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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 29 May 2024 1:19 am The Mets looked listless in dropping the second game of Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Dodgers, and that limp display was the highlight of the day. Certainly it was better than the first game, in which a terrific start by Tylor Megill went down the toilet when his teammates couldn’t field, pitch or manage to hit a fly ball a moderate distance.
I could talk more about these two games, but I don’t want to and frankly they’re not deserving of analysis. The Mets are on pace to win 66 games and anyone who’s watched them in May will tell you to take the under. The Mets aren’t merely we thought this would go better bad or trade every contract you possibly can bad; they’re a level of bad where everybody connected with the team should go sit on pillars in the desert for several years, repenting and begging for divine mercy.
* * *
Your recapper was in Phoenix over the long weekend for a sci-fi convention and saw about 20 minutes of the Mets – the 20 minutes I chose was when Saturday’s game against the Giants decayed from “Edwin Diaz save situation” to “latest debacle.” It didn’t exactly make me miss this team.
I slipped away from the con on Friday night to return to Chase Field, home of the Diamondbacks. I found a pretty unique seat on StubHub in a section dubbed RFW. It’s a single row of seats behind the right-field fence in what looks kind of like an unused bullpen. Your toes are an eighth of an inch from the warning track, the right fielder (variously Randal Grichuk and Miami’s Jesus Sanchez) is on the other side of the fence and home plate is some distance that-a-way. A unique view, one that I suppose is available at Citi Field through the Cadillac Club, except the Cadillac Club costs a fortune and comes with complimentary booze and eats, while the RFW is just a row of seats on concrete and if you want a hot dog you take an elevator back up to the concourse to secure one.
It was pretty neat: I chatted amiably with my seatmates, most notably a guy named Keith who came to Arizona from Brooklyn (I swear everyone in Arizona used to live in Brooklyn) and was happy to talk the Dodgers, Roberto Clemente, what’s gone wrong for Corbin Carroll and anything else the game brought to mind. A nice evening, seeing how it didn’t involve the Mets – the only flaws were a) that no ball rattled off the fence with an outfielder just feet away; and b) that Miami’s Braxton Garrett threw a complete-game shutout and so the entire game took an hour and 58 minutes.
My new plan: Next time in Phoenix I’m getting a RFW seat again, but this time I’m coming for batting practice and bringing a glove. And then hoping the game lasts a little longer.
* * *
Not everything is terrible: Angel Hernandez has retired.
That’s the polite way of saying it; in reality he was bought out by MLB, which finally tired of his chronic incompetence, screw-ups gone viral and frivolous lawsuits and decided no price was too high to sever Hernandez’s connection from the national pastime.
A number of people, from his fellow umpires to baseball scribes, took pains to say that Hernandez is a very nice person. I don’t doubt it. It also isn’t faintly relevant: Hernandez was a deeply terrible umpire, unacceptably bad at both the irreducible basics of his job and also at how to do that job without calling attention to himself and thereby embarrassing his employers. He was the bomb under the table that the audience knows will go off, which meant his mere presence on the field was a source of tension that had nothing to do with the game.
Hernandez first became a Mets villain during the last game before the 1998 All-Star break, when he called Michael Tucker safe despite Tucker being thrown out by a couple of feet and never touching the plate, though his spikes sure touched Mike Piazza’s thigh. Piazza called it the worst call he’d ever seen; Hernandez had to flee the field to escape the wrath of a mob of Mets led by an incandescently angry John Franco. (He got suspended for three games.) What made the call part of Hernandez’s legend, though, was that he supposedly had told Piazza to hurry the game along because he had a plane to catch.
Is Hernandez a nice guy? Who cares? Getting him to stop vandalizing baseball games should only be the start: True justice demands that he be barred from attending an MLB game, watching an MLB game, listening to an MLB game, discussing an MLB game, or thinking about an MLB game.
Given the horrors the Mets are inflicting on baseball, it might be a fitting sentence for them too. But one improvement at a time.
by Greg Prince on 27 May 2024 3:43 am John Olerud was at Citi Field for the Mets game on the fourth Sunday in May, just as he was at Shea Stadium for the Mets game on the fourth Sunday in May a quarter-century before…though “just as” might be a stretch. In 2024, Olerud was a visitor, sitting in the stands, brought to the home viewer’s attention via a mid-game interview with Steve Gelbs. Whatever John said on air was drowned out by my shrieking with delight at the sight of the classy first baseman of yore and the memories he evoked from 1999. It was on more or less the same spot on the calendar — and adjacent to the same spot in Flushing — that Olerud came up in the bottom of the ninth in a game the Mets had been losing all day and turned it around for good.
“The pitch to Olerud…line drive…BASE HIT INTO LEFT FIELD!” was the call on the radio via the detailed description of Gary Cohen, then on radio. “In comes Lopez! Here comes Cedeño! Here’s comes Gant’s throw from left field…the slide…SAFE, THE METS WIN IT! THE METS WIN IT! Cedeño slides home under the tag of Mike Lieberthal, a two-run GAME-WINNING single for John Olerud, the Mets score FIVE RUNS off Curt Schilling in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Mets win it in a REMARKABLE finish!”
