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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 7 September 2023 11:27 am Perhaps the most charming scene in a movie loaded with them is when a nervous Mark “Rat” Ratner first approaches Stacy Hamilton at the counter of Perry’s Pizza in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Armed with Mike Damone’s never-fail “send out this vibe” dating advice, Rat smoothly starts his come-on.
“What do you do with the jackets people leave here?”
Stacy tells him, “We keep ’em.”
“You keep ’em?”
“In case they come back.”
With that, Stacy pulls from beneath the counter a box full of high school students’ jackets and offers Rat the chance to look through it if he wants.
“No, that’s cool,” Rat says in a manner that is anything but. “It would take too long to look through all that. I’ll pick up a new one.”
In reality, Rat hasn’t lost his jacket (Damone is holding it for him off camera), and in reality, the Mets on Wednesday night didn’t lose a game they already had won, because you can’t consider a game in the bag — or box — until it’s officially in the win column. Which this wasn’t.
It felt like it though. The Mets took a lead in the top of the first (Brandon Nimmo doubled, Francisco Lindor singled him in), built upon their lead in the top of the fifth (Lindor doubled, Mark Vientos singled him in) and held that lead going to the bottom of the seventh, thanks to the capable right arm of Jose Butto, a right arm recently judged capable after watching it befuddle the Washington Nationals for six scoreless innings. Following Tuesday night’s triumph in our nation’s capital, the two out of three yoinked from the Seattle Mariners over the weekend, and the way we didn’t keep the suddenly wayward Texas Rangers from stumbling over themselves exactly a week before, you were getting the sense that winning games is now what the New York Mets do almost as a rule. We’d won four of five! Who was gonna stop us?
Well, the New York Mets for one. Even as Butto was mowing down Nats; and even as we could enjoy Lindor having what I’m comfortable referring to as a Lindor game (his 26th stolen base put him 4-4 away from 30-30); and even as a representative delegation of Citi Kids continued to introduce themselves to the present (Alvarez didn’t play, but there was that Vientos ribbie as well as a sleek 5-4-3 DP that was two-thirds Baty and Mauricio); and even as the Mets finally had a team to look down at from their lofty fourth-place perch, there was that nagging feeling one gets from believing your team is ahead by more runs than it is. The first five innings produced those two runs, but they also saw the Mets leave at least one runner on base in every inning, eight in all before the sixth. In the sixth, young Mauricio got as far as third — single, error, bunt — but no further. How, a person asked himself, are the Mets ahead ONLY two-nothing?
The brief sense of pervading presumptuousness that the Mets ahead means the Mets will win, shattered in the seventh. Shattered? Does anything shatter when the fourth-place team is playing the fifth-place team? How about crumbled? Or sagged? That sounds better, given the heat wave. Yeah, let’s just say the Mets wilted. Perhaps Butto did, for after those six essentially spotless innings, Jose gave up two singles around an out, leading Buck Showalter out of the visitors’ dugout at Nationals Park. That was reasonable. He signaled to the bullpen. Also reasonable. He wanted Trevor Gott to pitch.
For what reason, one is not sure.
Two more hits surrounded another out, and there went the lead. Tied at two in the eighth, the Mets threatened once more, as Omar Narváez singled with one out. When catching, Omar looks like a bona fide catcher behind all that gear — whereas some catchers look like hitters biding their time until they get to hit again — yet standing at the plate, Narváez has one of those lumpy frames that makes me think he is asked by ballpark security wherever he goes to flash his ID, because without a uniform on, he could very well be mistaken in street clothes for an overly ambitious fan. “Sorry, buddy, this is the players’ entrance.” (As if I wouldn’t be told the same thing.) But, per Brad Pitt dressing down Oakland’s scouting department, we’re not selling jeans here. I really dig the way Narváez goes about his at-bats. The numbers (.198/.279/.260) don’t back it up, but he seems to put balls in play or at least foul them off in a meaningful way. I’m almost always convinced he’s about to get a base hit, never mind that he doesn’t do so as much as 20% of the time. That’s some faint praise, but I’m willing to dispense it on behalf of a veteran catcher just trying to do his job.
Yet apparently Omar Narváez isn’t on base enough to have finely honed his baserunning instincts, because when Ronny Mauricio lined out hard to second, Omar was about twenty feet off first and the easiest of pickin’s for doubling-off purposes. So much for veteran savvy. So much for that eighth-inning threat.
Trevor Gott was no longer pitching in the bottom of the eighth, so the Nationals didn’t score the go-ahead run. In the ninth, the Mets limited their wasted opportunity to a Rafael Ortega leadoff walk that was erased when Nimmo grounded into a double play. The bottom of the ninth beckoned, and because it was tied, Buck beckoned Bickord… Phil Bickford. Perhaps from warming up alongside Adam Ottavino and then being called on, Bickford took Showalter’s selection as less a vote of confidence than a saveless sigh. If a lead was to be preserved, Otto would be signaled in. The implicit message to Phil: just don’t blow it here, OK pal?
Phil just blew it here. He hasn’t blown so many that we have to borrow some Gott-brand vitriol and direct it toward Bickford. I mean, two months ago, how high was your Phil Bickford Awareness Quotient? I kind of knew he’d been a Dodger, but before we traded for him, I was as likely to think “Phil Bickford” was SNY’s State Farm Agent of the Day. Either way, Phil walked Carter Kieboom on as few pitches as possible without simply waving him toward first; hit Jake Alu on an oh-two pitch, with the first strike having been the gift of clock violation; allowed a seamless sac bunt from Ildemaro Vargas (when did bunting become in vogue again?); and, inevitably, gave up the winning infield-in hit to Jacob Young. This projects as last time this season I plan to list a plethora of Washington Nationals in one paragraph.
The Nats won, 3-2, after the Mets didn’t have it won, 2-0. The Mets saw their lead for not finishing last reduced to a game-and-a-half, though they do maintain the tiebreaker, having taken the season series from their de facto archrivals, 7-6. Should we and they finish with the same record, I want the same consideration the defending NL East champion Braves got for finishing with the same record as the Mets but edging us in the season series, 10-9.
This matters how? Not at all (unless we and Washington both dip enough over the final three weeks to get in on that sweet Bottom Six draft lottery action). But it’s September 2023, a whole lot different from September 2022. One searches for scraps of stakes where there are none in evidence. Still, I’m a lot more ease this September than I was last September, and this is a welcome aspect to the denouement of this otherwise discouraging campaign. A game of this nature gets away a year ago, oh the agita. No disturbing of acids this September. The Mets played a game they came close to winning and didn’t win it. I’m willing to pick it apart some for recapitulation purposes, as I just have, but I come away with no regrets to place amid a pile of Pendletons, a jamboree of Jordans and a surfeit of Suzukis for eternity. Last September, the pre-Atlanta losses warned us of imminent danger, and even the wins somehow felt suspect. We all suspected something was off, despite the win total soaring through the 90s and topping 100.
