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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 17 May 2024 11:52 am The more straightforward aspects of a baseball game don’t require much explanation. Slugger Pete Alonso hit a home run. Got it. Starter Jose Quintana didn’t walk anybody. Got it. Closer Edwin Diaz blew a save. Got it, though we wish we didn’t. Still, protagonists gonna protagonize.
The aspects of ballgame that keep a person engaged beyond the obvious amid 162 of them are when you observe that because this happened, this didn’t happen. Or maybe one “this” subtly led to another “this” that could have or would have been a whole other “this”. A little of this and a little that can really add up, like what they say about a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere and god-knows-what occurring as a result.
On Thursday night in Philadelphia, there was enough flapping in the field and on the basepaths and at the plate and on the mound to determine the outcome of the Mets’ 6-5 eleven-inning win. It could have easily gone differently. The Phillies could have won by one. Or the Mets could have won by several. Or maybe the Phillies could poured it on. We got the final we got. We’ll take it, of course.
I don’t know what caused the stomach bug that scratched Brandon Nimmo from an already announced lineup, but I do know that if a proverbial butterfly didn’t flap its wings to sideline Brandon, that DJ Stewart wouldn’t have started in his place. And if DJ Stewart didn’t start in his place, Stewart wouldn’t have been batting and singling in the sixth inning. And if Stewart hadn’t gotten on as he did with two out and the Mets ahead by two, Carlos Mendoza wouldn’t have pinch-run Harrison Bader for him.
Bader’s pinch-running assignment added up to nothing at first. There were two out, and a moment later, there was a third. But now Bader was in the game, playing center and shifting Tyrone Taylor to left. Taylor rather than Stewart thus makes a throw home in the bottom of the inning that a) doesn’t nail the sliding runner and b) allows runners who might have been on first and second to advance to second and the third had Taylor aimed for the cutoff man. The man on third then scores on a sac fly to tie a game the Mets led by a pair a couple of moments earlier. Does Stewart play it by the cutoff book if he’s still in there? Does Nimmo if he’s healthy? Does the second Phillie run find the opportunity to register?
Go ask a butterfly.
But we don’t have to dwell on a Met misjudgment because we can enjoy some good Met fortune. This is in the eighth, after the Phillies have taken the lead (not all good Met fortune is unalloyed). Taylor reaches bases on an error and steals second. Alonso walks. After two strikeouts, Bader strikes…pitcher Jeff Hoffman with a batted ball, which allows Taylor to score, Alonso to go from first to third and Bader himself to reach second. Would have somebody else engineered such a stream of circumstances? While you ask another butterfly, notice Alonso crossing the plate on a wild pitch. The Mets are ahead.
In the ninth, Diaz isn’t the Diaz we thought we knew yet still (I hope) love, and the Phillies knot things again. No scoring occurs in the tenth. The 4-4 game, including its unearned-runner mishegas, moves to the eleventh. J.D. Martinez leads off with an RBI single, because that happens in extra innings. That much is easily understood since 2020. Martinez knocking in a runner from second is graspable, too.
Then we’re back to Bader, the pinch-runner for the left fielder who wouldn’t have played if not for the left fielder with the stomach bug. Bader doubles. It’s at least as big as Martinez’s single, even though it doesn’t knock in a run. It might have had there been a pinch-runner available, but the Mets were playing with a three-man bench, and all Mendoza had left to run for Martinez was his backup catcher, so no dice. Yet it was critical that J.D. got to third, which Harrison made happen, because after two more Met strikeouts, Phillies reliever Jose Alvarado uncorked a wild pitch, which was enough to bring Martinez home with a second eleventh-inning run. Connoisseurs of contemporary extras comprehend two runs in the top of an inning after the ninth is exponentially better than just one run.
In the bottom of the eleventh, Jake Diekman gave up one run — but not two. One we could handle, thanks to what the pinch-runner did with the bat twice. Sometimes a player comes off the bench and does something outstanding. Bader came off the bench to do one thing and wound up doing two things that had nothing to do with that one thing, and it made all the difference.
The previous pinch-runner to make an offensive impact with his lumber rather than his fee, if you can think back this far, was Nimmo, on Sunday. What Bader did, while not as definitive as Brandon’s Esix Snead-style walkoff homer, was pretty rare in Met annals. Only seven Mets have entered a game as a pinch-runner and proceeded to connect for two hits and drive in a run or more. The only one to knock a teammate home twice was utilityman extraordinaire Bob Bailor. On June 3, 1983, Frank Howard’s very first game as interim manager (directly after George Bamberger quit to, as Bambi put it, go fishing), Hubie Brooks started at third at Los Angeles. He led off the visitors’ sixth with a single, but had to leave the game with a bruised knee after tripping over first base.
Enter Bailor, who promptly stole second, advanced on Darryl Strawberry’s groundout to short, and came home on George Foster’s single to right. That’s really all you can ask a pinch-runner to do. But Bob wasn’t done doing. He singled in a run in the seventh, then another in the ninth. With Bailor involved as much as he could be across four innings, the Mets won, 5-2, and got Hondo’s managerial tenure off to a successful start. And, one might wish to infer, incumbent Dodger manager Tommy Lasords witnessed all Bailor was capable of and began hatching the germ of an idea that became trading Sid Fernandez (and Ross Jones) for Bob Bailor (and Carlos Diaz).