I probably didn’t hear every word Gary said live, as it was drowned out by my shrieking with delight. That half-inning, played out on May 23, 1999, began with the Mets down, 4-0, to the Curt Schilling and the Phillies, on one of those days when a bona fide ace was making scoring not only impossible but unimaginable. Fortunately, these were the Mets of Mike Piazza (leadoff single), Robin Ventura (seemingly harmless home run) and Matt Franco (one-out single) to start with. Every 1999 Met could be a force doing some reckoning. Luis Lopez got himself hit, Bobby Valentine pinch-hit for his pitcher with Jermaine Allensworth, and Allensworth singled Franco home from second. It was 4-3, two were on, only one was out and, in a last gasp of how baseball was managed throughout the 20th century, Terry Francona left Schilling in. Francona’s pen wasn’t in great shape, and he decided Schilling was better than anything he had out there. This wouldn’t happen today because Schilling wouldn’t have still been around in the ninth. He probably wouldn’t have been granted the chance to throw an eighth suffocating inning.
Roger Cedeño grounded into a 1-6 fielder’s choice, forcing Allensworth, Schilling fittingly in the center of the action. Cedeño took second on defensive indifference. Edgardo Alfonzo took first on Schilling’s second HBP of the inning. The impossible was becoming imaginable. The next batter was Olerud. Probability was very much on the Mets’ side. As Gary already explained a quarter-century and three days ago, Mets 5 Phillies 4 was the final. The quiet fellow who drove in the tying and winning runs likely wouldn’t protest if naming rights were ceded to the pitcher on the losing side. It can’t help but live on as The Curt Schilling Game.
John Olerud brought so much to the Mets in the final three years of last millennium. The conclusion to The Curt Schilling Game was as big as anything he gave us. His presence at Citi Field this Sunday perhaps transmitted the good vibes necessary to get us through what appeared to be a sixth consecutive loss in the making. The Mets might not win (per usual), but look — it’s Oly! SQUEE! While Gelbs was chatting up the unexpected guest, the Mets were doing more or less versus Logan Webb of the Giants what their predecessors were doing versus Schilling in 1999: nothing much. San Fran was up, 2-1. Sean Manaea was doing OK for himself, but Webb was wired in, per usual. If only Oly could excuse himself, slip on a uniform and, if he had their numbers handy, summon Mike, Robin and the rest of his teammates.
Instead, we settled for the 2024 Mets, which included Manaea hanging in there through five without giving up a whole lot; unlikely long man Adrian Houser going four, touched for only one run; Harrison Bader, reeling back into the field of play a sure home run off the bat of Matt Chapman; and Brett Baty continuing to look intermittently Venturaesque at third. There were some good signs dotted around the diamond at Citi Field for the blue-clad Mets. There are always a few good signs. They are usually overwhelmed by the plethora of bad ones. The worst one of all for the Mets was Logan Webb standing on the mound continuing to deal.
Fortunately, it’s the 21st century, and Logan Webb, who left little to the imagination in terms of imagining the Mets could get to him, was removed after seven innings. Giant skipper Bob Melvin goes back a ways, but he manages in the here and now. He turned the ball over to Ryan Walker in the eighth, which didn’t improve the Mets’ chances whatsoever.
The bottom of the ninth would have been the province of closer Camilo Doval had not the Mets been so (ahem) fiercely competitive Friday night and Saturday afternoon, forcing Melvin to use his main save guy twice. The Mets’ close-shave defeats were not for naught in that regard. I mean they were overall, but at least the Giants relief corps wasn’t lined up to quash them Sunday. Pitching for San Francisco was submariner Tyler Rogers. He’s not their closer and he’s not their No. 1 starter. Rogers was a tough assignment, but he wasn’t impossible.
Imagine away. Imagine that on the day John Olerud swung by to say hi, Brandon Nimmo led off the bottom of the ninth by chopping a bouncer that Rogers leapt for and laid only a fraction of his glove on, and Nimmo landed on first as a result. Then came J.D. Martinez, suddenly mired in a slump that detracts from his professional-hitter reputation. Yet a pro is a pro, and Martinez singled to right. The Mets, down two, had first and second and nobody out. For any team, this qualified as a genuine threat. For the Mets, this loomed as a nightmare. We’d seen versions of their can’t-missery all weekend, golden scoring chances that ultimately missed. The whole week was like that. First and second and nobody out, with the opposition closer unavailable? Stop doing this to us.
 I thought of my friend James Schapiro while trying to decide whether this was a rally worth getting invested in the way I threw myself into the one Olerud capped 25 years before. Those 1999 Mets blended magic and magnificence. They could be a little frustrating in real time, but memory recalls them as capable and inspiring. James, born roughly around the moment in February 1997 that Oly reported to St. Lucie as a Blue Jay expat, recently released a book called Only in Queens: Stories from Life as a New York Mets Fan. I’m in the midst of reading and savoring it, so I can’t yet officially tell you it’s terrific, go buy it for yourself (off the record, it is and you should). James became a Mets fan in 2004 at roughly the same impressionable stage of life I became a Mets fan in 1969. He not only missed 1969, he missed 1999. The launching pad for his fandom was a little different from mine. By the time he reaches 2011, a season he documents in a chapter entitled “Valentino Pascucci and Other Heroes,” he’s 14. James hadn’t been blessed with a miracle world championship out of the gate as I was, nor had the specialness of his Mets experience been cemented with a miracle pennant a quadrennium later. The peak for the kid to that point was staying up as late as he could when he was nine to hear the Mets not win the NL flag in 2006. It was all downhill from there to 2011.
