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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 22 July 2012 2:09 am “This is the bad time.”
—Henry Hill, GoodFellas
If I may use the present tense while it’s still technically valid, Miguel Batista doesn’t so much throw pitches for the New York Mets as he contemplates them. Not that any Mets fan necessarily wants Miguel Batista to throw his next pitch unless it’s his last, but my goodness that man is Zen between ball one and ball two, never mind the spiritual journey he takes between ball two and ball three.
I’m sure he’s read Leaves of Grass, but I could swear I saw him staring at blades of grass.
Oh, and then came ball four, twenty or thirty minutes after ball three.
The theme of this series thus far (all seven hours and three minutes of it) seems to be it was slow, but at least it was painful. That would pretty well sum up the 81 pitches Batista contemplated in the first, second and third innings, almost none of them effective, eight of them directly producing baserunners, four of them turning into runs, none of them making a case for the present tense to remain a valid tense for Miguel Batista and the New York Mets.
***
“Tick. Tick. Tick. That’s the sound of your life running out.”
—Jordan Chase to his victims, Dexter, Season Five
Is there any reason think the Mets’ season isn’t on the brink of plunging into its traditional final-third abyss? In All The President’s Men, Deep Throat advised, “Follow the money.” At Citi Field, you could simply follow the bouncing pitchers Saturday and discern how tenuous this .500 team’s competitive standing has become.
One press release and five public address announcements said all you needed to know.
1) The New York Mets today announced the team placed lefthanded pitcher Johan Santana on the 15-Day Disabled List with a right ankle sprain.
2) …and batting ninth and pitching, Number Forty-Seven, Miguel Batista.
3) Now pitching and batting ninth for the Mets, Number Fifty-Three, Jeremy Hefner.
4) …and pitching and batting fifth for the Mets, Number Sixty-Six, Josh Edgin.
5) Now pitching and batting fifth for the Mets, Number Forty, Tim Byrdak.
6) …and pitching and batting seventh, Number Forty-Three, R.A. Dickey.
That’s four pitching changes, each more desperate than the one before it, thanks to the Hail Mary nature of starting Batista. And that bland pronouncement about Friday night’s starter? That seemed to cast a pall on everybody who toes a rubber for a living.
Santana was placed on the DL before the game for Johankle reasons because there’s apparently nothing medically wrong with his shoulder and the Mets couldn’t claim the vapors, the blues or a bad case of lovin’ you as an acceptable reason to shelve him. Maybe the two-week old mishap is throwing his motion out of whack. Something sure is. For the record, Johan says he could keep pitching through his morass. But maybe that’s just the vapors talking.
With Johan cleared from the roster to make room for Hefner, the rest of the available staff responded as if they couldn’t wait to get a league-approved blow themselves. Not a single Mets pitcher retired the first three batters he faced upon entering Saturday’s game. The only Met who threw a one-two-three inning against Los Angeles was Batista, in the second, which was after he allowed a run in the first and before he permitted three in the third, all with two out.
The Dodgers batted seventeen times before the Mets could get to the bottom of their own order. By the time they got there, they wouldn’t let Batista bat. It was the second consecutive game in which the Mets’ starting pitcher never made it to the plate.
Hefner gave up a run in the fourth with two out and a run in the fifth with two out, leaving the Mets behind, 6-2. They endured the indignity of Chris Capuano for seven innings and trailed him, 6-3, upon his exit. The ballpark was more subdued than angry. Batista was long gone and Jason Bay had snuck an RBI single through a friendly hole many frames before and then had the good sense to be double-switched out of the game at some point because it’s not like Jason Bay is indispensable to the cause of a team trying to forge a comeback. So with Batista out and Bay out, there was nobody left worth getting riled up toward.
Subdued, with an undercurrent of mournful. That was Citi Field after seven innings, even with Edgardo Alfonzo bobbleheads tucked safely under seats.
 We Edgardo Alfonzo acolytes not only turned out in droves to accept our Fonzie bobbleheads, we dressed for the occasion as well. Then two Met runs in the eighth, which was exciting. And Dickey in the ninth, which was downright thrilling. It’s always thrilling to see a starting pitcher thrust into any role that’s out of the ordinary. It says somebody seems serious about winning a game in a way not starting Daniel Murphy (four hits Friday night, immense pinch-triple Saturday afternoon) or Jordany Valdespin (the Human Thunderbolt Friday night, pinch-bunt instigator Saturday afternoon) doesn’t.
It was beautiful the way “The Imperial March” blared and R.A. materialized fully formed on the mound to start the ninth. Like Batista in the first, Hefner in the fourth and Edgin in the sixth, Dickey retired the first two batters he faced. But when Dickey did it, mourning became electric. Citi Field was juiced. Just the sight of our savior coming down from the mountain to keep us within 6-5 brightened our late afternoon. He got Kemp. He got Ethier. And if he’d gotten a call from James Hoye, he might have gotten out of the ninth unscathed, sending a charge through his teammates and inspiring them to short out Kenley Jansen for at least one necessary run in the bottom of the inning…maybe two!
But Dickey didn’t get a call — the way the Mets can’t ever get what they want lately — and Loney singled and Uribe homered and it was 8-5.