Fast-forward a little, and who’s that on the mound shutting down the Red Sox in the middle of Game Seven of the 1986 World Series? “Hey, ease up on the cause and effect,” a butterfly just texted me. For one night, it was enough that pinch-runner Bob Bailor came to the Mets’ rescue in ways that transcended running for Hubie Brooks. And for another night, let’s be glad Harrison Bader was the right Met in the right place at the right time.
by Jason Fry on 15 May 2024 11:44 pm At least the Mets seem to be accepting that some things aren’t working. They reported for duty in Philadelphia without Joey Wendle, mercifully DFA’ed in favor of Mark Vientos, and recalled Joey Lucchesi while sending Jose Butto down to presumably find coaches to help him tame his sudden bout of wildness.
And, hey, the plan looked pretty good for an hour or so. Vientos cracked an early double off Ranger Suarez, who’s been invincible in 2024, and Lucchesi looked solid for four innings, his record blemished only by a Bryce Harper home run over the left field wall, which we should remember is about 195 feet away in this ballpark and so deserving of an asterisk.
But Lucchesi came apart like a dime-store watch in the fifth: walks, an ill-advised throw to third on a bunt, a bases-loaded HBP and consecutive hits that plated three. Vientos would pick up another hit but at times played third base like he was being chased by bees. The Phillies did cruel things to Grant Hartwig and Adrian Houser, there were Met errors, and that’s not even addressing the various dopey and/or inept things contributed to the proceedings by the winning team. Or the fact that the first few innings were played in a gloomy murk that made you want to reach inside your TV with a rag in hopes of making a clear spot.
This was some poor soul’s first-ever baseball game; I hope someone told him or her that they’re not all like that.
Before bringing this recap to a merciful conclusion, a last thought, one that I’ve been tugging this way and that for a couple of weeks: There’s a case to be made that Vientos should have been the DH all year, with J.D. Martinez employed by someone else. The Mets are thoroughly mediocre and it feels like the gap between them and the playoffs is a fair bit bigger than J.D. But this isn’t a surprise — it felt that way in March too. If that’s the case, why is Martinez here? Vientos, like his maybe-platoon partner Brett Baty, clearly has things to learn, but he’s not going to learn them in Syracuse. To have a shot at mastering those lessons he needs to play at the big-league level, and play regularly.
But it’s also true that Martinez has a sterling reputation as a student of hitting and an excellent teammate, and that may be part of the equation here. A decade or so ago I would have dismissed that as an unquantifiable Just So story, but now I’m not so sure. This isn’t the start of a stemwinder about intangibles, which really are Just So stories, but an open question about the value of mentors on a team with young players. There have been a number of relatively recent Mets who didn’t do much in our uniform but were later exalted as teachers — Jose Valverde and Jose Bautista are the names that come immediately to mind.
Those stories tend not to be told until later, sometimes popping up when no longer so young players talk about their own development and the guys who helped them along their path. Much later, sometimes: I don’t recall hearing about Mike Torrez helping a very young Dwight Gooden until Gooden’s number-retirement ceremony was upon us.
I’m not saying that’s the answer, or that those who grouse that Vientos’s development is being stunted are wrong — I’ve thought that myself. I’m just saying it’s something to think about. And maybe even a little comfort when you can’t bear to look at the scoreboard.
by Greg Prince on 14 May 2024 8:19 pm The Mets ain’t too bad when they wear either their classic home pinstriped uniforms (10-7) or their road grays (9-8). They’re godawful when they wear anything else. Four losses with no wins in the City Connects. Two losses with no wins in the fade-to-blacks. And now, with the belated arrival of the white pants that enabled them to don their blue jerseys, they’ve been unable to win in another shade.
The Mets put on their blues Tuesday afternoon and immediately came down with a fresh case of them, falling to the Phillies, 4-0. Aaron Nola pitched a shutout. I wasn’t rooting for him to prevail, but once it became intrinsically apparent the Mets weren’t going to conjure one of their intermittent last-out revivals, I perversely hoped the Seaver-tying bastard would go the distance. You’re gonna lose, you might as well lose to a single pitcher rather than a parade of relievers.
The Mets seem to embrace alternate jerseys and the 0-7 karma that comes with them. Not losing would be a better alternative. No doubt the winlessness when they dig deep into their closet is a coincidence. Still, the sample size has gotten larger and my desire to pick apart another loss that involves the Mets not coming through in any aspect of their most recent game is minute. So let’s pull on these threads.
The Mets introduced the blue tops in 2013. I was at the holiday luncheon at which Ike Davis and R.A. Dickey modeled them the preceding December. Dickey was traded soon later. Maybe that’s why I’ve never fully cottoned to those shirts. I should, I guess. They’re royal blue and the orange is prominent. Can’t say they don’t evince Metsiness. Yet something about them tries too hard. Look! Fun! Really! Matt Harvey really enjoyed wearing them when he was on the mound, including the night he carried his own shutout into the ninth inning in the World Series. Yet another association that works against them.
Despite the dismality inherent within the latest incarnation of black Mets jerseys, I wasn’t fire-and-brimstone traditionalist during their initial dark reign; I was super happy to see them in the first years of the new century and think of Robin Ventura grand-slam singling. I agreed with the consensus that they were tired by the time Shea Stadium gave way to Citi Field and didn’t miss them once they were altogether deleted in 2012. I was OK with their nostalgic return in 2021. The new ones should go down a black hole.
The City Connects, which display a certain sharpness from just the right angle (like when one of the caps is hanging on a hook by a player’s locker during an interview and I’m taken by the purple button), bug me mostly for the “NYC” on the chest. I referred to New York City when I was eight years old. My father, who could claim a tangible connection to four of five boroughs — born in the Bronx, raised in Queens, spent the first decade of his married life in Brooklyn, built a business in Manhattan — corrected my usage: “It’s New York. Only tourists say New York City.” Good enough for me. Unless I’m humming lyrics belonging to Odyssey, Lou Reed or Climax Blues Band (or requesting I’m Doin’ Fine Now), I keep my New York references to two words.