Yet there James is, wrapping his arms around Pascucci and Pedro Beato and every other 2011 Met, because, as he puts it in Only in Queens, “There’s a joy in wins during mediocre seasons. I would know. I’m a Mets fan. My experience with enjoying mediocrity is almost unparalleled.”
We should all be able to derive such pleasures from out-of-the-money campaigns, one of which is almost surely going to be 2024. Discerning there would be joy against the Giants required a surge of Olerud-level momentum amid the Mets’ growing assault on Rogers, but on a fourth Sunday in May in the borough the ballclub has called home for six decades, joy can absolutely be built on one exquisite half-inning.
James is in his twenties. I’m confident his instinctive appreciation for a nascent Met uprising hasn’t been ground down by too many trips through the wringer. I’d venture to guess that even those of us who wear t-shirts approximately as old as him could steer ourselves toward elation for what our current crop of mediocrities was in the process of cultivating with Nimmo on second and Martinez on first and nobody out.
Carlos Mendoza replaced Martinez on the basepaths with speedy Starling Marte, a savvy Bobby V-style move.
DJ Stewart lined out, but even Brian McRae had an unhelpful at-bat between Ventura’s homer and Franco’s single.
Jeff McNeil, harnessing the spirit of Lopez and Fonzie, accepted Rogers delivery upon his elbow pad in exchange for a trip to first. Nimmo advances a base. Marte, too. Sacks full.
Bader! Author of the Mets’ previous RBI and the center fielder who made that catch! He doubles! Nimmo scores easily! Marte, faster than Martinez, scores easily, too!
I wasn’t sure my keyboard still had exclamation points.
Bader’s on second, McNeil is on third. Baty is up, but he gets four fingers for his troubles. Bases reloaded. Omar Narváez, who didn’t start Sunday, approaches the plate. The “O” in Omar is literal. He hasn’t had a hit in 27 at-bats thus far this year at Citi Field. Then again, he hasn’t batted in the ninth inning of a game attended by John Olerud, either. He does here.
Gary Cohen is still behind a microphone and still has the right words for an occasion worthy of an Olerud sighting.
“And Narváez PUNCHES one, BASE HIT! AND THE METS WIN IT!! Omar Narváez with his first home hit of the year and it’s a game-WINNER!!!”
Gary does TV now. He doesn’t have to be as detailed as he was in 1999.
It would have been too cruel or too mathematically unfathomable to not think the Mets would manage to pull a 4-3 walkoff win out of everything that was coalescing in their favor once Bader came through to tie the score. Narváez batting while ostentatiously overdue for a simple single within the 718 area code made it only more obvious that the Mets couldn’t lose on Sunday. Yet the 2024 Mets can lose any day, and usually do. Not this time though. The mediocre sometimes rise to remind you they don’t always disintegrate. And sometimes we find ourselves enjoying it happening right before our eyes and our ears, no matter how little fun we’ve been having as this season has curdled, shriveled, and continually bummed us out. Shrieking with delight may be beyond the octave range of those of us who have endured too much dreck to somersault over the moon just because a five-game losing streak didn’t grow to six. But we’ll still make appropriate joyful noises as Met circumstances suggest. Even in a year like this. Especially from an ending like that.
by Greg Prince on 26 May 2024 2:01 am They’re probably not this bad, are they? How could they be? Twenty-two losses in thirty-one games seems to give us all the answer we need, as does the 3-12 stretch that’s unfurled since their last pairing of consecutive wins, not to mention the active streak of five defeats during which the most recent collapse or implosion feels it can’t be bottomed, yet the next day it is. The odds say sooner or later the Mets who are making a science out of finding ways to lose will accidentally win a game, and from there a few balls will bounce in their favor, and suddenly…
Suddenly, what? At best, they’ll soar to the status of not this bad; not a team that lets wins slip away; not a team that leaves almost all of its runners on base; not a team that allows opponents’ runners to come home exactly when they shouldn’t; not a team that swears afterward, in so many words, we’re not this bad. Perhaps I shouldn’t so readily dismiss their habitual recitations of positive-reinforcement affirmations. They’ve been told their whole lives as competitors to shake off whatever went wrong today, hold their head high and go get ’em tomorrow. In theory, it’s a healthy attitude to bring to any task. It’s just a little galling to hear after every loss. I’d gladly take some variation on “We were bad today. We’ve been really bad for weeks. We have to be one of the worst clubs going. I’m sorry our fans have to experience this.” Nobody’s going to say it out loud. Just once I’d like it said. It wouldn’t convert losses to wins, but it would hew somewhere near the reality we are witnessing.
The Mets’ absolve themselves from their wretchedness by noting how close they come to winning most of these games. I honestly don’t believe it works that way. Almost winning on a daily basis is the equivalent of losing day after day. Yes, they’re usually in these games right up until the final pitch or swing (or at least, as on Saturday, until extras roll around). Yippee. You’re professionals. You’re not supposed to be blown out more than a handful of times in a season. You’re also supposed to win more than a few of these close ones. That’s a core competency that’s wafted away from Citi Field in May. It usually takes until June.
I’m past trying to figure out if this team has a chance to creep into the bloated playoff picture. I’m just trying to figure out if this team has a chance to form a handshake line between now and, say, the Fourth of July.
