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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 10 October 2022 1:42 am You’ve probably heard this before, but baseball is designed to break your heart.
Twenty-nine of 30 fanbases are destined to have their teams’ seasons end other than the way they’d wanted — with a victory that doesn’t mean anything or a loss that means everything. If you’re one of the unlucky 29, there comes an afternoon or evening when your fervent hopes, pinch-me dreams and wild imaginings are all snuffed out over three or four fatal hours, replaced with months of winter and silence.
For a long time in 2022, we were among the dreamers — cheering on a team built to win and able to live up to its blueprint, with that intangible more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts something that says, “Psst, you’re gonna want to keep your October calendar free. Because this could be the year.”
Until the night that the verdict was delivered that it wasn’t.
I was there for that night, also known as Game 3 of the Wild Card Series. I was at Citi Field up in 527 with my wife and kid, and at least I can report that it was a beautiful evening, not at all the chilly ordeal I’d braced and dressed for, with a searchlight of a full moon in the sky and Jupiter riding shotgun. Unlike Game 1, we had good neighbors — knowledgeable about the game, passionate about the Mets, and philosophical and mournful instead of vengeful and irrational once things spun out of control. My favorite neighbor was in the row below me, a kid about seven or eight in a pint-sized ALONSO 20 jersey. He was still waving his THESE METS towel and chirping Let’s Go Mets!, enthusiasm not at all diminished, with two out in the ninth and the Mets down by six. Nobody gave him so much as a side eye even as the rest of us huddled in our own misery — his optimism was so simple and unassailable that I think it made more than a few of us wonder when, exactly, we’d set that aside in our own lives.
Ah, the game. Sigh.
Look, I was 500 feet from home plate. I can’t tell you anything about Joe Musgrove‘s stuff or location or the Mets’ obviously futile approach to countering it — all I know is Mets kept coming to the plate and leaving in consternation and/or dejection. What was apparent even from 500 feet away, though, was that the Padres flat-out beat the Mets. They pitched better, they played sterling defense, they took advantage of their offensive chances. That’ll do it.
I also can’t tell you anything about Musgrove’s shiny ears or the rest of that whole contretemps. (I’d gone to the bathroom and was nonplussed to emerge and discover a gaggle of players and umps at the mound.) As the umpires were examining Musgrove’s various body parts, our section started tilting phone screens for neighbors to see and then passing them around, showing charts of spin rates and discussions of Vaseline and Red Hot and pitchers’ baseline sweatiness and opinions from Jerry Blevins and Andrew McCutchen and video clips and freeze frames from the broadcast — an impromptu amateur digital investigation. (I’m just happy that in the end the consensus was that Musgrove was innocent, because an alternate conclusion would have been a huge mess and we’d all just be more unhappy.)
It was interesting being part of a baseball hive mind, but my memory flashed back to a very different game, one from May 1996 and the pre-cellphone era. Emily and I were in the Shea stands for an epic brawl between the Mets and Cubs on the day the Mets were lauding John Franco for his recently achieved 300th career save. Back then the Mets maintained a stuffy wanna-be patrician reserve about fights, refusing to acknowledge they were happening and afterwards not imparting information such as who’d been ejected. This became important when the Mets took a two-run lead to the ninth but didn’t bring in the closer they’d just honored, sending those of us who had transistor radios or AM/FM Walkmen to WFAN to figure out what on earth had happened. Which enough of us did so that eventually everyone in our precinct of the stands had been informed that yes, John Franco had been ejected on John Franco Day. (The Mets blew the lead but won on a Rico Brogna walkoff homer. Good times.)
Anyway, to return to more recent history, the Mets lost one and then won one and then their opponents played better and so they lost a rubber game. There’s nothing earth-shaking about that — I could have just described several chunks of any season, even a 101-win one. But because this particular rubber game came in October, people will try and tell you it means everything. They’ll turn it into a referendum on the entire season, or say risible stuff about 26 guys wanting it more than 26 other guys, or opine about who was battle-tested or possessed the will to win. And it will all be nonsense. The Mets lost a rubber game in an exhibition series. It’s disappointing and I’m sad about it, but fundamentally that’s all that happened and all this other … stuff encrusting that fact is more than a little ridiculous. The postseason is a series of coin flips that we spin into Just So stories, and the more baseball I watch, the more resistant I am to the whole narrative industrial complex that surrounds the games.
It’s after midnight and I’m tired and sad. I’ll leave the elegies and the lyrical flights of fancy for another day — our calendars are suddenly clear, after all. But I do want to leave you with two thoughts.
First of all, don’t let losing an exhibition series sour you on a 101-win campaign that was marvelous fun for six months. I guarantee you there will be multiple sleepless nights when I’ll realize I’m fuming about Trent Grisham running down Mark Canha‘s line drive, or about having to remember that Trent Grisham existed in the first place. But that won’t stop me from also remembering Brandon Nimmo robbing Justin Turner, or the Mets’ ninth-inning ambush of the Cardinals, or the furious comeback against the Phillies, or Canha saving us twice in Philadelphia the day we discovered Nate Fisher was on the roster, or Francisco Lindor walking off the Giants, or Eduardo Escobar singlehandedly beating the Marlins, or that goofball combined no-hitter, or Nick Plummer‘s first big-league hit, or Brett Baty‘s first swing, or Francisco Alvarez unloading for his first Citi Field homer, or the day Adonis Medina faced down the Dodgers, or the crazy walkoff on Keith Hernandez Day (at least he couldn’t be ejected), or Escobar and J.D. Davis combining for an unlikely game-saving play at Wrigley, or a dozen Luis Guillorme plays that looked like special effects, or Jeff McNeil beaming with a batting title secured. Or so many other wonderful moments from 2022 that you shouldn’t forget. (Here’s a wonderful Twitter thread to bookmark, for starters.)
Second, don’t let disappointment keep you away from these last couple of weeks of baseball. We’ve already seen an astonishing Mariners comeback, a marathon win for the Guardians and the last bow for two generational St. Louis Cardinals, and we’re just three games in. Yes, these series are exhibitions, and it’s unfortunate that they turn regular seasons into footnotes instead of the other way around — but hey, I never said they weren’t fun exhibitions. Before you know it, we’ll be down to two teams and four to seven baseball games and then one team and no games at all. The lights will be off and the talk will be about player options and salaries and budgets and competitive balance taxes, and it will all be boring and it will feel like winter is never, ever going to go away.
It will — I promise — but not for a while. So stockpile all the baseball you can, even if the team we love to distraction and delirium and occasional dismay won’t be a part of what’s left.
by Greg Prince on 9 October 2022 11:57 am According to mathematics from whichever grade I learned percentages, three is fifty percent greater than two. According to how I felt waking up this morning to the knowledge the Mets would have a Game Three in the Wild Card Series versus how I felt yesterday morning when Game Two loomed as the conclusion to our 2022 postseason, three is exponentially greater than two. To quote Tom Seaver to Lindsey Nelson following the Mets winning the fifth game of the 1969 World Series, it’s the greatest feeling in the world!
Being alive will feel that way when the abyss stares at you from a distance of 27 outs.
Rather than concluding, the Mets continued on Saturday night, hanging inning for inning with the formidable San Diego Padres until putting together an inning that separated the sudden rivals once and for all for an evening and reminded viewers and listeners that not only did the Mets lose 61 games this regular season, they won 101. In the bottom of the seventh, with the Mets leading by an inadequate 3-2, two Padres pitchers threw fifty pitches to nine Mets hitters, the end result being four additional Met runs. It took about 45 minutes, which I might not have been aware of had ESPN not posted a graphic and Howie Rose (seconds ahead of the television, appropriate since the broadcasting acumen of Mets radio is light years ahead of national interlopers) not righteously kvetched about the pace of game slowing to a crawl.
Pace of game, brought to you by PitchCom Molasses. PitchCom Molasses: for when your next pitch absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. Spread it all over a reliever holding his cap close to his head in hopes of someday finding out what his catcher wants him to deliver next.