At this moment, in this September, we’re 64-75. The vibe is very relaxing. Blow a game? Cool. Just pick up a new one, if it’s not too much trouble.
Pick up a new episode of National League Town right here.
by Jason Fry on 5 September 2023 11:17 pm Francisco Alvarez connecting for a long home run. Ronny Mauricio driving in a run and making some nifty plays afield. Mark Vientos tripling. Brett Baty driving in runs and ending the game with a highlight-reel play.
There was a lot to like from the anticipated future of the Mets on Tuesday night: They beat the Nats by six, with the margin that slim only because of some unfortunate bullpenning, and the yout’ of America went 5 for 13 with 6 RBIs in advancing the cause. They had help from more veteran Mets, too: Brandon Nimmo went deep twice, Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso hit big flies, and Jose Quintana didn’t break much of a sweat after a first-inning bump.
Alvarez was the story to be most pleased about: The rookie catcher never let his dreadful slump at the plate carry over to his work as a backstop, with that aspect of his game remaining impressively precocious and marked by a laser-beam focus on detail. Still, the slump really was dreadful, with Alvarez looking completely lost in all the ways that can snowball on a rookie: too aggressive when he had to be selective, too selective when he should have been attacking, seemingly always looking for the opposite of what the pitcher decided to throw, and hitting in lousy luck even when contact was made. Over the last couple of weeks you saw a slow but steady sea change, though: more patience, better contact, and finally the payoff against poor Patrick Corbin. Maybe Alvarez needed his workload cut back, maybe he just needed some time to make the necessary adjustment against pitchers who’d adjusted to him, or maybe it was some of both. Whatever the case, it was a welcome sight.
So too is being ahead of the Nats again in the standings, whatever one might think about draft order and continuing the Steve Cohen restocking of the farm. On the one hand it seemed karmically appropriate for the Mets’ gold-plated season to land with such a thud that they were actually a last-place team; on the other, that seemed like taking the bit a tad too far. Yes, the Mets were a pile of money thrown into a dumpster and set on fire, but the point was made without the Mets actually being worse than the Nationals. Now they aren’t, and even with my October calendar free, that makes me a little happier.
* * *
On a sad note, however the Mets finish their season they’ll do it without Carlos Carrasco. Cookie’s season and Mets career came to an end when he smashed his pinkie with a 50-pound dumbbell in the weight room over the long weekend. Carrasco had a confounding time in orange and blue: He arrived as a surprisingly robust addition to the deal for Lindor, one of those “wait and they also got…” players; saw his inaugural season ruined by injury and ill luck; had a quietly excellent second go-round in which he proved to be every bit the well-liked, steady veteran Cleveland fans mourned losing; and then dove straight off a cliff.
I suspect five years from now Carrasco will be remembered with a shrug when he’s remembered at all, which will be simultaneously a shame and no particular injustice. Just one more reminder, as if the entire season hasn’t been enough, that baseball can be unpredictable and cruel.
* * *
You have to read Tim Britton’s piece in The Athletic, which finds him walking Tom Seaver‘s vineyard in Calistoga, Calif., in the company of the Franchise’s daughter, Anne. It’s a deeply felt, sharply observed elegy for Seaver and a tribute to how he brought his perfectionism and drive to an entirely new pursuit after his playing days. Read it and then, if you haven’t already, subscribe to the Athletic.
We were lucky in having our first years as Met bloggers coincide with the initial wave of ambitious baseball blogs, the high-water mark of online media, and the still vibrant autumn of traditional beat writing. Much of that trifecta is gone now, but at its best the Athletic’s smart, deep and rich Mets coverage reminds me of those days. That’s worth celebrating and supporting.
by Greg Prince on 4 September 2023 1:42 pm What distinguishes every Mets “game go” that involves me and my friend Mark Simon?
As was the case on Sunday afternoon, when Mark and I went to Citi Field to ostensibly watch the Mets play the Mariners, each of us brings several, perhaps many Mets-based trivia questions to ask one another.
What’s the purpose of these trivia questions?
Less to stump one another than to pose a fairly impossible query that is then broken down through a series of somewhat reasonable hints meant to make answering possible, lest the initial impossibility factor break the spirit of he to whom the question is posed.
Can you give me an example of one of those questions?
“Who was the last Met batter Doc Medich ever struck out?”
Why would anybody ask that?
Because this year’s theme was Doc, Doc and Darryl, in honor of Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry having their numbers retired…and Doc Medich conceptually being along for the ride.
Yeah, but how the hell would anybody remember who the last Met Doc Medich struck out was?
The point of the question is not to elicit the correct answer off the bat — though if it’s gotten immediately, more power to the answerer — but to peel the clue onion down to its last layer until the answer is obvious. Like if you say, “he was traded for a 1969 Met,” you might think the answer was Jesse Orosco, because Jesse Orosco was traded for Jerry Koosman.
Is the answer Jesse Orosco?
Um, no.
Does the answer ever become obvious?
Not really. But spirits stop just shy of reaching their breaking point.
So what’s the answer?
The answer is to live a rewarding life of Mets fandom that makes you interested in asking or answering who was the last Met Doc Medich ever struck out.
No, I mean, who was the last Met Doc Medich ever struck out?
Pepe Mangual. He was acquired for 1969 Met Wayne Garrett.
Why would anybody want to know that?
Because of the companion question.
Why was there was a companion question?
Companion questions are the lifeblood of this ritual.
What was the companion question?
“Who pinch-hit for Doc Medich in Doc Medich’s only start as a Met?”
Who was it?
Here’s a clue: his name came up about 30 seconds ago.
Um, Wayne Garrett?
No! Pepe Mangual! The same player who was Doc Medich’s final Met strikeout victim was also the player who pinch-hit for Doc Medich in his only Met start!
What did Pepe Mangual do when he pinch-hit for Doc Medich?
Pepe Mangual struck out.
And you and Mark asked each other these types of questions at the game Sunday?
Only for about the first five innings. We also compared notes on dietary restrictions.
You guys must’ve gotten a kick out being on hand for Pete Alonso’s 40th home run, huh?
We noticed it, even if kind of got in the way of our trivia and foods we avoid.
What about Pete’s 41st homer and hundredth RBI?
We were out of questions by then, so we ate that up with a spoon. Yessir, Pete had the bulk of our attention, though maybe not the scoreboard operators’, because they didn’t seem to ballyhoo No. 100 in the ribbie department with any kind of informational graphic. I don’t care what you think about “counting stats”. A hundred runs batted in is a hundred runs batted in, and that should have been spotlighted. Met trivia buffs we may fancy ourselves, but without confirming it on our phones as Alonso rounded the bases, neither Mark nor I was 100% certain the most amazing power hitter we’ve ever had wasn’t up to “only” 99 RBIs.
How about that Pete Alonso?
