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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 9 July 2022 12:27 am 1. The Mets ran this ticket special in the 1980s that was incredibly successful. For the price of one admission, you could see the most fearsome competitor in the game, a peerless clutch hitter and first base play that was as revolutionary as it was nonpareil. They were also willing into throw in for that one ticket a consistent .300 hitter, a guy who ran the game like a point guard and a window into the mind of the most intelligent ballplayer you’d ever see or hear. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough to lure you in, you’d watch somebody who was looked up to by almost all his teammates, experience the hit that turned around Game Seven of the World Series and, if you requested it, the second-hand effects from a stream of Marlboros. Actually, you got the cigarettes whether you wanted them or not. Still and all, a really great deal. The Mets sold a lot of baseball with that package, especially in ’86. It was an incredible deal. So was the one they made in ’83 that made it possible.
2. The above paragraph was written, by me, in 2005. I believe it still holds up as testament to the abilities and impact of Keith Hernandez, first baseman for the New York Mets from 1983 to 1989. I wrote it an appropriate 17 years ago to introduce the new blog Faith and Fear in Flushing’s recall of Mets history, and who could recall Mets history without wishing to dwell on the presence of No. 17, Keith Hernandez?
3. No. 17 becomes officially retired this Saturday, July 9, 2022, one day after an aggravating Mets loss to the Marlins and 32 years since the man who wore it last played major league baseball. It’s fair to rhetorically ask, “What took so long?” though at this point the answer is irrelevant (we’ll say it was the Wilpons). Once a number or a plaque goes up, it’s tough to summon dissatisfaction with the flaws in the process that kept the ceremonies from happening all those years.
4. Yet 32 years is a very long time to have waited to bestow an honor on a figure so essential to this franchise’s identity. Then again, the Pittsburgh Pirates waited 32 years from Ralph Kiner’s final game — like Keith, Ralph finished up with Cleveland — until they decided No. 4 should be retired. From the vantage point of someone who’d spent a lifetime learning baseball from Ralph Kiner (and learning what Ralph Kiner did to a baseball in Pittsburgh), that seemed absurdly long, too.
5. Ralph and Keith, besides both theoretically filling out a blank Wordle row, proper noun prohibition notwithstanding, strike me as riding similar trajectories after their distinguished playing careers concluded. Their fame grew in so-called retirement, certainly in New York. The Pirates may not have been directly nudged into action by their erstwhile slugger and matinee idol having become a broadcasting institution for their rivals to the east, but by 1987, they could no longer dismiss all he’d meant to their history. His 4 was too big to ignore at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela. Ralph said it didn’t bother him that the club that traded him to the Cubs in 1953 waited 34 years to properly honor him, but others where the mighty Ohio River took shape saw it differently. “We’re talking here about one of the greatest players ever to put on a Pirate uniform,” his old roommate Frank Gustine vouched in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as the Kinercentric ceremonies approached. “Why it took so long I really don’t know.”
6. Why it suddenly happened for No. 17 in 2022 when every opportunity existed through the 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s perhaps speaks to the presence of a new team owner in Flushing (come to think of it, the Pirates were under fresh management in 1987). Maybe once the Mets got Mike Piazza’s 31 and Jerry Koosman’s 36 squared away, the prevailing vibe was “who’s next?” Keith’s been next for a while. The Mets were last when Keith showed up. They were first soon enough.
 The only number that matters today. 7. Keith Hernandez ranks 13th among all Mets in base hits, 12th in runs scored, 12th in doubles, 10th in his beloved ribeye steaks, 15th in extra-base hits, 12th in total bases, 10th in times on base, 40th in home runs, 6th in walks, 4th in on-base percentage, 26th in slugging percentage and 15th in OPS. Only in batting average, something for which he won a crown in St. Louis, does Keith rank in the career Top Three of a discernible category for the franchise, with his .297 average third, a long way shy of John Olerud (.315) and currently five points behind a surging Jeff McNeil. Keith Hernandez doesn’t rank first in any given offensive grouping that Baseball-Reference bothers to track.
