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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 18 August 2022 10:46 am Welcome to the Brett Baty Era of New York Mets baseball. It is fitting that you can’t spell “Bretty Baty” without “era”. After Wednesday night, the same could be said of “Max Scherzer,” “Starling Marte,” “Trevor May,” “Peter Alonso,” “Edwin Orlando Diaz” and “Francisco A. Lindor.” Lindor’s middle name is Miguel, actually, but you can hardly resist giving the man an “A” after all he’s meant in this upbeat era of Mets baseball.
After two downcast, overcast evenings in Cobb County, the metaphorical sun came out on the Mets’ side of the field in their third game this week against the Braves, attributable in large part to the son of Clint and Leslie Baty coming out to play. We know the names of Brett’s parents because they filled supporting roles in SNY’s telecast Wednesday, co-starring as the proud parents of the fresh-faced rookie first making his major league debut, then making his major league debut indelibly memorable for everybody and not just the Baty family. One plate appearance into his Baseball-Reference game log, on the second pitch he ever saw, Brett swung at what Jake Odorizzi threw him in the second inning and sent it on a ride to right field. Kid knew enough to make reservations at the Chop House, apparently, for that’s where the ball he hit went. It was a two-run homer to start a career; a two-run homer to extend an already two-run lead — achieved on back-to-back first-inning solo shots from Marte and Lindor — to 4-0; and with Baty floating on Benny Ayalaesque air and Scherzer resuming his night, the rest of the story prepared to write itself.
Then the story got damp, having left its pencil out in the rain, all the sweet black graphite flowing down. Someone left the mound and the rest of the field out in the rain, too. That meant another delay, just as on Monday, and another veteran starter having to stay loose. Max didn’t look quite as uncoiled as usual before the downpour and he didn’t look too patient waiting for the grounds crew to spruce up his mound after the dirt commenced to drying. Max Scherzer is the eldest Met. He’s seen some rain delays. He can fix his own mound like he can fix a stare.
Thirty-four minutes of waiting ended. Scherzer returned to his craft. It was the bottom of the third, the Mets had a four-run lead and one of the two best pitchers of the Jacob deGrom Era going for them. They had Max’s excellence, Max’s experience and Brett’s injection of hiss and vinegar (expression cleaned up in deference to Brett’s mom sitting in the stands). All the Mets had to do was what they usually do in this era.
Technically, they did. They won. They never trailed. The Braves never really got to Scherzer, but Scherzer never really put them away, either. From the end of the third, after giving up one post-rain run, through the sixth, it appeared Max had locked in as Max will, and the Met lead had built to 6-1, and you figured it was a nice dollop of payback for the previous two nights of figurative and literal pain. Scherzer didn’t have to leave the game early as Carlos Carrasco (oblique strain) and Taijuan Walker (back spasms) had. These Mets added on, with Mark Canha doubling in a run in the sixth and Marte homering for a second time in the seventh. Not only did we finally get around to answering Atlanta’s annoying habit of bringing up young impact players on a monthly basis, but we had that deGrom fellow waiting the wings for the next night. Everything looked wonderful.
Then it looked less so. A tight strike zone betrayed Scherzer. He left with one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh, handing the ball to Adam Ottavino, whose “0” never looks quite large enough on the back of his jersey and for whom “0” never had a chance to blink onto the scoreboard. For a second there, Adam had us extricated, on a nifty 5-4-3 double play started by none other than Baty, who’d kept swinging a lightning-quick bat (albeit into a couple of outs) and now was showing defensive felicity at his position. Alas, the first DP started by the 182nd third baseman in Mets history and 1,174th Met overall was erased by video replay review on the flimsy pretense that batter Vaughn Grissom barely beat Jeff McNeil’s throw to first. Harumph!
One run scored on the overturned double play, which would have represented an adequate avenue of escape for Ottavino had he in fact found an exit from the jam he inherited. Instead, Robbie Grossman came up next and Grossman grabbed the table next to Baty, homering to Chop House territory in right and, whoa, it was suddenly 6-5. The only thing that saved the pitcher was his catcher, James McCann, who gunned down Ronald Acuña, Jr., trying to steal second after Ottavino walked Acuña after Ottavino gave up the homer to Grossman.
There was nothing to like in them bullpen apples, but Buck Showalter is always one to inspect the orchard he’s got rather than the orchard he wants, so he sprang into managerial action. In the bottom of the eighth, with the Mets still leading by a skinny run, the skipper skipped the setup niceties and went straight to his closer. Edwin Diaz entered to an off-brand version of “In The Air Tonight” rather than “Narco” — William Contreras holds the local rights — but Sugar makes his own kind of music in whichever ballpark he pitches. Facing the heart of an order that is all vital organs, Edwin swiftly put down Dansby Swanson (swinging), Austin Riley (flyout to center) and Matt Olson (looking). It took him ten pitches. The best ninth-inning man in the business can extend his franchise to eighths at will.
Since Diaz needed to exert himself minimally to brush aside further bad Brave behavior, Buck resisted his instinct to get a lesser arm up to protect the one-run edge in the ninth. Another two-inning save was on the horizon. Perhaps it would have implications Thursday and Friday. This was Wednesday. Winning Wednesday was the order of the day on Wednesday. Plans changed, though, when the Mets increased their advantage ASAP, looking very much like the first-place outfit that it took a pair of injuries for Brett Baty to crack. Brandon Nimmo and Lindor each singled. Nimmo dashed to third on Lindor’s hit. Lindor stole second while Alonso hit. Alonso, who could have been intentionally walked at that point, singled instead, which worked great for us. Brandon and Francisco each scored to make it 8-5. Pete stole second, which will happen when a Polar Bear sniffs opportunity. Daniel Vogelbach, who you’d assume has all the letters in his name, whacked a double to right to bring the Bear home. It was 9-5. Diaz could relax.
We couldn’t. It was Trevor May time. No save opportunity. Definitely an opportunity to blow the game. Trevor, reverting to his early-2021 alter ego of Rover T. Yam (the “T” stands for trouble), plunged that four-run lead into grave danger. After striking out Eddie Rosario, Yam gave up a single to “Narco”-thieving Contreras, then another to Michael Harris, who I’m certain has been bedeviling us for a decade yet is somehow younger than Baty, the chronologically youngest Met yet. Contreras was on third, Harris was on first. Then Harris stole second uncontested, positioning him to zip home behind Contreras when Grissom — also younger than Baty — drove them both in.
So much youth in action. Such an old story unfolding. At Turner Field in 1999, the year Baty was born, a game like this ends with Kenny Rogers walking Andruw Jones with the bases loaded (Kenny didn’t require an automatic runner on second in extras). Or if it’s 2001, the year Michael Harris and Vaughn Grissom were born, there’s Brian Jordan waiting in the on-deck circle, licking his lips in anticipation of a walkoff grand slam versus John Franco. Those of us who have been around a long time are familiar with ancient story beats.
New era in progress here. It’s 2022. Rover T. Yam morphed back into Trevor May, striking out Grossman and then flying out Acuña to deep but not too deep right. Mets held on, 9-7, preserving the 199th win in the illustrious career of Max Scherzer, who was born the day Dwight Gooden was definitively making his case for National League Rookie of the Year, and the good taste in the mouth of Brett Baty, who was born less than four weeks after Robin Ventura launched the Grand Slam Single of Metsian lore. Doc and the first-place Mets beating the second-place Cubs on July 27, 1984, when Max first glared at his mother’s obstetrician (“yeah, I was gonna spank him, but he gave me a pretty intense look, so I’m just gonna assume he’s fine”). Ventura was staving off the Braves, elimination and, with less success, Todd Pratt some fifteen years later. High school-age Max was probably watching the Mets and Braves carry on for fifteen innings that rainy Sunday at Shea. He was old enough to stay up late on October 17, 1999. Hell, he’s old enough to have pitched at Shea for the Diamondbacks on June 11, 2008.