My friend and I agreed the Mets need to extend Alonso long-term this winter for every obvious reason — yet if they somehow discern they can’t, like if Pete wants to play “closer to home” à la Jerry Koosman wishing to pitch in Minnesota following 1978, or he’s yearning to test his value in free agency — that the only package they should accept in trade is something that brings them a young pitcher on the level of Noah Syndergaard circa 2016 and a contemporary all-around young star like Austin Riley. And nobody’s going to give you that.
”How about that Pete Alonso?” was more of a rhetorical question, but can you honestly imagine the Mets trading Pete Alonso or letting Pete Alonso go?
I can imagine anything, I suppose, especially when Pete is waiting two weeks between his 39th and 40th homers, but then he waits only four innings between his 40th and 41st homers, and no, of course not. But once you’ve lived through every prominent Met not named David Wright or Ed Kranepool not playing his entire career as a Met, the imagination runs wild, or at least takes a Sunday stroll.
How was the rest of the game?
I’d say Mark and I swapped some pretty good questions.
No, I mean being at the Mets’ 6-3 win over the Mariners?
Oh, that was awesome. We took a series from a contender, though it’s hard to call it being a spoiler when by all rights we should have no business having anything to do with the American League West race. There were more Mariners fans on hand than you might expect, but, thankfully, not too many people in general.
What do you mean “thankfully”?
I like going to Sunday afternoon games, but I don’t dig huge Sunday crowds. When Mark and I sought a game for what he calls our annual game go, I suggested this one with the idea that the Mariners carry a relatively low local profile; there was no giveaway scheduled; it was a holiday weekend that might scatter people’s interests away from Citi Field; and the Mets at this point of the season are, you know, the Mets. We lucked out in terms of manageable demand and really lucked out with seats that were just shaded enough from a convincing September sun. It was pretty hot, though not as steamy as the last time Jerry Koosman pitched at Shea, which he did long after that trade to Minnesota, because Jerry Koosman apparently decided retiring as a Twin wasn’t the be-all and end-all of his post-Met career.
You rarely have a kind word for Interleague play, so why did you want to see the Mariners?
That was actually the biggest reason I wanted to go. The Mariners were the only AL team I’d never seen at Citi Field since it opened. The ballpark opened in 2009 and Seattle hadn’t alit in our presence until 2022, a series we were defeated that I didn’t attend. Saw them twice at Shea, seen them on the road in a couple of places, but not at Citi. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a gaping void in my current edition of The Log, but it was a void. Now it is no longer. One “Seattle (A)” has been dutifully scrawled under “OPPONENT” within the pages of my steno pad of record.
Despite the everybody-plays-everybody ethic of our times, you still denote Interleague opponents with a parenthetical A?
Quaint, I know. But I innately don’t expect to see the Mets play anybody who doesn’t share the National League standings with them.
Anything else you didn’t expect to see yesterday?
Well, I somehow didn’t expect to see Ronny Mauricio, because I assumed Buck would want to rest a rookie who had just lit up the first two major league games he’d played, but it was a nice surprise to see him not benched. I didn’t necessarily expect to see Dominic Leone pitching for his third team at Citi Field this year, and, honestly, we were so deep into our trivia that I didn’t notice Leone come in or realize that was him giving up Jeff McNeil’s laser beam of a home run to right. I also wasn’t expecting to see Mr. Met on the EnormoVision screen at the center of a prerecorded celebratory hora. Nice touch for Jewish Heritage Day.
Isn’t “prerecorded” the same thing as “recorded”?
A phrase is a phrase. Ask me a real question.
Did you see a lot of US Open fans?
Judging by garb, a few decided to make what I’ll assume was a day-night doubleheader out of baseball and tennis, and I appreciate that kind of bi-sport curiosity on behalf of tourists or even Mets fans with split focus. On the 7 on the way in, I heard somebody ask “where do we get off?” and without looking up, I realized they were tennis people. Once I did look up, there was no doubt about it. They’re all so much, I don’t know, cleaner than we are.
Did you offer them directions?
I figured they’d figure it out for themselves. I always have to tamp down the temptation to answer, “eff you is where you get off.”
What do you have against the US Open?
Not much. I just sort of resent the idea that the Mets-Willets Point stop all of a sudden for two weeks every year becomes about something other than the Mets. The same way I resent Mariners fans coming to root against the Mets. I now have proof that such a phenomenon exists. Mariners fans coming to root against the Mets, I mean. I already knew that I’m capable of boiling over with petty resentments.
So you’ve finally ceased reflexively referring to that subway stop as Shea?
No, not really. I still do a two-step in my head, the way I continue to think the Stop & Shop in my neighborhood continues to be a Waldbaum’s.
There haven’t been any Waldbaum’s for quite a while, right?
There also hasn’t been a Shea Stadium stop, per se, or a Shea Stadium for 15 years. But you know how it is. You get used to thinking of something or looking at something a certain way, like when all those Mets wore 36 after Jerry Koosman, yet to you 36 was always going to be Jerry Koosman.
All right, that’s the third time you’ve slipped Jerry Koosman into the conversation — is there something you want to ask me?
If you insist. In his 17 starts following his early departure from the legendary Fourth of July game in Atlanta in 1985, Doc Gooden allowed only 20 runs the rest of the year, and only one of those was driven in by a pitcher. Who was it?
Um, can you give me a clue?
It wasn’t Pepe Mangual.
by Jason Fry on 2 September 2023 11:05 pm The Mets played a ridiculously entertaining game Saturday night, once that saw them come back from three runs down and again from four runs down, one that featured a DJ Stewart homer and a Mark Vientos moonshot and a Francisco Lindor screen-rattler, and one that turned, as so many games do, on Daniel Vogelbach using his speed.
Honestly, everything about it was fun except for the final score, which featured an 8 and a 7 in places we wished had been reversed.
(An admission here: Emily and I were at dinner in Torrington, Conn., while the Mets fell behind the first two times, meaning I reported for duty with the forces of good down 7-3. This means that the portion of the game I saw was a 4-1 Mets victory, which unfortunately doesn’t count but made for more pleasurable watching. I highly recommend this as viewing strategy, should you find a way of reliably accessing it.)
Adam Ottavino giving up what turned out to be a fatal homer to J.P. Crawford does not count as one of the entertaining parts: Ottavino is another example of a 2023 Met who’s regressed, though I find it a bit harder to grouse about Ottavino’s backsliding than what we’ve seen from various teammates. Ottavino is a reliever and so knows perfectly well that a good season doesn’t guarantee another good season any more than a bad season is a life sentence. Relievers are spaghetti hurled against a wall; Ottavino stuck the horizontal landing beautifully in 2022, but a lot of 2023 dinners involving him have wound up with pasta on the floor. That’s just the way it goes, which is why the man invariably looks grim and slightly weary on the mound — he’s seen some shit and knows he’ll see some more of it before he’s through.