You couldn’t blame the knuckleball starter turned desperation reliever for not rescuing 24 men stranded up a creek and a season on the brink. But it would have been beautiful if he had.
***
“The Mets got two runners on in the ninth, but couldn’t get over the hump, and went down to their 12th straight defeat. That was to be a Met pattern for their early years. They would get themselves into a seemingly hopeless position, only to rise up off the mat to stage a desperate rally, which invariably fell just short. In their 120 losses, the Mets brought the tying run to the plate in the last inning 56 times. Thirty-nine of their losses were by a single run. ‘He concedes defeat almost daily,’ Robert Teague wrote of the Met fan, ‘but only after the very last Met has been retired.’”
—William Ryczek, The Amazin’ Mets, 1962-1969
Scenes from a Polo Grounds homestand, from just about this time of year, 50 years ago:
• On July 7, 1962, trailing the Cardinals, 3-2, Marv Throneberry tripled with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Gene Woodling grounded out to end the game with the potential tying run on third.
• On July 12, trailing the Dodgers, 3-0, Sammy Taylor walked with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Cliff Cook was then hit by a pitch. Jim Hickman, representing the potential tying run, grounded out to end the game.
• On July 13, the Mets came to bat in the bottom of the eighth, tied at three with the Dodgers. Woodling led off with a triple against Don Drysdale. Hickman went into run. Chris Cannizzaro struck out. Felix Mantilla tapped to Drysdale, who got Hickman at the plate. Throneberry struck out. Al Jackson gave up a leadoff home run in the top of the ninth to Ron Fairly. The Mets went down in order in the bottom of the inning to lose, 5-4.
• On July 15, the Mets went to the bottom of the eighth down seven runs to the Giants. They scored six and had runners on first and second with two out. Juan Marichal came into relieve. He flied out Rod Kanehl to end the inning. The Mets would lose, 9-8.
• On July 16, the Giants increased their lead from 2-1 to 3-1 on a two-out wild pitch in the top of the ninth from Bob L. Miller. In the bottom of the inning, Charlie Neal and Elio Chacon each walked. Choo Choo Coleman popped out and Hickman struck out. Richie Ashburn singled home Neal and sent Chacon to third as the potential tying run. Kanehl flied out to end the game, the Mets losing, 3-2.
• On July 19, Throneberry broke a 5-5 tie against the Pirates with an RBI single in the bottom of the eighth. With Marv on first and Chacon on third, Jay Hook struck out and Ashburn popped out. Hook started the visitors’ ninth by walking Bill Mazeroski, advancing him to second on a wild pitch and seeing him go to third and then home on two flyball outs. It was tied at six. In the bottom of the ninth, Hickman singled with one out but was caught stealing second. The game went to the tenth, where Hook — still pitching — surrendered a leadoff home run to Bob Skinner. In the bottom of the tenth, after Kanehl flied out and Neal fouled out to the catcher, Chacon doubled and Throneberry was intentionally walked. With the tying and winning runs on base, Joe Christopher flied to center. The Mets lost, 7-6.
On July 21, 2012, the Mets trailed, 8-5, in the bottom of the ninth against Dodger closer Kenley Jansen. After Lucas Duda fouled out and Ruben Tejada flied out, Andres Torres and David Wright walked. Scott Hairston then struck out to end the game.
This followed the 7-6 loss of July 20, when the potential winning run, Torres, popped up with two out…two days after July 18, when the Mets trailed the Nationals, 4-1, in the ninth, before Wright homered to lead off, Ike Davis and Duda each struck out, Bay homered and Valdespin struck out to end the game in a Met loss, 4-3…and that happened on the heels of July 17, which was when Valdespin’s three-run pinch homer converted a 2-0 deficit in the top of the ninth into a 3-2 lead, before a Nationals run tied the score in the bottom of the ninth, which was before Josh Thole put the Mets in front, 4-3, in the top of the tenth, which was before the Nationals scored two to win it, 5-4, the last of the runs coming on a wild pitch Thole couldn’t block.
All of which is to say chronically battling back and falling short doesn’t work any better now than it did a half-century ago.
by Greg Prince on 21 July 2012 2:33 am We didn’t miss winning Friday night’s ballgame by much. Another inch or so batwise, and either Wright or Davis gets much more than a sacrifice fly in the first and we’re tied at three. The pitcher’s glove that deflects Jerry Hairston’s grounder away from Ruben Tejada keeps a runner off base in advance of Luis Cruz’s first-ever home run in the third. And a more generous, possibly more accurate call at second by the revered Jim Joyce when Andre Ethier was probably tagged out by Daniel Murphy (who did his job a helluva lot better than Josh Thole) means a runner who becomes a run is erased. Oh, and throw in however close Terry Collins came to writing VALDESPIN on his lineup card but failed to as another measurement by which a game of inches inched into the Dodgers’ column.
But even had the Mets gotten the microbreaks they needed to effect a grand-scale comeback or prevent the need for anything overly dramatic, a theoretical win against L.A. wouldn’t have felt free-and-clear fabulous, not when Johan Santana was pitching as he was pitching.