Brett, who came into this world on November 12, 1999, was just a kid in 2008, no more than a coming attraction to Clint and Leslie while Robin and the Mets were Risin’ our Mojo. He was a coming attraction to us from the night he was drafted first by the Mets, twelfth in the nation, when we were enduring the dregs of 2019. Even with the battle-tested Mets of 2022 — led exclusively to date by players born in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s — steadily holding first place all season, a fan can’t help but feel a thrill when a top prospect is promoted from concept to reality. It might mean more when we’re livin’ in desperate times. It’s a welcome sensation anytime. A second-pitch, first-swing home run that facilitates a victory over your closest pursuers and traditional tormentors imbues it with plenty of meaning.
On April 30, 1965, Jim Bethke, then 18, finished a game started by Warren Spahn, then 44. On May 31, 2006, Lastings Milledge, then 21, started a game in which Julio Franco, then 47, pinch-hit. The chasm from Scherzer to Baty isn’t quite as expansive as those generational Met divides, but it’s always something to absorb how these careers and eras overlap, all under the umbrella of a given Mets team, sometimes within the confines of a single Mets box score. I’m ecstatic that Mets Old Timers Day, AWOL for 28 summers, is happening on August 27 because there will be Mets on hand from 1962 and Mets on hand from as recently as 2018, maybe 2020, depending on who RSVPs at the last minute, and Mets from just about every year in between. Gooden will be there. Ventura will be there. We will be there, whether physically or spiritually. As ever, we are the common denominator of these sixty-plus years. We are the Mets fans. Whatever our vintage, it is always our era.
Additional thoughts on the family reunion that will be Old Timers Day, plus a few hosannas for Buck Showalter and the friends who invite you to see his team do its thing, fill out the lineup on the latest episode of National League Town, a podcast a Mets fan can find here and listen to most anywhere.
by Jason Fry on 16 August 2022 10:44 pm One of my odder Met hobbies is keeping track of the franchise’s ghosts — players who are on the active roster but never appear in a game. Going into Tuesday night, the Mets had rostered four ghosts in 2022, which would be a record for a season: Gosuke Katoh, R.J. Alvarez, Sam Clay and Kramer Robertson had all been trapped in ectoplasm, increasing the all-time spooky roster to 13.
Alvarez returned to the active roster Tuesday night as part of the shuffling necessitated by the Mets giving up 13 runs and losing Carlos Carrasco to the IL for a month or so on on Monday, but I didn’t figure on seeing him — and certainly not in the third inning. I was on my way to a bathroom in a restaurant on the north end of Long Beach Island when I did a double-take: A hairy Met reliever was coming out of the bullpen, and my brain stumbled over the fact that a) Trevor Williams was replacing Taijuan Walker; and b) wait a minute that wasn’t Trevor Williams.
No, it was Alvarez (Walker was taken down by back spasms and is headed for the inevitable MRI on Wednesday) and Gameday told me he wasn’t exactly effective. There were the green circles of balls that were way over batters’ heads and too many announcements of IN PLAY, RUN(S). Robbie Grossman took Alvarez deep, and then Matt Olson hit a two-run shot that might wind up worked into the plot of next season’s For All Mankind.
Meanwhile, Charlie Morton was simply obliterating Met hitters, juggling a sweeping curve and a fastball to keep them honest. Inning after inning went in the books with nothing happening, and even though the Mets were within three, you didn’t exactly feel a comeback in the cards. They did bring the tying run to the plate in the seventh, but Dylan Lee fanned Jeff McNeil, and two more Atlanta runs in the bottom of the frame made the rest academic.
The Mets, word has it, are calling up Brett Baty in an effort to give the suddenly moribund offense a jolt — a tactic that’s worked wonders for the Braves, as it happens. That’s reason for hope — and even if Baty’s time on the roster is brief, it’s always fun to get a preview of a future that’s been billed as bright.
More immediate reason for hope, though, is that the next two games will be pitched by Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom. Win those two and the Mets will have pushed the Braves right back to where they started this series. You’ve probably heard that momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher; the Mets, fortunately, will be sending out two of the best on the planet.
by Greg Prince on 16 August 2022 11:52 am The Monday night plan was simple enough: watch the Mets in full; watch the Mets win, if all went as desired; watch the finale of Better Call Saul, recorded while the Mets were winning.
What’s that phrase, “Man Plans, God Laughs”? This year, it’s usually, “Buck Plans, God Notices and says, ‘hmmm…I hadn’t thought of that — very impressive!’” Alas, you can plan for only so much Met success or even Met process on a given Monday night. I hoped they’d play without interruption. Mother Nature had other ideas. I hoped they’d be done by 10:38 PM, so I could get to the DVR the moment my show was done airing live. Rain washed out that hope. I hoped that another Met win would not only boost the Mets’ lead further in the National League East another game, but tie the 2022 Mets with the 1986 Mets after 116 games, a race that’s existed in my Metsian mind and its diligently tended computer files for months. That race will have to wait another day.
Plans. Hopes. Poof! Monday night in Atlanta in August is gonna get you some rain. (Have you ever seen a Southern sky?) The Braves anywhere can be a handful anytime. The Mets, despite having just completed another gleaming homestand in what has thus far been A Year to Remember, are susceptible to pratfalls, just like any group of humans. And anatomy can be a bitch sometimes.
The Mets lost Monday night. They lost by a lot, they may have lost a starting pitcher and they lost a game off their division lead. The last part doesn’t bead much sweat here. In a four-game series versus your closest pursuers, a sweep was gonna be a chore, even if every night sets your sights on going One and Oh. Losses by twelve runs don’t count any more than losses by two runs. Que Sera Sera. The pitcher is another matter. Carlos Carrasco felt something in his side after coming back from the 55-minute soak delay in the second inning. He stayed loose in the pen. Then there was tightness after his final pitch to a batter. You don’t like to hear about sides not feeling right. Max Scherzer felt something in his side. James McCann felt something in his side. They went out for a while. Eduardo Escobar felt something in his side the other day. He’s still playing, albeit compromised in his switch-hitting.
You’d think the Mets would have a side coach.
While we crossed the sides of our fingers that Carrasco will be fairly OK fairly soon and doesn’t join Luis Guillorme as a long-term absentee or Tomás Nido amid officially mysterious circumstances (he’s on the portion of the IL that doesn’t speak COVID’s name), there was still a game to get played and, by the time Carlos exited, lost. The Mets were down, 3-0, already. Two of the runs scored on Brave homers. One scored because the clouds and winds over Truist Park conspired to obscure a fly ball from Mark Canha’s view. Canha came in to make an increasingly difficult catch until he realized the ball was behind him. He turned around to chase it in the other direction. It was already that kind of night before Cookie pronounced himself crumbled.
Then it got much, much more that kind of night. Joely Rodriguez ferried the Mets through the third and two outs into the fourth. So far, so decent, despite no scoring off of self-appointed Met luck monitor Spencer Strider. Then Adonis Medina grabbed the wheel and steered the night into a ditch. Quadruple-A’s towing services can be a little unreliable. By the time it was 8-1 in the sixth, Medina was relieved by Mychal Givens. Once Givens had it up to 9-1, Better Call Saul was recorded in full.