It was a little messy for the Padres’ Adrian Morejón in the Mets’ seventh, what with PitchCom maybe not functioning as Rob Manfred envisioned and the Citi Field crowd gleefully interjecting aural interference, but a San Diego mess is a New York blessing. Following Friday night’s deprivation of runs, good fortune and anything resembling Mojo, we’d take everything we could get. We’d take a Series-saving 7-3 victory, however it was pieced together, regardless that it required four hours and thirteen minutes. We’d take an on-ramp to Game Three, the new must-win segment of this portion of the playoffs. We just want to get out of Dayton.
Dayton? Dayton’s where the NCAA plays its “First Four,” determining how college basketball whittles its Field of 68 to a more numerically pleasing Field of 64. I’ve had my alma mater go to Dayton and survive. They were a real NCAA participant once in Dayton, but they were really in the Big Dance once they got out of Dayton.
The Mets need to get out of Dayton tonight. They need to book that flight to Los Angeles they anticipated the minute they got coy about who was gonna pitch Game Two, acting as if it would be dependent on what happened in Game One. In Game One, Max Scherzer got shelled. In Game Two, they turned to Jacob deGrom, definitively depriving themselves of the ideal starter for Game One of the Division Series, but granting themselves the best chance they had to make their flight.
Prior to Game One, I dealt with the usual postseason emotions (“usual” a questionable word to use when your team usually absents itself from the postseason altogether) of not being able to deal with the idea that two wrong moves would eliminate the Mets from the playoffs before the playoffs really got going. After Game One, I evolved quickly to philosophical about early rounds of playoffs bouncing out of your hands, something I’ve had drilled into me as a Nets fan, and life going on regardless, perhaps giving in a bit to the most vexing of the Four Horsemen of the Metpocalypse: Fatalism. I’d successfully averted the entreaties of the other three: Skepticism, Pessimism and Cynicism. I was particularly proud of dodging Cynicism. My contribution to the Game One Mets Social Media Discourse — always a pleasant arena for calm, reasoned chat — was pointing out to anybody who would listen that five times the Mets had lost Game One of a postseason series before rebounding to win that series. Some took heart in that historical nugget. Others, donning the dark, menacing mask of Cynicism, couldn’t wait to advise me that none of those situations involved a best two-out-of-three scenario.
“WHAT, YOU DON’T THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT, YOU METSIE COME LATELY CYNICAL FOR A BRAND PUNK? I’VE GIVEN MY LAST 54 SUMMERS TO LOVING AND UNDERSTANDING THIS TEAM AND KNOW MORE ABOUT THEM IN MY LITTLE FINGER THAN YOU WILL IN YOUR ENTIRE BODY EVEN IF YOU LIVE AN ETERNITY AND SOMEONE BEQUEATHES YOU AN ENTIRE BASEBALL LIBRARY OF METS MEDIA GUIDES DATING BACK TO 1962!” is not what I typed to the Reply Guys I didn’t know from a tweet in the wall. Instead, I calmly retorted that in four of the five series I referenced (1969 World Series, 1973 National League Championship Series, 1986 National League Championship Series and 2000 National League Division Series), the Mets who’d fallen behind 0-1 took a 2-1 lead (in the 1986 World Series, we needed to come back from 0-2). Once I’d repeated this about a dozen times, I blocked a few people and muted the entire conversation.
Such is the price of attempting to avert Fatalism.
Despite my if you’ll excuse the expression brave front, I wasn’t certain the Mets would continue on from their Game One debacle to see a Game Three. I just knew that Game Two hadn’t been played yet. You didn’t need a master’s degree in Metropolitan Studies to divine that much. I’m frankly amazed by the Mets fan state of mind as it stands after sixty-one years, particularly the sixty-first. If the Mets are ahead, don’t act as if they’ve won anything (agreed). If the Mets are behind, they’re automatically doomed (get bent, you fatalistic prick). I’m not interested in the defense mechanisms you claim to have erected against potentially impending disappointment or the scars you bear from seven up with seventeen to play or Beltran taking strike three or Scioscia going yard or Yogi not pitching Stone. You think I don’t have them? You think I don’t feel them as deeply as you do? I’m not even saying You Gotta Believe it’s a sure thing the Mets will come back. I’m saying You Gotta Believe that It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over, particularly before it’s barely begun.
Here’s another historical nugget: all teams are 0-0 in games yet to be played. The Mets hadn’t played Game Two. The company with the ads with the guy on the toilet placing bets (which is our new household euphemism for having to excuse ourselves to the water closet) could take those chances to the app and let it ride.
DeGrom let it ride in the first inning Saturday night at Citi Field, throwing with everything he had and smothering the Padres as he smothered most comers between 2018 and his first several starts of 2022. Along the way, he dipped in and out of trouble, giving up a pair of runs, one on a solo homer to Trent Grisham in the third, one when Grisham walked, took second on a bunt and zipped home on Jurickson Profar’s single in the fifth. In both cases, however, Jake’s dabble with mortality proved nothing close to toxic, as the Mets had given Jake a run before he gave up that first run — Francisco Lindor homered with nobody on in the first — and a second before he gave up that second — Brandon Nimmo singling home Eduardo Escobar. The Mets were leaving too many runners on base, but they also kept getting runners on base, which isn’t a note I picked from the Pollyanna Broadcasting System. Unlike the night before, when the Mets put their bats back in their racks after a couple of innings of not quite getting to Yu Darvish, they kept coming after Blake Snell. Snell wasn’t overwhelming them and it didn’t appear he was going to outlast them.
DeGrom himself lasted six. He’d ceased overpowering Padres like he had in the first, relying more on sliders than fastballs as he went along, but he appeared back in full Jake mode as he brought his night’s work home, striking out Manny Machado and Josh Bell to end the fifth and dismissing his final three batters with ease in the sixth. In his first Citi Field postseason start, Jacob departed in position to be the winning pitcher, thanks not only to his 99 pitches of overall effectiveness but to Pete Alonso providing him a third run on a massive leadoff homer to commence the bottom of the fifth.
The Mets never score for deGrom.
The Mets mostly lose deGrom’s starts.
DeGrom isn’t really deGrom anymore.
Be gone, Metpocalyptic horsemen!
DeGrom won’t be available for Game One of the NLDS should there be a Game One of the NLDS. That one I’ll concede. DeGrom will never pitch for the Mets again. That remains to be seen. The opt-out is out there. Jake’s been the greatest pitcher in the world for a long time while wearing No. 48, but this offseason he’ll be looking out for No. 1, and I don’t mean Jeff McNeil. The balance between never wanting to see Jake in any uniform but the Mets variety and figuring out his future value past his current age of 34 (he’s older now than David Wright was in the 2015 postseason, and David Wright in the 2015 postseason seemed positively venerable) is a balance to be struck when there’s no more Mets baseball to be played in 2022. At least a few innings remained when Jake exited after six in Game Two. At least nine more remain as of this moment. Maybe more than nine after tonight.
Edwin Diaz came on in the seventh, a little ahead of schedule. Whatever spectacular playoff flourishes the Citi Field A/V staff planned for Edwin’s entrance in the postseason had to be deferred because the grounds crew was on the field tidyiing up the dirt along the basepaths. That’s the postseason for you. Diaz came on when he needed to come on, with an eye toward protecting a one-run lead with the most dangerous elements of the San Diego order up around the bend. The inning to close this game was not the ninth or the eighth. It was the seventh.
Four batters, two putouts at first around a single off the shortstop’s glove and then a 1-3 assist to retire Juan Soto may not have been as sexy as three straight strikeouts with trumpets blaring and lights flashing, but boy did it get the job done. Edwin Diaz posted his save right there, no matter what you read in the box score.
Then, in the bottom of the seventh, the Met offense went about protecting their lead, saving their game and persevering their postseason a whole lot more. It was an inning you recognized from any given game between April and the better parts of September. It was the Mets working the bleep out of counts. It was Alonso seeing ten pitches before taking a walk with Lindor already on second, it was Mark Canha taking ten pitches before taking a walk to load the bases and, most deliciously, it was batting champion Jeff McNeil doing what batting champions do and doubling in Lindor and Alonso. Maybe Morejón couldn’t hear Austin Nola’s signals in PitchCom, but the Padres could certainly see what was becoming of their series lead.