 The only “NYC” I dig. Instead of “NYC” and the whole bit about how we have subways and sidewalks, I would have led with “NYM” as the wordmark and made the requisite storytelling about something more than the city, because the Mets and New York connect to so much more than the city limits.
Get a celebrity whose voice is easily identified as genuinely Metsian. Have that person read something along the lines of…
***New York. The Metropolis.
Biggest city in the country. Most mammoth Metropolitan area, too.
We’ve got boroughs. We’ve got the longest of Islands. We encompass three states.
The beautiful part of being from here, moving to here, or simply loving it here is how much you get to choose from here. The best food, according to YOU. The fashion you decide looks best on YOU. The field that is indisputably YOUR field. You decide who you want to be and what you want to be about. You are an individual among millions.
Yet just because you don’t go along with the crowd doesn’t mean you’re all alone here. In the New York Metropolitan Area, you’ve got neighbors; you’ve got community, you’ve got teammates.
The passion belongs to you.
And you.
And you.
There’s nothing quite like knowing you’re in this thing together…and that your team isn’t only YOUR team.
(Interject with a few fans.)
My team.
My team.
My team.
(Back to our celebrity v/o.)
You connect with your team, your teammates, and the entire Metropolitan Area. If you happen to be in a hurry — you are, after all, in and around New York — you can express that feeling in three quick letters.
NYM.
We know what that stands for.
Our home. Our team.
Just let somebody try to tell us different.
***“NYM,” I believe, would have spoken not just to a wider geography, but a relevant mindset. It would have spoken to Mets fans, the people who are your primary audience for whatever is being placed on shelves. I suppose there is some research showing the vaguer the Met link, the better the chance that somebody on another continent who doesn’t know or care what the Mets are will wear what is being sold. Perhaps there’s research indicating “NYC” is the best play for non-baseball merchandising.
“NYM” would have been about the Mets and the mindset of those who’ve chosen to forge their bond with this franchise and its other acolytes. They could have done the purple and the gray and whatever. I would have changed one letter. It would have been ours. We would have been happy to share.
***I wonder if I ever thought more than in fleeting terms about uniforms before I first read Paul Lukas’s Uni-Watch column in the Village Voice in 1999. I know I’ve never looked at uniforms the same ever again. Paul invented the concept of covering the aesthetics of athletic apparel as a beat unto itself. A lot of us watched games and thought “that thing they’re wearing is kind of interesting.” Paul thought it, wrote it and committed to learning more and more about it. Uni-Watch grew in scope, but never lost sight of its mission. Paul and the people who have supported his enterprise — both as dedicated Uni-Watch staff and readers he’s indirectly trained to eyeball every last detail of every last pants leg — created a world of their own, one that opened its gates to anybody who “gets it” in his words. The only perspective that’s out of fashion at Uni-Watch is dismissing the topic of uniforms as not such a big deal.
 Abyssinia, Paul. Uni-Watch turns 25 later this month, meaning Paul’s been on his beat for a quarter-century. He’s decided that’s enough monitoring stirrups for now. Paul will retire from the everyday of Uni-Watch, handing the keys to his friend and collaborator Phil Hecken. I’ve met Phil and read Phil and know he’ll keep a great thing top-notch. But I’m gonna miss Paul in the realm he’s constructed because he’s one of a kind. He’s provocative, evocative and authentic every time he posts. His 2020 column for the New Republic, on what he calls blue collar “cosplay” by professional sports teams, stays with me. Every time some announcer (including those who announce Mets games) lauds a player as “blue collar” because he went from first to third on a single, it gets on my nerves, as if anybody who ever worked wearing anything else is a lollygagger. My dad put on a suit and took a very early train into New York — just New York — every morning for decades. He came home kind of late and was usually tired. What was his work ethic?
That’s not exactly the point Paul was making, but he really nailed something that had been irking me forever about sports. He’s done that so often, all while delivering news nobody before him considered news. Plus, based on the several times we’ve crossed paths, he’s a helluva sweet guy, unfailingly kind to this correspondent and this blog. Mets fan, too. He once told me that when he was a kid going to Shea, he rooted for the Mets, on those occasions when they were winning in the ninth inning, to blow their lead so he could stick around for extras. I found that a little nuts, but knowing he’s ending his regular Uni-Watch role, I sort of wish somebody would mandate that he has to keep playing in his field.
Really, I hope Paul Lukas enjoys himself and his next endeavors. But he should know he’s incredibly appreciated for what he’s created.
by Jason Fry on 13 May 2024 11:08 pm The game wasn’t lost when Edwin Diaz gag-jobbed the save, though Diaz’s slider has been MIA all season, his command was horrific again, and some of us have been sounding the alarm for some time now.
The game wasn’t lost when Whit Merrifield was inexplicably given a free base after clearly swinging through a 3-1 Diaz slider, even though this umpiring crew was an embarrassment and yet another flashing red indicator that balls, strikes and all the other decisions MLB umpires get serially wrong need to be taken away from them posthaste. (Though when this finally happens we’ll get another idiotic challenge system that shoves baseball closer to the numbing bureaucracy of football, because baseball’s custodians are business-school vandals who shouldn’t be charge of anything, let alone humanity’s highest achievement.)
The game wasn’t lost when Kody Clemens singled off a noncompetitive Diaz slider, or later when he made a leaping catch to rob Francisco Lindor, but it should be noted that Kody Clemens is the son of a war criminal and so should have grown up a lonely exile in some forgotten place, destined to become a schoolyard legend in the annals of Elba, St. Helena or the Ross ice shelf.