Dreadful was how he was pitching. As dreadful as he’s pitched in a Mets uniform, probably, and that includes those horrible Yankee Stadium starts and the last two games when he also surrendered six earned runs. Those six-packs weren’t as resolutely flat as this one. You could kind of blame the ankle tripping him up against the Cubs at Citi Field right before the All-Star break and note that until C.B. Bucknor brought his inept magic to bear in Atlanta he was doing pretty well at Turner Field.
Nothing, however, was doing here against the Dodgers. The game of inches — even the inches to which Johan contributed with his glove on the “other” Hairston’s ball — didn’t reflect the miles that were missing from his pitches, particularly that home run to Cruz. Changeup or not, a Johan Santana delivery at 73 MPH, by SNY’s reckoning, is too slow to be believed or to be of any use. No wonder Luis Cruz looked like Matt Kemp…who, unfortunately, looked a lot like Matt Kemp when he took Johan over the wall on another pitch that appeared thrown in Super Slo Mo.
One pet theory of mine is Johan could have pitched better, but he was showing solidarity with Miguel Batista in advance of the kind of outing we all expect Saturday. Another wishful thought is Johan wanted to boost his bullpen’s confidence by setting the bar low and then giving them plenty of innings in which to stretch out. What a perfect teammate he is! But no, I’m pretty sure Johan’s night of misery was genuinely unintentionally wrought. That was really and truly bad pitching, and the postgame interrogations of Collins and Santana didn’t yield much in the way of understanding beyond “something’s wrong” and “we’ll try to figure it out.”
One explanation I will not accept is the 134 pitches thrown seven weeks earlier were lethal. Hogwash. As the handy chart printed here illustrates, three starts after Santana’s nine innings of no-hit, shutout ball versus the Cardinals on June 1, Johan threw six innings of four-hit, shutout ball against the Orioles; the start after that, it was six innings of five-hit, two-run ball dropped on the Cubs, blemished only by the evil Joe Mather; the start after that, these very Dodgers — or a Kempless, Ethierless facsimile — were subject to eight innings of three-hit, shutout ball. Santana’s had his downs since the night of The First No-Hitter In New York Mets History, but he crafted several legitimate ups along the way.
If something’s wrong, it isn’t from an extra 15 to 20 pitches seven weeks ago only now truly getting the best of him. I’d have bought it if the lousy start against the Yankees and the lousy start against the Rays had been followed by this lousy start. But he looked very good twice, pretty darn good (save for Mather) once and good enough to have escaped, save for ankles and Bucknors, another two times.
But if you’d like to use 134 pitches as your crutch (and I’m not a doctor, athletic trainer or pitching coach, I just play one on Faith and Fear, so how would I know what’s right and what’s wrong?) and tell me oh dear, that extra inning worth of exertion was too much strain for the surgically repaired shoulder, there goes the man’s career, there goes our season and present irrefutable evidence to support your assertion, I’d have nothing to say except what Lyndon Johnson had to say in 1963 in response to fears that he’d expend too much political capital too early in his unforeseen presidency if he attempted to push controversial civil rights legislation through a recalcitrant Congress:
“Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”
Except replace “the presidency” with “a great pitcher” and switch out “controversial civil rights legislation” for “long dreamed of franchise milestone whose fruition is as cherished in its existence as it was in fantasy”.
He’s Johan. He’ll figure it out.
If you need me for anything else, I’ll be in 405 this afternoon, cradling Edgardo Alfonzo’s bobblehead so it doesn’t fly off with Miguel Batista’s real one. Come say hi if you’re in the vicinity. I’ll be wearing No. 13 and loudly inquiring of Terry, should his lineup be yet again lacking the Human Thunderbolt, “Well, what the hell’s Jordany Valdespin for?”
by Greg Prince on 20 July 2012 5:17 pm They sold the jerseys, they sold the dirt, they sold replicas of the tickets they didn’t sell…the Mets were so anxious to cash in on Johan Santana’s no-hitter that they even put the game-used shortstop up for sale! Didn’t necessarily think there’d be any takers, but the Orioles just had to have a piece of history and asked the Mets how much it would take to install Omar Quintanilla at Camden Yards as a reminder of that historic night at Citi Field. The answer was “cash considerations,” and the Orioles agreed. Now, seven weeks after the blessed event, one-tenth of the players who secured the First No-Hitter In New York Mets History have been shipped to Baltimore.
Is nothing sacred?
by Greg Prince on 19 July 2012 6:40 pm That’s what All-Stars are for, eh? One belts two homers, each with a man or more on, and the other pitches fairly deep if not particularly stylishly — but it’s been established we don’t care about style points when wins are going wanting.
And boy have we been wanting a win for the longest time.
The last time David Wright and R.A. Dickey (and, come to think of it, Terry Collins) had anything to do with a victory, it was in Kansas City for a game that the ensuing week-plus suggested would be free of long-term Met implications. The Mets likely won’t have to concern themselves with home-field advantage for the World Series. They had to concern themselves with not coming home on their shield after losing the first five on this just-finished, still-disastrous road trip, their last six overall.
