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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 8 July 2023 12:24 pm It took ten innings, but the Mets made the Padres look like the Mets while preventing the Padres from making the Mets look like the Padres. This is to say the East Coast version of the Padres beat the West Coast version of the Mets, 7-5, in extras.
If I wasn’t following one of these teams closely, I’d have a hard time telling them apart, save for the one I don’t follow closely dressing for Cinco de Mayo on the Seventh of July. The San Diego Padres have a lot of highly reputationed players who, together, I assume would be unstoppable, but have instead been quite halting. I recognize that formula. It’s the one executed to a tee until very recently by the New York Mets. To those with no particular stake in the success of either ballclub, the Padres and Mets are two overpriced peas in an underachieving pod.
On Friday night at Petco Park, they both met the enemy and, at various junctures, it was them. The Mets did their chances of extending their winning streak to six no favors early, playing shaky defense and undermining a not altogether sharp Justin Verlander. Verlander hung in there for six innings, and the Mets stayed close, despite adamantly keeping many of their own runners on base. A 3-1 deficit closed to 3-2 when would-be injury replacement All-Star reserve shortstop Francisco Lindor stayed scalding, homering off traditional Met tormentor Yu Darvish. In the fifth, more Lindor magic was at hand: a walk, a steal, an advance on a grounder, and a run when Daniel Vogelbach singled him in.
The game that bent but never broke maintained a sense of warpedness thereafter. A definitive breaking point was avoided in the home seventh when Ha-Seong Kim violated the cardinal rule of not making any of the outs of an inning at third. Tim McCarver drilled into me the verboten nature of first outs and third outs, but Kim, steaming past second on his ball down the left field line and then getting thrown out by a sneaky casual (or perhaps just casual yet lucky) Tommy Pham at third didn’t speak well for making the second out of an inning at third. When Brooks Raley gave up a bases-empty double to Juan Soto an instant later, one that theoretically would have scored Kim from second base had Kim stayed put, well, I kind of got what’s been plaguing the Padres all season.
They’ve been the Mets. Or what the Mets were some of April, much of May and all of June. It’s July. The Mets are something else this month.
Adam Ottavino, the personification of a green light, turned an eighth-inning two-out walk into a double when he didn’t hold Jake Cronenworth on first in the eighth. Cronenworth isn’t some privileged character in that regard. Otto holds no runner on, so against Adam, the cardinal rule is you won’t make any out of the inning at second. Old Fleeting Acquaintance™ Gary Sanchez proceeded to loft a fly ball to what appeared a little too deep left field, but instead of landing in the stands and unleashing countless “how did we ever let Gary Sanchez go?” recriminations, it fell into the glove of the proprietor of Pham’s Corner, no actual or narrative harm done.
The top of the ninth provided an opportunity for a continuation of elation or a resurgence in cynicism. Here came Lindor singling and stealing (with a little tag-averting flourish that would have made his buddy Javy Baez proud). Here came the Polar Bear walking, which in the city that houses the San Diego Zoo, probably didn’t seem too remarkable. Here came Vogey, who has been promoted back to his previous rank of endearing nickname based on his three hits — two of the infield variety — walking as well. Here came DJ Stewart to pinch-run for Vogey, because now the bases were loaded, and the Mets were grinding, and you knew they were ready to make things happen.
Too ready, apparently, was Starling Marte, who, rather than grind wild reliever Nick Martinez, tapped back to said pitcher, who began one of the most easily executed 1-2-3 DPs you’ll ever see. The Mets were very much the Padres in that moment, or just the Mets as we had known them for half-a-year. Visions of Drew Smith trudging off the mound after surrendering the game-losing home run in the bottom of the ninth filled my sleepy head, for a Met pitcher meeting misfortune in San Diego is inevitably typed onto the West Coast itinerary.
Good thing Drew packed an eraser. Not only did he not give up the run that would have called it a night, he got the last out versus Juan Soto, who must have been thinking, “Don’t I always beat these guys?” That meant extra innings were at hand, which meant Starling Marte would be granted second base to start, because the guy who kills a ninth-inning rally is on second to start the tenth in Rob Manfred’s sick, sad world. Sadder, still, is as soon as the ninth ended, I was totally aware Marte would be the automatic runner, maybe the first time since this abomination of a get-it-over-with rule was implemented in 2020 that I’ve factored the guy on second into my thinking rather than being surprised to spot a figure in the middle of the diamond who isn’t a fielder when the tenth dawns. I was proud of myself a few drowsy innings earlier when, during a Gary & Ron conversation about the Padres releasing Nelson Cruz, I thought, “maybe an American League team needs a DH,” before remembering, crap, that isn’t a thing anymore.
Just as I have reluctantly adapted to rooting for the Vogeys of the Mets to hit well when they’re so designated (and before they’re run for) rather than continually cursing out the existence of the Vogelbach role, I accept that there’s a man on second who shouldn’t be there and root for him to be a man crossing home plate. That rooting was rewarded in the top of the tenth when leadoff hitter and erstwhile champion of batting Jeff McNeil found Tom Cosgrove’s first pitch to his liking and swung. We were against first-pitch swinging when Marte did it in the ninth, and we are against Marte being on second to start the tenth on principle, but we do what we can to survive the late West Coast night and we cheer it when it happens. McNeil’s swing became a double. Marte’s phantom presence on second became a genuine run. Two pitches later, Francisco Alvarez — 4-for-5 — knocked in McNeil, and after a few more machinations that included the entry of Padre reliever Brent Honeywell (name presumably on loan from CBS’s The Bold and the Beautiful), Francisco Lindor — 3-for-5 — accounted for two more RBIs.
If our Franciscos hit so well in San Diego, imagine what the Mets could have done in San Francisco had they ever had Diego Segui.
The 7-3 lead entrusted to David Robertson in the bottom of the tenth wasn’t a save situation statistically. Spiritually, classic closing was in order once his second batter, Manny Machado, socked a two-run homer; one was out, but Soto was on second base for the same dim reason Marte was on second base in the top of the tenth. Robbie, still worthy of his endearing nickname, bore down to get the next two outs, make for a festive Siete de Julio and preserve the 7-5 win in the opener of a series that has me thinking of the Repus Bowl. Unless you were living in Tampa in the fall of 1983, you wouldn’t recognize that appellation. See, Tampa was getting Super Bowl XVIII in January of 1984, and there was unhinged preseason speculation in the Bay Area that the hometown Buccaneers might not just host but play. Except the Bucs, who’d actually been pretty good for a few years, completely fell apart, and were 1-11 heading into a late-November Tampa Stadium showdown versus the similarly dreadful 1-11 Houston Oilers. The Tampa Tribune took great delight in referring to the matchup as Repus Bowl I.
Repus. Opposite of Super. For Tampa, it was hilarious.