The game wasn’t lost when Joey Wendle bunted Jose Alvarado‘s second pitch of the 10th in a polite little arc to Alec Bohm at third, though one wonders what the point of Joey Wendle is, since so far this year he’s demonstrated that he can’t hit, can’t field, can’t be trusted to make sound decisions and has now shown that he can’t bunt.
No, the game was lost a lot earlier. It was lost in the third, when the Mets took a 3-1 lead off Cristopher Sanchez on a J.D. Martinez walk that left them with the bases loaded and nobody out. That’s a gimme run there at least with a second in reach; good teams get something out of those situations even if they don’t manage another tally. What happened? Brett Baty struck out, Harrison Bader struck out and Jeff McNeil struck out. The Mets didn’t stretch the lead to 4-1, 5-1 or break the game open; instead they went down meekly against Sanchez, let the Phillies stick around and eventually the roof caved in.
Mediocre teams lose games in this fashion all the time — blowouts don’t materialize but turn into close games, which turn into losses. The highlight-grabbing plays are the ones that get recorded as the heartbreakers, but it’s not really the case. The real heartbreakers come and go with a lot less notice, when something needs to happen and it doesn’t.
by Greg Prince on 13 May 2024 2:20 pm Dull and dreary turned to bright and shiny in an instant — the very last instant. If you’re gonna make such a switch, latest inevitably proves better than never.
Had Brandon Nimmo not swung and connected for the walkoff two-run homer that transformed a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 victory, dull and dreary was prepared to carry the night Sunday. Dull and dreary has been this Met season’s signature, even if the signature’s i’s have been dotted and t’s have been crossed at brief intervals with improbable swings like Nimmo’s. There were Pete Alonso and Tyrone Taylor pushing the Mets into the win column for the first time all year, against the Tigers. There was Mark Vientos, just visiting from Syracuse for a weekend, taking it to the Cardinals. There was flu-ridden Francisco Lindor exposing the Cubs to whatever had been but was no longer ailing him. For a team that you’d think is always one out from being no-hit, the Mets do manage to craft some dramatic wins.
No Met in 2024, however, has executed a swing quite like the one Brandon took to redirect Sunday night’s slog toward oblivion and lead it to jubilation. No Met charged with coming to bat in a ninth inning seemed so close to physically unable to play status, like one false move and we’d next see him in July, as Brandon. Whatever happened to him Saturday looked like nothing when it happened, which is usually the most dangerous injury a Met can court. In this case, there was an at-bat that left him with intercostal irritation. Intercostal is a cousin of oblique, an anatomical element recognized by Mets fans as “I don’t know what that is, exactly, but goddamn, I don’t want to hear it mentioned in the context of any Met having one.”
So Brandon didn’t start on Sunday, but he swore he was fine, he was available. The only thing Carlos Mendoza let him do was sit on the bench and chat with the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth, which for most of us would loom as a tougher assignment than facing a lineup topped by Ronald Acuña, Jr. To stage a conversation with Karl Ravech & Co, one would have to listen to Karl Ravech. Anybody watching at home would agree that itself tempts exit velocity. ESPN’s doing the game? How fast can I get to the radio?
But Brandon’s a good egg, a good sport, a great fount of soundbites. Ask him anything, he’ll transcend cordiality. Inject a pretape of his mom Patti into the segment — it was Mother’s Day, ESPN wanted us to know — and Brandon will aw-shucks it from here to Cheyenne. On a nationally cablecast ballgame, Brandon Nimmo emerged as America’s favorite son.
Then Brandon removed his microphone and the Mets returned to mute. Luis Severino was providing his usual competent complement of innings, and his teammates were depriving him of meaningful support, as is their custom. The first Brave to score was Jarred Kelenic, who gave the Mets an eyeful of “you could had this” with a solo blast in the second. The next two Atlanta runs were carried by the feet of Zack Short, the very same Zack Short who was a Met approximately ten minutes before, and a Red Sock maybe thirty seconds after that. Short, who scored two runs in ten games as a Met, had just been grabbed by the Braves to fill the role of current L.A. Angel Luis Guillorme, whose tribute video never saw the light of CitiVision. Pretty much every Met you never thought you’d miss dating back to Charlie O’Brien, Bill Pecota and Mike Remlinger becomes a Brave, and all of them take a turn as Travis d’Arnaud.
Bryce Elder didn’t exactly stymie the Mets à la Max Fried Saturday or Charlie Morton Friday. The best strategy is often letting the Mets stymie themselves. Pete Alonso slipped through the offensive miasma to single home a run in the third and a double another in come the sixth. And both Severino, in the fifth, and Reed Garrett, in the seventh, picked off Acuña. Two pickoffs of the first-ever 40-70 man (without giving up a homer to him, either) seemed a perfect way to commemorate a jaw-dropping incident that happened at Shea Stadium exactly 54 years earlier.
On May 12, 1970, Ray Sadecki allowed three stolen bases…all at the same time. It was the second inning versus the Expos. Bob Bailey was on third, John Bateman was on second, Ron Fairly was on first. Then Sadecki went into his full windup — “all I was concentrating on was getting out the batter” — and Bailey slid home, Bateman ran to third and Fairly arrived safe at second. An honest-to-goodness triple steal, perpetrated by three baserunners who, Montreal Gazette columnist Ted Blackman observed, “couldn’t beat Jesse Owens even today”.
