win. Matt Harvey will have another day.
by Greg Prince on 22 May 2015 10:56 pm The Mets played a lame, losing game in Pittsburgh Friday night. I won’t argue the point or by any means embrace the result. But I truly enjoyed watching young, strong Noah Syndergaard throw baseballs past as many Pirates as he could. And if I didn’t enjoy watching young, strong Gerrit Cole throw baseballs past as many Mets as he could, I can’t say I didn’t admire the way he stayed in command and hit his spots. Their kid’s been at it on this level a little longer than our kid. Cole’s kept getting better. Noah will do the same.
Come back for a rematch soon, boys. You’re encouraging for the future and you’re good for the sport. Some nights, if a fan can’t have a win, he’ll relish the pulsating parts of the process.
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