How long had it been since the Mets won a game? It had been so long that the last guy to win one has since had season-ending surgery. Since Dillon Gee weaved wove his twelve-day-old magic on the Cubs, the Mets bullpen and other culprits performed season-ending surgery on the Mets’ chances…unless you choose to believe that no season is over until it’s over, which is all well and good, particularly if you’ve been charmed by these heretofore never-say-die Mets.
I sure was that night against Philadelphia when David and Daniel and Ruben and Jordany and Ike crafted a ninth inning for the ages. That’s when I pledged to take these 2012 Mets seriously. But seriousness turned comedic/tragic and the charm wore off in the days preceding Thursday afternoon’s do-or-die 9-5 deathgrip win in Washington. The losses were bad. The routes to defeat were generally excruciating, what with the Mets almost always coming back about 95% of the way — or coming back 105% of the way and having their schlemiel relievers deduct a 10% vig. However it happened, the result was loss after loss after loss from Atlanta and D.C., after which there’d be lots of courageous talk about the resilience of this team.
It was talk that rang hollow. Resilience is futile when it’s the stuff of moral victories, of waiting until the very last minute to blow it, or creating an extra inning in which to do the blowing. I’ll take a game like the Washington finale, in which there was plenty of, shall we say, “silience” in the form of a 9-1 lead built on the bat of Wright and the battle of Dickey, and then only half a stack of giveback (Byrdak, Ramirez, Edgin and Parnell would make terrible labor negotiators). Never has a sizable margin felt so terrifyingly tiny, but that’s your Met bullpen for ya.
But it hung on, those knowledgeable Nationals fans figured out it was time to leave and the Mets had their one win in a row. If you wanna believe, you gotta start somewhere. You can start with that.
For a little something more uplifting than Met bullpen shenanigans, read what Samuel Annable has been up to with an Ike Davis glove at Two Blue Dice.
by Jason Fry on 18 July 2012 11:41 pm From The Lesser-Known Haikus and Other Poetry of Miguel Batista, Vol. 4:
I throw a baseball
Then it flies the other way
But now much faster
Like Jon Niese the night before, Chris Young was good — one bad pitch in six innings, and he even contributed a double. Yes, that third time through the opposing order was problematic again, but what did you want Terry Collins to do? He had a starter who was cruising, albeit under a small-sample statistical red flag. He could hope Young dodged his own recent trend, or he could turn it over to the bullpen, whose members are nothing but larger-sample statistical red flags. If the Mets hadn’t supported Young with a big goose egg to that point, Adam LaRoche’s two-run homer might have been a blemish, instead of the mistake that ruined the ledger.
With Young having departed and the Mets having cut the Nats’ lead to 2-1, Collins went to the bullpen to bring in … Miguel Batista. Saturday’s starter was as consistent and reliable as he’s been all year, giving up two runs to turn the Mets’ upward struggle into a near vertical face. The Mets fought back in the ninth, with David Wright and Jason Bay (!) smacking home runs, but this time Tyler Clippard struck out Jordany Valdespin, and this once-happy souffle of a season has deflated all the way to one measly game over .500.
Miguel Batista, Jesus. I’ll freely admit he’s become my 2012 Mets scapegoat — that guy who isn’t actually all that important to the fate of the team, but whose presence on the roster leaves me sputtering in fury, beyond the reach of logic or rationality. As with Alex Cora a few years back, Batista seems to be here because he’s a good clubhouse guy, because he has the fabled intangibles that have left rosters clotted with creaky, crappy players for decades.
I don’t doubt that Batista is indeed a mentor and a teacher and all that — I’ve heard it enough times from enough sources. But my goodness — Batista’s intangibles have to be pretty much off the charts to come anywhere near the metronome of suck that are his tangibles. I’d send him packing in a heartbeat for a reliever who was an enormous asshole with nothing to teach anybody and whom nobody liked, provided he could actually pitch.
Oh, and then after the game Batista told the beat reporters he thought the Mets were better than the Nats — best team in baseball, in fact. Is being delusional a useful intangible?
Look, the season’s not over — the Nats will have their own ebb, to use Sandy Alderson’s language from yesterday. (Though boy does Bryce Harper look good. Is this what it was like watching Mickey Mantle before he stepped in that drain?) There’s a second wild card out there. The long-term plan still looks on track. And hey, even if the Mets once again are felled by a second-half swoon, even if they finish under .500, this was the year we got a no-hitter. In March, if you’d offered me 78 or so wins, encouraging years by a number of young players, a resurgence for David Wright, a likeable team, the feeling that better days are ahead and a no-no, I’d have signed on the spot. In blood.
Could I be happier? Well, of course I could be. It’s the nature of being a sports fan to get nice things and then want more. The Mets could go to the playoffs, for instance. But since that dream seems to have once again died in post-All-Star dust, how about the Mets get wherever it is they’re going without broken-down retreads who can’t pitch and say risible things in the clubhouse?
by Jason Fry on 18 July 2012 12:49 am For a minute, let’s turn off the car in the closed garage, unknot the noose and descend the ladder, and drop the plugged-in hair dryer on the floor beside the tub instead of between our knees in the water. We’re going to try to gain some distance, and assess a certain recently concluded debacle from an outsider’s perspective.
OK. You with me?