The Mets taking on the Padres doesn’t exactly constitute a replay of 1983 Bucs vs. 1983 Oilers, and one shouldn’t mistake it for the next Royals-A’s tilt, yet this best-of-three series below the surface of obvious contention does feel as if it carries an elimination component to it. It’s less another rematch of last fall’s dratted NLWCS than a potential last chance for the winner to maintain, at the very least, false hope in the second half. By virtue of winning six straight, the Mets have bolted to the top of the pretenders’ section of the Wild Card standings. We’re actually ahead of some teams for a change. We’re not really close to the cadre of clubs that a nonaligned observer would believe are the only National League teams legitimately angling for playoff positioning, but for the first time in a while, we’re not behind practically everybody who isn’t absolutely awful. Escaping San Diego with that kind of edge allows us to string ourselves along for the four off-days that follow Sunday’s series finale and anticipate the Mets’ next set of games somewhat seriously. In the realm of there being no “must” wins in early July, nothing could be less must than Game 88 when you’re a bunch of games under .500 and your opponent is a bunch of games under .500, and neither you nor your opponent is situated in the American League Central.
Yet Friday night in San Diego was a game the Mets absolutely could not lose. Nor could the Padres. But the Padres did and are materially worse off for it, meaning the Mets are materially better off for it. It could all amount to a hill of beans for both teams by the time either of them plays a hundredth game. It probably will.
But the East Coast version of them did indeed defeat the West Coast version of us, which is to say if we can win another game today or tomorrow, we can kind of put them behind us and entertain ourselves with notions of making up ground on the next tier of teams. It’s not much, but after the way our team has played for so long, it wouldn’t be repus.
by Jason Fry on 7 July 2023 1:06 am Who are these guys and what have they done with the 2023 Mets?
Actually, don’t answer that, because who cares? And don’t look for them, because this is fine.
Unlike Wednesday’s heroic, up-off-the-mat victory, there wasn’t a lot of sweat expended Thursday in urging the Mets across the finish line. The game was essentially over in the first, when Pete Alonso followed a Francisco Lindor triple with a laser beam over the left-field fence. That gave the Mets a 2-0 lead, and they were just getting started: Alvarez homered again, Daniel Vogelbach was heard from, and Lindor went 5-for-5, missing a double and a cycle by a couple of degrees of angle off the bat. (Points to Todd Zeile, who noted after the game that Lindor might well have had the cycle if the D-Backs’ ballboy hadn’t made a startlingly athletic move to avoid one of those two triples.)
With Met hits raining down all night — 17 of them, a whole week’s worth in June! — it was easy to miss Carlos Carrasco completely smothering the Diamondbacks, who looked befuddled early and then dispirited late. (In part, alas, because the marvelous rookie Corbin Carroll suffered a scary-looking injury to a shoulder that’s cost him considerable time in his young career.)
Carroll’s health aside, it was a laugher, when we’re all still reeling from a June that featured barely a guffaw. A night to hope for cycles and tut-tut about benches clearing (an overreaction) and admire young rookies and appreciate old veterans, instead of waiting for something else to go wrong.
Everything worked all night, after a month when pretty much nothing worked. I’d say go figure, but baseball will make you look foolish all the time. It sure is a lot more fun when you’re surprised by things going well, though.
by Greg Prince on 6 July 2023 12:29 pm A late night West Coast game is a late night West Coast game under any guise, whether the coast is relatively ballpark-adjacent or an entire state over. Arizona’s oceanic only in that it chooses to not spring its clocks forward for Daylight Saving Time, meaning that for all intents and purposes from a New Yorker’s view of the world, baseball games in Phoenix might as well start in California. Once you’re past 11 PM EDT and nobody’s risen for the seventh-inning stretch, it’s all too late for decent people.
 Honestly, they all look like West Coast games from here. Ah, but Chase Field isn’t Petco Park or Oracle Park or Dodger Stadium. The Mets have BOBbed for their share of losses at the former Bank One Ballpark, but it’s been more oasis than desert when it comes to a spot where they can refresh their winning ways on the other side of the country. The home of the Diamondbacks is where the Mets won their first playoff game in eleven years, in 1999, in wholly nocturnal circumstances back east (first pitch was 11:07 PM where most of us sat and tried not to snooze); where they wrangled thirteen consecutive wins between 2004 and 2007, highlighted by the most productive nights in the baseball lives of Victor Diaz and Mike Jacobs in 2005; where Matt Harvey introduced himself to major league hitting by shutting it down completely in 2012; where another six consecutive wins would be reeled off from 2013 to 2015; and where Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista, Brandon Nimmo and Asdrubal Cabrera teamed to wish a happy recap to all the fathers out there in an otherwise arid June five years ago. In most recent times, we took two out of three in ’21, two more out of another three in ’22, and resisted the temptation to blow up a Fourth of July victory in ’23.
Yet late is late, and sleep tantalizes, and no matter how your starter is pitching, if there are no Mets runs to keep you awake in New York, you really have to question why you’re struggling to keep your eyes open. About the only reasons I could come up with by the eighth inning of an impending 1-0 defeat was a) the chance to mark the debut of Trevor Gott as the potential 1,207th Met overall — he was indeed sighted warming in the bullpen; and b) the obligation to remark to anybody listening that Kodai Senga was taking the first Met complete game loss (not rain-shortened, not seven-inning pandemic doubleheader nonsense) since Dillon Gee was entrusted to carry his shutout against the Braves to the finish line in June of 2013. On that occasion, Freddie Freeman got Dillon in the ninth, and the Mets lost, 2-1. On this occasion, a suitably rested Kodai Senga, not having pitched in a week and not scheduled to pitch again until after the All-Star break, hung zeroes from the first through the sixth, masterfully mixing fastballs and forkballs. His only blemish came in the seventh, at the hands of graffiti vandal Christian Walker, who tagged Senga for a doubt-free solo homer. The bomb to left turned a scoreless duel to 1-0, as the Mets hadn’t done a thing to lefty Snake starter Tommy Henry nor his successors.
Walker’s shot was of the leadoff variety, so one could be forgiven for expecting Buck Showalter to appear from the visitors’ dugout to quickly remove Kodai, but no, he stuck with the guy who, except for that very long fly ball, was going untouched. Senga received the rest of the seventh and, despite Gott getting loose, all of the eighth. It was the right call, as the pitch count (107) was reasonable and the pitcher was marvelous: only three other hits besides the home run, only one walk and a dozen strikeouts. Supporting Senga with Met runs would have made it all worthwhile. Otherwise, you’re left trying to maintain alertness by searching your memory and Baseball-Reference for dispiriting precedent.
The bad news for Dillon Gee is he’s still the most recent example of a Met starter left in to complete a shutout that got away, for Kodai Senga got to trade in his nearly surefire CG L for a different, more rewarding result. It didn’t look like that would happen as the Mets batted to begin the top of the ninth against lefty closer Andrew Chafin. Starling Marte grounded out to second on Chafin’s third pitch. Jeff McNeil flied out on Chafin’s fourth pitch. All that stood in the way of the D’backs putting a win in their books (and Met offensive futility under our skin) was Francisco Alvarez.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Alvarez presents quite an obstacle to opposing pitchers’ goals and desires. In this Last Chance Cafe of a plate appearance, Francisco pulled up a chair and showed no inclination to vacate his table. He worked Chafin the way the veterans who preceded him didn’t. Alvy was patient, collecting three balls. Alvy was resourceful, fouling off a three-two pitch. Ultimately, Alvy was powerful, as the folks in Chase’s right field stands were privileged to observe up close. The home team fans might not have been particularly juiced, but 21-year-old Francisco leapt and twirled on his way to first as if he had just taken his nattering nabob of a neighbor from up the block over two sewers to win a stickball faceoff. The ball has come down. I’m not sure Alvarez has.