The Mets were up, 5-2 in Game Two. New reliever Pierce Johnson’s third pitch was turned into a run-scoring single by Escobar. His eighth pitch was converted into a sacrifice fly by Daniel Vogelbach, pinch-hitting for Terrance Gore, who had pinch-run for Darin Ruf, who had been on base twice as the DH via a walk and a hit-by-pitch, but what do you care how Darin Ruf gets on base so long as he’s not making unproductive outs? When the fifty-pitch dust settled over Citi after seven, the Mets were ahead of the Padres, 7-2, and still had Edwin Diaz in the game.
Diaz was well-rested from a September and early October that involved precious few save situations, so why not keep his arm warm and leave him in to face what remained of the heart of the San Diego order? The Mets led by five. On Saturday afternoon, in a game that stretched into Saturday evening and briefly pushed the Mets from ESPN to HGTV (you had to go to your doctor’s waiting room to watch it), the Blue Jays held a seven-run lead on the Mariners. The Mariners are going to the American League Division Series, having erased that seven-run lead of the Blue Jays. No time to take anything for granted. Buck Showalter asked Edwin to take care of Machado, Bell and Jake Cronenworth. He grounded out Machado right back to the mound (run, Manny, run!), surrendered a four-pitch walk to Bell and Narco’d Jake Cronenworth on three consecutive strikes. Edwin Diaz threw 28 pitches. Kenley Jansen pitched every ninth of the series we vaguely recall in Atlanta. Diaz will pitch again if needed.
Now that Trevor Williams has been removed from the NLWC roster for tactical reasons and Joely Rodriguez has been shifted to the IL for shoulder reasons (the Mets wishing Taijuan Walker be available to shoulder a little additional load), Adam Ottavino stands as the lone Met pitcher to be active for every single game of the 2022 season and postseason. Ottavino has been as close to an unsung hero as the Mets have had this year. We’re free to sing the praises of Ottavino at any time, but usually his contribution boils down to “after Adam Ottavino pitched a scoreless eighth, it was Edwin Diaz time” or words to that effect. This would be a wonderful time to sing Ottavino’s praises exclusively and fulsomely.
That would be if his Game Two performance were praiseworthy. After he struck out Old Friend Brandon Drury to end the eighth, the ninth, with the Mets still ahead by five, represented a ploddingly developing minefield for Adam. He struck out He-Seong Kim, but then hit Grisham; walked Nola; flied out Profar deep enough to advance Grisham; walked Soto; and walked Machado (who prefers not to run). Now it was 7-3, the bases were loaded and the song to sing was whatever Seth Lugo would respond to.
It warmed my heart to see Seth Lugo on the mound one out from conclusion, not so much because he’d be my choice for a Met to end a life-or-death playoff game — “Narco” is a truly catchy tune — but because Seth Lugo has been here forever, embodying the kind of continuity a fan cherishes from his ballclub. Like Nimmo. Like McNeil and Alonso all of a sudden. Like deGrom, lest you’ve forgotten 2014. Like Tomás Nido, even, never mind Nido not laying down one of his signature bunts earlier when it would have come in handy, and Nido swinging away with Gore on first when the whole reason for Gore being on first was for Gore to steal (it became a double play). The homegrown guys had waited the longest for a game like this, and we’d waited alongside them. Only Jake had ever pitched in a postseason game for the Mets, and never at home. He was injured for their one-night stand in 2016 after willing the Mets through the treacherous portions of the fifth game of the NLDS in 2015. Nimmo and Lugo were callups in 2016, only watching Noah Syndergaard and Curtis Granderson doing what they could to stave off the Giants. Nido appeared on the Mets in September 2017 in the most depressing series I can remember from the most depressing year I can remember from the previous decade. The Mets were in Chicago for three nights, not even days. They were swept three games. The combined score was Cubs 39 Mets 14. The last of those losses dropped the Mets’ record to 63-83. Welcome to the big leagues, Tomás Nido!
But Nido hung around, backed up every catcher in sight and, eventually, emerged as the No. 1 catcher (maybe 1A; even still) on a playoff team, a team that won 101 regular-season games, a team that with one more out and one more win would be slipping the surly bonds of Dayton and flying toward the Final Four of the National League for real. Making these playoffs as the Wild Card registered, before it started, as being shunted to the kids’ table. Weren’t we a little tall to be sitting with these non-division winners? Check the book again: we had the same record as the Braves, we belong over there, with the grown-ups.
That was a few days ago, when the last of the second-place wounds were licked. No time for that now. Game Two of the Wild Card Series was still Game Two of a postseason series, and here at Citi Field, it featured enough New York Mets from all those seasons without postseasons to make this additional step feel more than worthwhile. Nido was behind the plate waiting for a delivery from Lugo. Lugo was facing Josh Bell with the bases loaded. All romantic notions aside, Lugo had to get Josh Bell out. He most certainly had to not give up a grand slam that would have tied the game at seven. I’m none among skeptical, pessimistic or cynical and I’ve already established I’m not fatalistic. But I do get nervous. I haven’t been a Mets fan as long as I have to rule out any possibility.
I never ruled out that the Mets weren’t done after losing Game One. That got me to Game Two. The Mets themselves did the rest. Lugo induced a grounder to Alonso. Alonso flipped it to Lugo. There would be Game Three. That was an absolute certainty.
The Mets’ survival to Game Three rates its very own episode of National League Town, as does every Mets postseason game, but the one after Game Two is cheerier than the one after Game One.
by Jason Fry on 8 October 2022 1:27 am The good part is that Citi Field still knows how to bring the noise for a postseason game. I was there Friday night for Game 1 of the Wild Card Series (or whatever it’s called, I don’t really care), and the stadium was loud bordering on deafening — not just the A/V system, though that was certainly supercharged, but also 40,000-odd fired-up rooters. We roared out “Let’s Go Mets,” we shouted accolades for the Mets assembled on the first-base line whether assistant trainers or batting champs, we carried on as you’d hope a big October crowd would.
One thing I quickly remembered from my last playoff game, now somehow seven years removed, was that few individuals who make up the crowd realize that they cannot, in fact, scream for three straight hours. That typically sinks in around the second or third inning — the pandemonium becomes dotted with pauses, which grow longer and longer, until the crowd, having tired itself out, finally sounds more like what you find at a regular game.
Game 1 was extra-pandemoniac (this is possibly not a word but oh well) because the first inning was action-packed, and unfortunately not in a good way. Max Scherzer gave up a leadoff hit to the annoying Jurickson Profar, looked like he’d get out of the inning, but then surrendered a two-run shot to former teammate Josh Bell to put the Mets in an early hole. Up in section 528, right under Willie Mays‘s 24, my neighbors were vocal about their unhappiness. The Mets made some noise in the bottom of the first against Yu Darvish, he of the lankily hesitant delivery and loaded arsenal of pitches, but the sound and fury signified nothing, as Pete Alonso struck out with a runner on third and one out (don’t do that) and Daniel Vogelbach hit a ball down the right-field line that briefly looked like it would sneak into Utleyville but came up short.
Scherzer gave up a solo homer in the second and the Mets again showed signs of life in response, as the blissfully returned Starling Marte snuck a leadoff single through the infield and then stole second and third. But his teammates once again failed to convert a one-out runner on third — this time it was Eduardo Escobar who struck out — and another promising inning yielded nothing. Up in 528 the roaring had turned into muttering and a sour mood had crept over the proceedings as everyone got the feeling that this might not be our night.
The crowd would achieve full liftoff again, but unfortunately, that was after the roof caved in on Scherzer in a horrific fifth. As he trudged off the mound, the boos that had slowly accumulated during the inning became an avalanche. I was surprised, which I suppose is on me given what I’ve had to admit about human nature over the last few years. Really? Of course we’re all shocked and frustrated, but are you seriously booing Max Scherzer? After what you’ve seen him bring to this team? Do you think he isn’t trying? Do you think he isn’t angrier than you are about what’s happened?
It was shameful. I’ll leave it at that.
The mildest of silver linings was that a lot of the trash then took itself out, leaving mostly diehards who had more measured reactions to the proceedings — and an appreciation for the little things. Some of which were little indeed: Luis Guillorme got cheered just for showing up, Mark Canha for grinding out a long at-bat, and Francisco Alvarez for being part of the presumed future. (Lest things get too treacly around here, none of those episodes actually resulted in a Met hit.)