 “Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna turn on the Mets tonight like last night didn’t happen. They didn’t lose by twelve runs. They didn’t lose a starting pitcher. Say you understand.” Send a message to Mychal: I’m watching my show. I didn’t know how the series I’d been watching since 2015 would turn out. I already basically knew what was going to happen in this Mets game, even as I stuck to my feeling for the Mets season at large. This exchange from Saul strikingly captured my mood vis-à-vis the 2022 campaign.
“So I gotta ask, where do you see this ending?”
“Where do I see it ending…with me on top. Like always.”
Should have I included a “SPOILER ALERT” there?
Endings aren’t just about endings, however. Grace notes are what put the prestige in prestige television, and sometimes losing by a torrent of runs can make for fascinating viewing. A glimpse at the in-progress box score while fast-forwarding past commercials revealed a plot twist I hadn’t seen coming in Atlanta. Not the tally itself, now 13-1, but the participants. There was a catcher making his Met debut, Michael Perez. There was a shortstop making his Met debut, Deven Marrero. And, not altogether unpredictably yet still good for a WHA???, there was a pitcher making his Met debut, Darin Ruf.
I missed the three up and three down Ruf recorded in the bottom of the seventh, which means I also missed the first instance of Perez (catching ball one) and Marrero (picking up a grounder en route to the second out) etching themselves into the annals as Mets No. 1,171 and 1,172, respectively. Ruf was already inscribed as Met No. 1,170 from his standard-issue hitting duties, but now he was the fifteenth position player in Mets history to pitch, marking the eighteenth instance in all of a Met position player toeing the rubber.
Better Call Saul got paused. I hung in there for the Mets’ futile attempts to close the gap on the scoreboard — nothing happened on that count despite Jeff McNeil notching four hits amid enemy carnage — and was rewarded by a second inning of shutout ball from Ruf. It would have been a second perfect inning had first baseman James McCann not thrown away what was hometown-scored an infield hit. McCann was saving Pete Alonso a couple of innings in the field, same as Perez was saving McCann a couple of innings of crouching, same as Marrero was saving wear and tear on Francisco Lindor (Deven is here instead of, say, third base überprospect Bret Baty, because he can field several positions à la Guillorme), same as Ruf was said to be saving the bullpen. It baffles me that in the age of eight-man bullpens and Syracuse shuttles that position players still have to now and then display fairly uncommon versatility, but it happens. Showalter knew Ruf could handle it. Buck plans for eventualities like this. God reportedly continues to be impressed by Buck’s attention to detail.
Darin’s ERA of 0.00 is far more impressive from a Met perspective than was the final of 13-1, another event to be buried under the heading It Happens. Also impressive: despite the cringe-inducement of Monday night, the Mets are 75-41, one historical game behind the 1986 Mets, 76-40 at the same juncture in their dream season. In Game 116 three-dozen years ago, the Mets played their starting catcher at first base to give him a breather. Gary Carter hurt his thumb and would be out a few weeks. The Mets lost that game and their next game — unwittingly placing their intermediary record of 76-41 within reach of some future Queens superteam — but were way ahead of everybody in real time and didn’t really have to worry. Carter came back. The Mets went on. Carrasco will come back. I don’t know when. I’m not a side coach.
Generally speaking, despite the spate of dings to key Met contributors, I am not shaken from my notion that for the club 4½ games out in front and 34 above .500, s’all good, man.
by Jason Fry on 15 August 2022 9:35 am This is the stretch that will send the Mets down one of two postseason roads: a newfangled bye that advances them to the division series, or a dogfight in the scrum of the wild-card round. Three with the Phillies, four with the Braves, four more with the Phillies, two with the Yankees.
Well, so far so good.
Our good friends from Philadelphia came into Citi Field, scored a conventional run off Max Scherzer immediately on Friday night, sent a ghost runner home against the luckless Mychal Givens later that evening, and … oh wait, that was it.
Nothing against Jacob deGrom and three relievers on Saturday. And nothing against Chris Bassitt and four relievers on Sunday.
Bassitt doesn’t have the raw stuff of Scherzer and deGrom, which is no insult whatsoever, but he’s cut from a similar mental cloth: intense, furiously competitive, ornery. There are the long shake-off sessions with catchers, the chess games he likes to play with hitters, and the “grind you till you break” philosophy articulated in spring training and now immortalized in his heavy-rotation Mets profile ad. (Hapless customer: “Uh, sir, I just came to this weird deli to get a pack of smokes — please no grinding or breaking. Also, why is this place infested with ballplayers?”)
I’ve come to admire Bassitt’s gunfighter stare and that violent pitching motion — the knee coming high as the arm cocks low behind him, then whips overhead at a slightly odd angle. Not to mention the array of pitches that might emerge from that delivery: three varieties of fastball, with the sinker most prominent; a slider; and a curve.
Bassitt had all of those pitches working Sunday, and needed them for heavy lifting in the fourth and fifth innings, facing two on and no out in each frame. No matter: In the fourth he fanned J.T. Realmuto on three pitches, got Nick Castellanos to fly out, and elicited a comebacker from Darick Hall; in the fifth, facing second and third, he fanned Matt Vierling and Bryson Stott, walked Rhys Hoskins after a lengthy duel, and erased Alec Bohm on a liner to second.
Runs had been hard to come by for the Mets, too, but on Sunday they finally woke up and swung the lumber against old friend Zack Wheeler, with a four-run fourth putting the game effectively out of reach. That inning’s scoring ended with a bonus run, as Jeff McNeil scrambled home to punish a bit of lackadaisical defense from Brandon Marsh and Jean Segura.
(I’d say Keith Hernandez must have uttered a belated “told you so,” but between Keith’s being elsewhere this weekend and his living in a highly Keith-centric world at all times, I’d put decent money on him having no idea that he gave the Phils bulletin-board material or that they responded by playing essentially airtight defense until then.)
The lone blemish of the Mets’ series win, if you don’t count the Marlins’ pacifism in getting steamrolled by the Braves, was the sight of Luis Guillorme limping home in the Mets’ uprising against Wheeler.
It’s been a joy to watch Guillorme have the breakout season I’d stubbornly insisted he had in him, sometimes without much evidence. That was a long time ago. Now, with two outs, I’ll urge enemy batters who can’t hear me to “hit it to anybody,” but with games on the line my plea is more specific: for some opponent to hit it to Guillorme, because I know he’ll do exactly the right thing. And none of that admiration has touched on his emergence as a useful if not terribly powerful bat; his glorious beard worthy of a Babylonian bas-relief; or his vaguely ironic mien in going about his business.
Guillorme has also been a key to the Mets’ positional flexibility, able to move seamlessly between second, short and third in various infield alignments. Hopefully the Mets will be without him only for a few days as this critical stretch continues. And, hopefully, said critical stretch will continue to be a showcase for smothering starting pitching, hitting in whatever quantity necessary and that most vital currency of all, series wins.
by Greg Prince on 14 August 2022 11:01 am The sound of one hand clapping makes about as much noise as a batter facing Jacob deGrom. Yet at Citi Field when Jacob deGrom pitches, all the hands clap and the noise overwhelms. Not as much as Jake overwhelms. Little can outdo deGrom in that regard.