I learned of this episode of derring-do (and do twice more) from “John Bateman,” a Twitter/X account run by actor Ken Webster, who’s been animating the late journeyman catcher on social media for more than a decade. I wanted to “like” the post, except a Met pitcher had given up three stolen bases on one pitch and 54 years later, I found that hard to approve. I felt better about appreciating Bateman’s/Webster’s this-date-in nugget once I looked up the box score on Baseball-Reference and discovered the Mets won the game, 8-4.
I felt worse about the game of May 12, 2024, once Short scored the go-ahead run for Atlanta in the eighth inning. We won a game when we gave up a triple steal? Karma had taken its time, but had hunted us down at last. Two pickoffs of Ronald Acuña, Jr., and we were poised to lose.
Or so I was absolutely sure.
Edwin Diaz pitched the top of the ninth with the Mets behind. Perhaps because it was an ESPN game and their director isn’t as invested in spotlighting Edwin the way SNY’s John DeMarsico is, but the pouring on of Sugar in a non-save situation seemed like a non-event. Sugar’s outings have become almost exclusively non-events since his health — knock wood — became a non-issue. The Mets lack save situations. I wouldn’t reverse Kelenic-for-Diaz, even if it retroactively meant we never had to involve ourselves with Robinson Cano, but it struck me how ordinary an appearance by one of baseball’s most electrifying closers had become. Ordinary for his team had become dull and dreary. Why should Diaz be immune?
Yet let it be noted that Edwin Diaz retired the Braves in order and kept their lead to one run, setting the stage for Jeff McNeil to start the bottom of the ninth by initiating the drag bunt story hour. Well, it was a story for a second, but it shouldn’t be forgotten. The former National League champion of batting (speaking of Mets giving off fewer sparks since 2022) did what he had to do to get himself on base. He put the ball on the bat, and his bat put the ball somewhere no Brave could get it.
McNeil was batting eighth, which meant a catcher was scheduled to follow him. With Francisco Alvarez on the IL, catchers bat ninth for the Mets in 2024 like pitchers batted ninth for the Mets in 1970. Tomás Nido was up. Omar Narváez began the night in the nine-hole. Mendoza, sensing it was one of those nights, got desperate and creative every chance he got. More desperate than creative. He used Nido to pinch-hit for Narváez in the seventh in a righty-lefty exchange. Omar had made two outs already. Tomás made one in his stead.
Now, in the ninth, Mendoza relayed instructions to Nido to bunt. Not the kind of bunt McNeil manufactured, just something that would move Jeff along. It worked. Squirrel scurried to second. Nido was out. Of course he was. He’s too considerate to make Narváez feel any worse.
The most creative thing Mendoza might have done all night was constructing the very top of his lineup. Was that DJ Stewart in left? It was. Nimmo, after all, was sitting in deference to that intercostal business. Was that DJ Stewart batting leadoff? It had been, and it wasn’t a bad idea, DJ being synonymous with OBP as he is. As recently as the seventh inning, right after Nido pinch-hit and struck out, Stewart walked.
Desperate for runs, the manager asked intercostal recoveree Brandon Nimmo if he was up for pinch-running. Nimmo didn’t want to sit in the first place, so he said, one assumes, “darn’ tootin’ I am!” Brandon got as far as third base without hurting himself. Then he took over for Stewart in left and caught two balls without hurting himself. Had there been genuine concern that sending Nimmo to the plate would irritate the intercostal any further, it didn’t matter. Desperate for offense or at least the “traffic” he’s always referencing on the basepaths (where it tends to stall), Mendoza had already substituted in every non-pitcher at his disposal, which is to say Nido, Tyrone Taylor and Joey Wendle. Desperation doesn’t leave a lot of options.
So Brandon Nimmo batted with one out and a runner on second. He didn’t hurt himself. He helped the Met cause as much as any erstwhile pinch-runner ever has at the end of a game…which is to say as much as Esix Snead.
Esix Snead! If you remember Esix Snead at all, you remember Esix Snead for exactly one thing: a three-run walkoff extra-inning home run versus the Expos on September 21, 2002, ending a game that Snead entered in the eighth as a pinch-runner. Snead stuck around to play the outfield until he could take the swing that would win the game in the eleventh.
How rarely does a Met pinch-runner become a Met home run-hitter in the same game? Probably not as rarely as a successful triple steal occurs, but it’s pretty unusual. Another trip to Baseball-Reference reveals no Met had ever gone from PR to HR until Wally Backman did it in 1982. Wally’s was ITP, or inside-the-park. Three years later, Howard Johnson’s pinch-running appearance at Wrigley begot a tenth-inning home run that stood up as the game-winner. In the summer of 1986, when almost nothing went wrong, Mookie Wilson homered one inning after running for Kevin Mitchell at Olympic Stadium (built after Montreal won the rights to host the 1976 Olympiad, which was announced on the very same day the Expos pulled their triple steal), part of a seven-run uprising that guaranteed a Met win. Others on the pinch-runner home run list nobody had bothered to look up until a few minutes after Brandon Nimmo batted Sunday: Brian McRae, Eric Valent, Jason Pridie, Tommy Pham (just last year, against the Braves). But Snead’s was the only homer by a heretofore pinch-runner that served to win a game on the spot.
The spot is now shared by Brandon Nimmo. He swung. He stayed in one piece. The ball didn’t stay in the park. Once the pitch he whacked from Alan Minter, lefty triumphing over lefty, landed in the Atlanta bullpen, Brandon’s intercostal became fair game for his celebrating teammates and the electricity appeared back on at Citi Field. The light show the A/V squad usually reserves for Diaz’s entrances accented Nimmo’s trip around the bases. “What a win for the New York Mets!” Howie Rose exclaimed, and who could argue? Whether it definitively disrupts the dull and dreary nature of the season is the next game’s guess. Sunday night, it was as “what a win!” as a win could be.