I heard something else in the diehards’ applause, though — the unhappy but unavoidable knowledge that the end may be near. The postseason is a funny thing — a small slice of the baseball year whose significance distorts the normal ebb and flow of games. A Hall of Fame pitcher shows up missing the “ride” on his fastball and gets strafed. That happens. Not surprisingly, his team loses because of it. But because the game is part of this particular slice of the year, Saturday’s game is suddenly everything. A two-game losing streak against the Padres means the Mets’ season is over. A Mets win Saturday doesn’t set up a rubber game as we think about one from April through September, but a showdown after which 100-odd people get to continue doing what they do while another 100-odd people go home for the winter.
Whatever happens, for at least one more day it’ll be loud. Here’s hoping it’s the better kind of noise — the kind that barely got to be heard on Friday night.
by Greg Prince on 7 October 2022 2:23 pm At 2:37 PM Thursday, 29½ hours before first pitch of Game One, I felt it. I was thinking about Sunday, potential Game Three, and how its start time is up to the dictates of television, reportedly fluctuating between its penciled-in 7:37 PM and its apparently ESPN-desired 4:07 PM, a slot that would become available if the Guardians sweep the Rays or the Rays sweep the Guardians. The uncertainty seemed unnecessary, particularly in a month when everything but the bare minimum of action is couched in terms of If Necessary. I began to think of what it would be like on Sunday if the Mets-Padres Wild Card Series is not settled, and my stomach began to reflect that lack of precision. Make us wait? Push us up? Not tell us? Aarrgghh!!
There it is, I realized. Dread. Postseason dread. Postseason anxiety. Playoff mode. Whatever you want to call it. Nice to have you back, no matter that a person won’t be able to take you anymore by first pitch. The only thing worse than not handling the dread is not having the dread because that means you’re not having your team in the playoffs.
The MLB logo this time of year should feature a batter popping Pepcid. Antacid For All! would be quite the pitch to viewers who understand.
For now, there is Game One, tonight, 8:07 PM. Oddly timed starts, yet rather exact. Max Scherzer will drape himself in Friday night black and face nine Padres batters. Yu Darvish will face nine Mets batters also draped in black. No mourning permitted; black is the new celebratory hue of Mets baseball. It is shorthand to say it will Scherzer vs. Darvish. It is also not wholly accurate. The starting pitcher never faces the other starting pitcher. Especially in the era of the designated hitter (boo, after six months of living with it, Vogie or not), baseball games now encompass two alternating baseball games. We pitch to your guys, you pitch to our guys, we’ll tally up the runs when everybody’s done. It didn’t feel like that before the DH, when the pitcher batted once every nine batters, when the offense and defense organically intertwined. I came to this conclusion in 2020. I’m revisiting it out of antsiness for First Pitch, just now promoted to upper-case institution.
The Mets released their roster late this morning, presumably because Buck Showalter is not allowed to keep it inside his windbreaker. He’d rather maintain the element of surprise at every turn. That, presumably, is why he never lets us see his uniform top. The element of surprise on this roster is the presence of Starling Marte, which qualifies as a nice surprise, assuming Starling is a gripping machine again. We also have Francisco Alvarez active for the postseason one week after making his big league debut. Kid can swing a bat. He is poised — and poised to start Game One on the bench alongside Darin Ruf, back from the IL/dead, and Terrance Gore, who’s hit a little better than Ruf recently but is here for his wheels. Tylor Megill, a paper injured list occupant for 48 hours, has also been resurrected.
Not invited to the ball for round one: Mark Vientos, Tyler Naquin, Trevor Williams, Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker. Vientos and Naquin had to fall victim to the numbers game so Gore, Alvarez and Ruf (who has hit some key Padre pitchers well) could be ensured space. Williams took one for the team in the form of soaking up six soggy innings on Closing Day and wouldn’t be available for his intermittent heroics anyway. Back-end starters Carrasco and Walker won’t be needed in a series that will go no more than three games, not with a heartily stocked bullpen of in no particular order except for the name that closes the list Megill, Ottavino, Lugo, Peterson, Rodriguez, Smith, May, Givens and Diaz supporting Scherzer in Game One and whoever starts Game Two.
Yeah, we don’t know who will start Game Two. Buck presumably knows if he’s going to assign that very necessary start to Jacob deGrom or Chris Bassitt, or if he’s going to save Chris Bassitt or Jacob deGrom for Game Three if Game Three is necessary, or is he hoping he can hold deGrom out for Game One of the thus far mythical National League Division Series between the Mets and Dodgers which, as we learned in New Format School, won’t be played unless the Mets take two games from the Padres?
This is good if evanescent obsess-on stuff for the hours before First Pitch of Game One because at the moment I started writing, the only baseball happening was that between the Rays and Guardians and, despite my best wishes by text to my dear old Cleveland-fan friend a couple of hours ago, I can’t say I’m terribly engaged by the progress at Progressive Field other than my ears perking up at the mention of Amed Rosario hitting and fielding. No Rays or Guards are at fault here. They might as well black out all other series while the Mets are on the clock in October (or Clocktober). They don’t register for me while I’m immersed in that sweet dread unique to Met autumnal participation.
Will Jake check in at the starter’s desk for Game Two? Only if the Mets lose tonight. I think. I don’t know. Buck does, and as long as he tells the pitcher who needs to know and maybe the catcher, all will be cool. My imagination has meandered to wonder if the Showalter-deGrom relationship is all one wishes it to be. Buck steered a Met ship to the top of the division without Jake. Every manager who had deGrom between 2014 and 2021 (there were a slew if we count Beltran) seemed over the moon about having deGoat at his disposal. Showalter never seems particularly impressed by that. He does seem to enjoy chatting with Max on the bench when Max isn’t pitching. If there’s such a thing as being a Scherzer Guy or a deGrom Guy, the sense I get from listening to Showalter take questions of the “wasn’t Jake amazing today?” nature after deGrom’s better starts is he’s not a diehard deGrom Guy, that deGrom isn’t one of his guys, the way managers have their guys whether they’d ever admit to it or not.
I may be seeking soap opera entertainment where there is none. Yet Buck’s not starting deGoat in Game One of a postseason series, which, recent Jake outings and careerlong Max pedigree notwithstanding, rubs me ever so slightly the wrong way. I know Max is Max, and I love that Max is a Met. But Jake was one of us when nobody else on this staff was anywhere near us. I’ll always veer to the most authentic Met available if given a choice.
Side note: on the rosters of Wild Card Series clubs: deGrom, Matz, Syndergaard and the heretofore missing from October action Wheeler. Pride in Met pitching pervades a little piece of me, regardless that three-quarters of that quartet pitch for teams I’d shove off a cliff if I could. A slightly littler piece of me wonders how Matt Harvey is doing these nights.
Then again, Buck (and whoever collaborates with him on vital decisions; this is 2022, when even established managers aren’t left solely to their own personnel instincts) shook up the rotation enough to start Jake in the first game of that last Brave series, which actually gave me bad vibes despite being a deGrom Guy of the first order, because it reminded me of the pressure put on Davey Johnson — from telegrams sent by fans, which was something that actually used to happen — to switch Darling and Gooden for the big series in St. Louis the last week of 1985. Popular sentiment swelled in Doc’s direction for the opener because Doc was never more Doc than he was in 1985 and Darling, scheduled to open that series at Busch Stadium, simply wasn’t Gooden. Nobody was. The Mets were three behind the Cardinals with six to play. How could you not go with your best?
But Darling was Darling, who was very good himself usually. Johnson kept the rotation intact. Ronnie threw nine shutout innings, and the Mets won; Doc pitched the next night, and the Mets won; and had Rick Aguilera been a little more seasoned or Tom Seaver not been lost in the compensation draft…let it go, it’s 37 years already. And had the Met rotation of Bassitt, deGrom and Scherzer rotated as previously rotating before Atlanta and produced results in the first two games like Darling and Gooden did in 1985…let it go, it’s a week already.
Or maybe Jake just needs to take care of that blood blister.
You’re listening to my interior monologue. Clocktober is coming up on five hours to First Pitch. Scherzer will throw it. I will cheer him with all the gusto I would deGrom. Nine Mets will attempt to hit. I will cheer them similarly. Marte is eligible to be one of those nine. I’m cheered by that. A whole lot of professional relievers will be on high alert. Forty-three thousand fans in the ballpark and who knows how many more (this correspondent included) watching/listening away from Flushing will be the same.