They probably will. Won’t they?
by Greg Prince on 25 May 2024 10:56 am FLUSHING (FAF) — Scientists anxiously monitoring activities at the Flushing Meadows National Laboratory expressed amazement Friday night at the discovery of yet another way for the New York Mets to lose a baseball game, this time by blowing a sizable eighth-inning lead to the San Francisco Giants and then loading the bases in the bottom of the ninth, only to fall short by a run. Observers say what marked this experiment in defeat as a true advancement in humanity’s march toward thoroughly understanding futility was the way it built on a key discovery earlier in the week, wherein Met researchers learned they could hit three home runs in a game on consecutive days and not stop losing.
A spokesperson for the Nobel Prize committee indicated “this may be the most impressive manifestation of losing we’ve seen in modern times. There were and are so many aspects to how the Mets go about both not winning and altogether not succeeding, that ‘staggering’ doesn’t begin to describe it.
“They even thought to wear black.”
Fueled by splendid starting pitching from Christian Scott, the Mets achieved one of what experts call “the all-important losing first step,” wasting a very good outing when they don’t get nearly enough of those to begin with. Scott, a rookie, pitched six innings, giving up only two runs on two hits, theoretically positioning him for his first major league win. He was succeeded to the mound by in-limbo closer Edwin Diaz, receiving his first assignment since his newfound propensity to blow saves sidelined him from high-leverage situations the previous weekend. Diaz persevered through the seventh without giving up any runs.
“That, too, is key,” said another source in the scientific community. “Diaz emerging unscathed after Scott looked so sharp was reason enough to raise the hopes of Mets fans. A real losing team will make a person rooting for them think things are looking up, setting the stage for a tremendous kick in the [expletives].”
The Mets had built a 6-2 lead on three solo home runs — struck by J.D. Martinez, Mark Vientos and Pete Alonso — along with several other key hits. Their batters also hit some balls that traveled far, only to be caught.
“If you were a believer in harbingers,” the scientific source said, “you could begin to see what was ultimately coming. Yet you can’t be fully convinced until the proof is presented to you.”
Reed Garrett, briefly considered a revelation in relief, emerged to pitch the eighth inning. After a pair of somewhat lucky hits (though scientists debate how much “luck” is involved when an opponent is playing the Mets), Garrett’s night began to disintegrate with two outs, as he gave up an RBI double, a walk and, finally, a grand slam to Patrick Bailey, converting what was left of the Mets’ advantage into a one-run deficit. An inning later, Jorge Lopez allowed a solo homer to Mike Yastrzemski to make the score Giants 8 Mets 6.
With the visitors’ insurance run added to their burden and Camilo Doval on to close for San Francisco, the Mets made feints toward a comeback of their own. “Ah,” one scientist was moved to note. “It’s the comeback that can’t miss but does miss that creates a ‘novel loss’. You think you’ve seen it all, but then the Mets show you something you hadn’t thought possible.” Sure enough, a DJ Stewart fly ball that Yastrzemski couldn’t handle in right became a double. Brett Baty, like Stewart a pinch-hitter in the ninth, placed a ball beyond the infield that appeared destined to become a base hit. It took a fairly spectacular play by Thairo Estrada and first baseman LaMonte Wade to retire him, but retire him they did. Stewart went to third, but there was one out.
“A team on the verge of winning has no worse than a two-on, no out situation there,” the Nobel committee spokesperson explained. “Stewart might have even scored. But these were the Mets doing losing things to break new ground in coming up shy of victory. It was astounding.”
It was also only beginning. Francisco Lindor did drive in Stewart to bring the Mets to within 8-7. Succeeding batter Alonso converted the first pitch he saw from Doval into a certain double play ground ball ticketed to end the game. Except San Francisco shortstop Marco Luciano — who had early pulled a baserunning boner — booted the ball to place Lindor on third and Alonso on first. Alonso was switched out for pinch-runner Tyrone Taylor, and Taylor quickly stole second.
“Can’t you see the beauty?” the scientific source asked. “Taylor taking second without a throw was the sort of thing that usually happens to the Mets. He was the potential winning run. No cogent baseball watcher outside the Mets’ sphere of influence would have thought New York wouldn’t win. But the Mets’ ability to harness nature’s ballet to drop what is handed them is what elevated this experience.
“Perhaps Mets fans knew in their bones what was coming. Everybody else had to have chills.”
An intentional walk to Brandon Nimmo loaded the bases with one out. Cleanup hitter Martinez, possessor of a hot bat, was up. The Mets somehow “proceeded to crack the code” on losing, the scientific source said. Not only did Martinez, a proven professional hitter, strike out, but Vientos flicked a roller to third base that would have been impossible for Matt Chapman to handle, let alone make an effective throw on, but Chapman both handled Vientos’s ball and threw him out to end the game.
“The chef’s kiss on all this,” the scientific source said, “was the Mets challenging the call, as if there was even a shred of possibility it would be overturned. A perfect grace note of after-the-fact desperation.”