Senga was no longer in line for a loss. Neither were the Mets. The blast felt like it had rocketed June’s mopesters into another stratosphere. Far be it from a viewer now leaning forward on a distant couch to note that game was only tied. We’d probably need another run ASAP.
Francisco’s fellow Citi Kid, Brett Baty, singled, and Mark Canha, who can summon a youthful spirit at age 33, laced a ball deep into the right-center gap. Brett took off. So did Mark. Baseballologists identified the result of the sequence a go-ahead triple. You never know what you’ll come across in the desert as the clock rounds twelve.
David Robertson was handed the ball for the bottom of the ninth. The bottom of the eighth didn’t work out so well for Robbie this past Friday, when Patrick Bailey, somebody else’s catching wunderkind, took him too deep with too many on. But that was in a month when no Met not named Tommy Pham could do right. This is a new month. By the bottom of the ninth, in New York at least, it was a new day. After midnight, David was protecting his third lead of July. The first two Arizonans were retired with ease. The third was Christian Walker, the slugger who had the curious and drowsy looking up Dillon Gee and Freddie Freeman. The count Walker worked was the same full version Alvarez constructed versus Chafin. These Snakes were one swing away from whacking an otherwise pleasing storyline. These Snakes this year have been one of the best teams in the league. These Mets…not so much.
Robertson relied on his offspeed stuff and Walker flailed above it for strike three. The Mets, left for dead in the desert barely minutes before, had sprung ahead and stayed there, 2-1 winners. The home viewer cheering the resilience of the road-trippers noticed his yawn was now a yay, or no worse than a yaWWWWn, with four wins in a row serving to infuse adrenaline no matter that the clock marched on. A person whose ambition was simply to see the action from Chase Field to its conclusion was now free to chase Zs. But when you’re this excited by a Mets win, who can think about sleep?
First pitch tonight in Arizona is 9:40 PM ET again. A new episode of National League Town is available to help get you to the starting line.
by Jason Fry on 5 July 2023 12:14 am The Mets have spent the better part of the 2023 season thralls to disappointment, mostly of their own making. Yet they’d somehow won two in a row, a modest accomplishment except that June was such a horror show that two in a row seemed like ascending a fair-sized mountain.
They didn’t play Monday, leaving their winning streak intact; Tuesday saw them in the Arizona desert, where it was 109 degrees and the Diamondbacks were waiting — the same D-Backs whose young hitters have seemingly arrived all at once, lifting them to the top of the National League West.
The Mets were lucky enough to miss Zac Gallen in the series; instead they drew Zach Davies, who entered with an ERA near 7. Davies’ opponent was Max Scherzer, who flipped spots with Kodai Senga at the last moment.
As for me, I tuned into the game a couple of minutes after turning onto the Mass Pike, en route from Connecticut to Maine. More through luck than planning, the timing was right for the Mets to carry me to my destination, with Keith Raab and Pat McCarthy as guides in the absence of Howie Rose. Despite the Mets’ recent struggles, I was happy as the game got under way — I adore having baseball as a companion when I’m driving, letting me measure out a journey by innings as well as by miles.
I’d be a lot happier if the Mets kept me coming while winning, of course.
It was an odd game. Scherzer’s performance was hard to scrutinize: He struck out Diamondbacks left and right but seemed allergic to good fortune, surrendering both leads that the Mets handed him, the second time on a bases-loaded walk. The Diamondbacks are awfully good, particularly their young phenom Corbin Carroll, but Scherzer once again was missing the put-away stuff he showed as recently as last year. One wonders, not for the first time, if power pitchers of a certain age are the ones most punished by the pitch clock — unfortunate since the Mets built their rotation around two of them.
It was also not exactly a riveting game, heavy on home runs, strikeouts and walks. For all baseball’s tinkering with its own rules, including some basics long held to be sacrosanct, games don’t look all that different than they used to. This was very much a “three true outcomes” game, as so many still are these days, which meant it was dull. It sure doesn’t seem to me like all that tinkering has changed the fundamental problem baseball’s critics agreed it faced. 2023’s dull games are half an hour shorter than 2022’s dull games; does that mean the sport is fixed? If it isn’t, what’s the point of all this mucking around?
Anyway, when Scherzer allowed the Diamondbacks to tie things up on a bases-loaded walk I was on I-95 a little short of Portland, and yes, I was bashing my fist into the steering wheel and saying less than kind things about our starting pitcher. But then around the time Freeport slid by on my right Francisco Alvarez faced off against old friend Miguel Castro and had the kind of AB that put a spotlight on how he’s maturing. Alvarez couldn’t do anything with Castro’s first two sinkers, but fouled off two more of them and refused to bite on a changeup just low and away. That was the pitch Castro had been working towards as an exit strategy; when it didn’t work he went back to the sinker, only it was the fifth one Alvarez had seen and Castro left this one in the middle of the plate. Alvarez destroyed it — the ball came down 467 feet away, which is to say basically in New Mexico.
The Mets had a 6-4 lead, which they then extended without (gasp) needing more home runs to do so. Which was fortunate, because Drew Smith got into trouble in the ninth and David Robertson got into more trouble, walking in a run for the second time in the game.
By then I was on the outskirts of Wiscasset, just a few minutes from my parents’ summer house, where I’ll be for the next few days. Robertson was in trouble but had two outs; normally I would have sat in the car and waited to hear what transpired, but the 2023 Mets have not exactly inspired that kind of loyalty. I took my phone into the grocery store to pick up a few things, and around the produce aisle the feed cut out.
Oh that’s right, there’s a Verizon dead zone here, I remembered a little too late.
And then I said fuck it, because I was tired and it was only the 2023 Mets. Robertson would get out of it or he wouldn’t, and my hearing what transpired wasn’t going to have any bearing on the outcome. I got my cheese and crackers and some cherries and a bottle of Prosecco and seltzer and other things from the staying in a summer house food groups, paid, got back in the car and revived MLB At Bat from its no-signal torpor.
Mets 8, Diamondbacks 5 FINAL.
Good, I thought to myself. At least for a day, the Mets had declared independence from disappointment. Not exactly worthy of fireworks, perhaps, but a small celebration was in order, so I pumped my fists in the car and started it up to finish my journey.
by Greg Prince on 4 July 2023 9:50 am With 25 home runs, Pete Alonso is an All-Star for the third time as a Met. Despite first-half performances suggesting they could have planned to join Pete on the flight from San Diego to Seattle this Sunday, Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo remain players who’ve never been All-Stars as Mets. It is the latter cohort that we’re focusing on this week on National League Town.