That really was a heck of a baseball game.
No, really — it was. It was two pretty intriguing games in one, in fact.
The first one was tense and tight and grinding, a staredown between Jon Niese and Ross Detwiler in jungle heat. Niese was in line for the loss because Tyler Moore (who’s been tired of your jokes for many years now) snuck a liner just over the right-field fence, with Scott Hairston poised for a carom that would never arrive. Detwiler was in line for the win chiefly because Hairston kept coming out of his shoes trying to hit pitches that weren’t strikes and Jason Bay was remarkably feeble — even by post-Omarpalooza standards — in his first night back in the lineup. And OK, because Mark Carlson badly blew a fairly obvious call. But then baseball’s umpires seem to do that on a daily basis now.
The second game within a game was something else — wild and unlikely and entertaining before it turned hideous, as I think most of us sensed it was going to. Down 2-0 against the Nationals’ closer, the usually reliable Tyler Clippard, Jordany Valdespin whacked a pinch-hit three-run homer, lifting the Mets from goats to potential heroes in an ear-popping ascension. Say what you will about Valdespin — and when cloaked in anonymity various Mets seem to say a lot — but he has a way of showing up in big spots. (Which is undoubtedly a reflection of a very small sample size, but let’s not be unfun.) The only problem with the uprising against Clippard was the Mets’ horrific bullpen and its shoddy defense would have to collaborate to protect a one-run lead.
Predictably, they couldn’t. Bobby Parnell threw fastballs over the fat part of the plate and the lead was gone. On to extra innings.
Unperturbed, the Mets grabbed the lead again, with Josh Thole guiding a double up the gap. Oh, how resilient of them! The only problem with the uprising against Mike Gonzalez was the Mets’ horrific bullpen and its shoddy defense would have to collaborate to protect a one-run lead.
Predictably, they couldn’t. Tim Byrdak surrendered a one-out triple to Bryce Harper (no little dunker in front of a sliding Vinny Rottino this time) for a tie game, the Mets walked the bases full, Adam LaRoche grounded into a fielder’s choice to give New York a puncher’s chance at escaping to an 11th inning … and Pedro Beato uncorked a wild pitch to lose.
Well, of course he did.
This was the flipside of six weeks ago: Then Valdespin led a late comeback and the defense (mostly Jordany himself, playing shortstop for probably the last time ever) did horrible, horrible things that made you half-wish the hitters had just expired quietly. Tonight, the defense was blameless, but the bullpen was spectacularly awful, which led to the same result. It was Death by Unga Bunga, to quote the terrible old joke understood by any baseball fan who’s seen an unexpected late rally morph into a demoralizing disaster.
I don’t know what to say. This feels exactly like the last three years, with the Mets rounding the halfway point looking tough and gritty and resilient and all those other things we reflexively say about teams that win more often than they lose, then quickly going into a death spiral that makes all those good feelings distant memories by the time October mercifully arrives and it’s time to watch other teams play in the playoffs.
I guess one thing to say is that it’s pretty hard to disagree with Sandy Alderson that the bullpen is what most needs fixing. But what kind of fix is possible when everything is broken? Soon after this one ended, I tweeted that I’d be in favor of releasing the whole lot of them, which should have sounded crazier than it did. Terry Collins told the assembled reporters that he was sticking with Parnell and Byrdak because “they’re the ones who got us here,” but where exactly is here? It’s two ticks over .500. Here isn’t a place any of us want to be.
Answers? Ya got me. Jon Rauch has been better on Twitter than he’s been on the mound. Frank Francisco gave us typical closer nightmares. Ramon Ramirez was the only reliever who was blameless tonight, and he’s been mostly awful. We all wanted Josh Edgin, we got him, and now he’s got an ERA over 10. We wanted Beato back, and he managed to lose tonight’s game in horrifying, Kenny Rogersesque fashion. Miguel Batista didn’t have a chance to be awful because the Mets are deluding themselves that he won’t be awful as a starter on Saturday. The Bisons’ bullpen is mostly made up of guys who failed up here earlier and got shipped out. The closer, Fernando Cabrera, hasn’t gotten a call-up, but before you start beating the drums for him, here are his ERAs from the last five years he pitched in the majors: 5.19, 7.21, 5.40, 8.44, 20.25. Ay Cabrera!
I know — let’s bring back Manny Acosta! What’s crazy is that no longer seems so crazy.
The best of the relievers have been frustratingly uneven, and as a group they’ve been horrible — so horrible that the best answer might be remembering that statistics suggest this group is unlikely to be more horrible than they’ve already been.
No, that doesn’t sound like much of a rallying cry to me either.
Maybe Sandy should do what the judge in “The Untouchables” did, when he swapped juries with the courtroom next door. He could put together a megatrade with, say, the Phillies — our terrible bullpen for theirs. Two fan bases get rid of bad relievers they can no longer stand, followed by a lesson in not trusting new bad relievers.
Since that’s unlikely to happen, we’re back to perspective: It really was a great game. Full of twists and turns and drama. The kind of game you hope will be a newcomer’s introduction to baseball, because it will go a long way to making him or her a fan.