The Giants had completed their third consecutive road-game comeback of four runs themselves, but it was the Mets, 9-21 in their last thirty games, consistently finding yet another “new and exciting” way to lose that left scientists worldwide buzzing. “The Mets,” said one researcher in Asia, “stand as an inspiration to anybody who doesn’t believe the worst can’t keep happening.”
by Greg Prince on 22 May 2024 8:17 pm If things were going better for them, the Mets would have won a game in Cleveland, maybe two, possibly all three. I realize that’s akin to invoking the old saying that if Carlos Mendoza’s aunt’s frog had wings, then every day would be Christmas; there are a lot of old sayings tantamount to declaring things would be different if only they were. But you know how it is with baseball teams. Ones in a good groove make the most of their situations. If the Mets were currently inhabiting one of those grooves, the scattered positive trendlines detectable here and there would tie together, and suddenly defeats would be victories.
Alas, frogs are still bumping their behinds, dear old Aunt Maria isn’t Uncle Pablo, and Christmas Day still comes only once a year. It surely didn’t arrive on Wednesday afternoon, when the Mets finished their stay in Northeast Ohio packing coal-filled stockings as souvenirs. Despite some bats waking up and several innings appearing well-pitched, the Mets lost, which is something the Mets have been doing a lot of late, no matter who hits and who pitches.
For those who’ve stopped keeping track, the Mets have lost ten of their last thirteen, encompassing four series in which brief individual pulsations haven’t added up to a collective heartbeat. I’m tempted to say it’s one of the most deathly stretches of baseball I’ve seen in 56 seasons watching this franchise, though I know there are veritable dugouts full of orange-and-blue ghosts demanding I hold their dismal beer. It doesn’t really matter that the 2024 Mets are probably better than dozens of previous editions of Mets. It’s the Mets right now who almost daily make one regret an investment of time and commitment.
Thanks to the playoff system that bestows potential contender status on almost everybody on Rob Manfred’s green earth, the season isn’t near over in the figurative sense. Should the Mets find the groove that’s eluded them and start capturing the games and series that mysteriously keep winding up in somebody else’s win column, tunes are designed to be changed. This is where my instinct is to invoke that golden handful of campaigns in which the Mets looked awful before the All-Star break and then made a spirited run to the finish, the lesson being it ain’t over until you believe it is, or however that one goes.
 Yet it’s too early for that framing and there haven’t been enough substantive signs of life to imagine a meaningful turnaround. What would change the tune? Get into that groove. Be watchable for nine consecutive innings, then another nine consecutive innings. Make a habit of good baseball rather than the kind you’ve been playing. Do some actual winning rather than talking about how capable you are of winning and how surprising it is to you that you are losing. At this point, you’re the only ones who are much shocked by what you’ve been doing.
I’m still watching, but that’s not shocking. Questionable habits are hard to break.
by Jason Fry on 21 May 2024 10:53 pm When the Mets are behind, Keith Raad likes to convey the score to those of us listening on the radio or some radio-adjacent audio product by informing us that they’re chasing whatever the deficit is.
It’s a perfectly fine way to go about one’s business, and Raad has been a good addition to the narrator ranks. But I can feel a vein throb in my temple every time I hear it — because I’m hearing it so often these days.
On Tuesday night I heard it over and over again: “chasing three.” That was the score the Mets fell behind by in the third, when Adrian Houser‘s not bad beginning turned lousy in a fusillade of Guardians’ doubles, assisted by some crummy fielding by Starling Marte. The Mets chased down two of those runs in the fifth, courtesy of a Mark Vientos homer and a flurry of hits that drove fill-in starter Xzavion Curry from the game. (Curry at least spared us the thoroughly depressing spectacle of Houser vs. Carlos Carrasco in a matchup of exasperating fell-off-a-cliff Mets starters.)
Curry was replaced by Nick Sandlin, whom I never want to see again: Much as he did on Monday night, Sandlin walked the first enemy batter but then went to work, fanning Brandon Nimmo with the bases loaded, one out and a gimme run on the board, and then erasing J.D. Martinez. Chasing one … except Houser gave up a two-run homer to Jose Ramirez, and the Mets were immediately chasing three again.
Jeff McNeil had a two-run homer of his own to deploy, cutting the lead back to one. But in the sixth Houser gave up a leadoff single and was replaced by Jake Diekman, who gave up a homer to Cleveland supersub David Fry, no relation as far as I know. And so the Mets were … that’s right, chasing three again.
Diekman left to show a luckless water cooler who was boss; the Mets cut the lead to one yet again on a Marte homer and went into the ninth trying to make up that margin against deadly closer Emmanuel Clase. I didn’t have much hope, not so much because of Clase’s ungodly stats (though they sure didn’t help) but because I’d spent two hours watching the Mets doing this thing wrong and then that other thing wrong and I was pretty sure they had another shortfall in them.
To be fair, they tried in the ninth — none of the Mets’ current woes are due to a lack of trying. Harrison Bader ground out a good AB that ended in a groundout (ahem); Francisco Lindor reached on an infield single; and Pete Alonso smacked a ball to Josh Naylor, who started a nifty 3-6-1 double play to send the Mets morosely back to their hotel. The Guardians played tight defense and collected hits when they needed to, which is what good teams do; the Mets staggered around failing serially at various aspects of baseball, which is what mediocre teams do, and so the outcome felt almost preordained.
Things can change and it’s still only May, but those things better change pretty thoroughly and pretty quickly to avoid the judgment that this is a team in an earlier stage of its transformation than the people who run it hoped. In which case, I wish the powers that be would get on with it already.