We bring the sound. Jake brings the fury. The Phillies, like every opponent, bring the best of intentions. Good luck, fellas, I’d tell them, albeit without sincerity. I wish you long, happy, healthy lives, yet in the spirit of full disclosure, nothing but ill will at the plate, in the field or on the mound. On the mound, you’ve been pretty good yourselves for two nights. In the field, you’ve appeared determined to make a certain color analyst recant all the sighs and groans and “throw a tent over that circus” he’s directed at your (until recently) ludicrous leatherwork. But at the plate, you’re still facing Jacob deGrom, and he intends to give you nothing. I doubt the Phillies wanted to see deGrom any more than Keith Hernandez wanted to see the Phillies.
Saturday night at Son of Shea — not only was Citi ramped up to a vintage volume, but my literal vantage point brought to the mind’s eye a way of seeing a game that hasn’t existed since Citi Field was under construction — everybody pitched as well as could be asked from a baseline perspective. Let’s put it this way: Edwin Diaz was, by default, the least impressive of the five arms throwing baseballs for either side, and he gave up neither a run nor a hit en route to notching another enormous save.
Diaz is saved for last. DeGrom throws the first pitch of any home game he works. He appears, we go wild. Not that we needed much of a cue, but once those of us who weren’t in the park last Sunday took in the ace’s warmup on TV, we recognized how special it is just to watch Jake throw the pitches that don’t count. Now we understand those as our portal to deGrominant immersion. Once he gets going for real, against professional victims, our impulse is to segue from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” to the Dovells’ “You Can’t Sit Down,” except you probably have to sit down, lest the people behind you shame you in a shower of DOWN IN FRONTs.
I mentioned my vantage point. As noted earlier Saturday, Stephanie and I had the honor and pleasure of joining our friends the Spectors at their 27th (25 + 2) anniversary party, thrown at the hottest joint in town, Citi Field. Specifically, we were in the Seaver Suite on the Empire Level. It’s down the right field line, befitting one of the greatest righthanders in baseball history. And what better spiritual post than the Seaver Suite from which to watch the greatest righthander in contemporary baseball?
 If you could see the mound Saturday, you saw everything. The only issue with the suite life from a viewing standpoint, at least on this occasion in short right field, was if you didn’t elbow out other swell people from the allotted outdoor seating (which we didn’t), you needed to plant yourself at a proper angle to take in as much as you could, cognizant that you had to prioritize. Citi Field geometry almost always subtracts something from your line of sight wherever you sit or stand. Here, the shortfalls in geometry were leavened by magically refilling trays of sliders, franks and fries, free-flowing beverages and the delight of mingling among an array of fine folks in air-conditioned comfort (even Garry and Susan’s Phillies fan friends seemed swell), which is to say who’s complaining if you can’t see the scoreboards or certain swaths of grass? If anything, the experience took me back to those stolen glances from the old subway platform extension, the one demolished prior to the final year of the old ballpark to clear space for the coming new ballpark. You might retroactively refer to it as the original Shea bridge, leading down a spiral staircase to the token booth rotunda. You couldn’t see everything from up there, but you could see enough.
My spot in the suite got me in line with Jacob’s delivery. If you could watch deGrom form his motion and fire, you saw everything you needed to see. That and the plate, where Phillie after Phillie was phlummoxed. That was the fun and game there. My Log tells me this was the 24th time I’ve seen Jake pitch at Citi Field. I don’t know that I was ever quite so focused on him (between burger bites) or nearly as blown away. He must look like hell from the batter’s box.
My seat was a tall bar stool that I staked out a little corner for. It allowed me to rest between pitches, because during pitches, I was up on my feet. There was just enough space for me to pace anxiously without making too much of an obstacle of myself. “Can’t Sit Down” didn’t apply to the Phillies. For six innings — the moderate workload wasn’t surprising despite the sudden appearance of Seth Lugo in the top of the seventh jarring me off of my chair — Philadelphia batters returned to their seats with alacrity.
We roared, Jake released, and nothing happened except exquisite pitching brilliance. Rhys Hoskins singled in the first only to be erased on a forceout. Bryson Stott lined a single to center only to be stranded when Hoskins struck out to end the sixth. And that was the entirety of the Phililes’ offense. No extra-base hits. No walks. Nothing threatening. Ten strikeouts in all.
The third strikes were so much fun to watch. Wow, they really are helpless against him, just like on TV. The occasional fly ball I didn’t really feel the need to follow (which would have necessitated neck-craning and such). I could tell what he was throwing wasn’t traveling too far or in much danger of falling in. I was in sync with Jake. My pacing didn’t drive him off kilter. My frequent applause was just a fraction of the supportive din.
You almost didn’t notice Aaron Nola crafting a gem of his own. At first, you didn’t have to, because the Mets cobbled a run together in their first ups. Starling Marte, as if to make up for Friday night’s ill-advised dash for home, built three-quarters of a run himself by singling, stealing and taking third on a throw into center. Pete Alonso brought him in ASAP.
That was the extent of what Nola gave up. It was too much of a hole to dig against deGrom, but whereas Jake departed after six (it was still only his third start of the year after thirteen months of major league inactivity, you had to keep telling yourself), Nola hung in there. No reason to lift him and no pitcher is pinch-hit for anymore. The Mets’ output after the first was as meager as the Phillies’ through the sixth, leading to the only foreseen drama of the evening. Would we be able to span the gap from deGrom to Diaz?
Seth materialized in the seventh and simply by not being Jake, he was the best chance of the visitors’ night. There was indeed a base hit, via Nick Castellanos’s single, but it came with the bases empty and two out and it was followed immediately by a strikeout. Trevor May succeeded Lugo, resembling the May we heard so much about in his pre-Met incarnation (a little like Diaz the Mariner needing time to find a holistic comfort level in New York, perhaps). Trevor notched two Ks, then didn’t falter when Kyle Schwarber lifted a ball to center. It was caught by Brandon Nimmo, leaving the score Mets 1 Phillies 0. That’s also where Nola left it when he completed his eighth inning of almost spotless work. It occurred to me that if all went well, I’d just seen a complete game thrown by a pitcher on the losing side.
We just needed all to go well. We’ve reached a stage in our lives as fans that we expect all to go well when it’s Diaz time. It’s a 180 from where we sat in 2019 and probably a 135 from where our hearts stubbornly positioned themselves before the reality of 2022 fully kicked in. Edwin’s stats improved so much in 2021 and glittered in the right light in 2020, yet you never really stop mistrusting your closer unless your closer convinces you to do otherwise. Edwin Diaz has become the most convincing Met closer I’ve ever known. The only thing that could mess with the tableau unfolding ahead of the ninth — there’s no DOWN IN FRONT-ing for the raucous “Narco” entrance, because everybody’s up and everybody’s loud — was the looming inevitability of an eventual lesser outing from the master of the three-batter save, that vague but palpable sense of it has to happen sometime. As much as Citi Field throbbed for Jake, it pulsated for Sugar. Their noise’s common denominator was confidence. We turn up the volume because they’ve supplied the certainty, excitement born of trust. Still, you couldn’t completely bar from your head that one nagging question, especially with the thinnest of 1-0 leads, even after Lugo and May had quelled the initial wave of post-Jake doubt.
Would Saturday night be the night the trumpets hit a sour note?