Out of affection for all the Mets we’ve loved before, Jeff Hysen and I, over at the podcast that’s all about Mets History, Mets Fandom and Mets Life, constructed an All-Star ballot strictly of Mets who never made an All-Star team as Mets. We set out to retroactively elect Mets who were overlooked or snubbed in their time by the Midsummer Classic powers that be. At their Met best, they may have been having very good seasons, but found themselves excluded for various reasons.
• A traffic jam at a given position.
• The Mets meeting what amounted to their quota.
• Fans elsewhere taking the “popularity contest” aspect of voting a little too literally.
• Managers who chose to cater to their own players rather than ours.
• The international anti-Met conspiracy.
It seemed time to give all these Mets who missed the All-Star Game as Mets a second chance. That’s what this ballot is about. We offer a dozen slots with five choices apiece, along with some write-in possibilities, and we remember some Mets who don’t otherwise come up in conversation this time of year. We didn’t consider current Mets, in the hopes that some year soon, when the Mets are playing better as a unit, the Lindors and Nimmos finally get their number called, and we didn’t try to sneak Mets who already made it onto an All-Star team as Mets on some more. Those 61 Mets already have the designation All-Star next to their names. Met All-Star Ed Kranepool. Met All-Star Pat Zachry. Met All-Star Michael Conforto. If you made it once, you’ve made it for life. If you made it as an Expo or a Brave or whatever, good for you, but we’re concerned that you didn’t make it as a Met, no matter that you might have been celebrated on the cover of the 1973 Official Yearbook for having made it in another guise.
 If you haven’t made it as a Met, have you really made it? This exercise is also informed by having been twelve years old once and remaining twelve years old somewhere inside. Mets who could have been All-Stars but weren’t when you were twelve represent an injustice that stays with you when you’re twelve years old times five.
Here’s the ballot. Listen to the episode for particulars and cast your own vote in your heart and/or head.
FIRST BASE
__DONN CLENDENON, 1970
__IKE DAVIS, 2010
__CARLOS DELGADO, 2006
__JOHN MILNER, 1974
__JOHN OLERUD, 1998
SECOND BASE
__WALLY BACKMAN 1986
__DOUG FLYNN, 1980
__GREGG JEFFERIES, 1990
__JEFF KENT, 1994
__FELIX MILLAN, 1975
THIRD BASE
__HUBIE BROOKS, 1984
__WAYNE GARRETT, 1973
__RAY KNIGHT, 1986
__LENNY RANDLE, 1977
__ROBIN VENTURA, 1999
SHORTSTOP
__ASDRUBAL CABRERA, 2016
__KEVIN ELSTER, 1989
__REY ORDOÑEZ, 1999
__RAFAEL SANTANA, 1987
__FRANK TAVERAS, 1979
CATCHER
__JOHN BUCK, 2013
__TRAVIS d’ARNAUD, 2017
__JESSE GONDER, 1964
__WILSON RAMOS, 2019
__MACKEY SASSER, 1990
LEFT FIELD
__GEORGE FOSTER, 1984
__CLIFF FLOYD, 2005
__BERNARD GILKEY, 1996
__KEVIN McREYNOLDS, 1988
__FRANK THOMAS, 1962
CENTER FIELD
__TOMMIE AGEE, 1970
__LENNY DYKSTRA, 1986
__JUAN LAGARES, 2014
__DEL UNSER, 1975
__MOOKIE WILSON, 1982
RIGHT FIELD
__JAY BRUCE, 2017
__JOE CHRISTOPHER, 1964
__CURTIS GRANDERSON, 2015
__RUSTY STAUB, 1975
__RON SWOBODA, 1968
ONE EXTRA GUY*
__BENNY AGBAYANI, 1999
__ENDY CHAVEZ, 2006
__CARL EVERETT, 1997
__WILMER FLORES, 2016
__ART SHAMSKY, 1970
*Player who’s somewhere between a utilityman and an everyday starter
STARTING PITCHER
__MARK BOMBACK, 1980
__GARY GENTRY, 1971
__TERRY LEACH, 1987
__BOBBY OJEDA, 1986
__CRAIG SWAN, 1978
SETUP RELIEVER
__LARRY BEARNARTH, 1964
__DENNIS COOK, 1998
__PEDRO FELICIANO, 2010
__DOUG SISK, 1984
__TURK WENDELL, 1999
CLOSER
__NEIL ALLEN, 1980
__BOB APODACA, 1975
__BRADEN LOOPER, 2004
__ROGER McDOWELL, 1986
__RANDY MYERS, 1988
There you have your National League Town Retroactive All-Star Ballot — happy listening, happy voting and happy Fourth!
by Jason Fry on 3 July 2023 2:39 pm A team played shoddy defense.
A team saw its relievers struggle.
A team hit balls right at defenders.
A team rallied, sent a strong hitter up in a big spot … and got nothing out of it.
That’s a familiar 2023 script, and it’s what we got on Sunday night, along with ESPN personalities we hadn’t asked for. (I at first accidentally turned on some alternate ESPN flavor and was subjected to A-Rod and Chris Russo, a situation I’d thought the Geneva Conventions protected me from.)
Except all the bad things from that familiar script happened to the Giants, not the Mets.
There was still some drama of course, more than you might suspect from an 8-4 final score. Jeff Brigham was terrible in relief and Dominic Leone wasn’t much better, turning 5-1 business as usual into a 5-4 sigh-fest. Brooks Raley refused to take a page from his colleagues, pitching ably, but Adam Ottavino surrendered a four-pitch walk and a two-pitch HBP to bring up J.D. Davis with the bases loaded, the tying run on second and Ottavino yet to besmirch home plate’s airspace with by sending a baseball through it.
I didn’t see what Jeremy Hefner did during the mound visit that followed, but it’s entirely possible he unplugged Ottavino and then plugged him back in, because when Ottavino started pitching to J.D. the idea of the strike zone had returned. Ottavino painted sinkers descending in the strike zone and heading for the outside of the plate, then put a four-seamer out there on the edge that Davis missed. In the bottom of the inning Seattle-bound Pete Alonso crashed a two-run homer that happily turned the game back into a mere diversion.
Still, our applause would be best described as muted: The Mets hadn’t secured a series win since May 31 and won two in a row exactly once in the now-gone, unlamented month of June. A night’s good work and some lousiness on the other side of the field isn’t going to make us clear our October calendars. But hey, the first step in doing good things is to stop doing bad things, and for one night at least that proved a good blueprint.
by Greg Prince on 2 July 2023 2:47 pm Almost everything was great Saturday. Really.
The start time, Saturday afternoon at 4:10, was great. As a start time, 4:10 has élan. On any day, 1:10 can be too early, 7:10 too mundane. On a Saturday especially, 4:10 is the sweet spot. You have your day. You have your night. You have your baseball in the middle. That’s the sandwich a fan craves.