Mediocre teams can be watchable if you can see them turning into something better, even if it’s by fits and starts. But it doesn’t feel like the Mets are that kind of mediocre — it feels like most of these current Mets will be gone before that something better arrives. They’re not part of the future but fill-ins and seat-fillers, treading water and spinning their wheels, and watching them do that is as frustrating for us as it must be for them.
by Jason Fry on 20 May 2024 11:02 pm I’d like to put 6:10 pm start times on the list of things that I thought would be good, or at least novel, and turned out to be terrible.
First off, I completely forgot. I was doing something non-baseball-related, noted it was around 6:35 pm, and reflexively went back to what I was doing, because 6:35 pm is too early to be worrying about things that everyone knows kick off at 7:10 pm.
[record scratch]
Oh yeah, that’s right.
I got upstairs to find it was already 2-0 Guardians, with the Mets having done ill-advised things in the outfield. J.D. Martinez doubled and I had a brief happy thought that the worm might be turning: Several times in the last week I’ve arrived at my post with the Mets having made first-inning noise, only to get stage fright and decide further runs are beyond them. So that was nice, at least.
About 45 seconds later, Starling Marte hit a grounder up the middle that looked like it would elude Ben Lively, except Lively speared it and found Martinez between second and third. He was run down by various Guardians, with Marte moving up behind the play to take Martinez’s place at second once he was tagged out. Except — whoops! — Marte wasn’t on second but between first and second, and a moment later he was in the dugout with his teammate, presumably with neither one of them wanting to talk about what had just happened.
That was really it for the game. Tylor Megill pitched OK. Tomas Nido hit a home run. Josh Walker did well in relief. But the Mets looked sleepy and put upon at the plate, and even at 2-1 it didn’t feel like they were much more than the night’s designated opponent. The most noise they made came in the sixth, when Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo hit one-out singles. But Lively ended his night by getting Martinez to swing through a high fastball, departing in favor of Nick Sandlin. Sandlin walked Tyrone Taylor, who’d entered when Marte was tossed out for offering a purist’s critique of home-plate ump Manny Gonzalez’s undulating trapezoid of a strike zone, and so Brett Baty came up with the bases loaded and two out.
Sandlin … well, he eviscerated Baty. Two fastballs separated by a splitter, all at different eye levels, no chance. Pretty soon the game was over, only now I was confused because my baseball-oriented biological clock kept insisting it was an hour later than it was.
Honestly, the whole thing was misbegotten from the start. I’ve already done my best to forget this one — which pretty much ensures I’ll smack myself in the forehead at 6:35 pm or so on Tuesday and we’ll have to do this again.
by Greg Prince on 20 May 2024 12:26 pm In the top of the first inning on Sunday afternoon, the Mets scored four runs, with Tyrone Taylor driving in two and Harrison Bader driving in two more. As soon as the third out was made, I called the visitors’ dugout in Miami. Bench coach John Gibbons answered. Gibby, I said, it’s Greg. Hi Greg, Gibby said, whatcha want, we’re kinda busy right now playing a ballgame. Yeah, Gibby, I said, that’s what this call is about. I know you guys have a nice lead and all, but you had a nice lead and all yesterday, on Saturday, and when the game was through nine, you didn’t have a lead, and when the game was over, you had a loss. So if you could tell the team to do more than just let these four runs sit alone on the scoreboard, I’d really appreciate it. Gibby said he’d see what he could do, he had to go, bye.
In the bottom of the first inning on Sunday afternoon, Sean Manaea took the hill, gave up a two-out double, but then got a grounder to end the inning. I called the visitors’ dugout again. Gibby answered. I asked him to put Sean on the phone. Gibby handed Sean the receiver. Hey Sean, I said, you don’t know me, but I watched yesterday’s game, with the lead getting away and everything, and I wanted to thank you for setting a tone in the bottom of the first by not giving up a run, please keep doing that, and also, as long as you don’t have to think about hitting, maybe remind your teammates to keep scoring runs, just to be on the safe side. Sean graciously thanked me for both my appreciation and my concern and said he would pass along my sentiments about further scoring. I have no reason to believe he didn’t, but the Mets didn’t score in the top of the second.
In the bottom of the second inning, Manaea allowed a two-run home run to Dane Myers, immediately halving the Mets’ lead to 4-2. I could see where this might be going, so I changed strategy and called the visitors’ bullpen in Miami and asked for Adam Ottavino. Otto, I said, this is Greg. What’s up, Greg, Otto asked me. Well, I told him, I know you’re generally not busy in the early innings so maybe you could get a message to Sean to settle down — I didn’t want to bother Sean anymore — and maybe tell the batters fans like me would be a lot calmer after Saturday if they could pour it on some more Sunday. Even though pouring it on didn’t ultimately help on Saturday, I explained, the more Met runs, the better, right Otto? Otto agreed, reminding me that he, too, has always valued certainty, and he’d certainly get right on it.
The Mets didn’t score in the top of the third, but Manaea didn’t give up another run. The same story for the top of the fourth, except with a couple of Marlin baserunners in the bottom of the fourth. As the fifth approached, I realized the Mets might need my help, so I called the dugout and asked for Brandon Nimmo. Brandon, I said, I know you’re about to lead off the inning, so I’ll be brief. I don’t like the pattern thus far: scoring in the first inning, then going silent, maybe you could do something about it, you and DJ and Tyrone, all due up here in the fifth. Brandon was brief but reassuring.