Of the Nationals.
by Greg Prince on 17 July 2012 4:05 pm Matt Harvey is clearly ready. Or almost ready. Or not ready, but a better bet than the barely any longer ready for prime time Miguel Batista, which is what matters in the short term. I kept an eye on the Bisons and the Mud Hens last night from lovely, lonely Buffalo, and I can’t say for sure whether Matt was masterful in holding Toledo hitless for five innings or they don’t call them the Mud Hens for nothing. Toledo is 38-57 and may not have been our 2010 first-round pick’s toughest test imaginable.
Harvey didn’t ultimately beat them but they didn’t much beat him, either. And do you really want to see Batista Saturday against the Dodgers? At worst (not counting a Tim Leary situation, and this game won’t be at chilly Wrigley Field in April), a Harvey debut blowup will have proven a learning experience and the Mets can continue to grope around with Jeremy Hefner or roll the dice — if they’re feelin’ lucky — with Zack Wheeler…if in fact 2012 is a season that feels worthy of rollin’ dice over when the fifth day after Saturday comes around. (Update: Forget it for now; Batista’s starting.)
What captured my notice more than anything when I wasn’t trying to be a TV scout and decipher Harvey’s readiness was how depressing Triple-A games are to watch. This contest was a relative big deal in our world yet there was nobody at Coca-Cola Field. There’s never anybody at these games when SNY shows them. There’s never anybody in Buffalo and there was never anybody in New Orleans when the Mets’ top farm club was the Zephyrs. Perhaps it’s a symptom of both those cities being major league in other sports but told to sit at the children’s table for baseball. Or maybe it’s from knowing that the up-and-comingest players they’re watching will soon be gone and won’t be back if all goes well. Or it could be New Orleans and Buffalo just aren’t Mets territory the way Norfolk was cultivated to be.
The other aspect of the minor league telecast that got me was the identity of the Bisons’ leadoff hitter, Fred Lewis. Fred Lewis…why was that name familiar? Then I remembered: He’s Fred Lewis from the San Francisco Giants five years ago. Fred Lewis played right at Shea Stadium on May 29, 2007, codified as an SNY Mets Classic, shown approximately every other week, it seems. That’s the one where, in the twelfth inning, Armando Benitez pitches for San Francisco, balks Jose Reyes home from third and gives up the winning homer to Carlos Delgado. I was at that game, one of the last indisputably great games I saw at Shea. As I thought back on it, I remembered Delgado ended it with a homer and a Giant began it with a homer. Wasn’t that Fred Lewis who started it with a bang?
No, it was Randy Winn. But Fred Lewis was there, 26 then, 30 last summer as a Red, 31 now. The Mets signed him in April and he’s been at Buffalo since, playing with Harvey, playing with Zach Lutz and Adam Loewen and Matt Den Dekker and all those names who filtered through my brain in February and March before going mostly into storage. I don’t know much about Lewis, but he seems to be having a pretty good statistical season at Triple-A: .296/.377/.483 with 7 homers and 18 steals. He’s been hot, too, having earned International League Batter of the Week honors for the period ending July 15. Fred hits lefty, which isn’t quite what the Mets need right now. If he hit righty, I might wonder what (besides a monstrous contract) would be keeping him at Buffalo instead of bringing back Jason Bay.
I do know, without knowing anything about the man, that I don’t blame Fred Lewis, a veteran of parts of six major league seasons, for keeping at his craft in lovely, lonely Buffalo. Who’d want to quit getting paid to play baseball? I’m pretty sure the answer is nobody.
While I watched him and Harvey and the rest of the herd do their thing, I noticed a Tweet from the Long Island Ducks:
“Timo Perez steps into the batters [sic] box to make his Bethpage Ballpark debut!”
Timo infamously broke into a trot a dozen years ago this October and hasn’t played in the majors since 2007, when Fred Lewis was a rookie, when Shea Stadium stood tall, when Armando Benitez was still being trusted to close games at the major league level, which the Giants would stop doing after he balked Reyes home and gave up that game-ending blast to Delgado. Benitez is now Perez’s teammate with the Ducks, where Armando’s ERA is 11.17, where his walks and hits are more than two-and-a-half times greater than his innings pitched and where he’s collected no saves. Yet there they are out in Central Islip, participating in games people buy tickets for.
You can blame Timo and Armando, among others, for losing Game One of the 2000 World Series, but you can’t blame them or Fred Lewis or Miguel Batista or anybody who’s seen better days to keep seeking baseball nights.
by Greg Prince on 16 July 2012 12:52 am How is it a player named Ben Sheets never played for a team whose signature promotion involves fans carrying bedsheets?
No, that’s probably not your uppermost Met concern following a very unbanner day in Atlanta, but after being subject to the worst kind of familiar — getting swept at Turner Field for the thirteenth time since 1997 — what is there to say about yet another unpleasant valley Sunday (the Mets have lost six in a row on the literally taken day of rest)? The peaks of June are behind us and peeking out ahead of us are three with the front-running Nationals, three with the Kempified Dodgers, another three with the new age whiz kids from D.C. and then it’s off to the desert and the Coast, where no one in his right mind forecasts good this far in advance.