The dread. The anxiety. The need to go up 1-0 or tie 1-1 or come out ahead however many games it takes.
It’s a day since I first felt it. It’s increased quite a bit.
by Greg Prince on 6 October 2022 4:02 am I packed an asterisk and a caveat as I set out for my 27th consecutive Closing Day. Unlike water bottles whose caps aren’t fully sealed, security waved them right through.
A rain delay nudged Closing Day into Closing Night. Closing Night closed only so much. The door to Citi Field and the Mets’ ultimate 2022 fortunes was left ajar. Really, that’s the ideal scenario after 81 home games and 162 games overall. Management won’t instruct maintenance to shut our ballpark tight for at least a few more games, hopefully not for several weeks. But the regular season is the regular season, an immersive journey we all anticipate as soon as the last one ends. This one, per usual, grew into our everyday obsession. We lived in it. Then, as ever, it prepared to end.
That end is always worth acknowledging. Dating back to 1995 and winding through every year that fans are welcome on the premises, I actively acknowledge it by attending the final home game on the schedule, original or revised. In 2022, the schedule was revised by The Lockout. Closing Day was initially intended to be Closing Night, and it was supposed to have happened last Wednesday against Miami, before Atlanta (when we were all so much younger and more innocent). These final three games against Washington were March and April refugees, tacked onto the last squares of the grid to make sure every last inning got played. Hence, Game 162 experienced a couple of changes of lives. It was no longer an early-season affair and it was no longer life and death. Games 157, 158 and 159 more or less saw to that.
Did I care that Game 162 was almost a formality? Do I ever let my care fall prey to priorities? Would I show up on 27 consecutive non-pandemic Closing Days if I did? My streak commenced to crawling when I crossed my fingers that the 1995 Mets would finish on a relative high of 69-75 (they’d been 35-57); resigned myself to the 1996 Mets whimpering into winter at 71-91; and cried actual tears of joy that the 1997 Mets were reaching 88-74. None of those Closing Days left any doors ajar.
A game that started as Wednesday night’s did, with a record of 100-61 while providing a conduit to a genuine postseason series, was certainly no less inviting than its 26 predecessors, regardless that the lunge for 101-61 would gain us not another inch of ground in a race for seeding nor a glitzier array of officially licensed merch. The two-seed and the five days of rest and revival accompanying it were out of our grasp. The t-shirts designed to stoke our impulse purchases would never say 2022 DIVISION CHAMPIONS. Overarching squad goals weren’t what this Closing Night would be about. Just the end of the long grind and a bit of a glimpse at the hard sprint ahead.
And a threat of rain. Rain threatened this game like this game had lunch money jingling a little too loudly in its hip pocket on its way to biology class. Rain proved to be nothing more than a bully. Show a little spine, and the rain would get lost, leaving only a delay in its wake. More delay than rain is what fell over Flushing. I swear, it rained for like three minutes at Citi Field a little ahead of what was supposed to be 4:10 first pitch, but the mere threat of rain made those empowered to order a tarp removed quake in their galoshes.
So we waited and we stared at the tarp. The Mets didn’t give us anything else to stare at. The large video screens showed a Mets logo. Not highlights from the 100 wins of 2022. Not highlights from championship seasons past. Not even Freddie Freeman at-bats for those tracking the dropped-from-the-sky duel for the National League batting title in which Jeff McNeil had charged from behind like a maniac while Freeman didn’t do anything wrong, he just couldn’t withstand McNeil’s pace (gee, sound like any two teams you know?).
The Mets didn’t utilize their superb video technology to show any of that. But that logo of theirs was plenty sharp.
I managed to entertain myself for a while during the delay. I grabbed a few distant photos of the recently extended set of retired numbers. When I saw 24 with my very own eyes, I actually smiled; I’ll never not smile that the Mets honored Willie Mays. When I spied a short Shake Shack line, I chose to indulge. Thirteen games at Citi Field this season, not one Shackburger devoured. I cradled bun and beef, protecting it from the three minutes of rain, until I reached a community eating table on the Excelsior level (access to covered seating was another Closing Day indulgence of mine) and savored the very first bite. Then the second. Then the others. Usually at the ballpark, I wolf down food without realizing it. I don’t have any more ballpark meals planned for a while. I really wanted this one to last. I treated a Fan Appreciation Day $5 hot dog with similar reverence.
The portion of the crowd that seated itself during the delay finally got to greet its heroes: the grounds crew. They wore orange and blue and they were taking the field. That was good enough for us to adopt them as our favorite team and applaud them vigorously. It was decided by somebody somewhere that the bone-dry tarp could be lifted. The Citi Field A/V squad sprung into action, too. “Thunderstruck” as the tarp was tackled; “Roll With It” as the tarp was rolled; “Push It” as the tarp was pushed. CitiVision should have shown grounds crew highlights from previous delays. They’re good.
A little prior to six o’clock, there was a ceremonial first pitch. A bit closer to six o’clock, there was a second ceremonial first pitch. And with six o’clock fast approaching, there was a third ceremonial first pitch. Since they were all ceremonial, we’ll let their eerily similar numerical designations slide.
The fourth first pitch was delivered by Mychal Givens, who’d been gone so long, Buck Showalter apparently forgot that Givens is a reliever rather than a starter. Or, more likely, the skipper figured an inning as an opener was good practice for whatever Mychal might contribute in the days ahead now that he’s recovered from his secret IL ailment. The theme of Closing Day turned Closing Night seemed to be “why not?” The Mets fielded a lineup with approximately three regulars, a lineup emblematic of a team going nowhere most years or a team going somewhere and not wanting to risk too many of its essential components en route this year. You could have imagined this being the Met lineup the day after a division-clincher. Maybe you did and tried to imagine something else.
Givens gave Buck the inning he needed to see. Trevor Williams, the projected starter as of 1 o’clock (Showalter’s personnel decisions may as well be troop movements disseminated purely on a need-to-know basis), would take over in the second, but before he’d ceremoniously throw his first pitch, he’d be treated to a lead a starter or even a bulk guy dreams of, courtesy of Mark Canha’s three-run homer inside the left field fair pole; of course it’s the fair pole, it’s a FAIR ball! After Williams had pitched one inning, Francisco Lindor’s three-run double doubled Trevor’s lead. In the bottom of the third, pseudo-regular James McCann, subbing at first base, belted a three-run home run of his own, sending marine biologists who were convinced that if McCann fell out of a boat he wouldn’t hit water back to their labs to adjust their heretofore flawless predictive models.
Just like that, the New York Mets led the Washington Nationals, 9-0. Starter Erick Fedde gave up all nine runs, all earned, the last three to a barely platooning catcher who entered the day batting .182. Fedde was left in to face Terrance Gore, the pinch-runner moonlighting as Game 162’s center fielder. Gore ripped a single to left for his first base hit since literally 2019. That was the bridge too far for Nats manager Davey Martinez. He removed Fedde from the mound. I wished he’d left him there, not so much so the Mets could run up the score some more Wednesday, but so maybe Bob Melvin would draft him to pitch for the Padres Friday night.
If you collected baseball cards in 1974, you know some San Diego players were rebranded members of WASHINGTON “NAT’L LEA.” just in case the Padres followed through on their threat of moving east, a threat that proved as genuine as that which the rain posed to Citi Field Wednesday. In light of that tenuous San Diego-Washington connection, I’m suggesting there would be precedent for Erik Fedde to pitch Game One of the Wild Card series instead of letting Yu Darvish take aim at the Mets.
C’mon, Rob Manfred. Use your “best interests of baseball” authority for something more than tacitly endorsing sponsorships centered on guys making bets on their phones while reigning on their thrones.
A 9-0 lead, even when it became 9-2 somewhere along the way, facilitated flights of fancy. It also carved out an interlude to announce that Freddie Freeman (.325) did not collect enough base hits in Los Angeles to overtake the idle Jeff McNeil (.326). Buck sat Squirrel for his own good. Squirrel stood up long enough for a well-deserved curtain call. We don’t get batting champions every day. When we do, they’ve been known to scoot away before we can get a good look at them.