I inserted myself into the suite’s official seating section to get the most expansive view available. Edwin Diaz was not immaculate. He did not flirt with perfection. He didn’t even strike out the first guy he faced, relying instead on Luis Guillorme to field a ground ball and fire it to Alonso for the first out. Then he walked Hoskins, whose pinch runner Edmundo Sosa stole second pretty easily. Alec Bohm flied out to right, which could have been a tag-up problem had Marte not made a strong throw into the infield. Then J.T. Realmuto walked on three-and-two, bringing up Castellanos. It would take seven pitches — during which there’d be a double steal that amounted to defensive indifference in a 1-0 nailbiter because Edwin would not be distracted by baserunning hijinks — but we never for a moment vocalized an iota of regret that we’re all in on Edwin. The closer was trusted to close a one-run lead with runners on second and third amid nary a boo. Our anxiety in the moment was empathetic rather than accusatory. That particular vibe in the ninth inning at a home Mets game has been rare since the Shea subway extension stood. It was by no means common then, either.
The end result was what we sought, and it was multifaceted:
Diaz struck out Castellanos.
Diaz saved the win for deGrom.
Diaz maintained our affection.
The Mets cooled the surging Phillies’ aspirations for one night.
The Let’s Go Metsing was as strong as ever on the short staircase trip from Empire Level to Field Level.
And on the LIRR home, east of Jamaica, no less, we heard “Narco” cranked up on somebody’s phone…and it wasn’t even mine.
The game was long over, but the melody lingered on. Timmy Trumpet blows. Edwin Diaz doesn’t.
Across nineteen innings, these two teams have pitched each other to a 2-2 tie. It doesn’t shake out that way in the standings, but maybe aesthetically should. One night, Ranger Suarez & Co. barely outpointed a Max Scherzer-led mound initiative that was effective enough to have prevailed most nights; and the next night Aaron Nola stayed within a shoelace tip of the deGrom-to-Diaz super express, one that made stops at Lugo and May without encountering delays. Tight games both. From our perspective, the second was the keeper. It looked great from where I stood. It sounded even better.
by Greg Prince on 13 August 2022 4:38 pm On July 22, 1995, the no-name, no-hope New York Mets were hot, having emerged from the All-Star break winning seven of nine. On the soundstage where they shot Star Trek: Voyager, Jeri Ryan presumably looked up, thinking her character was written into a new scene as SportsCenter blared in the background.
Seven of nine! The Mets had spent the first half of that strike-delayed season stashed in last place, as if on the lam, figuring no one would find them if they lodged themselves far enough down the cellar. But now, having shaken off those April-to-June doldrums, they were, reliable sources could have sworn, ready to start climbing in earnest. Instead, on July 22, a Saturday, they lost. Then they lost again on Sunday. They’d go on to lose every day clear through Wednesday.
 Happy Swanniversary! Was this any way to start a marriage? Maybe not the marriage of the Mets and post-1993 respectability, but it worked for Susan Laney and Garry Spector, who were engaging in marriage to each other somewhere in Oklahoma, Susan’s home state as well as that of 1995 Mets Kelly Stinnett and Butch Huskey, along with Mets voice for all seasons Bob Murphy. I didn’t know either Garry or Susan then, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and imagine some time before the first pitch of that Saturday ceremony, Garry checked the box score of the Mets-Rockies game in Colorado from the night before.
I’ll also take the liberty of deciding their honeymoon was perfectly lovely despite the five-game losing streak that probably crossed Garry’s field of vision at some point in the first throes of wedded bliss. I made sure to get married in November so I wouldn’t have to sweat such details. But this isn’t about me. It’s about Garry and Susan getting married when they did and life continuing on for them back in the Northeast, she a world-class oboist (or have you not heard of the Metropolitan Opera?), he a top-flight chemist, if I have his science credentials correct. I’ve rarely seen better chemistry between two people than that which exists between Susan and Garry, so I’m gonna assume I do.
As implied above, Garry’s been a Mets fan for a long time, long before winning seven of nine ranked as an unparalleled achievement for the mid-1995 Mets. Garry’s been a Mets fan long enough to inspect a roster of early-1970s Mets and decide somewhere on there was a defending world champion who’d love to come to his Bar Mitzvah. The act of addressing invitations transcends whether any of them showed. I’m not sure how long Susan has loved the Mets. Perhaps it had something to do at first with loving Garry. She’s her own fan, however. Read her blog Perfect Pitch for confirmation.
They lived as Mets fans, they raised a Mets fan daughter and they invested in the Mets, holding prime season tickets since before Shea went away and after Citi Field opened. You might know them as “the Spectors” of Section 318 — directly in front of the radio booth — if you listen to the games over WCBS with any frequency. Howie knows Susan and Garry are there practically every night. When a foul ball is heading directly back into the crowd, Howie from time to time estimates, “That might reach our friends the Spectors in Section 318.” When your team’s play-by-play announcer has conferred ground rule status upon your presence, you indeed get to a lot of games.
I don’t know who’ll be sitting in those seats tonight for the Mets and Phillies. None among Susan, Garry or daughter Melanie (a Resident Artist with Detroit Opera herself) will be. They’ll be a level below, having taken a suite for the evening. It’s a big suite. It’s a big night. DeGrom is pitching against Nola, but it’s bigger even than that. The Spectors are celebrating an amalgam of their 25th, 26th and 27th anniversaries tonight at Citi Field. If the Mets are at home, where else would the Spectors be?
Your math skills don’t elude you. No. 25 — the Del Unser anniversary, to my thinking — was two years plus a few weeks ago. They planned their Unser down to the D-E-L, or the letter. The only thing the Spectors couldn’t plan on was what 2020 had in store for all of us. No, nobody was going to a ballpark in 2020. Nobody was going much of anywhere. Thus, Del Unser would be double-switched out of the anniversary game for…
That’s right, Dave Kingman, No. 26. They were gonna do in 2021 what they intended do in 2020. But you know how Sky King could be about striking out. The COVID situation was still capable of diving for fly balls and doing something unspeakable to its thumb. Alas, the Kingman anniversary had to take a seat next to the Unser.
It’s a new year, a better year where the Mets are concerned, which is nice. It has a new anniversary going for it: No. 27, Craig Swan. Perfect. Swannie led the league in ERA once. So has Jake. Officially, the Spectors have dubbed the evening “Twenty-Five Plus Two,” which encompasses Swan and Kingman and Unser as I see it. They’ve been kind enough to invite Stephanie and me to join them and their friends and family at Citi Field tonight. We carry the credentials of neither Art Shamsky nor Ron Swoboda nor anybody Garry sought for his Bar Mitzvah, but we are honored to attend.
The best thing I can think to give them is the game of April 28, 1976. It’s not really mine to give them, but it’s not like it’s doing anything else right now but gathering dust in the archives. On that Wednesday afternoon at Shea Stadium, Craig Swan — 27 in your scorecard, folks — took the start against the Atlanta Braves. The game began at 4:05. That was intentional. It’s also probably irrelevant, but the Mets experimenting with 4:05 weekday afternoon starts early in the 1976 seasons sticks with me (M. Donald Grant, what an innovator). Attendance spiked all the way to 7,602 from the day before, which also started at 4:05 PM. On Tuesday April 27, the Mets and Braves drew 4,002. Bruce Boisclair ended that game with a double that drove in Jerry Grote and John Milner with the tying and winning runs. Perhaps the residual Boisclair-generated excitement is what nearly doubled the gate. Maybe young Garry Spector dropped everything he was doing up in Albany, hopped a bus and joined in the fun (probably too long a commute for young Susan Laney out in Oklahoma).