Johan got screwed by the spatially challenged C.B. Bucknor, who offered Sheets one kind of strike zone and Santana another, and that’s a legitimate beef, but that primarily explains one inning out of nine. For six, the Mets did nothing with a guy who hadn’t pitched in the major leagues in two years. Dan Warthen showed more fight against Bucknor than the Met bats did against Sheets.
What is there to say? In jockspeak, shake it off. Go after Ross Detwiler on Tuesday and take it from there. Don’t inspire innuendo-addict Andy Martino to write more silly “one team official said” conjecture laced with whispers about “surly older players”. And, if all looks decent for him against the Toledo Mud Hens (in a Bison tilt to be telecast on SNY), what the hell, make room for young Harvey.
There’s your pep talk, boys. Don’t say nobody’s tryin’ to fire ya up.
by Greg Prince on 15 July 2012 12:20 am There’s an old joke about an inveterate optimist and a pile of horse manure, the punch line of which is, “There’s gotta be a pony in there somewhere.” And indeed, you’d think that after the last 18 innings of steaming, redolent folderol in Atlanta, the least the Mets would be able to pull out of the heap is one shiny win.
But no. Nothing shiny, nothing winning, nothing doing. Nothing much good from two games filled with gobs of movement, but little in the way of positive action.
You’d think 12 runs and 24 hits delivered across two games, much of it manufactured in classic resilient Met fashion, would have resulted in some semblance of triumph for your gritty, gutty visitors from the north. Turner Field, as it tends to do more often than not, has had other ideas. A 7-5 Mets loss Friday. An 8-7 loss Saturday. In neither case did the Mets look good, yet in both cases the Mets seemed perched on the precipice of looking fine. A couple of hits that never came Friday spelled the big difference between holding a lead and trying to make up a deficit against Craig Kimbrel. But the hits, as noted, never came.
Saturday, there were hits, there was a lead late and for all the umpire-instigated nonsense swirling about them, there was every reason to believe the Mets were going to emerge from their mess clean for day. But here came the Met bullpen again, this time more deadly than the last. When Messrs. Byrdak, Beato and Parnell were through in the bottom of the eighth, a lead became another deficit and Atlanta’s talented Mr. Kimbrel was on the scene once more, even more invincible than usual.
And there goes the old ballgame again. Two in a row in Atlanta, three in a row overall if you can remember back to last Sunday when the Mets decided to get an early start on their break.
What a mess.
The phrase, “R.A. Dickey didn’t have it,” is becoming unpleasantly common to inject into these recountings, but R.A. Dickey didn’t have it. Nor did Jordany Valdespin, though Dale Scott said he did. Dale Scott was the umpire who ruled there was a catch on a trap in the bottom of the fifth with one out. Valdespin acted the part of the successful left fielder, held a ball Jason Heyward hit aloft and followed through with what seemed to be some kind of slow-moving 7-4-3 DP on Martin Prado. But replay — the same mechanism that proved C.B. Bucknor had earlier blown a safe call on Valdespin at first — showed Scott was dead wrong and (unfortunately for us) the two umpires who weren’t that idiot Bucknor convinced Scott that the catch was a trap.
From there, the double play Dickey thought had gotten him out of the fifth was revoked. Thus, he had to stick around and continue pitching the fifth, and two batters later, Freddie Freeman unloaded a double to score Prado and Heyward and give the Braves a 5-3 lead. Worst part was the Braves redeemed an opportunity they deserved to have. Terry Collins had argued it to the point of ejection, but he was wrong (though not wrong to argue — it’s what managers are supposed to do). Fox was no immediate help in explaining why he was wrong, but why expect anything remotely insightful from baseball’s broadcast network of record? They’ve only held the MLB rights for 17 seasons.
I suppose Fox is proof of the adage that fans don’t tune in for the broadcast but for the game, and that Fox is double proof that fans don’t tune out the game because of the broadcast, but geez, they’re awful. How is it there are nearly 312 million people in this great country of ours, and the best Fox can come up with for a game of the week are the disengaged Chris Myers and the clueless Eric Karros?
Anyway, Dickey wasn’t good, Myers and Karros were abominable, the Mets were one slice shy of a loaf every time you turned around, yet there they were, lifting our sights the way they are capable of elevating them, pushing three runs across in the sixth and another in the eighth after the reversal-of-fortune call, so you can’t say (no matter how those numbskulls in the booth framed it) the Mets were doomed by the trap. They instead set their own trap later when Geren/Collins trusted the bullpen to hold a two-run lead with two innings to go.
Couldn’t be done. First Byrdak issued a walk to Brian McCann, who’s no Ned in the third reader but exactly the kind of batter (lefthanded) hilarious Hulk is supposed to retire. Out goes Tim, in comes Pedro, and he gave up one horribly long single to Dan Uggla (how was he not a Brave all those years?) before striking out the kid Pastornicky. Another hitting-pitching change had Bobby Parnell striking out Juan Francisco, but then…well, it was like the Braves knew what was coming. They probably did know what was coming, as it was unimpressive fastball after unimpressive fastball that Michael Bourn, then Prado and then Heyward whacked effectively enough to produce one, make it two, no make it three runs.