For a second straight night, Vogelbach was at the center of the game. This time, he led off the bottom of the ninth by spanking a Justin Topa changeup into the left-center gap. Vogelbach rumbled around first, saw the ball on the warning track and shifted into … well, second gear in an effort to reach that base ahead of the throw. It didn’t work: He was tagged out a good foot and a half shy of the promised land.
This was, of course, unfortunate! Vogelbach’s time at first after a single and a more conservative decision would have lasted just long enough for Tim Locastro to replace him on the bag; Locastro might have been on second after a steal (the equivalent of a double if you’re scoring at home and even if you’re scoring in the middle of the desert, looking up the barrel of an abandoned nuclear silo or while peering at the heartbreakingly beautiful blue curve of the Earth from a space station) when Stewart rapped a single up the middle, and that in all likelihood would have tied the game.
After the Mets had lost, various commentators tut-tutted at Vogelbach for pushing beyond his limitations and forcing the issue. And this is indubitably correct … but nevertheless I must protest. On Friday night Vogelbach won a game for the Mets by being aggressive in a situation where we’ve often seen him be passive: He went into protect mode and fouled off a number of close pitches instead of expecting the umpire’s sense of the strike zone to align with his own. He was aggressive again Saturday night in a situation where it was going to take a perfect relay to get him; as it happened, the Mariners made a perfect relay.
You know what? So be it. The Mets tried to play spoiler for a second straight night and almost pulled it off with nine innings of scratching and clawing, playing never say die baseball at the tail end of a season we can’t wait to shovel dirt onto. They played highly watchable baseball after a spring and summer in which too many games bordered on unbearable to witness,. I’ll take that every time — even if the final score winds up not to my liking.
by Jason Fry on 1 September 2023 11:21 pm Fireworks Night in a lost season is always a bit of an asterisk: There are a lot more spectacle-oriented fans in attendance than one might wish, treating the baseball game like it’s the opening band. They wait with varying degrees of impatience, get in your way in the aisles, and annoy you with their conspicuous lack of interest in what’s happening between the lines. If you’re particularly unlucky, they’re even rooting against the Mets, eager for them to finish up and make way for things that sizzle and boom.
(Not that I was there Friday night — I can think of about a thousand better uses for my money than further subsidizing the 2023 Mets — but I remember Fireworks Nights from lost seasons past, and that shit’s annoying.)
I caught the game on Apple TV, which has that Apple quality of simultaneously feeling it’s arrived from a streamlined future and not being something you asked for. The game looks big and wide and bright, with an admirably readable score bug and information, yet a lot of that information seems like it was written up by someone not particularly well-versed in baseball. I don’t particularly trust being told that Cal Raleigh‘s chance of reaching base has increased from 17% to 22% between pitches and more to the point, I don’t particularly care. The announcers weren’t bad — old friend Wayne Randazzo was leading a booth that I think also included Dontrelle Willis (though, again, I don’t particularly care) — but halfway through I remembered a little-known Apple TV feature and switched the audio feed to Howie Rose and Keith Raab. The feed was in perfect sync — now there’s an actually useful bit of Cupertino wizardry — and I rather enjoyed the over-descriptive feel of radio words and TV images, since “over-descriptive” is pretty much what we do here.
I also enjoyed the game, though I kept thinking I was about not to. Kodai Senga was terrific again, Brandon Nimmo socked a homer to match one from Seattle’s J.P. Crawford, and Ronny Mauricio finally made his big-league debut, with his family in the stands determined to make more noise than 30,000-odd fireworks enthusiasts. Mauricio has gained some bulk since I saw him not so long ago as a gawky bordering on extraterrestrial Brooklyn Cyclone, but he’s still all arms and legs and looks like he could use a daily bag of cheeseburgers. But those long arms are powerful levers: Mauricio’s first AB against Logan Gilbert ended with a line drive that rocketed out to right field at 117 MPH, sizzling over the head of a startled-looking Teoscar Hernandez. Mauricio then showed some capable glovework at second, taking a throw from Jeff McNeil in left and tagging out Julio Rodriguez just short of the bag.
(That 117 MPH double, we were told numerous times, was the hardest-hit ball recorded by a Met this season, a stat that’s simultaneously awesome and better left unscrutinized, because who actually cares?)
Mauricio was joined by Brett Baty, returned from Syracuse (he got a knock) and hit ninth behind Francisco Alvarez and Baty. But the game didn’t come down to any of the Baby Mets. Rather, it turned on an eighth-inning confrontation between Daniel Vogelbach and Andres Munoz with the game tied at 1-1, two outs and Francisco Lindor on third. Vogelbach was down 0-2 to start the AB, but instead of watching close pitches he went into protect mode, spoiling four-seamers and sinkers until Munoz’s ninth offering caught too much plate. Vogelbach ended the best AB of his season with a single spanked between the third baseman and the shortstop, which gave the Mets the lead.
So of course Buck Showalter turned to … Drew Smith?
Yes, that Drew Smith, serial allower of home runs and yet another 2023 example of worrisome Met regression. On my couch I reached for my phone and paired word that Smith was warming up with a copied image of “The Scream,” and on your couch you were probably expressing the same feelings though quite possibly in a different fashion. Smith walked Raleigh to start the ninth; picked off pinch-runner Jose Caballero with several Mariners’ looks of disgust bordering on theatrical; coaxed a flyout from Hernandez; but then allowed a single to Dominic Canzone, whoever that is.
The game came down to Smith and Ty France, with Smith seemingly hell-bent on mumping things up. He threw a trio of four-seam fastballs, all for balls, mixing in a slider that hung horrifyingly … but France somehow missed it. So with the count 3-1 Smith went to all sliders. France somehow missed another hanger, then fouled off two more that weren’t obviously disastrous but still caught too much plate for anyone’s liking. “C’mon, hit it to anybody,” I kept intoning on the couch, though what I was really thinking was, “Don’t hit it to some fan sitting 425 feet away.”
Smith threw his eighth pitch to France, which was another slider, I braced for horror — and this slider was, finally, well-located. France swung through it, the Mets had kicked off the Mauricio era with a good one, and I ignored a bunch of elegantly presented meaninglessness on Apple TV. All’s well that ends well, even if you’re not quite sure how it worked out that way.
by Greg Prince on 31 August 2023 11:33 am Just desserts were on the Citi Field menu Wednesday night as the Mets earned their 6-5 victory over the Texas Rangers, and the Rangers just as surely earned their 6-5 defeat at the hands of the New York Mets.
Had it gone the other way, all would have seemed more predestined. The Mets are the lousier team here, they were starting their secret self-implosion weapon Denyi Reyes, and the Rangers, in the thick of a three-way divisional fight with Seattle and Houston and hardly having a Wild Card fallback wrapped up, have something to play for. Of course, it shall be remembered without citing any glaring example that stays with a fan forever, that an out-of-it team starting a pitcher with limited credentials and no reputation (cough, Joe Grahe, who hadn’t won a game in four years, suddenly excelling for the Phillies down the stretch in 1999, cough) can trip up a team with everything to play for (cough, the 1999 Mets, who succumbed to Joe Grahe on that season’s penultimate weekend following getting swept in Atlanta, cough).