So Swan started and threw a shutout inning. One zero on the board. Versus three-time All-Star Andy Messersmith, a celebrated acquisition for Ted Turner’s Braves (he was the first active pitcher specifically freed from the reserve clause, a remnant of baseball’s moldy past about to be completely consigned to the ash heap of history, and granted the agency to seek employment where he chose — in other words, the majors’ first true free agent), Boisclair led off the first by looking at strike three. I guess Bruce tired of heroics quickly. Felix Millan came up next, choked up on his bat and flied to the shortstop. Two outs, nobody on…but wait! Who’s that coming up to bat?
Why, it’s No. 25, Del Unser. No. 25 is what Susan and Garry set out to celebrate two years ago until COVID walked away with the party. Del retroactively makes it up to us here by walking against Messersmith. Unser’s on first. Batting cleanup for these 1976 Mets? It’s Ed Kranepool. He wears No. 7 and he’s perennial. You can put him in most any Met story between September 1962 and September 1979, and Eddie fits. Eddie singles. Del zips to third.
Which means the five-hole hitter will have a turn at bat in the bottom of the first, and batting fifth, at manager Joe Frazier’s behest, is the holder of the New York Mets’ single-season home run record, established one year earlier and already appearing in danger of extinction in the year ahead. It’s No. 26, Dave Kingman. Kingman has hit eight home runs in the Mets’ first seventeen games. He’s hit them out of Shea, out of Three Rivers, especially out of Wrigley, onto Waveland Avenue, a.k.a. the Cubs’ backyard. One of Kingman’s dingers was reported to have cleared “everything on Waveland Avenue but a treetop”. Another was said to have “hit the porch roof of the third house up the block on Kenmore Street”. Viewers in New York learned so much about Chicago geography from Dave Kingman batting.
Nothing much lurked directly beyond Shea Stadium’s left field fence except the parking lot. After a bunt attempt went for naught — Kingman was a slugger more infatuated with the element of surprise than he was his own raw power — Dave turned his focus to the general direction of the fans’ cars. BAM! (sound effect added), the score was 3-0, Mets. “It wasn’t a home run cut,” the reticent Kingman appraised. Some hitters don’t need to swing as hard as they can. Sky King left the Chryslers and Plymouths undented, reaching only the Braves bullpen, but it was a long enough shot. He now had nine homers in eighteen games, which could be extrapolated to 81 in 162 games. If you don’t think there was a kid on Long Island calculating the record-shattering pace Kingman was on, then you didn’t know me then and don’t me now.
But again, this isn’t about me. This is a celebration of No. 25, who scored the Mets’ first run, and No. 26, who drove in the Mets’ first and only three runs of April 28, and, mostly, No. 27. Craig Swan took his three-run lead and guarded it with his life. Swannie went nine innings, the distance. He struck out eleven Braves, allowing only five singles and one walk. No runs. It became the first complete game of Swannie’s career and, of course, his first shutout. Messersmith, whose free agent availability attracted interest in the offseason from owners who wished there was no such thing as free agency, tipped his cap to his mound opponent:
“I was running into Walter Johnson That kid pitched a hell of a game.”
Even if Swannie never quite lived up to that kind of hype (Walter Johnson won 417 games, Craig won 59), No. 27 seized the day, with a big boost from No. 26 and a little help at the outset from No. 25. I really don’t need much of an excuse to invoke the likes of Craig Swan, Dave Kingman and Del Unser. Nice of Garry and Susan Spector to provide one. Everything about them is nice, actually. They truly deserve the best tonight. It’s appropriate they’re getting Jacob deGrom.
by Jason Fry on 13 August 2022 12:49 am Let’s get this part out of the way: I was in the front of the Promenade a fair distance down the first-base line. So I can’t tell you jack about Max Scherzer‘s stuff or location or exactly what happened to various Met defenders or anything else that relies on the nuance of an up-close view. Being in the park isn’t about any of those things unless you’re in the really fancy seats; rather, it’s about what you can’t recreate in your living room, namely becoming a small part of a shared experience.
And hey, that part was fun, even as everything else proved frustrating. The high-water mark, of course and alas, came when Francisco Lindor drove a Seranthony Dominguez sinker to deep center with no one out in the ninth and Starling Marte on second. The ball was going to be gone for a walkoff homer, or off the wall for a walkoff single, or at least it was going to be a long fly that would move Marte to third and allow the Mets to win the game on a walkoff a batter later, and Citi Field was one gigantic jet-engine roar which you knew was only prelude to the bigger roar to come.
Well, except it never did.
Lindor’s drive was a long fly. Marte did indeed move to third. And so the ninth inning came down to Dominguez against Daniel Vogelbach, who hit the requisite fly ball to left, where someone named Matt Vierling was waiting. It wasn’t as deep as you’d like, but it would take a perfect throw to get Marte, whom Joey Cora properly sent homeward. Vierling’s throw came in hard and slightly up the first-base line, where J.T. Realmuto snapped it out of the air before flinging himself at Marte, catching him across the chest a moment before his hand slapped the plate. The Mets wouldn’t win in a walkoff, Vogelbach’s rocket ride as Citi Field cult hero wouldn’t reach new heights, and the Mets and Phillies would play on into extra innings.
Honestly, it was kind of a miracle that things got that far. Scherzer looked out of sorts in the early going, battling himself and a run of buzzard’s luck that saw plays not quite made, ducksnorts and parachutes drop onto the outfield grass, and two Met infielders exit — Eduardo Escobar with what’s billed as a side injury and Jeff McNeil with a lacerated finger suffered in an odd collision with Rhys Hoskins. But then other Mets looked out of sorts too — besides the defense being ever so slightly miscalibrated, the hitters did next to nothing against Ranger Suarez, who hung around far later than most enemy starters these days. The Phillies, meanwhile, were playing crisp defense, perhaps mindful of all the bulletin-board material Keith Hernandez recently gave them.
One team played crisp and clean and the other one looked a bit ragged, but that still meant a 1-1 tie going to the 10th.
And then, ah, the bedrock unfairness of baseball. Mychal Givens made a nifty play on a little tapper, then got a flyout and a strikeout — a blameless performance for which he was rewarded with a loss. That flyout unfolded almost as a mirror image of the play on Marte: Alec Bohm hit a fly to Marte, a bit deeper than Vogelbach’s, which Marte fired in to Tomas Nido on one hop, in plenty of time to get Bryson Stott at the plate — except that hop was a short hop, and the ball ticked off the tip of Nido’s mitt and bounded away. Could Nido have fielded it? Yes. Was it a tricky hop requiring a do-or-die snag? Also yes. Did the Mets make those kind of plays on Friday night? Not often enough.
The ball bounded away, allowing Stott to score and the Phillies to turn the ball over to David Robertson, so recently coveted as one of our bullpen additions. (That was perhaps a little extra cruel.) Robertson got Tyler Naquin looking at a cutter on the edge of the strike zone, elicting a big collective oof! from the crowd, and then coaxed a grounder from Luis Guillorme, and so the Phillies had won — a win they thoroughly earned, but one that will leave a mark anyway.
by Greg Prince on 10 August 2022 11:45 pm Some days this year as a Mets fan, if you’re lucky (which you are if you’re a Mets fan this year), you feel a little like Tommy Flanagan — pronounced fluh-NAIG-un — Jon Lovitz’s truth-stretching character whose Saturday Night Live catchphrase “that’s the ticket” had the country in stitches for about a year in the mid-’80s. As with many of the decades-old popular culture references I’m compelled to invoke in this space, maybe you had to be there.