The train going to the game was great. Conceptually great. Anecdotally fine. I mean, it’s a train ride that requires a couple of transfers. You just want it to get you where you’re going when you need to be there. Romance for train travel takes a beating when you’ve spent any part of your life as a Monday-through-Friday local rail commuter, yet I will contend for the rest of my days that Saturday afternoon is ancestral prime time for Long Island Mets fandom, when, if blessed with tickets, our instinct is to reach for our Long Island Rail Road schedule. We know in our hearts and heads that we should drive only as far as the station in the town where we live. We will wait antsily. We will stare down tracks. We will board. We will change at Jamaica. We will wait at Woodside. We will climb staircases and trundle across boardwalks. We will tamp down our resentment and suspicion of strangers and roll as one orange-and-blue ball until our journey reaches its destination, at which point we will disperse, albeit inside the same facility. We have arrived at Shea Stadium or, if progress insists, Citi Field. We have avoided traffic. We have saved on parking ($40, unless you rely on secret spots). I will go to Mets games at any juncture of the week, yet to me, Saturday afternoon is home, and the LIRR — with an assist from the 7 — means I’m homeward bound, coming and going. Granted, I am influenced by personal experience: my first Saturday afternoon game came at the end of June in 1974, so I’ve been doing it forever. It was also my first win at Shea, so I tend to associate a Saturday train ride to the ballpark with a seminal happy memory.
The date on this Saturday was great, in that it marked the beginning of July. We very much needed to end June in 2023. June 2023 is already one of the most infamous months in Mets history. We live through a lot of Junes like that. And a lot of months like that. After going 7-19 in June, July arrived right on time, which is something you can’t say of every conveyance scheduled by the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
 If you know, you know. And we know. The parade of banners running down the first base side of Citi Field was great. I don’t know if they’ve been hung lately or I simply didn’t see them until July 1 because I had no reason on previous 2023 visits to head for the right field entrance, but I’m taken by the imagery the Mets have decided to project. It’s not just famous faces, but famous scenes, none more recognizable to the clued-in Mets fan than The Black Cat. There’s no accompanying text, no caption. It’s The Black Cat, no explanation necessary. It’s classic IYKYK.
The seat that I was commuting toward was great. The section is behind the Mets dugout, to the rear of the Mets dugout. The row is numbered 19. I’m not automatically enamored of Field Level in the way Shea-raised fans are conditioned to be. The angle-closeness tradeoff doesn’t always work for me, and I can never shake the feeling I’m surrounded by people who were given tickets to the game and would otherwise not be there. Then again, I was given a ticket to the game and would otherwise not have been there, so who am I critiquing, exactly?
The weather was great. You can’t take weather for granted in an outdoor stadium in a city (and nation) where air quality alerts share space on our apps with temperature. On this Saturday, it is not raining and it is not smoking. That’s like being ahead two-and-oh in the count. Four nights earlier, on my previous Citi Field adventure, I was in jeans and kept a long-sleeve shirt handy. That was June. July is here. I’m in shorts, carrying no additional sleeves and I’m not regretting my choices. The Shea winds of Citi can be tricky. No mischief today. Play ball!
The starting pitcher about to start the 4:10 start is great. No qualification is necessary to describe career 246-game winner Justin Verlander just that way. His groping for greatness in a Mets uniform has been another matter, but nineteen rows from the home dugout, I take a second to process that I am seeing Verlander pitch for the Mets in front of me. Ever since the ballpark reopened to fans in 2021, I’ve drawn a lot of Carlos Carrasco starts (6), practically every Rich Hill start (4), plenty of Taijuan Walker starts once he stopped being routinely outstanding (5, with the Mets going 1-4) and a few relative oddities I was happy to add to my collection for novelty’s sake (Robert Stock, Mychal Givens, Joey Lucchesi and Trevor Williams twice). I lucked into David Peterson throwing shutout ball on two separate occasions, Tylor Megill three times appearing as if he belonged at the big league level, Marcus Stroman pitching effectively enough to get Marcus Stroman a new contract somewhere else, and, though it seems distant and sort of impossible now, Jacob deGrom being Jacob deGrom a couple of times last year, when that meant superb rather than injured. The luck of the draw — or a lack of proactivity on my part — has yet to have me and Max Scherzer doing our thing together and, until Saturday, I had never written “Verlander” in The Log II, the steno pad where I keep track of, among other essential details, who has started the games I’ve gone to. Barring unforeseen revelations that prevent his seemingly inevitable Cooperstown induction, I was, on July 1, 2023, seeing a future Hall of Famer start for the Mets for the first time since September 25, 2008, Pedro Martinez’s last home start at Shea. It’s worth taking a second to process greatness when it appears right before your eyes.
The starting pitcher for the opposition in a 7:10 start thirteen years prior was not great, which was great…for us. And noteworthy thirteen years later in the context of Saturday’s 4:10 start, for I saw Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers pitch at Citi Field on June 22, 2010, one of those Junes that didn’t implode on the Mets (that would come in July). Verlander was in his fifth full season in the majors. He’d been Rookie of the Year, attracted Cy Young votes, and was about to make his fourth All-Star team. But he was neither the primary attraction nor a particular obstacle that June night. Looking back via the magic of blog archives, I can see I wrote about the rain you get in an outdoor stadium; and the personnel who operated the outdoor stadium and how they could make a rain delay even worse; and the fleeting sighting of the pitcher Justin Verlander has reminded me of from afar in the years since — Tom Seaver was on hand in his ambassador capacity, making it the last time I’d ever see him in person; and the torrent of runs that fell on the Tigers, falling harder on the visitors than the rain fell on us. The Mets won 14-6. I was thrilled that the Mets were winning by so much, and more thrilled that the Mets were winning so many games I was going to that year. The Log II and the blog archives will confirm it was my tenth win in a row at Citi Field. The Mets were legitimately competing for first place as June grew late. I was so giddy with the provincial and personal success, that I notice thirteen years later I never thought to mention in my on-site report the name of the losing pitcher. Verlander’s outing was halted by the precipitation, but he wasn’t getting anywhere when the skies were dry, surrendering five hits and three walks en route to being charged with five earned runs. Justin may have been developing into a Hall of Fame pitcher, but on June 22, 2010, he was just roadkill on my Mets-myopic romp through the rain.
The starting pitcher’s pitching on July 1, 2023, from 4:10 onward, was great. The Verlander we haven’t seen much of as a Met emerged in full form once the first San Francisco Giant stepped in the batter’s box. Joc Pederson was there for exactly three pitches, all strikes. The ultimate Old Friend™, Wilmer Flores, wasn’t any more successful, though he did make contact. Less beloved but still welcomed warmly Old Friend™ J.D. Davis battled Justin for six pitches. J.D.D. the SFG, determined to join the ranks of 3B-OF/OF-3B alumni who make the Mets regret dismissing them, singled to left, but Verlander shook off the setback and put rookie Patrick Bailey back in his place after the fresh kid put veteran David Robertson in his place the night before, popping the catcher to short.
The opposing starting pitcher’s pitching was great for a couple of innings, as New Jerseyan Anthony DeSclafani held the Mets scoreless in the first and second, but if I wasn’t gonna be at Citi Field specifically to see the emerging immortal Justin Verlander in 2010, what did I care that DeSclafani was matching zeroes with our imported hero in 2023?