But if it were just Reyes shaking off his 15.88 ERA as a starter in 2023 — gathered over two outings that lasted fewer than six innings — and holding the Rangers in check for five-and-a-third, leaving the game with an unlikely two-run lead that set the Mets up for their victory…well, solid pitching from mysterious sources materializes from time to time. Plus, this was the first start in which Reyes’s first name was pronounced “Den-gee” by Mets announcers rather than the intuitive “Den-yee” or Americanized “Denny”. Perhaps this Reyes is somebody else altogether. Or perhaps he hired as his private pitching tutor former Met stalwart Dillon Gee and the lessons took.
The 3-1 lead Reyes protected until the sixth was built in part by a DJ Stewart solo home run. Later, when the Rangers would attempt to protect a lead of their own, Stewart would return to the spotlight and homer again. And, in the tenth inning, the game-winning RBI would be produced by the man Buck Showalter refers to as Stew, because “DJ” is apparently just too formal. Yet with all those sizable contributions — four RBIs plus some extra-base thievery as Stewart threw himself into the ESA ORT portion of a right field fence ad to complete his running grab of Marcus Semien’s sure-thing RBI double — it can’t be said that the Rangers losing was just about DJ enjoying yet another game of his life at the close of the month of his life.
Texas had ample opportunities to overcome Reyes, overcome Stewart, overcome the microscopic detritus of Mets Magic that we’d like to believe still permeates the atmosphere over Flushing. Ample is an understatement. The Mets didn’t dare the Rangers to beat them. They invited them over and brought out refreshments for a Win The Damn Game, Already party. The Rangers simply forgot to RSVP.
When Reyes departed with one out and one on, England Dan and Sean Reid-Foley entered. The Rangers really loved to see him last night. Sean proceeded to walk the ballpark. It’s no exaggeration. The paid attendance of 23,849 each received a base on balls, courtesy of SR-F. Of more use to the visitors, so did Corey Seager, Nathaniel Lowe and Adolis Garcia, all on full counts, all in a row. That’ll manufacture a run. It was 3-2, the bags were juiced and you knew what was going to happen next.
No, you didn’t. The Texas Rangers certainly didn’t. Despite Reid-Foley pitching like nights were forever with him, he struck out Mitch Garver and then Jonah Heim, the latter at the end of his fourth full count and second nine-pitch battle of the inning. Sean threw 35 pitches to five batters. Sixteen were balls. Somehow the Mets were still ahead and the Rangers were still behind.
One reliever would provide stress-free relief for Showalter, Trevor Gott in the seventh (not to be confused with Trevor Gott, stress-inducer in the ninth a couple of nights before). Then came the old pros, Brooks Raley and Adam Ottavino. They appeared to have taken up new professions that did not involve retiring batters. Raley got nobody out as he started the eighth. Brooks was removed literally as fast as a pitcher can be in these three-batter minimum times, leaving the bases full of Texans. Ottavino hit Garcia on a full count to tie the game; teased a double play bouncer out of Mitch Garver that went 1-2-3, as easy as A-B-C if you consider Otto’s backhand flip to Omar Narvaez a piece of cake; and, imbued by the positive momentum the DP had produced, gave up a two-run single to Heim. So much for momentum.
“So much for momentum” might be what Bruce “Boch” Bochy muttered in the Texas dugout when a) a subsequent walk didn’t lead to any more Ranger scoring; and b) Stewart homered for a second time, this dinger delivered with Pete Alonso on base. Yeah, Stew! The game was tied going to the ninth, and Jeff Brigham, who I’m pretty sure had been warming up since being recalled Sunday, was on to keep getting his work in. Two batters saw seven pitches apiece from Brig — I assume that’s what Buck calls him — with one walking and the other fouling out. The fella who walked, Leody Taveras, took second on an errant pickoff throw after not being able to score or even advance when Stewart made that aforementioned sensational catch at the wall. Surely Leody’s getting to second was going to enable a go-ahead run, but no, somewhere amid Brigham’s 23 ninth-inning pitches, Jeff escaped.
After Francisco Lindor walked and stole second with two out in the ninth, and Jeff McNeil punished his bat for popping up with the winning run in scoring position, the game went to extras. Rob Manfred, considerate bloke he is, ordered ahead and had a runner placed on second for Texas. Brigham returned to throw more pitches. One was shot down the third base line but smothered by Jonathan Araúz before it could finish its Citi Field tour as an RBI double down the left field line. Araúz couldn’t throw the hitter, Garcia, out at first, but boy did he keep the runner who had no business being on second, Lowe, on second. Talk about a huge defensive play in extras.
You should, because it’s not the one anybody was talking about first and foremost in a couple of minutes, for Garver walked to again load the bases for Texas, and with one somewhat conventional out made (Lindor catching a sizzling liner from Heim), Old Friend™ Travis Jankowski stepped up to presumably pull a Travis d’Arnaud or James McCann or ex-Met of your choice and do the Mets in. Jankowski wasn’t here very long. He was 2022’s Terrance Gore in the months before Terrance Gore became 2022’s Terrance Gore, a role played intermittently in 2023 by Tim Locastro. We mostly saw Jank — that had to be his clubhouse nickname, right? — pinch-run as a Met. Bochy uses Jank as semi-regular outfielder. Bochy’s managed three world championship teams. We’ll assume “Boch” knows what he’s doing.
Every reason you could think of for why the Rangers were about to take a tenth-inning lead vaporized in a blink. Jankowski grounded to Alonso, moving in front of first base toward foul territory. Alonso rightly threw home. Jankowski, reacting in a sense of self-preservation lest Pete’s throw inadvertently clock him, slowed down and ducked. While Narvaez received Pete’s throw and recorded the first out, Travis turned his head toward home for an instant, perhaps thinking, “why wait for highlights when I’m on the field and get to watch a big play develop in person?” This slowed the speedy Jankowski substantially, allowing time for the Mets’ new ad hoc first baseman, McNeil, to complete his race over from second to take the return throw from Omar.
Jankowski had both hit and run into a 3-2-4 double play. It got Brigham (40 pitches over two innings and at least as many thunderous claps of his glove in exultation in appreciation of his defense) and the Mets out of the inning right about the time the Rangers should have been planning their happy flight. Travel home to Arlington was on somebody’s mind when this game was scheduled for a 6:40 start. Now Texas was stuck in New York a little longer.