Flanagan was referred to as The Pathological Liar in deference to everything coming out of his mouth stretching credulity. That sort of behavior used to be considered universally antithetical to trustworthiness, thus it was considered hilarious rather than admirable that somebody would do nothing but lie to a mass audience. Another case, perhaps, of having had to have been there. Here and now, it could be that the hardest part of being a Mets fan is when you offer a factual account of their daily exploits, it’s almost impossible to have it sound believable.
Honestly, it’s the only hard part of being a Mets fan here and now.
“Yeah, I went to the Mets game today. They scored six, no eight, no TEN runs! Francisco Lindor — he’s our shortstop — scored one, no two, no THREE runs himself. He’s scored at least one run in five, no nine, no THIRTEEN games in a row. That’s a team record! Almost everybody, no EVERYBODY in the starting lineup was on base. Two, no four, no SIX of them scored runs. One of them leads the ENTIRE LEAGUE in runs batted in. The Mets won their third, no fourth, no SIXTH game in a row and have nearly as good a record as they did at this point in 2006, no 1988, no 1986! And this weekend we’re gonna have Max Scherzer starting for us on Friday night and Jacob deGrom on Saturday night because Max Scherzer is on our team and Jacob deGrom is healthy. And if we’re ahead by only a little in the ninth inning, we’re not gonna be the least bit nervous. No, we’re gonna clap along while somebody plays trumpets. Oh, and at today’s game, I sat in plush seats practically behind home plate next to a real Broadway singing star. Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
Good bit. Except everything in the above paragraph is the emmis truth. It only sounds like a wild exaggeration if you’re not in the middle of it. It is our good fortune to be in the middle of all of it. The six in a row is our current roll, the last three of which came at the expense of the Reds, following three taken from the Braves, encompassing a 15-of-17 megaspurt that has taken down opponents of all competitive stripe. The Reds would be charitably described as middling. They weren’t too bad before playing us. A few innings versus the Mets seemed to have them checking to see if the jet whisking them to Iowa for the Field of Dreams game was fully fueled and ready to fly. They were in the midst of an afternoon nightmare Wednesday.
Lindor indeed continued to do Lindor things, which is the most convenient way to describe the tear he’s been on for more than a month. A couple hits, a couple ribbies, a walk, another three runs when just one was needed to tie David Wright’s consecutive games scoring mark. Francisco was hardly alone. National League RBI leader Pete Alonso — four shy of a hundred already — went three-for-five. Tyler Naquin, who’s probably happy to no longer be a Red and even happier to be a Met, homered and scored twice himself. Daniel Vogelbach brought his milkshake to the yard. And so on and so forth and what have you. Truly it was hard to keep up with the deluge of offense. Just ask Cincy, once you scrape them up from their 10-2 flattening.
The Mets’ pitching side, while not as spectacular (how could it be?) was sound, which itself was spectacular after last Friday when Taijuan Walker kinda blew up in the sole loss to date on this homestand. Plus there was something mumbled about a sore hip. Tai appeared ship shape and Bristol fashion over six innings, allowing only two runs to the Reds, and our modest anxiety to dissipate. Walker is a highly dependable No. 3 starter on this staff. So is Chris Bassitt. So is Carlos Carrasco. The Mets have five starters, all of whom I’d be OK with as Game One starters in a playoff series, all of whom I’d be comfortable with should they find themselves with the ball to start a decisive Game Five or Game Seven.
Yeah, I know we have deGrom and Scherzer. Yeah, I know we have two months to go. But I also know that at 73-39, the 2022 Mets are inhabiting rare air. How rare? Wrap your mind around this: should the Mets win three of their next five games, albeit against Philadelphia and Atlanta (who, conversely, have to play us), they will be 76-41 after 117 games.
The only Mets team that’s ever been 76-41 after 117 games is the 1986 edition, and they had to go into a slump to dip to 76-41. No Mets team that isn’t the 1986 Mets ever shows up in the “best record after ‘x’ games” conversation once the season passes the one-third mark. Yet the 2022 Mets are on the cusp of matching the 1986 Mets, even if it’s for one fleeting juncture.
Dude, that’s Amazin’.
 Liz Callaway, surrounded by admirers. Also Amazin’: that kicker slipped in earlier about me taking in Wednesday’s game in the company of a real Broadway singing star. That’s no prevarication. Through the machinations of online Mets fandom, social media bonhomie and another kindred spirit with access to really fine (that’s the) tickets, I absolutely found myself sitting practically behind home plate next to Liz Callaway, star of stage and song and, especially, Sondheim. Stephen Sondheim is the nexus where we bonded virtually a few years ago. Sondheim and the Mets, of course. Liz is a serious fan with a voice serious enough to have tamed the national anthem on multiple occasions at Shea Stadium and Citi Field. She recently played a series of shows in Manhattan dedicated to her friend and inspiration Mr. Sondheim, or “Steve” as she honestly comes by calling him. She was acclaimed as sensational. I sure thought so. So did my pals Brian and Mitch, whose feel for vocal artistry is clearly as impeccable as their taste in baseball teams. Brian’s the one who had the bright idea to bring us all together for a game and made it happen.
The Mets, meanwhile, continue to make it happen every day. No lie.
The 1986/2022 comparison, with a touch of 1973, gets a longer look on this week’s National League Town. You oughta listen here.
by Jason Fry on 10 August 2022 1:03 am The Mets won a quiet, even slightly dull game against the Reds … with the lack of excitement counting as a good thing.
Carlos Carrasco was terrific until he found his tank on E. Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil homered. Darin Ruf collected two hits, one against a pitcher from the side he’s not supposed to see. A trio of bullpenners we don’t entirely trust — Mychal Givens, Trevor May and Seth Lugo — put up zeroes, though I’ll grant May’s wasn’t particularly elegant.
So what’s ho-hum about that? Nothing! It’s amazing to think that Carrasco is now tied for the N.L. lead in wins, given the horrific season he had last year. Just as it’s been remarkable to watch Lindor wash away the crud and dirt of a star-crossed first season and close in on various Met single-season shortstop marks. And how fun has it been watching McNeil get back to being McNeil, serial abuser of baseballs?
But this was one of those games that felt snoozy once it got started and came with warnings of danger in the middle innings. The Mets drove up Mike Minor‘s pitch count and cuffed him around, but Minor refused to break, stoically giving his team innings and keeping them within shouting distance if not quite striking distance. Carrasco tired in the seventh and before you could blink Jake Fraley had smashed a ball off the Citi Pavilion and the Reds had cut a steep four-run deficit into an all too scalable two.
Suddenly Tuesday’s game looked like one of those where the hare ends up blinking and amazed at the sight of the tortoise ambling across the finish line just out of reach — a forgivable letdown, but one to get the grumbling muscles exercised.
Instead, a couple of good things happened in rapid succession.
First, Buck Showalter called on Givens, the new recruit who’s shown bad body language and worse numbers so far. His assignment was to bail out Carrasco with two men on and Nick Senzel at the plate. Givens passed the test, fanning Senzel, and then Showalter wisely turned to another reliever despite Givens having thrown only four pitches — it was more important to send the former Oriole into the clubhouse on a psyche-restorative high note than it was to spread out the workload the way Showalter would probably have preferred.
Second, the Mets immediately pushed the Reds back down the hill they’d just climbed, with Ruf’s two-run single restoring the four-run lead. Good teams running at full hum do that, beating opponents without working up too much of a sweat. It’s a habit that’s comforting when you’re on the right side of the rooting equation and infuriating when you’re not.