Nimmo, Stewart and Taylor all made outs, and the score remained Mets 4 Marlins 2 heading to the bottom of the fifth. I’m not sure Brandon totally got the gist of my meaning, so after Manaea got through the bottom of the fifth, I thought it best I go right to the manager. I called the visitors’ dugout, told Gibby I needed to talk to Mendy, and when Mendy got on, I was direct. Look, Mendy, I said, you can’t have two consecutive losses where you blow big leads, do something about it. Sean’s been OK through five, but he’s thrown 95 pitches, so I hope you have another pitcher ready for the bottom of the sixth. Also, please inform the lower portion of your order, all of whom are due up here in the top of the sixth, to make like they’re capable of hitting in the top of the order. Mendy told me he’s still kind of new at this, but he’ll try to process all this advice and have the team execute it. I said, Mendy, all I can do is ask. It was a pleasant conversation, even if only one single came out of it.
After Sean Reid-Foley pitched the bottom of the sixth, I figured I’d call the visitors’ dugout and congratulate him. I was surprised when Sean Manaea answered the phone. What’s up with that, I asked Manaea, I wanted Reid-Foley. Sean Manaea laughed and said this sometimes happens, what with two Seans on the team, and then you throw in that there’s a J.D. and a DJ, and a Bader and a Baty and a stream of Syracuse guys who come up for barely more than one game. Anyway, he went on, he was on his way to the shower and happened to be passing the phone, and when he heard it ring, he thought it might be important and, oh, the top of the seventh is about to start and he’s late for his shower and besides, they don’t really love us chatting away while the game is going on, thanks for calling, bye. I guess Sean Manaea really unwinds once he’s out of the game. I never got a chance to tell the other Sean he’d done well nor nudge the batters to put another run on the board. I worried that my lack of input might have an adverse effect on the remaining three innings.
Despite Francisco Lindor singling to begin the seventh, the Mets didn’t add to their total. Then Jake Diekman came in to pitch the bottom of the seventh and gave up an immediate home run to Christian Bethancourt to make it 4-3. Once Diekman escaped the inning, I figured I needed to have a word with him, but in my dialing haste, I got the home dugout in Miami instead. Hi, I said, who’s this? Bethancourt here, the voice said. This was awkward. Oh, yeah, you…hey, that was quite a shot you hit there, um, try not to damage any palm trees the rest of the way. I chuckled and hung up. Talking to a Marlin can be a bit disconcerting, especially when it isn’t your intention. I didn’t tell him to do more damage, did I?
As I settled in to watch the eighth, there was a knock at my door. It was John Franco. John, I asked, what are you doing here? Franco said as an official Mets Ambassador, one of his duties is to visit nervous fans and try to get them to relax when those fans seem as if they could use a little soothing. He’d gotten word from Miami that I seemed particularly anxious and they sent him over. I said why you, John? I mean, no offense, but you’re the last person I could picture representing relaxation in the late innings of a Mets game. Franco kind of stared at me and said I had to be kidding, didn’t I know he held the all-time Mets saves record, that nobody ended more Met games ensuring a win than he did? Gosh, John, I said, I’d never thought of it that way.
John Franco and I watched the eighth and ninth together. We watched the Mets not score in top of the eighth and Reed Garrett not give up anything in the bottom of the eighth. When I instinctively picked up my phone to contact Garrett — I was gonna ask Reed to put Lindor on after — John gently removed it from my hand. Greg, he said, the guys know you want them to win. More importantly, they want to win. It might be most helpful if you could channel your encouragement to general enthusiastic cheers, whether at the ballpark or following from home. It really helps them concentrate if you aren’t spreading your anxiety the way fans like you tend to do. You recognize my voice from me yelling at you, John, don’t you? Franco laughed. I’m just glad you didn’t have a cell phone in 1998, he said.
In the top of the ninth, the Mets finally added more runs to the four they scored in the first inning. Brandon whacked a two-run homer to make it 6-3. Hey, John, I said, I basically told Brandon to do that, many innings ago. That’s great, Greg, John said. Brett Baty added an RBI single. I hadn’t spoken to Brett. I kept that to myself.
In the bottom of the ninth, with a four-run lead of 7-3, I can’t say I totally relaxed, but I decided to trust Garrett and the defense. Sure enough, the Marlins went down without much of a fight and the Mets won. John Franco shook my hand and departed. I was glad I could be of so much help.
by Jason Fry on 18 May 2024 11:05 pm Believe it or not, the Mets did some good things on Saturday afternoon before decidedly not good things started happening.
Mark Vientos collected a pair of hits, drove in a run and played the kind of defense I didn’t think he could play. J.D. Martinez once again looked like he’s shedding the rust of his late start. The recently somnambulant bats of Starling Marte and Jeff McNeil were heard from. Even Tomas Nido made some noise at the plate.
And since I’m in the habit of sneering and/or snarling at the Marlins when the slightest opportunity presents itself, a tip of the sartorial hat to Miami’s City Connects. The Sugar Kings alts aren’t just a good City Connect uniform — they’re a good uniform period. Better, in fact, than anything the Marlins have sported in their aesthetically misbegotten existence. It’s a pleasure to see them, even when those wearing them are doing horrible things to the Mets.
Which they did. Oh boy did they ever.
This one had the feeling of a New Soilmaster disaster when the Mets failed to put the hammer down in the first, again when they let the Marlins creep back into it against Luis Severino, and — sad to say — when Edwin Diaz warmed up with only a four-run lead. Yes, you read that right, and yes, I thought that.