When Esix Snead launched his home run in 2002, he did so in The Esix Snead Game. There was only one. It’s harder to label this most recent win The Brandon Nimmo Game because Brandon Nimmo’s put his imprint on a lot of games, and been in tons more. Intercostal willing, Nimmo will crack the franchise’s all-time Top 20 games played chart in a couple of weeks. His contract suggests he’ll rise high in those rankings, nearing Ed Kranepool territory. Nimmo’s only ever been a Met and, with any luck, will never be anything but a Met.
There’s something about a lifetime one-team player. At worst, you become what they called in The Shawshank Redemption an institutional man. When the institution’s the Mets, that can skew the player’s perspective. I noticed a difference between how Nimmo and J.D. Martinez responded to reporters’ questions following the Mets not quite getting no-hit on Saturday. Martinez, whose home run ensured the Mets would avoid that delightful slice of history, didn’t seem terribly impressed that his longball pulled the Mets from the edge of infamy. Nimmo, however, appeared at least a little grateful that his ballclub did not wind up roadkill as the Braves rushed to dogpile their several pitchers who would have thrown all those zeroes. Nimmo, who’s seen plentiful amounts of fire and rain since 2016, knows from watching the Braves hop around at the Mets’ expense. Likewise, on Sunday night, I heard Brandon acknowledge that it was of significance that the Mets didn’t get swept by the Braves. I thought about Kranepool, who’d been a Met since the first ghastly year of 1962, being a lot happier about the Mets finally reaching .500 in May of 1969 than Tom Seaver, who famously dismissed the idea that breaking even for one day should have been anybody’s goal here. Comparisons to lovable losers weren’t Tom’s bag. But Ed knew something about the institution. So does Brandon.
Not getting no-hit. Not getting swept. Not getting hurt. Not dull and dreary at every last instant. What a win for the New York Mets.
by Jason Fry on 12 May 2024 5:05 am There’s honestly not a lot of insight to be had comparing a mediocre baseball team with a very good one. Very good teams make plays and get hits when it matters; mediocre ones sometimes do and sometimes don’t. Christian Scott, forced to cosplay as a chimney sweep for his first-ever Citi Field start, was pretty good: He showed an electric fastball, was aggressive in tackling the Braves’ lineup, and most importantly he threw strikes. Honestly, he made one bad pitch all afternoon, a fastball to Orlando Arcia that got too much plate and so became a souvenir.
But Max Fried was better, using his devastating curveball to set up all his other pitches. The Mets ground out some good ABs, leaving Fried out of pitches and forced to depart after seven despite not having allowed a hit. And with less exemplary glovework from Atlanta, the Mets might have been right in the game: Michael Harris II made two spectacular plays in center to deny extra-base hits to Pete Alonso and J.D. Martinez, Austin Riley snagged a low liner at third, and the Braves made all the routine plays.
After Fried’s departure, Joe Jimenez staggered through the eighth without an effective slider but survived, and with two outs in the ninth only Martinez stood between Raisel Iglesias and completing a combined no-hitter. After a near-miss in Friday night’s ninth, Martinez didn’t miss this time, slamming a homer over Ronald Acuna Jr.‘s head to spare the Mets the humiliation of a hitless day. Brett Baty came to the plate as the tying run and hit a ball solidly, but Harris was there in center, as he generally is, and the ballgame was over.
The Mets weren’t no-hit, which is good, but humiliation was still the order of the day. The Mets somehow took two of three in Atlanta last month, but these first two games at Citi Field (with the Phillies’ juggernaut in waiting, oh joy) have followed the usual formula for Mets-Braves tilts. These games feel like a living-room dispute between brothers on a rainy weekend afternoon, with Mom responding to cries of alarm to find the older brother has stiff-armed the younger with a hand on the forehead, leaving the junior partner in the dispute to flail impotently at his tormenter, unable to land a blow and dissolving into tears of rage. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but the Braves are playing .750 ball against the Mets in recent seasons, and the sample size is no longer small.
The Mets are trying to have it both ways this year, developing the young players they hope will be the future of the franchise while positioning themselves on the periphery of the wild-card race and hoping to get lucky. The jury’s out on the former but the latter looks increasingly unlikely; more and more I wish the Mets would quit kidding themselves and go all-in on the future. Instead they’re caught in between, and that’s a recipe for more sour afternoons spent facing futility and a chance of humiliation.
by Greg Prince on 11 May 2024 6:12 am Good call Friday night wearing the reimagined (apparently during a bout of gloom) black jerseys in which the Mets wordmark, the player name and the numbers on the front and back sink forlornly into the fabric as if they followed Carole King’s example of staying in bed all morning just to pass the time. The rain was an apt touch as well.
The Mets started their game late, fell behind fairly early and feinted toward catching up late, only to fall to their ostensible archrivals from Atlanta. Competitively, the Braves play in a different league, but the last time we vied for anything of substance, we vied with them. So humor us.
Jose Quintana had one bad inning, the third, but one bad inning is all it takes when it consists of giving up three home runs in a span of four batters, with a walk thrown in between dingers two and three. That’ll bury a team that can’t do anything against Charlie Morton. Morton went seven, sullied only by a solo blast off the stylish bat of Francisco Lindor in the seventh. At that point, it was 4-1. A rally-like series of plate appearances, highlighted by a ball struck by J.D. Martinez that for half-a-second appeared to be going out but sailed foul instead, made the final 4-2. Spiritually, it was mostly a shutout.