Seeing my friend Dan arrive in Row 19 before the second inning was over was great. Truly great. Dan’s the reason, more than the glorious Justin Verlander, more than the glorious weather, more than the glorious recollections of Saturday afternoon trips via train to games past, that I was at Citi Field. Dan’s the one who gave me the ticket to the game in Field Level, but this wasn’t about the game. Getting together with Dan and being Mets fans with Dan was the point. It always is. Dan and I go back to my second wave of living the Mets online. First came the Metcave board, where Jason and I found one another in the mid-’90s. Later, as the 1990s were morphing into a new millennium, came a Mets fan email group that I nudged my way into via a side door. I was a stranger let in by a lurker. I spoke up and wasn’t kicked out. Those were the days of Bobby V, who you’ll recall as the most fun Met manager ever, running teams you couldn’t wait to talk to others about orally or electronically. For me, those were also the days of some real sweethearts I considered myself the luckiest fan on the face of the Web to get to know. One of them was and is Dan. The email group dissolved ages ago. Dan and I are still in regular Met touch, which in 2023 has meant Met commiseration, but on July 1, 2023, meant a Happy Bobby Bonilla Day live at Citi Field (Bobby Bo was the actual answer to a between-innings quiz on MegaCitiVision — if you owe it, flaunt it). Dan got to the park late because of traffic. He didn’t take the train, but he wasn’t coming from Long Island.
The conversational flow was great. Dan and I compared notes on which player-dedicated t-shirts we have or haven’t discarded from our respective wardrobes out of pique for the player’s departure or from eternal loyalty to that player’s tenure; how many years after a world championship a team’s fans can begin to righteously reclaim long-suffering status; what’s it’s been like to raise a child to adulthood as a Mets fan without being able to share a world championship with that child-turned-adult (Dan’s son Asher is still hanging in there); whether we should sip from our respective cans of Rheingold that we’ve been waiting to open more than two decades apiece, saving them for that moment families of Mets fans throughout the Metropolitan Area have been thirsting for since 1986; and what the hell is wrong with this team. There were no answers forthcoming on that last one.
Interrupting the conversation and general sense of doom was great when THREE home team home runs in the third inning made it too loud to talk and too celebratory to mope. There went one to right from Francisco Alvarez, which I briefly lost track of because I thought everybody was following the flight of another foul ball. There went one up onto the sponsored beverage porch from Brandon Nimmo, suddenly overcome by a thirst for power. And there went one in the direction of the bullpens from Francisco Lindor, who we would later to pause to praise for his steady defense, and here he was being offensive. There went DeSclafani from the game after the third, rendering him a footnote to this on-site report. Throw in an RBI double from Tommy Pham, and misery could take itself a long holiday weekend. Dan and I got back to our t-shirt talk in an uncommon state of relaxation.
The starting pitcher for the home team continued to be great. Justin Verlander, staked to a 4-0 lead, didn’t encounter trouble until Pete Alonso threw a grounder away on what could have been a 3-6-3 DP had he opted to step on first to begin with, but instead went as a fielder’s choice that wound up putting runners on first and third. A redemptive double play grounder scored one Giant run. An ensuing double and walk indicated maybe Justin was just about done, but an inning-ending strikeout of Brandon Crawford indicated better that Justin would be the one to determine when his day was over.
The seventh-stretch was great, mainly because it’s the middle of the seventh already? Dan and I were having such a marvelous time talking baseball, that the baseball in front of us was flying by, with much help from Justin Verlander’s 102 pitches in seven innings that I was surprised to realize were seven innings. I kind of didn’t want the game to go so efficiently, because Dan and I only get together like this every so often, but you’re gonna ask the Mets to complicate what has shaped up as a great day for them? The answer to that is the same answer we collaborated on regarding drinking the Rheingold from 2002.
Drew Smith was great, setting down the Giants in order in the eighth, which I swore felt like the seventh, but I wasn’t the most reliable of witnesses. When Verlander gave up that one run in the seventh, I thought it cut the Mets’ lead to 3-1, because I somehow had forgotten all about Pham’s double in the fourth scoring Alonso.
Adam Ottavino had to be great in the ninth, because let’s not blow this, guys. Otto was great for his first batter, Davis, grounding him out to surehanded Lindor for the first out. Otto was less great walking Bailey. Up stepped Thairo Estrada as not the potential tying run (it was 4-1, not 3-1), but who wants floodgates to open? Two pitches in, Adam induces another ground ball to short. Lindor to Guillorme to Alonso! Mets win! We win! We high-five! All but the usual influx of Giants fans cheer! That includes the guy at the end of Row 19 in a Los Angeles jersey — DRYSDALE 53 — who has come to Flushing presumably to hate on San Francisco. All things being equal, I detest the Dodgers and maintain an affinity for the Giant franchise, but all things are not equal when the Mets are involved. I’m with Don Drysdale over there.
“BACK! BACK IN THE NEW YORK GROOVE!” is so great to hear after a game is over. It’s the leading indicator of a Mets win, and that, no explanation necessary, is great. Not so great is when Ace Frehley is mysteriously and rudely interrupted. The KISSman briefly gone solo was, in fact, silenced, and all the on-field high-fiving was cut off. What gives?
The mystery is solved. The rude interrupter is Giants manager Gabe Kapler. He is issuing a challenge on the apparent game-ending double play. What is he talking about? The throw to first clearly beat Estrada, and Pete’s foot was on the bag. Wait, did he think Luis didn’t have his foot on second? What the hell? Dan and I already agreed that in the tale of two Luises, Guillorme would never turn a win into a loss for us the way we’re still sore at Castillo for doing that one time what Dan saw fit to invoke during an innocent 2023 pop fly lofted over the right side of the infield because he admits he can’t see any pop fly and not, in his mind, see Castillo circling under another, less innocent pop fly in 2009.
Thinking July is going to revert to June before it can move on with its own calendar page is not great. Thinking the Mets might find an all-new way to lose that not even Luis Castillo ever thought of is not great. And, very much in the moment, the clock is not great. The game that flew by permitted me a hopeful glance at my LIRR schedule app. I didn’t want to not enjoy the company of Dan or the thrill of well-played Mets baseball all day for all it was worth, but making a train is making a train. Commuter’s instinct never leaves a Long Islander. The game has ended at 6:18. It’s a fairly short walk from these great seats to the 7. I know there’s construction down the line, but the Super Express is running. I can make the 6:44 at Woodside. I can be home by 7:30. I never get home by 7:30 from a 4:10 start. I want to be home by 7:30 from this 4:10 start. I want to walk in the door at 7:29 and announce to my wife, we won a great game and we did it so quickly that I’m home already.
Waiting on this asinine challenge is not great. 6:18 is becoming 6:19. My train is scheduled to depart Woodside in 25 minutes. Every second counts. MegaCitiVision is showing every angle it has. Luis Guillorme is stepping on second. Of course he is. Isn’t he? Maybe not? No, don’t give into Kapler’s chicanery! This is a ploy! This is worse than Buck and the ear goo business with Joe Musgrove in the playoffs last year. It’s unbecoming of a major league manager. They shouldn’t allow challenges of a last out, I’ve just decided on the spot. They shouldn’t allow challenges when me making the 6:44 is on the line.