I’ll spare you the particulars because I don’t want to relive them, and the historical record will just have to be the poorer. Suffice to say that Diaz is a walking disaster right now: not enough life on the fastball, slider out to perform sabotage, the pitch clock in his head and zero confidence in his pitches.
This is 2019 all over again, except this time it’s even crueler. Then, we didn’t know Diaz and reacted to his failures with the visceral distemper of a shopper sold bum goods with a forged warranty. The first time around Diaz, to his immense credit, somehow gave a doomed New York sports story an unlikely second chapter, in which he was transformed from reviled bust into a folk hero. Then he got hurt, and somehow he and we are back at the beginning. He isn’t scorned this time; instead your heart goes out for him, because we’ve seen what he can do and we’ve learned how much things mean to him and we’ve seen how failure eats at him. It seems impossible that we’re back in creeping dread mode, yet we are. And that’s left us wondering if we can possibly go through this again.
Now, baseball is habitually cruel: To quote a key tenet of the Kanehlian school of philosophy, “the line drives are caught, the squibbles go for hits. It’s an unfair game.” But there’s habitually cruel and there’s Book of Job outtake stuff. That’s where Diaz is right now, and unfortunately we’re all strapped in for the ride.
What happens next? To him, to the Mets, to us poor observers living and dying on the outcome, which means mostly dying right now? I wouldn’t dare venture a guess, not with the narrative having turned so Gothic and dour. Things are bad enough without tempting the baseball gods to show you that you’re still too optimistic.
by Jason Fry on 17 May 2024 11:20 pm Baseball is always about momentum.
On Thursday night the Mets emerged from a terrifying game with the Phillies as the owners of a hard-fought win. It’s the kind of game that pulls teams together, that gives them a certain sense of purpose when they head for the next battleground, newly confident that they can, in fact, do this. The kind of game that …
Wait a minute, I’ve just been handed a dispatch from the Faith and Fear news desk.
On Friday night the Mets got steamrolled by the Marlins, 8-0.
OK, so baseball is sometimes about momentum.
The Mets were shut out, the defense wasn’t particularly crisp, and the Marlins did the annoying Marlin things that the Marlins do to the Mets at New Soilmaster. They made great catches, had balls carom off people right to them, were in the right place to intercept hard-hit balls, and were generally Marlinesque in their usual teeth-grinding way. If you’ve been laboring in the mines of Met fandom for even a few years, you know that you could pluck a dozen vagrants from one of south Florida’s near-infinity of dodgy byways, dress them in barftastic neon, and watch them beat the Mets at least one game out of three, probably by sneaking a ball through the infield in the bottom of the 11th to make it hurt worse.
The only good thing about Friday night’s game counts as an ever so slightly shiny silver lining, if you squint hard enough. Christian Scott, making his third-ever start (two-thirds of which have now been in his native Florida) reported for duty with his splitter nonexistent and his slider not to be trusted. Predictably, he got whacked around, with the first awooga-awooga of alarm a home run off the not particularly imposing bat of Nick Fortes. Fortes entered the night hitting .127; he went 3 for 3 with a trio of RBIs and is now hitting … .159.
(You’re wondering where the silver lining is, because this all sounds pretty terrible. Patience.)
The hint of something possibly metallic came in the bottom of the fourth. Scott, in trouble all night, found himself on the ropes after a Jeff McNeil error, a single and a walk that loaded the bases with nobody out. Scott was left out there to find his way out of trouble (or not), a necessary rite of passage for every young pitcher, and I looked up from grumpily being bad at Sudoku, mildly curious how he would fare, hoping that he’d keep it to an additional run or two instead of flat-lining and waiting to be rescued. (There’s a variant of this where you get your brains beat in and then throw your teammates under the bus by passive-aggressively musing about plays you could wish had been made; that’s known as the Full Niese.)
Scott didn’t flat-line. He struck out Jazz Chisholm Jr. on a slider that actually did what it was supposed to, got Bryan De La Cruz to pop out to short, and coaxed a ground ball from Josh Bell. After which Carlos Mendoza wisely went to the pen, letting Scott depart on a relatively high note. Maybe it wasn’t much, not on a night when you got beat by more than a touchdown, but it counts as something.
* * *
How about a palate-chaser to send you off a little less down in the mouth?
The Mariners recently saw their 1,000th player go into the record books, and celebrated this milestone in a pretty wonderful way: Kirby Snead got a SNEAD 1000 jersey as part of an on-field celebration featuring appearances by Mariners 505, 644, 677 and 823, all of them Oh Yeah That Guys primarily of interest to people going for a rarity score in Immaculate Grid, and wearing signs with those numbers to indicate their less than routinely celebrated place in team history.
Isn’t that wonderful? How I wish the Mets had done that for their Mr. 1,000! Greg and I could have helped! (If you’ve forgotten, the milestone Met was Michael Conforto, back in 2015. The Mets’ tally now stands at 1,236, with the aforementioned Mr. Scott proudly occupying that particular cell in the Excel sheet.)
There was another Metsian touch to the Seattle celebration: They made not one or two or even three but four cakes for Snead’s party – a 1 and three 0s — and the guest of honor reported that he somehow didn’t get a single slice.
Somewhere, I imagine, Marv Throneberry hoisted a Miller Lite and smiled.
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