Happily, we can take comfort in it, at least for however long this pinch-me stretch of baseball continues — which I say not out of superstition but out of the sad wisdom that even great teams hit ruts where they seem to have somehow forgotten how to play baseball. Should that happen, though, you get the feeling that Showalter will say the right things, one of the clubhouse’s wise old heads will offer helpful counsel, and then a determined starting pitcher — this year you can take your pick — will decide that it’s on him to change the narrative.
Or maybe there will be a lot more ho-hum wins until the calendar dictates that all spotlights are on full. That would be fine too.
by Greg Prince on 9 August 2022 12:32 pm “All right, Harold. Let’s do it.
“OK, everybody, Buck is available to answer questions. First, Steve.”
“Buck, great 5-1 win tonight over the Reds. In light of the passing of Olivia Newton-John earlier today, do we have to believe this Mets team is magic and that nothing can stand in their way?”
“Aw, is that right? Olivia Newton-John? She couldn’t have been that old. How old was she? Seventy-three? You’re kidding. My wife and I saw her perform one year at some winter meetings or postseason banquet. When I worked for the Diamondbacks, Jerry Colangelo introduced me. What a nice lady. She could really sing. I’m sorry, what was the question? Are the Mets magic? Well, we work hard to do what we do. So does the other team. It would be presumptuous to think nothing could stand in our way. I tell you, though, we got a really solid inning out of Otto tonight. I don’t know if it was magic, but we were happy to get it.”
“Tony, a question for Buck?”
“Yeah, Buck, the great pitching you got from Chris Bassitt tonight, after the kind of outings we saw from Scherzer on Saturday and deGrom on Sunday, do you think opponents look at your rotation, throw up their hands and beg, ‘please, mister, please’?”
“They beg? Nobody in this league begs. I hope they’d have a healthy respect for our pitching and all aspects of our game like we do for theirs. Chris certainly went a long way tonight. What did he go? Eight innings? That’s a big help to our bullpen, which has been so good lately. Did you see Joely on Sunday? Those two-and-a-third were a lifesaver. But, you know, I’ve always wondered about the line ‘please don’t play B-17.’ What do you suppose the song was on that jukebox the button-pushing cowboy had to hear? We try to play everybody who can help us win, but of course we can’t play 17 anymore. That’s hanging up there way above left field. I think Keith would express his displeasure if we were playing 17. He might wanna get a few swings in the cage first.”
“Tim, you’re up.”
“Buck, your team got off to a strong start tonight when Starling Marte muscled a home run for an immediate two-run lead over the Reds. Would you call that a matter of telling your players, ‘let’s get physical’?”
“If we’re doing anything physically outstanding out there, that’s a credit to the training staff. They come in early, they’re keeping the players ready and loose, drinking lots of liquids. This hot weather makes hydration essential. We have a whole lot of guys who can hit the ball far if they find their pitch. Where Starling really excels is the mental game. Francisco, too. What’s the saying about baseball being 90% half-mental? I once asked Yogi at a Yankee old-timers game if he really said that. He didn’t. But if you’re asking about good shape, Tyler Naquin is a specimen. Did you see him go to third on that triple? Of course the first winter Angela and I had cable, that video was all over MTV. There was nothing else on, so we had this crazy new channel on more than we should have, probably. Those guys, the ‘Physical’ guys? They were in great shape. No wonder that was such a big hit.”
“The other Tim.”
“Buck, speaking of great shape, you’re 32 games above .500 for the first time in sixteen years, you’re seven games ahead of the Braves after tonight. But you still have four in Atlanta next week plus a couple of series against a very hot Phillies team. Does that give you enough to tell your fans, ‘don’t stop believin’?”
“I saw that. That many over .500 for the first time since 2006. That was Willie’s team, right? Willie Randolph is a great guy. I’m surprised he never got another shot at managing. He won a division title his second year. I don’t know what happened after that. But let me tell you something. Everybody thinks those lyrics about not stopping believing belong to Journey. Their song got used at the end of that gangster show. What was it called, the one in New Jersey? I should know that, being a manager in New York again. Right, The Sopranos. Great song. You still hear it all the time. Olivia had a different song, a little more country, ‘Don’t Stop Believin,” when I was comin’ up in the Cape Cod League. That’s when I got the nickname Buck supposedly for how little I’d wear in the clubhouse. I’m not gonna tell you to not stop believin’ that story. It’s makes for a good story, whether it’s true or not. As far as the fans, we really appreciate their support. Did you hear how loud it got tonight when Vogie drove in Francisco? I know we didn’t have as many people here as we did over the weekend, but it sounded the same. We have a sponsor, but you could call the ballpark Xanadu if you want. It’s been that good for us. The key to that inning was Pete making their pitcher work. Pete didn’t get a hit tonight, but he saw a lot of pitches. But ‘Don’t Stop Believin’” is a great song. She had so many of them.”
 When your team has won of 13 of 15 in July and August, it can be said they are Totally Hot. “Deesha.”
“Buck, your lineup, one to nine, when everybody is going well, could be said to be running deeper than the night. How do you prevent slumps from changing that dynamic?”
“Players don’t have slumps. I know it looks like they have slumps when they go a while without many hits, but there are ebbs and flows in this game and everybody is subject to them. I know I am. I take the same route to the ballpark every day, yet I missed my turn off the Grand Central this afternoon. Can you believe that? They were doing construction and I got distracted, and next thing I knew I think I was practically in Brooklyn. Glenn was gonna be promoted to manager if I hadn’t gotten turned around and I’d be scouting the Cyclones. Wouldn’t be a bad change of pace maybe. But our team prides itself on our consistency. The thing about ‘Deeper Than The Night,’ the song I think you’re referencing, is it was on that album that came out after the Grease soundtrack. My god, that album and that movie were huge. I think I saw it three times the summer it came out. It was the only one playing. You don’t have much of a choice in those minor league towns. Of course they didn’t have streaming then. You just hope too many teenagers didn’t start smoking because of Olivia as Sandy at the end in the leather jacket and all. The album after was called, oh…Totally Hot. That was a real image-changer for her, but she knew she could shift that way after those last scenes in Grease. But to that question earlier, the Phillies are totally hot right now, but we’re not looking past Cincinnati. We think we’re doing OK, too. Anybody else, Harold?”
“We’ll finish up with Mike.”
“Buck, the fan energy around the Mets has always been one that’s kind of a hopeless devotion. Yet you’re suddenly incredibly formidable. Is it some kind of twist of fate that you’re this good? Or are you still worried that the Braves will make a move on you? Can you yourself be mellow?”
“All right, y’all are just playing with me now. Listen, we’re gonna miss Olivia Newton-John. I’m just glad she left us so many great songs. We oughta do something for her here, shouldn’t we, Harold? I mean we had that slogan, the Magic is Back. I wasn’t here then, but I remember that. I thought it was clever, and she had that song at the same time. I’d love to hear her music during BP or between innings. The players might be too young to want to use it for their walkups or whatever. Maybe I’ll just listen on my drive home tonight. Maybe I won’t get lost. But I think our fans can all be hopeful. I don’t think our success to this point is sudden. The coaching staff and myself had a short spring, but we had a lot of willing players putting in a lot of effort and I think you’re seeing it pay off every night. I don’t believe in fate. Too much can go wrong. Atlanta is still capable of going wrong on us if we don’t keep doing what we have to do. Mellow is for after the season and, if we’re lucky, the postseason. We’ll have to keep grinding and make our own moves. Y’all should make a move on the clubhouse. Talk to the players who win these games. They’re the ones that you want.”
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