Quintana did correct himself in the fourth and fifth, and there was representative bullpen work from unusual suspects — Recidivist reliever Yohan Ramirez, doing his best Michael Tonkin impression, and recast starter Adrian Houser. There was Pete Alonso maintaining his newfound ability to make contact and reach base as a result. There was Brett Baty diving and tumbling over a rolled-up tarp to catch a foul pop, shaken in the process and pinch-hit for shortly after, but reportedly unharmed by the encounter with some padding by the third base railing.
Mostly there was dampness, defeat and those dreadful black jerseys, suitable for mourning. The Mets, in conjunction with Nike, Fanatics and Grim Rob Manfred, removed the white outline that made the alternate tops comparatively cheerful in both their original incarnation and their reboot a few years ago. This version resembles those knockoffs at your local Bob’s Stores you’d buy in the late ’90s because they said Mets and it was close enough. Soon the Mets will be wearing the unlicensed Bugs Bunny in sunglasses t-shirts that spring up for sale on Opening Day in the parking lot, except they’ll be licensed and expensive.
Today, current avatar of hope Christian Scott will make his Citi Field debut. On the first occasion he was a major leaguer in his home park, he suited up in black. On the mound, he will wear dark gray and “NYC” across his chest. If he hangs in there, maybe someday he’ll get to dress like a Met.
by Jason Fry on 8 May 2024 12:39 am Baseball makes no sense.
Just ask the Mets, who went into the second inning at Busch Stadium Tuesday night down 3-0 to the Cardinals, as Jose Butto couldn’t command his fastball and St. Louis was whacking his pitches all over the ballpark. It sure looked like Monday night’s relatively streamlined, professional win was the exception to the recent rule and the Mets were once again mired in the frustrations that dominated the Tampa Bay series.
So of course the Mets went ham in the top of the fifth. Jeff McNeil led off with a little soft single that Nolan Arenado couldn’t convert into an out despite that being pretty much what Arenado does. Tomas Nido singled and Brandon Nimmo unloaded, tomahawking a Miles Mikolas slider into the stands to tie the game. And the Mets weren’t done: Starling Marte doubled, Francisco Lindor singled, and Pete Alonso sent a double the opposite way for a two-run lead. Yes, the same Alonso who spent three days at the Trop looking like a boy who’d lost his puppy and so was benched for his sanity once the Mets arrived in Missouri. A J.D. Martinez single brought in one more run and the Mets somehow led 6-3. It was one of those exhalation innings that teams and tortured fanbases both need every now and then – an explosion that erases a long track record of frustration and leaves everything thinking, “Oh, so this is what it’s like to actually breathe – I’ve missed this.”
The Mets made defensive changes in the bottom of the fifth, primarily getting poor DJ Stewart out of left before some horrific pratfall put him on the IL. That was wise but also a reminder that there was a lot of ballgame to go, and ample time for things to go wrong.
Said things went wrong when Sean Reid-Foley got in trouble in the seventh and Jose Lopez arrived with two on, one out and the tying run on first. Lopez immediately yielded a single to Ivan Herrera, who’d come in when Martinez’s backswing broke Willson Contreras’ forearm on a gruesome case of catcher’s interference. Bases loaded, Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt coming to the plate, and once again nobody with Mets rooting interests could get enough air.
But remember our thesis: Baseball makes no sense. Lopez left a sinker up in the zone to Arenado, who fouled it back and then popped out. He then left a slider up in the zone to Goldschmidt, who fouled it back and then struck out. I was simultaneously relieved and pretty sure I didn’t want to know how many alternate universes featured Arenado and/or Goldschmidt not missing those pitches.
In the ninth, Alonso took MLB newcomer Chris Roycroft deep: reassurance for the suddenly doubt-stricken Polar Bear, insurance for the Mets. SNY had a good time showing Roycroft’s family in the stands: They were gleeful when Roycroft struck out Francisco Lindor, then turned philosophical when the Alonso AB had a different conclusion. That endeared them to me, despite the ample Cardinal red and baby blue on display: Every pitcher winds up turning around in dismay after the occasional pitch that didn’t do what it should have, and while that was Roycroft’s first such pitch in the big leagues, it won’t be his last. His cheering section were also baseball lifers, and they knew this perfectly well.
Anyway, it was 7-4, but the question was how the Mets were going to secure three highly necessary remaining outs with no properly rested, reliable relievers. (Oh wait, there was Adrian Houser, ha ha ha.) Carlos Mendoza opted for Adam Ottavino, whose recent workload was more than 50 pitches, and it was buckle-up time.
Ottavino retired Brendan Donovan, but Lars Nootbar homered, Herrera singled and Arenado walked on four pitches.
The bad news about Ottavino was he was a) obviously gassed and b) therefore stuck with a disobedient sweeper. The good news about Ottavino is that he may or may not get beaten but I’ve never seen him panic: He goes about his business with an Eeyore-like affect and a certain existential heaviness that comes from knowing the universe has already decided the outcome and he’s just along for the ride.
Fortunately for Ottavino and for us, Goldschmidt was the next hitter and he’s lost in the same nightmare that has been plaguing Alonso, a deep slump that leaves a hitter feeling like he might as well be playing blindfolded. Ottavino threw two sinkers more or less down the middle, almost erased Goldschmidt on a third that sat just wide, gave him something to think about with a changeup, and then threw a fastball that Goldschmidt couldn’t have hit with an oar. He tried anyway and missed.
That left Alec Burleson, who hung in there as Ottavino sent everything but a bunch of balled-up hot dog wrappers and the kitchen sink his way, hoping some offering – any offering – would yield an out and let Ottavino go collapse in a dark room until Friday. The fifth pitch was a sinker up and away at the top of the zone; Burleson’s bat ticked it backwards, it found Nido’s mitt and went no farther, and the Mets had won.