A game in which Mets relievers threw 128 pitches over four-and-two-thirds innings couldn’t possibly be blown by the Rangers, yet it was about to blow the Mets’ way. With McNeil standing on second as Manfred’s gift to the hosts, Bochy ordered the intentional passing of Pete. First and second, nobody out, the accomplished yet apparently exhausted Aroldis Chapman on the mound. If the Mets were the Mets of most of 2023, it wouldn’t have necessarily been a recipe for Texas disaster, which, if you ever happen to be in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, isn’t nearly as tasty as Texas barbecue. But the Mets rose a little above their station all night and the Rangers seemed determined to let this one get away. Sure enough, Francisco Alvarez, who had taken over the DH duties from Daniel Vogelbach (who himself had homered way back in the second), gritted his way to a full-count walk — Alvarez still isn’t hitting much, but he does dig in for some tough at-bats when the conditions are late and close — and DJ Stewart made his body available for a bases-loaded plunking. Heroics, schmeroics, it was the game-winning RBI. McNeil jogged home, Stewart was showered with a bucket of bubble gum (wrapped), and the Mets, who are about to add Ronny Mauricio to their ranks for their stretch drive to nowhere, had one night to feel very good about themselves.
The Rangers, who really had to work to absorb a loss they definitely didn’t need in their AL playoff chase, had a long flight ahead of them, courtesy of the team that’s headquartered the shortest of hops from LaGuardia.
by Greg Prince on 30 August 2023 12:03 pm Kudos to the Mets for scheduling the finale of their series versus the Rangers tonight a half-hour earlier than usual. The 6:40 PM start time, slotted in deference to Texas’s travel itinerary, isn’t a secret, but it will no doubt take some habitual viewers and listeners by surprise. The Mets begin virtually all of their evening home games at 7:10 PM. Not a few people will tune in then only to find the Mets and Rangers already in progress.
Those are lucky people, and I’ve figured out a way to create even more fortunate souls. Just keep starting Mets games earlier than expected, a little bit more each night or day. Did we say 6:40? We meant 5:50. You thought first pitch was at 5:50? Oh, we went with 5:20. Listen, we know we said 5:20, but 2:30 seemed more convenient. We hope you don’t mind.
Mind? Mind? If you kept getting your games over with without what’s left of our attention directed at them, we’d thank you for flushing this dreaded 2023 Met habit from our system.
If we had no idea when their games start, we’d hopefully take the karmic hint and slither slowly but decidedly from our rut of seeking the Mets out in the name of some kind of bizarre fulfillment. So by all means, try to sneak these games in when we’re not looking and we’re not listening. The worst that will happen is we’ll have to find out about yet another low-scoring loss — like Tuesday night’s in which Jose Quintana pitched wonderfully and the infield defense performed admirably behind him, only to have nobody score on his behalf and Drew Smith enter and throw his patented home run ball — after the fact. The resulting fact on Tuesday turned out to be Rangers 2 Mets 1, typical for what happens when These Mets play some contender. The Rangers wheedled an additional run to set up an impenetrable two-run lead heading to the bottom of the ninth. Mark Vientos proceeded to hit a home run with one out remaining, nobody on base and the Mets down by two. Hence, they lost by one.
Actually the worst that will happen will probably be tonight, when Kodai Senga will be allotted additional rest and Denyi Reyes will be brought up to quite likely reprise his performance from previous spot starts, and the loss won’t be so low-scoring. I take that back: the worst that will happen will be remembering to tune in at 6:40 so as not to miss a single pitch of Mets baseball, whoever throws how many it takes to finish losing.
Or, I suppose, winning. You never know. You pretty much do, but you actually don’t. I plan to tune in and report back, dammit.
by Jason Fry on 28 August 2023 10:43 pm These games are the bottom of a can of soda your buddy just handed back to you after taking way too big of a sip, so that the can is 90% empty and you start thinking about what percentage of what’s left is backwash, and then … ehh, come to think of it you’re not really that thirsty.
Cans like that start off perfectly pleasantly — a sweet fizzy drink on a hot day — and so it was with Monday night’s game against the Rangers. Tylor Megill pitched well, then bent instead of breaking the third time through the enemy order when some of the steam came off his pitches. Rafael Ortega played some good defense in left, Brandon Nimmo and DJ Stewart went deep — it was refreshing.
But then came the ninth, and Trevor Gott being asked to secure a one-run lead, and it was time to give what was left in the can a suspicious shake.
I’ve written about changing my tune on Ortega and Stewart and even Jonathan Arauz, though I do kind of wish Arauz could hit. But Gott I’ve had no use for, and Monday night’s game didn’t exactly change my mind. Gott gave up a single and a double within five pitches, leaving the fall-behind run a single hit away before recording an out — and sending me to Twitter to grouse at everyone and no one. (I’ve mostly quit Twitter — oh, sorry, I forgot that jackass renamed it X — for Bluesky, but Bluesky is still sparsely populated and mostly nice, meaning it’s a poor fit when you need to vent your spleen.) Having dug himself a hole, Gott then fanned Leody Taveras and Marcus Semien, making me wonder if I’d have to issue a mea culpa after he Houdini’d his way out of trouble. Which, let me make it abundantly clear, would have been fine — one of many marvelous things about baseball is how often you’re happy to be wrong.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t wrong. The Mets gave Corey Seager a free pass to first, which was only sensible. But then Gott missed badly with a 1-1 sinker to Nathaniel Lowe, forcing him to give Lowe something to hit. Against the Cardinals in a similar spot Gott made a perfect pitch to Paul Goldschmidt. He didn’t make one to Lowe — he left a cutter elevated which Lowe whacked between first and second, almost but not quite clipping Seager on its way to the outfield grass. The Rangers led 4-3 and won by that score after dealing with a bit of Met kicking and bleating in the bottom of the ninth, and we were done.
Honestly, my only question at this point is how the hell Gott managed to retire Goldschmidt.
by Greg Prince on 28 August 2023 9:43 am As one who doesn’t subscribe to Peacock, I couldn’t tell you what Sunday’s Mets-Angels game looked like, but from the sound of it over WCBS-AM, it was quite the staring contest. The Mets stared at the Angels. The Angels stared at the Mets. It was 0-0, 1-1 and 2-2. Two teams used to staring into the abyss had at last encountered their respective match. Who would withstand who? Who would blink first, or simply nod off?
The Mets, that’s who. The Angels blinked. Or got tired of staring a little sooner on a sleepy afternoon. The game started at 12:05 PM following a Saturday night affair. Barely enough time to listen to American Top 40 on SiriusXM’s ’70s channel and then shift dulcet tone gears from preserved for posterity Casey Kasem to alive and well Howie Rose & Keith Raad. First pitch probably ate into a few pregame naps.
We just spent three days in the company of an outfit I’ve long considered our Southern California spiritual brethren (early 1960s expansion roots; enormous market with a suburban bent; overbearing neighbors; never enough enduring success), yet this version of the Los Angeles Angels, for all the starpower their one standing star brings wherever he goes, felt like an assortment of Anaheim strangers. Shohei Ohtani needs no introduction. Four certified Old Friends™ — Brandon Drury, Aaron Loup, Eduardo Escobar, Dominic Leone — constitute a portion of his traveling party. Plus I seem to catch a few innings of the Angels late at night via the MLB Network every couple of weeks. All of that, and I swear they seemed more of a mystery by the last out Sunday than they did when they arrived on Friday.