Williams went six. McNeil entered for defense. Lindor exited to applause after giving 161 games of himself. Francisco Alvarez and Mark Vientos functioned as real major leaguers in the field rather than mono-skilled curiosities. Those fans not seated in Field Level were invited to sit in Field Level. I was quite comfortable in Excelsior (grander name), but many among the not many in attendance took the Mets up on their reasonable offer. Pre-Steve Cohen, even looking at a Field Level seat without a Field Level ticket— regardless of how many empty Field Level seats looked back at you — was grounds for Citi Field dismissal. Maybe policies are loosening up. Maybe somebody noticed it was Fan Appreciation Day and thought it might be nice to appreciate the fans who withstood the two-hour rainless delay.
With Trevor May and Joely Rodriguez brushing aside the last of the modern-day “WASHINGTON NAT’L LEA.”, the Mets posted a 9-2 victory, concluding their schedule at 101-61. Only the 1986 Mets won more regular-season games in franchise history. This is stated as a point of fact, by no means intended to persuade you of the merits of a 101-61 team that finished tied for first in its division if you glance at the standings very quickly and don’t take a magnifying glass to the agate type that denotes the other team that finished tied for first is technically considered division champion. Heavens, no. The 2022 Mets were the worst 101-61 team in the National League East during the 162-game regular season. Keep telling yourself that to make certain you never feel any better about the entirety of the past six months.
Of course that regular season and those six months are now over. I saw its ending for myself. Asterisks and caveats aside, it percolated with good vibes. Personally, I reveled in having just witnessed my 300th regular-season home game at Citi Field, one that raised “my” 2022 record to 10-3, accounting for the best winning percentage (.769) the Mets and I have joined forces on in any year I’ve attended more than two games. The only thing this Closing Night was missing was a true sense of finality. This time of year, I deeply value finality.
But I prefer impending playoffs far more.
The window has closed on the 2022 regular season. But the door has opened on the 2022 postseason. Enter that intriguing portal by listening to the latest episode of National League Town.
by Jason Fry on 5 October 2022 12:33 am On Tuesday morning, pulling up my email in an idle moment at work, I noted that Mets postseason tickets were on sale — and then I deleted the email that had told me that and went back to work. It wasn’t until an hour or so later that what I’d done — or rather, what I hadn’t done — registered.
Wait a minute. Am I so mad at my baseball team for how they got into the playoffs that I’m … not interested in going to a playoff game? What, exactly, am I proving and to whom?
Emily was a voice of wise counsel. So was the co-worker I half-hoped would tell me that playoff tickets were frivolous. A few minutes later, I’d spent a ridiculous amount of money for nine tickets on three dates. Screw it, I figured. If the Mets are going to stomp on my heart, they may as well also kick the shit out of my bank account. But even then, I felt ambivalent, even uneasy — like the guy at the poker table who’s trying to figure out who the sucker is.
What’s happened since Friday night has been a journey — a journey that continued Tuesday afternoon and evening, as the Mets swept a doubleheader from the Nats and watched their division hopes fade to black when the Braves edged the Marlins to clinch the NL East.
And yet, somehow, it’s a journey that’s brought me back where I’d hoped I’d wind up while fearing I might not.
I’ve forgiven the Mets — or maybe that hasn’t quite happened yet but I’ve at least accepted what didn’t come to pass. The important part is my baseball team is hosting wild-card baseball on Friday, and I’m in.
It helped that my baseball team played the kind of games we’d come to appreciate and then (perhaps unwisely) to expect. The Mets beat the Nats in Game 1 behind sharp defense, capable relief and some impressive hitting from Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil, then obliterated them in Game 2, kick-starting the bottom of the first with back-to-back-to-back homers and hanging seven runs on poor Paolo Espino in a third of inning.
It helped that Francisco Alvarez, alternately luckless and jittery in his trial-by-fire debut against Atlanta, found his footing and then some, blasting a mammoth home run in his first Citi Field AB and following that with a rifle-shot double. It’s not exactly a long-shot wager to say those will be the first of many, with Alvarez perhaps becoming a force as early as this weekend.
It helped watching McNeil slash balls all over Citi Field and out of it too, taking the lead on Freddie Freeman in the NL batting race. McNeil has been a joy to watch all season, erasing his lackluster, uncertain 2021 with a campaign that’s married offensive mayhem with much improved defense. A fun game on our couch this year has been “Why Is McNeil/Scherzer Enraged This Time?” — those two are each other’s bookends, playing baseball like twin kettles boiling over, and it’s alternately hilarious and a little scary to watch.
It helped knowing the Mets had reached 100 wins, which might not have been quite enough this year but was a level they’d only reached in three other seasons. Two of those ended with World Series titles and the third expired in dismay and disarray, but that’s baseball.
All of that helped, and when Kenley Jansen coaxed a flyout from Miami’s Jordan Groshans, I did an emotional inventory and found I was … well, one might even say disappointed but no longer devastated. Yes, perhaps you remember those words in another context. That’s my point — baseball would be the death of us all if we weren’t able to turn the page, to put some healthy distance between past unhappinesses and present possibilities. No dedicated baseball fan ever forgets — there are failings and fizzles that play on repeat up there on the ceiling when we’re fuming sleepless at 4 a.m. — but in remembering, you have to make room for the idea that something good might happen one day.
Maybe even one day very soon.
Plenty of Mets seasons have ended with a little ember we’ve had to convince ourselves is a spark that will grow into a bonfire — think what we would have done with two Game 161 hits from a Francisco Alvarez in 1993 or 2004 or some other dismal campaign that we weren’t actually sad to see breathe its last. But this isn’t one of those seasons, however much it may have felt that way this weekend and during our rainy sulking Monday. Someone I know from Twitter asked how a 100-win season could feel so depressing. This was my response: Wipe the slate clean. Win the next four series — even by just a game each — and they’re all immortal.
That would have been courageous but empty talk this weekend or Monday or even between games Tuesday. But by the end of the night I believed it.
I have a ticket for Wednesday’s game. I’d decided before the Braves series — thanks in large part to some wise words from my blog partner — that I wasn’t a jinx and could safely attend. But today and even tonight, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. After all, the game was likely to be meaningless — not to mention cold and dreary. And, well, there was the fact that I was still pissed off.
But somehow that meaninglessness became a selling point once second place was official. Wednesday’s game will be the only stress-free one played in October. It will be a chance — weather permitting, of course — to look around the park and cheer on McNeil’s batting-champ chase and compare notes about roster construction and play amateur scout and fret and kvetch and maybe even dream a little. How could I miss that?
Friday will be different. The slate will be clean — erased of accomplishments and shortcomings alike. And I’ll be all in, both eager and anxious to see what’s written. You should be too.
by Greg Prince on 4 October 2022 2:51 pm Good news: the Mets weren’t eliminated from winning their division Monday night, cleverly getting rained out while Atlanta (you’re not gonna believe this) lost. Not only did the Mets gain ground by not doing anything but pulling a tarp over the field, but Jeff McNeil overtook a declining Freddie Freeman in the batting race simply by not getting wet. WE’RE NO. 1 at something.
Bad news: the Mets weren’t eliminated from winning their division Monday night, which is only bad news if you’re in the get it over with already camp, which I will admit visiting until first pitch in Miami, when my true orange-and-blue instincts took over and snapped me back into wishing the Braves not even incidental goodwill in theoretical service to our desire for clarity. The Marlins seemed unlikely to sweep the Braves heading into their final series. They seemed unlikely to postpone the inevitable at all. But they beat the Braves once and still have two games to go. What the hell? Brew up a mug of Bigelow and tease proudly.
Good news: The Mets are one of three teams from their division going to the playoffs, speaking not only to our still having something to look forward to after the events of the past weekend, but to the strength of the division that has catapulted more than half of its occupants forward toward potentially greater things.
Bad news: We intensely dislike those two other teams from the Mets’ division who will be joining us in the postseason tournament, but we’d intensely dislike them regardless of where everybody finished.
Hail the unusually potent National League East; its Mets; its Braves; and its Phillies, each accomplishing a clinch of some sort in the same season. How unusual is that? If it were the usual, it wouldn’t be noted here. This is the first time we’ve sent three NL Easterners to the playoffs. The NL East has been around since 1969. Three teams from the same division in the playoffs have been a possibility since 2012’s expansion to two Wild Cards per league, yet 2022 (with its expansion to three Wild Cards per league) makes this circumstance a maiden voyage.