6:19 turning to 6:20 before a mic’d up pronouncement is forthcoming is not great, but it comes, and it is great. The call stands. Phew! Ace Frehley returns to the sound system. Dan and I congratulate one another anew. I tell the Dodgers jersey guy, “Screw the Giants, right?” (“We’re all Mets fans today” is his gracious reply.) I thank Dan profusely for inviting me, and then, like Gabe Kapler interrupting Mets fan revelry, I am rude. I bolt, because now that the day is done and night approaches, I want to make that train. I want to make that train so bad, I skip my standard precautionary men’s room trip because the line is snaking. I usually run up to take care of that precaution in the eighth, but the eighth showed up so suddenly that I didn’t want to pause my conversation with Dan. Every choice carries a price.
I walk heartily through Field Level, down the winding staircase and out the Rotunda. I do my best impression of a blocking back to reach the stairs to the 7. I’m swiping through the turnstile, I’m dodging the dawdlers, I am on the Super Express. I don’t get a seat. i don’t need one. I need to feel momentum beneath my feet. I feel none. An announcement tells us this train will be express, but not that super. It’ll stop at 74th Street. Then 69th Street. Then, finally, 61st Street, a.k.a. Woodside, where I need to be to catch the 6:44 to Jamaica, where I’ll change for the Babylon train and be home by 7:30, which, as mentioned, never happens.
All we need is for the Super-ish Express to get going. “Stand by for closing doors,” the disembodied voice says more than once, but the doors don’t close in response. False start, like when the Mets being 14-7 in April. Are we gonna go or are we gonna go? Not going is not an option. It’s before 6:30. I’m not totally worried. It’s after 6:30. I’m not overly worried. Then I’m a little more worried. Miss the 6:44, and it’s the 7:12 for me. Twenty-eight additional minutes at Woodside on an ever more crowded platform, plus the gap to the connecting train at Jamaica is longer, too. Come on, MTA. Don’t you fall victim to Kapler’s chicanery.
The closing doors close. We crawl out of Mets-Willets Point. We crawl to 74th. We crawl to 69th. We wait for a gust of wind to push us to 61st. I can see the 6:44 pulling in below. I stride off the 7 at maybe 6:43:30 and rush to the staircase. Even with plywood up everywhere as they make repairs they’ve been waiting since at least 1974 to make at Woodside, I know my way down. I make it to the top of the staircase that I know will lead me to my final dash.
What it does in reality is give me a great view of the 6:44 pulling away.
I kick a temporary plywood wall twice because Gabe Kapler is not available to take my frustrations out on. It’s his fault. The Super Express, whatever its machinations, is keyed to the end of the game. If the game ends two minutes earlier, the Super Express leaves two minutes earlier and I’m at Woodside two minutes earlier, and I’m on that 6:44, likely the one and only train that’s left anywhere on time all frigging day.
Kicking didn’t do it for me. Besides, one more kick would have given the cops on the other side of the station the opportunity to notice me assaulting public property. I need to cool off. I hit the street below. I stand and tweet something nasty about Kapler onto an app that I’m not sure is working well enough for anybody to see it. People do and tell me Kapler was probably right about Guillorme’s foot missing second, as if I frigging want to hear that right now. May the managerial suite in the Giant hotel be lodged directly above a jackhammer convention and directly below another jackhammer convention. I’m still fuming — and that not stopping to go to the men’s room before leaving Citi Field isn’t working out for me, either. I take a walk a few blocks, I circle back toward the station, I enter a neighborhood pizzeria I know has a bathroom it doesn’t hide from customers, I order a slice to go, I slip into the back to attend to certain matters, and I pay for the slice. Soon I’m on the predictably crowded platform waiting for the 7:12, contenting myself with the pizza and the win and the knowledge than unless everything goes to hell like so much of this season has, I’ll be home a little after 8 PM, and, really, that won’t be so bad.
by Jason Fry on 1 July 2023 9:20 am Was it David Robertson‘s fault, or just his turn?
The Mets normally reliable post-World Baseball Classic Plan B closer was called upon to protect a 4-2 lead in the eighth against the Giants and started by striking out old friend Wilmer Flores, who’d homered earlier. (With Wilmer, J.D. Davis and a hamstrung Michael Conforto on the roster, the Giants have become something of a Mets tribute band, playing hits from years when you actually liked the team.) Joc Pederson hit a grounder to first which Pete Alonso — so frustrated it’s a surprise when he doesn’t snap a bat over some portion of his anatomy — misplayed for an error. Peterson walked the aforementioned Davis to bring up Patrick Bailey, whom you’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of before, seeing how he started this season as a Richmond Flying Squirrel.
Bailey found one heck of a nut, driving a Robertson curveball over the center-field fence for a 5-4 Giant lead. A lead the Giants held, with insult added to injury in the ninth as Bailey made a perfect throw to gun down pinch-runner Starling Marte on a steal attempt about a nanosecond before Brandon Nimmo struck out to end the game.
Important note: You just read Bailey’s name multiple times. The temptation is always to attribute a loss to some moral deficiency, but sometimes it would be simpler to say the other guys won. I will now climb down off this soapbox and complain some more.
It’s all bad. It’s all so so bad.
The loss marked the end of a 7-19 June in which the Mets played eight one-run games and lost seven of them, surrendered 14 1/2 games in the NL East and 10 in the wild card, and went from contenders about whom we grumbled to dead men walking about whom we’d prefer not to think at all. (I cribbed those stats from the Athletic, which explores if what just ended was the worst month in franchise history.)
Some of these Mets will be elsewhere when this month ends, with Tommy Pham leading the list of those likely to have their sentences commuted. Maybe Robertson will join him, so long as further performances like Friday night’s don’t reduce the return on him from “Double-A lottery ticket” to “already opened bag of sunflower seeds.” Mark Canha, Marte and Brooks Raley could have new homes, one supposes. Perhaps someone will take a flyer on Max Scherzer and/or Justin Verlander, preferably someone with a time machine and/or a stack of Get Out of Stupid Pitch Clock Free cards.
We’ll see, and by then we’ll know what other horrors this star-crossed team has had inflicted on it and in turn passed on to us. Can’t wait!
by Greg Prince on 30 June 2023 11:40 am Three series remain in advance of the All-Star break, a break that can’t come soon enough — or last long enough. I picture various Mets repairing to their country estates or wherever they live, clearing their heads at their pools or in front of their sizable video game consoles and then, properly relaxed, forgetting that they’re eventually due back at a ballpark near us. “We did plan to bring you Mets baseball tonight,” Gary Cohen will explain in the cold open from a vacant Citi Field on the appointed Friday night, “but it seems the players have opted to continue their vacations.”
Would any among us truly object?
In the Mets’ 81st game, marking the mathematical midpoint of their lost season, the 2023 Mets played one of their signature games. More like a scrawl. They executed certain elements of their craft adequately, they raised hope modestly, they dropped a couple of balls, they offered not quite enough resistance when challenged, they let a couple of chances wither, and they fell short by one run. These are not limited-edition outcomes handed to merely the first 15,000. Everybody gets to see the Mets do something like this most every night.