This series drew well, presumably owing to the Ohtani factor. Watching and listening to the crowd reaction, especially from those draped in his Angel and WBC gear, I was brought back to the influx of McGwire and Sosa idolaters at Shea when the home run virus spread far and wide. I was surrounded by people wearing Cardinal or Cub jerseys who I were pretty sure couldn’t have named any other Cardinal or Cub. They surely weren’t interested in the Mets’ best interests, and my resentment boiled. Ohtani’s acolytes, the first two nights, didn’t bother me. His celebrity speaks for itself, and whatever the Angels did, it didn’t threaten to trip up a Met playoff chase. Shohei the showman was giving those folks what they came for. Cheers for his hits and steals meant something went wrong for the Mets, but things have gone wrong for the Mets without much pause in 2023. At least somebody at Citi Field was giving some people there something to cheer about.
In the finale, however, when Ohtani went hitless, particularly the two times he struck out, I could hear a torrent of boos pervading the Mets’ ballpark. I don’t care how transcendent a figure he is. I don’t care what good he does for baseball. I don’t care that we’re in last place. The striking out of an opposing batter by a Met pitcher is not to generate anything less than tacit approval at Citi Field. That’s my rule and I’m sticking to it. Once Ohtani made his fourth out Sunday, I was ready for the Ohtaniacs, like the McGwirephiles and Sosascenti, to take a hike. (I mean, sure, come back if the guy wants to sign here, but we’ll deal with that chicken when it crosses the road.)
Escobar got a nice hand, which was deserved. Eduardo’s Met tenure now seems ages removed, as if he was part of the crew that ran roughshod over the National League in 2006. Nope, it was only a year ago he was a part of better days, only this year he was going down with the ship before being offered a leaky lifeboat in the form of a trade to the Angels. He played only in the last game of the weekend set and doesn’t seem to be of much everyday utility to Los Angeles of Anaheim. Nevertheless, his presence had me yearning for days of barely yore. I kind of hoped he’d pull a Coffee Black from the ABA tribute movie Semi-Pro and, like the charismatic player the doomed Flint Tropics had recently traded, drop his red warmups, cross the diamond to the Met dugout, and tell Lindor, McNeil or anybody he recognized, “I’m with y’all.”
Whoever the hell the rest of the Angels are and whoever the hell the rest of the Mets are got it on in professional enough fashion. No Mets tossing the ball around the infield after the recording of an inning’s third out like happened Friday. No Angels zinging one off their own pitcher’s noggin after the catcher threw to the absolutely wrong base (there are only three of them) as transpired Saturday. Pete Alonso’s own melon avoided contact with flying objects, thank goodness. Pete looked good, driving in one of those runs that produced one of those aforementioned tie scores.
The other Pete looked great. The other Pete is David Peterson. Buck Showalter regularly refers to David as “Pete,” which is confusing for the home viewer (SNY gets to do a postgame show even when Peacock struts on a Sunday). Well, the David otherwise known as Pete could be described as a godsend if a higher power could possibly be concerned about who would lift slack for These Mets after a veritable bullpen game the night before. David took care of seven innings and gave up only one run in the process. If “Pete” is really what he’s called internally, then he earned his clubhouse nickname, because that was a powerful performance, even if it was equaled by Angel starter Griffin Canning. That’ll happen in a staring contest.
Drew Smith succeeded Peterson when the score was 1-1 in the eighth, and immediately threw “the home run ball,” as Howie called it, which made me think that’s a pitch Drew (or Smitty) should remove from his repertoire at once. Fortunately, the Alonso commonly known as Pete drove in the shortstop known as smoking hot with the run to make it 2-2. The shortstop is Francisco Lindor, now on a thirteen-game hitting streak, which is better than whatever the other Francisco has been on. Catcher Alvarez has been navigating the slumpiest of waters — his August falloff is historically reminiscent of what another Met rookie strongboy, a slugger named Ron Swoboda, went through in 1965 (15 homers before the All-Star break, only four thereafter) — but maybe, just maybe, he’s set to come out of it, having made enough contact to concoct an infield hit in the fourth, a grounder Angel second baseman Luis Rengifo (the same guy who’d hit Smith’s home run ball later) could only smother. The Mets appeared to load the bases as a result, but spunky Jeff McNeil — urged on by spunkier Alex Cora — raced from second to home as the LAA infielder struggled to his feet. That’s how we scored our first run, the one Peterson guarded as a lead clear to the seventh.
That was the essence of the staring contest for eight-and-a-half innings. Once Adam Ottavino retired the Angels in the top of the ninth, a person listening at home debated the likelihood of Rob Manfred’s fugazi extra innings, given a) that the Mets are the Mets when it comes to scoring; and b) the Angels, though I don’t know them well, seemed pretty damn Metslike in their ability to let a game get away. The PointsBet folks would have gladly taken my action either way, I’m sure.
Alvarez got himself grazed by a pitch, which will circumvent any slump (it was close enough for the Angels to challenge, but it stuck). No dugouts emptied and young Francisco was no worse for the ding. Tim Locastro came out to pinch-run, which made sense, not only because Locastro is faster than Alvarez, but because Daniel Vogelbach had already been hit for. “It’s not like I only wait around for Vogey to get on base, you know,” Locastro’s thought balloon says. “I can run for anybody!”
With Locastro on first, DJ Stewart singled to right, which was characteristic (dude can rake some) and a wee bit ill-placed, because the Angel right fielder, Hunter Renfroe, has an arm of which to be wary (a tidbit I picked up from my radio friends). Mark Vientos, back from the IL, never had a chance to knock in the winning run or, for that matter, ground into a double play. He took his four unintentional balls from reliever Reynaldo Lopez and liked it. So did we.
OK, bases loaded, nobody out. What the fudge is gonna go wrong? That was my thought when Rafael Ortega came up with a chance to win the game. That was also the thought of my counterpart across the country, the Angels fan who’s rooted for them as long as I’ve rooted for the Mets, except his “gonna go wrong” was directed at his own object of affection/derision. I rooted hard for the 2002 Angels to win the World Series because I imagined I had a veritable doppelgänger living somewhere in SoCal and I sure wanted that guy — around 40 years old at the time — to get one title after all he’d been through. If he’s still out there, having passed 60 and still searching for a sequel, he was on his own Sunday.
Me, I had Rafael Ortega. And now I will always have Rafael Ortega, even if the Mets won’t after this season ends. Ortega ensured his sliver of Met immortality by sinking a fly ball along the edge of No Man’s Land, or at least not inside Renfroe’s zone of defensive comfort in right field. Hunter nearly made a stumbling catch that would have likely resulted in Locastro tagging up and scoring, because however strong the right fielder’s arm, his angle wasn’t optimal to make an effective throw.