Bingo. 8-7, Atlanta. Just enough cushion for Kimbrel’s unhittable arsenal to be deployed. Ike, Murph and the hobbled Duda all flailed and all fanned. Ballgame.
What kills about these two games, besides that each was there for the taking and Saturday’s screamed to be swooped up and secured, was that you’re not losing to a club of worldbeaters over there in the other dugout. The Braves looked maybe one iota better, net, across the two days, yet they get to enjoy all the fruits of victory — which matters not only because they were the opponent, but they’re a little ahead of us in this playoff race we weren’t expecting to be in. They’re now a little more ahead of us than they were before Friday and we’re a little less in the race, but we’re still there. Of course we are. Most of the National League is. Even Eric Karros could analyze the situation accurately: You have to win these head-to-head games. And since almost everybody is still kind of contending, you can’t afford to lose any games you play in pairs.
A few good signs exist from these disasters. Josh Edgin, Chipper initiation notwithstanding, seems hyperuseful. Andres Torres’s bat has woken up, or at least hasn’t given into the snooze alarm. Ruben Tejada got even better over the break. Valdespin, once he’s informed that he’s already gotten off the island, might learn to take a pitch and turn his certain something into something relentlessly positive. Ike has just about stopped sucking.
But familiar bullpen blues, failure to pile on and all-around growing pains aside, Young was terrible, Dickey wasn’t passable and Gee isn’t here. Johan’s ankle (a.k.a. The Johankle) needs to prove it isn’t a detriment Sunday and Niese isn’t entitled to be inconsistent in Washington. Beyond that, it’s either Old Timer Day next Saturday with Miguel Batista or the likely unready aces of tomorrow today. If this were a flat-out lousy season, I’d be salivating to see Harvey or, as long as they’re dropping breadcrumbs about him, Wheeler (who threw a Double-A shutout Saturday night). This is still a good season. I don’t know that I want one of our top prospects being set down on our mound amid Fire Time, as Collins calls these defining days of July. Come to think of it, has anybody seen Terry manage a legitimate playoff hunt in this century? Will there be a legitimate playoff hunt by August 1?
You can’t let two bad results pull the thread on what has been an encouraging tapestry. But spend seven-plus hours with this team over these bad and worse games and try to have faith the sun’ll come out tomorrow.
It will, probably, but I wouldn’t rush to bet my bottom dollar.
by Greg Prince on 14 July 2012 8:05 am Thank you for your interest in joining the Chipper Jones Metropolitan Victim Club. Please fill out the attached application fully, and Mr. Jones’s selection committee will meet at home plate to inform you of your membership status in a timely manner.
————–
NAME: Josh Edgin
AGE: 25
AFFILIATION: Buffalo Bisons New York Mets
DATE OF REQUEST: July 13, 2012
MAJOR LEAGUE EXPERIENCE: 4 Batters
PREFERRED VENUE:
X Turner Field
_ Shea Stadium Citi Field
_ Other
PREFERRED LIGHTING:
X On
_ Off
PREFERRED COMPETITIVE CIRCUMSTANCE:
_ Innocuous Early Season Matchup
X Midseason Meeting With Standings Implications
_ Pressure-Packed September Pennant Race Showdown
_ Heartbreaking National League Championship Series
PREFERRED GAME SITUATION:
_ Blowout
_ Tie
X Blowout That Seemed On The Verge Of Becoming A Tie
PROJECTED INTERNAL RESPONSE (Choose All That Apply):
X “Jesus, he’s still doing this to us after all these years.”
X “I knew this was too good to be true.”
X “He has HOW many now against us now?”
X “We really should have driven somebody in when the bases were loaded and nobody was out.”
X “When is he going to retire already? I mean, cripes, I watched this SOB on TBS when I was a kid and here I am joining the parade of pitchers who got a slider up and made that forlorn turn of the head to see where it landed a second later.”
X “At least I didn’t give one up to David Ross, who I’m pretty sure is always torching us.”
X “Boy, that Prado can really play short.”
X “Now I see what my Little League coach was saying when he was muttering about ‘oh those bases on balls.’”
X “This game is NEVER going to end, is it?”
X “Ball’s still going…damn.”
————–
FOR OFFICE USE ONLY:
Manzanillo, J. 1
Harnisch, P. 1
Walker, P. 1
Mlicki, D. 2
Jones, B. 4
Clark, M. 1
Isringhausen, J. 1
Yoshii, M. 1
Mahomes, P. 1
Hershiser, O. 2
Reed, R. 3
Cook, D. 1
Leiter, A. 2
Franco, J. 1
Rusch, G. 1
Trachsel, S. 4
Komiyama, S. 1
Astacio, P. 1
Gl@v!ne, T. 1
Seo, J. 1
Almonte, E. 1
Heilman, A. 2
Martinez, P. 1
Oliver, D. 1
Pelfrey, M. 3
Maine, J. 1
Putz, J. 1
Feliciano, P. 1
Misch, P. 1
Santana, J. 1
Carrasco, D. 1
Niese, J. 1
Dickey, R. 1
Schwinden, C. 1
Edgin, J. 1
Form LWCJ-10 (REV. 10-19-1999)
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