Won using the usual blueprint, of course: Starter gets clobbered, team that can’t hit ambushes opponent, slugger lost in the weeds staggers out of them blinking and amazed, reliever goes unpunished for throwing two hangers, exhausted reliever finds just enough in himself to push the car into the service station.
What do you mean that’s not the usual blueprint? Hey, take it up with the powers that be — I already told you baseball makes no sense.
by Greg Prince on 7 May 2024 9:40 am After a weekend when the Mets sought out and discovered multiple ways to lose in St. Petersburg, it was a pleasant change of pace to watch them figure out how to win one in St. Louis.
They sat Pete Alonso. Given the Polar Bear’s roughly 2-for-a-thousand slump, they kind of had to.
They inserted DJ Stewart in Alonso’s stead, and though Stewart is not a first baseman, he played first base without incident and knocked in the night’s first run, in the first inning.
They stuck Jeff McNeil in left field, one of the positions he used to fill with a flourish, and he made a trademark Flying Squirrel catch.
They had Tomás Nido collecting two hits, bunting a runner over once and not getting stolen on.
They generated two runs in the fifth as one imagines the Gashouse Gang might have in the same town ninety years ago, minus dust or fuss: a single; a single; taking advantage of an outfield error on the second single to grab another ninety feet apiece; a run-scoring groundout to the right side that drove the lead runner home and moved up the trail runner as well; a sacrifice fly to bring home the second of two runs and build a 3-0 lead.
They relied on Sean Manaea for six innings. The first five yielded zeroes. The sixth ended tied on three runs scored, but gosh it was nice to see only one walk. No wonder it was the kind of start labeled quality.
They took back the edge as soon as Brandon Nimmo came up in the seventh. Nimmo has mostly walked and gotten hit when not batting in tough luck in 2024. The clubhouse’s elder statesMet is still capable of getting hold of one and nobody getting hold of it. When he did on Monday, the ball he whacked didn’t stick around and the visitors were up, 4-3.
They slipped Alonso back in for defense as the evening progressed (with Stewart moving to left, McNeil to second and Joey Wendle to towel off early), which was a heady maneuver, both because Pete has played lots of first base and he shouldn’t sit and stew over his hitting for too long.
They deployed a bullpen that’s earned plaudits and was ready to deliver results. Jake Diekman gave up an isolated double, Adam Ottavino just one single, and Edwin Diaz nothing at all.
The closer had a save. The starter had a win. The team was victorious. It’s been known to happen. It just did.
by Jason Fry on 6 May 2024 8:35 am I don’t know if therapy rays are actually a thing (they probably are), but I’ve been to Tropicana Field, which has the affect of the world’s largest basement rec room and smells vaguely like pool cleaner, and the most interesting part of the stadium is the oft-shown pool where cownose rays swim around in a circle. You can reach in and pet the rays, and while I doubt it’s a fulfilling experience for them — this classic Onion bit comes to mind — I found it mildly diverting.
Not mildly diverting? Sunday’s Mets-Rays matinee at the Trop — or, for that matter, the entire series. Or for that matter, the Mets going to the Trop at all — I believe Gary Cohen said the Mets are winless in St. Petersburg since the reign of Elizabeth I. Sunday’s game brought to mind Wes Westrum and his go-to postgame comment: “Oh my God, wasn’t that awful?” You could see the disaster brewing early on, and when it arrived it still managed to be horrible, and now I never want to think about it again.
The Mets jumped out to an instant 2-0 lead on a Francisco Lindor homer — Lindor, at least, looks like he’s shaken off his woes at bat — but Luis Severino, like Jose Quintana before him, followed up a terrific game with a clunker, walking the ballpark. The teams went back and forth, exchanging leads or perhaps indicating they didn’t deserve them — the Rays are lucky they faced the Mets in one of their valleys, as the home team played both lethargically and dopily this weekend. Mets pitchers seemed studiously uninterested in looking runners back to their bases or even admitting they existed, letting basestealers run wild — at one point Lindor spoke for us all when he smashed his glove into the ground repeatedly in teeth-grinding annoyance. Pete Alonso looks absolutely lost at the plate, which because baseball is cruel of course meant he kept getting handed bases-loaded situations where he looked helpless. Even Brett Baty suffered, coming off his best defensive game with one where you could see him thinking again in the field, something Baty should never be doing.
But perhaps we should save the biggest concern for Edwin Diaz. Diaz arrived for the ninth to protect a 5-4 lead and started off his day by throwing sliders: He threw 13 in a row, in fact. Which was sufficient to retire Richie Palacios and Isaac Paredes, but the Lucky 13th slider was a 3-2 pitch to Randy Arozarena that got too much plate, and which Arozarena clobbered into the stands. (After the game, Arozarena said he was looking for another slider. Gee, you think?) Diaz’s post-layoff fastball velocity is down, but the slider has also lacked that extra little bit of bite it needs, and it’s officially a problem.
Farce followed tragedy, as it does. The Mets got a 10th inning reprieve from the baseball governor when a crew-chief review revealed Brandon Nimmo had crossed first base as Yandy Diaz was letting a ball that looked like it was in his glove bounce on the ground, turning the third out of the inning into a momentary Mets lead. But we all knew it was not to last, not with the pitchers opting for nonviolent resistance in combatting enemy basestealing. With runners on first and third and nobody out Jonny DeLuca lofted a ball to center, where Harrison Bader decided it was best not to prolong everyone’s misery and so dove for a ball when he should have stayed on his feet. He missed it by at least the length of a cownose ray and the pain was over, or at least it was for another day.
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