Congratulations?
Too soon for anything but the rending of garments over the Mets’ recent momentum shift and the spitting of venom at the Braves and Phillies, especially should we cross paths with either of them later this month, but together, these three are having a good year. Not only are three postseason berths in the NL East a first, reaching the season’s final breaths with three teams having as many wins as these teams can claim is rare. The Mets are at 98 wins and holding. The Braves have a couple more. The Phillies won their 87th on Monday night, which got them their first playoff spot since 2011. How often has the National League East featured three teams with at least 87 wins?
Glad you asked. The last time it happened was 25 years ago, in the golden year of 1997, more teal than gold in light of the world championship captured by the Florida Marlins, who made very good use of their Wild Card (the first achieved by an NL East club), topping the already perennial division-winning Braves in the NLCS. This was only the fourth year of the five-team National League East, only the third that was played to a strike-free conclusion, but the Braves were already making it their happy hunting ground, having taken the title in 1995 and 1996 while preparing to take the title from 1998 through 2005. And nipping at the heels of both? The revivified 1997 Mets, who went 88-74 after a veritable eon in the desert (six consecutive seasons of losing records, but as with all episodes of Met despair, it felt longer). Bobby’s V’s low-profile Mets made a legit run at a playoff spot. They fell short, yet they might have stitched together something even rarer for this franchise than the pouring of champagne. They left you feeling very good despite technically going nowhere but home at regular season’s end. That’s an emotion an 88-74 record that doesn’t rate as much as a six-seed will probably never elicit again.
Following 1997, the National League East shaped up as a powerhouse for years to come, with the 101-61 Braves being, you know, the Braves, and the 92-70 Marlins being stacked. Then Wayne Huizenga decided his defending world champions weren’t likely to draw more than millipedes and centipedes from the South Florida market and went about destacking his talent. This worked out pretty well for the Mets, as it directly provided us Al Leiter and Dennis Cook; indirectly provided us Mike Piazza; and eliminated the Marlins as an archrival, save for a couple of key series a decade later, but you already went there in your head.
For another handful of hours, we situationally root for the Marlins. That will expire as soon as we finish our mug of Bigelow. #TeaseProudly
Prior to 1997, the 87-win barrier being breached three times in an NL East season happened three times. Once was in 1993, when the Mets weren’t one of the three teams — the kooky Phillies, the spunky Expos and the Jefferies Cardinals — with 87 or more wins (87 or more losses is a different story). Once was in 1987, with the 91-71 Expos staying within striking range of the 92-70 Mets and 95-67 Cardinals, though the stretch drive was primarily a two-team derby that doubled as a miserable 1986 hangover headache. Another instance can be said to have sort of happened in 1981, if you prorate the winning percentages of the first-half champion Phillies, second-half champion Expos and overall-for-naught best-record-holder Cardinals across 162 games, which you’d have to for a season that played out minus a middle. Plus the Mets weren’t involved. We can say definitively it didn’t happen.
The only other version of the National League East to contain three teams with at least 87 wins actually had four teams with at least 87 wins, and that was the 1969 National League East, which was the very first National League East and quite the crucible. The defending National League champion Cardinals of Bob Gibson and Lou Brock finished fourth with 87 wins. The not-too-distant-future division champion Pirates of Roberto Clemente and Wilie Stargell finished third with 88 wins (they’d improve to 89 and take the division in ’70). The team that was in first place more days than any other in the East, as if that’s something they give out a prize for, the Chicago Cubs of Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams and so many more who were thought to be so unbeatable, finished second with 92 wins.
And your 1969 New York Mets finished first with 100 wins. Which is something the 2022 Mets can still do. The finishing first…maybe not so easy (go Marlins!?!?). The 100 wins…that would be nice if it doesn’t rain too much on the Mets and the Nats between today and tomorrow. The title the 1969 Mets are remembered for winning most…thanks to that playoff spot we clinched fifteen long days ago, we can still have the 2022 edition of that to raise up the flagpole on Opening Day 2023. I swear, it won’t even take a miracle.
by Jason Fry on 2 October 2022 10:58 pm Something I do when making real-world decisions is ask, “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” and then adjusting my plans as needed. (“I could get hit by a car that I won’t know is coming around that corner” = maybe don’t do that, while “the weather means the flight’s canceled and I get there in the morning instead of tonight” = don’t stress about it overmuch.)
Well, what just finished happening in Atlanta was, in fact, the worst thing that could happen, and it sucked. The Mets lost all three games, the NL East lead, the NL East tiebreaker, and barring the kind of derailment that hasn’t happened to the Braves since late May, the division.
Like I said, it sucked.
Lining up two aces and a demi-ace didn’t work, as all three failed to deliver the kind of shutdown performance you’d hoped for. (Which is not the same as the kind of shutdown performance that’s guaranteed, let alone that you’re entitled to.) More damagingly, the Mets’ bats were AWOL when really needed, doing almost zip with runners in scoring position — once again, this team really, really misses Starling Marte.
Meanwhile, the Braves did what they’ve done since Memorial Day; hats off to them, however reluctantly, for doing it. Add Dansby Swanson and Matt Olson to the lengthy roster of Met killers, and could someone please tell Travis d’Arnaud that we all hate Jeff Wilpon too, and that’s enough already? I could break down Sunday night’s game beyond that, but I don’t particularly want to and I doubt you want me to either.’
It sucked, and the Mets go home to play three with the Nats (weather permitting, which is its own little bit of irony) watch the Braves clinch at some point and, I dunno, have some sort of sour, perfunctory celebration of Plan B. It’s about as bittersweet an ending to a ~100-win season as I can imagine, one I have no doubt will leave me muttering and clenching my jaw all the way to Friday.
Ah, but there’s the thing: Friday.
The Mets are going to be part of the playoffs. They will play games beyond No. 162 — even if they somehow lose all three against the Nats and we all greet them with boos in their Game 163.
Does that take any of the sting out of “what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
It doesn’t right now, not even a little bit. It won’t when the Braves clinch. It won’t while we’re muttering about failures against the Nats, whether those failures are momentary and ephemeral or conspicuous and decisive.
But come Friday? I think it should. Because the playing field will be reset, the goals will be new and what happened before won’t matter.
Yes, we’ll have a harder road through the playoffs on paper. But I recall looking at a soft September schedule and tallying up likely Ws and Ls, and look how that worked out. No, we won’t be able to line up our top pitchers and have them all rested the way we wanted. But we just lined up our top pitchers, and look how that worked out. And I’m not convinced that rust won’t be a bigger factor than rest — just ask the 2015 Mets about those days off between the Cubs and the Royals.
On Friday everything resets. Focus on that, and not on what might have been. And try not to spend the week letting the gap drive you crazy.
by Greg Prince on 2 October 2022 12:12 pm Using a bookmark is usually a very effective method of keeping your place while reading. No “I was reading this really interesting book, but I seem to have lost my place, whatever will I do?” laments are necessary when you properly employ a bookmark. If you don’t insist on something fancy with a tassel, access to a bookmark requires no additional purchases. Nearly any thin household item that fits decisively but unobtrusively between pages should do the trick. For example, if you’re not planning on ginning up a game of rummy anytime soon, you can pick a card, any card, from a handy deck and, presto, you’ve got a bookmark!
Warning, though: The aces in your deck don’t automatically help you keep your place any better than anything else you use.
For the last two nights, Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer pitched well enough to propel their team to victory. At the same juncture, they didn’t pitch well enough to unquestionably tilt the hand they held in their team’s favor. We know they’re aces their entire careers. On consecutive nights, they could’ve been mistaken for a pair of threes. Had they been available, you could have slotted, I don’t know, Mike Pelfrey and Dillon Gee in their stead and gotten roughly the same results.
Thing is, when you unseal your deck, deGrom and Scherzer aren’t supposed to look like Pelfrey and Gee or any perfectly decent pitchers from whom you’d be satisfied by three or four runs given up in five or six innings. They’re aces. Aces oughta be most adept at holding your place when your place is first and your opponent has designs on it.
Aces like they oughta be aren’t always what you wind up dealing.