But why take any chances? Better that it fell in for a single, sending Locastro across the plate cleanly and turning the heretofore space-filling Ortega into a Met walkoff wonder. Immediately, I found myself in mind of Austin Jackson, the last outfielder I can remember the Mets picking up to help them get a season (2018) over with who managed to sneak a walkoff hit onto his permanent record. Jackson’s action stays with me thanks to the circumstances surrounding his auspicious occasion: it was David Wright’s final game, which SNY shows a lot. That one did go into extras, to thirteen, back when extra innings featured only the baserunners who earned their way on without commissioner’s assistance.
Ortega is also part of a slightly larger, harder to narrowly define cohort. Or might ultimately be. Jackson’s part of it. Nori Aoki, (2017) too. If we include pitchers, Aaron Harang (2013). Going back a bit further, you have your Cory Sullivan (2009), your Wilson Delgado (2004), your Kevin Bass (1992). These are the major league veterans who transcend mere Met-for-a-minute status (reflexive Random Met citings need not apply). They suddenly showed up on the Mets in some second half when the Mets were going absolutely nowhere and were now a part of our lives on a surprisingly regular basis, playing almost every day or, in Harang’s case, slotting into the rotation for more than a test spin. We’d never seen them coming Metwise, and we’d never see them again in orange and blue. They weren’t brought in to help us win anything. They were here to give us a hand so we could limp toward the finish lines of seasons that were over before they were over. They played a bunch, then they completely disappeared from our Met consciousness.
I thought that might be DJ Stewart’s legacy, but Stewart is a comparative rock of this organization now, so maybe it will be Ortega, owner of a certified Mets walkoff RBI single, who inherits the mantle of what we might call this season’s Dead End Achiever, when the greatest accomplishment of all is coming to the ballpark, putting on a Mets uniform that may or may not have been measured to fit, and soaking up innings/at-bats. Should a walkoff hit emanate during that time on the clock, all the better.
We won’t know if Ortega’s highlight(s) as a Met will lead him to a dead end. For all we know, we’ll see him in camp next February and he’ll be a valued part of the team for many a Sunday to come. Same for Stewart or Jonathan Araúz or anybody else who’s seeped into our field of vision long enough to morph from “who’s that guy?” to “oh, he’s batting sixth tonight”. Maybe all the 2023 Dead Enders are making a case as essential Mets in 2024 and beyond. Probably not. But until proven otherwise, they persevere as Mets and continue to earn “hey, ya never know” status.
The Mets themselves, meanwhile, don’t yet have a skull-and-cross bones next to their name in the standings to denote mathematical elimination from postseason consideration, but the very final ember of remotely conceivable longshot possibility is on the verge of extinguishment. After the 3-2 win over the Angels on Sunday, the Mets sit at 60-71. Win tonight versus Texas, and they are 61-71. That record is what the 1973 Mets were as of August 30, the last day they languished in last place. From there, everything we know and cherish about the efficacy of You Gotta Believe began to kick in in earnest, inadvertently casting a pale glow on any Met team stumbling in near total darkness for five months across the fifty years that followed.
The 1973 Mets didn’t just win one of history’s most unlikely pennants. They created an almost impossible precedent for which Mets fans have grasped when there is nothing left to grab hold of. Our sweaty hands, despite a plethora of playoff spots seemingly there for the taking this year, have kept coming up empty these past five months. The 61-71 Mets of a half-century ago stayed within wishing distance despite occupying the bottom of the National League East, creeping to within six-and-a-half games of first after being double-digits behind earlier that summer. The pack came back to them before they made their biggest move; objects in the front windshield proved even closer than they appeared. Should everything break right tonight, the 61-71 Mets of 2023 will be only eight games out of the final Wild Card berth in the National League with thirty games remaining, and you know what that means.
It means we’ll be one day closer to this dead end of a season being over.
by Jason Fry on 27 August 2023 8:17 am The Mets lost, which is once again what they do: Carlos Carrasco was awful again and at this point one has to conclude he’s hurt, done or both; the bullpen was superb but it didn’t matter, as the offense didn’t hit enough or hit when it would have been useful.
The dregs of the game brought a jolt when Pete Alonso got hit below the helmet by Jose Soriano — a breaking ball, but an 88 MPH breaking ball, as this is 2020s baseball. (Seriously, by 2033 changeups will be delivered at 103 MPH. Shit’s insane.) Alonso took offense and there was some milling around and close talking; after the game, Buck Showalter fumed and talked about not saying certain things in public, which kind of sounded like retaliation is forthcoming.
Now there’s a way to complicate the Mets’ potential pursuit of Shohei Ohtani, the baseball unicorn looking at a year or so of settling for mere legendary thoroughbred status.
Which got me thinking….
Ohtani, late 2033: “With free agency upon me I had decided — though for obvious reasons I couldn’t tell anyone — that I wanted to be a New York Met. The fandom is so intense and knowledgeable, and I wanted to be final piece of the puzzle in returning that club to its rightful spot atop the baseball hierarchy. But then some pitcher of theirs — was it Peterson? Megill? honestly I could never tell them apart — hit me in the finale of this super-meaningless series, and I just lost all respect for them. I mean, hit O’Hoppe or, I dunno, drop Phil Nevin during the lineup exchange, but you’re going to risk injuring the reason everyone came to the park because some million-dollar arm, ten-cent head kid couldn’t control his breaking stuff? Does that really make sense? Plus the game was played at like dawn and was on some ridiculous network called Peacock, so I was already in a bad mood. Anyway, they made their choices and I made mine. And, well, my choices meant the Texas Rangers became a dynasty, starting with the late-career renaissances of deGrom and Scherzer, and their choices … let’s just say it’s sad to see what that club’s become.”
Or I dunno, maybe Ohtani, late 2033: “With free agency upon me I had decided — though for obvious reasons I couldn’t tell anyone — that I wanted to be a Seattle Mariner. There’s so much great coffee there, and I just love the Space Needle as an example of brash, optimistic architecture. But then, in the finale of this super-meaningless series against the New York Mets, their pitcher Peterson dropped me with a fastball in my first AB. He was defending the Polar Bear, who’d been hit the night before by one of those million-dollar arm, ten-cent head guys on our roster. So as I was lying there looking up at the belly of Delta 5696 to Charleston I thought, ‘This is the kind of fighting spirit that’s been lacking in southern California,’ plus I realized I could not only get coffee anywhere but was also about to have enough money to straight-up purchase Colombia. So I decided to sign with the Mets. I taught Peterson and Megill a few things and, well, the last decade kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? No, winning the World Series doesn’t get old. Oh, and I did buy Colombia and am very proud to have made it into the high-tech mecca and showcase of primary education it is today. Want a coffee?”
Hey, like the man once said, you never know.
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