The 3-2 defeat at the hands of the Brewers left the Mets’ record at 36-45, an easily multipliable mark if you’re still interested in their 162-game pace. Take 36-45, “times” it by two, as too many teachers said in elementary school (“times is not a verb,” I’d mutter in my head), and you’ve got the 72-90 Mets. For those who’ve already made the connection anecdotally, 72-90 was the final record of the 1992 Mets, known far and wide, thanks to the diligent work of Bob Klapisch and John Harper, as The Worst Team Money Could Buy. Except at the midpoint of 1992, the lavishly budgeted Mets were two games better than the 2023 Mets and within conceivable range of first place (the only playoff spot available in those two-division days).
If you want a numerical match for the 36-45 Mets of 2023, you can go back almost as far, to a season nobody wrote tell-all book about, because there wasn’t enough to tell. The 1994 Mets were 36-45 after 81 games, which wasn’t that season’s midpoint, because that season soon did what we wish this season would do: it went away. The owners and players reached an impasse, a strike was called, and the 1994 Mets lasted only 113 games. It was only two years removed from TWTMCB, but a Mets fan wasn’t actually aching for the 1994 Mets to take their leave. They were already an improvement over the Worst Team sequel — the 1993 Mets were 25-56 after 81 games — and they would play quite competently in what little second half there was, going 19-13 before bats and balls were stored for ’94.
Lousy first-half Mets teams have been known to morph into satisfying squads in select second halves. As recently as 2019, we gave up on the 37-44 Mets only to be charmed by their 49-32 turnaround and spirited samba along the periphery of Wild Card contention. Met history is dotted by, if not jammed with, such dramatic changes of direction for the better. A few abysmal half-years gave way to energizing stretch-run drives or at least a sense that the entire schedule wasn’t for naught. Another recent-past example comes from 2018, a season that saw the Mets with both a worse first-half record than 2023 (33-48) and a worse June than the current bunch’s 7-18 (5-21). We unanimously gave up on those Mets in advance of the second half, and we were not wrong in terms of the big seasonal picture, but somewhere along the way the 2018 Mets stopped performing as if weighed down by lead weights. In the second half, they went 44-37. Catch them in the right light, and you’d mistake them for a legitimate ballclub.
If you still dare to bottom-line 2023 through the prism of the Mets actually going somewhere rather than away, you know there’s only one acceptable answer in the historical precedent files. The 1973 Mets were 35-46 at their halfway juncture, separated from first place by five teams and twelve games. The 2023 Mets trail what passes for first place in their lives — the third bonus playoff position in the National League — by three fewer games, though they have just about everybody and their brother ahead of them. It is often noted that the 1973 Mets won their division with a tepid overall record, a reflection of the flaws of the NL East that year, but it is just as worth noting that in their second half (only 80 games due to a rainout that didn’t require a makeup), they went 47-33. Do the math and realize that’s a team that didn’t just put on a You Gotta Believable stretch drive. The 1973 Mets were playing at a 94-win clip for a full half-season.
Given that when we invoke the 1973 Mets, it is a highly singular invocation, with nobody asking, wait, which astounding comeback from last place to a pennant are we talking about again?, we know we’re in the land of long odds. All the 2023 Mets have going for them vis-à-vis a potential 50th-anniversary celebration for the ages is reputation. The 1973 Mets had too many good players to continue on as bad as they’d been for a half. Several of them were injured, a few had not yet found their groove, and leadership didn’t seem all it had been cracked up to be. Time healed the hurt, progression rather than regression toward the mean lifted the ailing averages (batting and earned run), and somebody instilled the notion that an incomplete schedule indicated room for improvement.
The 2023 Mets have too many good players to continue on as bad as they’ve been for a half. That’s the most generous/valid comparison to the 1973 Mets I can gin up to keep my chin up. I haven’t believed this edition has been outright bad. To me, it appears they’ve mostly fallen short of good. It’s a nuanced difference, but it gives me, if not a meaningful dose of it ain’t over…, then some sense that it won’t get any worse and might get marginally better, which, if they are going to return to the ballpark after the All-Star break, is the best to reasonably hope for if not excitedly expect. Not much of a rallying cry, I know, but the Mets will probably not go home and leave us alone, and it’s not our nature to wish they would.
On a more cheerful note, National League Town this week is devoted to remembering Mets who were good enough to be All-Stars as Mets yet somehow weren’t chosen, so we decided to retroactively make them All-Stars. If you’ve been a Mets fan for more than a minute, this is the podcast for you.
by Jason Fry on 28 June 2023 11:15 pm Oh, so we’re back to this again.
On Tuesday night your bloggers were reunited at Citi Field and had a wonderful time, which we would have had anyway but was definitely enhanced by the Mets hitting homers by the bushel and David Peterson being unexpectedly competent. Speaking for myself, I left the park with a certain smallish but real spring in my step and a willingness to entertain the probably ridiculous but still pleasant notion that the glass was better described as 1/20th full.
Wednesday night took care of that rather thoroughly.
Actually we should have seen it coming Wednesday afternoon, when Steve Cohen held a press conference that left you trying to hold two not entirely complementary ideas in your head at once:
- It’s good that Cohen isn’t going red wedding on his employees just because he’s mad — that would have been cathartic for a couple of hours and then revealed as corrosive and counterproductive.
- Was it really necessary to hold a 23-minute press conference to articulate that you’re frustrated but hey, sometimes life is frustrating?
It was a little off-kilter, which set up the night’s game rather well. There was Kodai Senga pulling a Verlander, which is to say that the bottom-line results were not bad but the execution was annoyingly inefficient and nothing you saw was even remotely inspiring. There were Mets not named Tommy Pham not disturbing baseballs while holding apparently ornamental bats in their hands. There was a rally of sorts that tied the game but still managed to be disheartening, as the Mets converted a pair of bases loaded/nobody out situations into a single run that scored via a base on balls.
And there was the thoroughly emblematic top of the eighth, the frame in which the Mets lost the game. Adam Ottavino entered the game with no one on and one out, secured the second out without undue fuss, but then gave up a double and a walk and hit Joey Wiemer in the hand with a pitch. Lost in the moment was the fact that Wiemer clearly swung and should have been called out by multiple umpires whose entire reason for being present is to ensure things aren’t lost in the moment. Rather than being down 0-2 against Ottavino, Wiemer went to first; three pitches later Christian Yelich slapped a ball slightly wide of second, not the kind of play you expect to be automatically made but one you can reasonably hope will be made. Jeff McNeil didn’t make it, the Brewers led by three, Ottavino let his disgust be apparent, Buck Showalter was ejected, and the only silver lining left was that T.J. McFarland made his Mets debut, which actually doesn’t matter at all except Greg and I had tried to will it into being Tuesday night and so still got a mild kick out of it a night later when nothing else good was happening.
I mean, seriously, look at that top of the eighth and tell me it isn’t this star-crossed season in miniature: a couple of guys who were really good last year continuing to not be good this year, some horseshit umpiring (seriously, Carlos Torres is terrible at his job), a sprinkle of bad luck, and another day ripped off the calendar, balled up and hurled in the direction of the trash.
Crap, missed the can. Guess I better go pick that up. It’s been that kind of year, hasn’t it?
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