One night after deGrom (6 IP, 3 ER, all on Brave home runs in a 5-2 loss) couldn’t do quite enough to help the Mets keep first place to themselves, Scherzer (5.2 IP, 4 ER, three on Brave home runs in a 4-2 loss) couldn’t do quite enough to allow the Mets to maintain any of it. In the aftermath of deGrom and Scherzer being Pelfrey and Gee — and the players who batted on their behalf bringing early-2010s energy to the table — the Mets have indeed lost their place. The heretofore first-place Mets are presently the second-place Mets.
Not lethal at this very late stage of the season. Not ideal, either, but hardly the end of relevant competitive pursuits. The Mets will play the Braves one more time, and the opportunity remains to:
a) win that meeting tonight;
b) in the process of winning tonight, tie for first place once more;
c) in the process of winning tonight and tying for first place once more, claim the division tiebreaker over Atlanta, thanks to what would be a 10-9 season series advantage;
d) defeat last-place Washington as often over the succeeding three dates as the Braves defeat the Marlins (doing it, not just saying it);
e) finish in first place;
f) exhale;
g) proceed to the Division Series without installing along their potential championship path an additional obstacle called the Wild Card Series, an exercise in which losing two games out of three would be lethal, thus you might as well avoid the extra steps and possible pitfalls inherent in that unforeseen detour if you can.
Should all of those absolutely conceivable events unfold, order up a clinching pizza and pour yourself a nice glass of bubbly. You’ve won the NL East. That’s something to toast and a fitting reward for a long season that, until very recently, has been extremely worthy of celebrating.
And if it doesn’t? If the second-place Mets remain the second-place Mets and go to the playoffs as the top-seeded Wild Card and commence postseason activity several days sooner than desired? Grab a slice and a sip anyway, for the answer lies within the question. The Mets will be in the playoffs. They’ll have to deal with a best-of-three against a quality team capable of knocking them off and out — at the moment, San Diego — and if that’s the draw of the cards between tonight and Wednesday evening, well, the Mets will be ensconced within a playoff structure that has been generously widened to allow for losing first place, provided you haven’t dropped it with a resounding thud and won sufficiently before a little too much ill-timed losing set in.
That’s not just the postseason the Mets are going to regardless of what happens in one more game at Atlanta and three versus Washington at Citi Field. That’s a whole new season, or a series of highly condensed ones. Close to a hundred wins and (hopefully) counting earns you at least that much these days: a chance to extend your winning ways or a chance to freshen up from your visit to the doldrums. Twelve teams out of thirty will be in the playoffs. Eighteen teams won’t. Even if they don’t shake off this sudden fascination with landing in second place, the Mets belong to the party of the first part.
Party like it’s 1999, like it could be 1969. It surely beats moping like it’s 1979.
 Having more than two aces can help you find your place again. What card do the Mets have up their sleeves to optimize the remainder of their journey? I do believe I see another ace. The name “Chris Bassitt” doesn’t shimmer from a distance the way “Jacob deGrom” and “Max Scherzer” do when they top the GAME TONITE marquee, but if the pitching half of my season came down to just one Met starter in 2022, and I pulled a Bassitt from the deck, I wouldn’t have the slightest inclination to throw it back. I do believe Chris has been the stealth ace of this team from April through September. Righty rather than lefty, I nonetheless get a strong Bobby Ojeda vibe from him. The Mets went 4-0 in postseason games started by Bobby O in 1986. Twice he was masterful. Twice he mastered the challenge of not letting a Game Six get away when it very well could have slipped into oblivion. Gooden, Darling and Fernandez all had All-Star accolades attached to their names headed into October of 1986. Ojeda, who didn’t, was the guy I wanted out there most.
(Bobby Ojeda and a problem with a finger on the eve of another postseason and its disturbing historical parallel to the current status of Starling Marte constitute a different thread for a different day. Not gonna pull on that one right now.)
DeGrom isn’t done because he didn’t outduel Max Fried on Friday night. Scherzer isn’t done because he didn’t outduel Kyle Wright on Saturday night. The Mets aren’t done because they didn’t touch the Brave bullpen enough on Friday or at all on Saturday. This ace talk can be a little simplistic. But aces do get your attention even if they don’t always hold your place.
On to the next pair. Chris Bassitt has the ball tonight. So does Charlie Morton. They’re both pitchers you’d assign a value of no less than jack, queen or king on any given day. Bassitt will have to be better than Morton. Met relievers will have to be better than Brave relievers. Met hitters will have to stir from their stupor. Have faith that these Mets — they of the “98” under W and an indelible “x” or “y” alongside their name depending on where you study your standings — can ace this test. I don’t know that they will, but they can. Faith, like the common household object you might use as a bookmark, is already something you have within easy reach. Don’t give up on it or these Mets. Don’t be overwhelmed by doubt. This is neither the time nor the place.
by Jason Fry on 1 October 2022 12:32 pm It’s a measure of how spoiled we’ve been: Jacob deGrom looks mortal (and for a second start in a row, no less) and we’re all scratching our heads as if God has repealed physics and things are falling up and sticking to ceilings.
DeGrom was better than he was in his confoundingly disastrous Oakland start, and he seemed to find his way in the middle innings, regaining control of the back-foot slider that had been annoyingly AWOL and looking more himself before a blood blister ended his night a little early. (Let’s not worry about that last part until it’s obvious we have to.) But he was still mortal, surrendering consecutive homers to Austin Riley and Matt Olson on pitches left in the middle of the plate, which isn’t a wise strategy against any team and a particularly poor one against an aggressive, powerful lineup like Atlanta’s. (DeGrom surrendered a third homer to Dansby Swanson, but that one was more cap tip than head shake, as it came on a change-up low in the strike zone that Swanson simply went down and got.)
That’s the analysis, but it’s missing the obvious context: Jake was facing the Braves with six games left to go and a division title in the balance, so “seemed to find his way in the middle innings” isn’t the headline. The headline is more like WOE! DOOM! @$#@*$@!!!!
The Mets lost, because deGrom wasn’t immortal and because Tylor Megill made things worse and because their hitters were stymied by Max Fried and a parade of Atlanta relievers. They made a little noise in the ninth, which either made you feel not better enough or added insult to injury, depending on your temperament. They lost and we’re now tied all over again. (It’s been noted before, but once again for posterity: The Mets really, really miss Starling Marte.)
The other storyline of the night was wunderkind Francisco Alvarez being summoned from driving home after Syracuse’s season to take over righty DH duties, with Darin Ruf put on the IL with a neck strain one suspects would prove elusive if investigated by a physician not employed by a baseball team. (Don’t miss Greg’s wonderful curtain-raiser tying Alvarez to another player you’ve heard of.)
I’m always excited to see a Brooklyn Cyclone make the big leagues, but this debut arrived festooned with extra bunting: I was watching Alvarez and fellow Cyclone Brett Baty ply their trade on Coney Island just last year, and they’re still very sharp in my memory. Alvarez in particular struck me when I was watching the Cyclones last summer: He plays with a joyous aggression and swagger that naturally draws your eye to him. (Plus he’s got really fast hands and sends balls a long way.)
Alvarez got frankly undressed in his final at-bat, undone by Kenley Jansen cutters as many, many big leaguers of various tenures have been undone before him. But he looked like he belonged in his other three plate appearances, hitting balls hard though without positive outcomes and in general not seeming overawed by his new surroundings. And there was the sight of his parents in the stands: his Dad beaming but rigid with tension and obviously dying a little inside with every pitch, while his Mom was a portrait of the same emotions expressed in the opposite way, yelling encouragement out of the stands while holding an oversized ballpark can of Miller Lite. The sight of them made me applaud and laugh out loud, feeling lucky to witness a little down payment on all that lies ahead for their son.
The Mets lost a game we really, really didn’t want them to lose, and that was the stuff of muttering. (And a result that stung enough that I wanted to put a night’s sleep between me and it before this recap.) But stay off the well-worn Met fan ledge, folks: Tonight Max Scherzer takes the mound. That would be the same Max Scherzer who would crawl across a mile of broken glass if it were between him and a win, and who knows perfectly well that he was paid an ocean liner full of money to take command of games exactly like tonight’s.
That’s no guarantee of anything — baseball doesn’t work that way — but if I could pick the scenario I want after losing that first game, it would be exactly the one that we’re getting. Trust in Max, keep hope alive, and maybe fortify yourself with an extra Miller Lite.
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