8. Yet if you needed a Met up to continue a rally, to bring a runner home, to tie the score, to win a game, who is the very first Met you’d want up at bat?
9. Defensively, I don’t have a number handy to explain No. 17. I don’t need a number to explain No. 17 in the field. If you didn’t live through the Gold Glove defense, you’ve seen the highlights. As with the hitting, the truth lives up to the legend. From the annals of real-time jaws dropping in disbelief, however, I think it useful to share a few quotes from a June afternoon in 1984 when Keith Hernandez’s positional expertise — first displayed in snagging a Tim Raines liner that appeared destined for extra bases, then by rescuing a double play relay that Jose Oquendo bounced in the dirt, both in the same inning — was making agape the standard formation for mouths all around Shea Stadium.
• “What can I tell you, he’s the greatest. We’ll see that all year, though, not just today.”
— Davey Johnson
• “That was a great play. In fact, that was it right there because that ball was basically down the right field line for a double and a run would’ve scored. He made a hell of a play on it. In fact, I tried to get over to cover first for the double play. Hell, he even ran over to first. He wanted the ball for the double play.”
—Doug Sisk, bailed out by Keith on the play the reliever described
• “I’ve seen more great plays since I’ve been here than I’ve ever seen. I think everyone knows how great Keith is.”
—Bruce Berenyi, who’d been a Met for all of two starts
• “That’s the best-fielding first baseman I’ve seen since Gil Hodges.”
—Murray Hysen, my friend Jeff’s father, sitting in the Field Boxes behind first base and speaking for those whose frames of reference extended back a ways
I didn’t see Gil Hodges play first base, but I have been watching first basemen for 54 seasons. I’ve never seen a better fielding first baseman than Keith Hernandez. If Shea Stadium were still standing, you could fill the joint with people who’d swear the same thing.
10. Keith’s not quite seven seasons as a Met were golden. They shimmered only more in memory as 1989 receded into the rearview. Just as the 1969 Mets came to represent something wistful for those of us stuck watching the 1979 Mets, the failure of the Mets of the early 1990s to sustain the previous decade’s hard-won winning ways cast the 1986 Mets in an impossible role. I remember sometime in the smoldering aftermath of 1993, when the best Mets highlights were to be found by cueing up A Year to Remember on your VCR, a newspaper story that caught up with the recently retired Keith Hernandez. Keith said Mets fans still called out to him on the street in Manhattan that they needed him to come back. Keith being Keith scoffed that he was too old and in no shape to be of any such help. Me being me, I was thinking that if I saw Keith on the street in Manhattan, I would have called out to him that we needed him to come back.
11. During the interregnum between the twilight of Keith the Met ballplaying icon and the emergence of Keith the Met broadcasting icon, Keith Hernandez became a sitcom guest star for the ages. Never mind that Elaine Benes didn’t think the third base coach would be waving Keith in. Never mind that Newman and Kramer were enjoying a beautiful afternoon in the right field stands when their day was ruined by a crucial Hernandez error. Never mind the serendipitous meeting in the health club locker room or what a big step in a male relationship one man asking another man to help him move furniture is. The key to “The Boyfriend,” the Seinfeld two-parter that put Keith Hernandez on a whole other psychic map was Mrs. Sokol, the unemployment official who informs George Costanza that she didn’t miss an inning of the 1986 Mets and who will bend the rules and extend George’s benefits if he can produce Keith Hernandez in her midst within the hour. Mrs. Sokol was every one of us in New York in 1986 with our eyes and/or ears glued to every game. Mrs. Sokol was every one of us as of 1992, when The Boyfriend aired, missing how wonderful it was to have been a Mets fan a few short years before, clinging only to our autographed baseball and the slim chance the strange man begging for an extension will bring Keith Hernandez to our office in sixty minutes or less. It was worth a shot in the dark to believe Keith Hernandez could become part of our lives again. He was, after all, Keith Hernandez.
12. The Keith Hernandez who re-entered our daily consciousness in 2006 (for those who didn’t find themselves thinking about him as a matter of course already) wasn’t exactly the Keith Hernandez on whose every swing, dive or word we hung twenty years earlier. He couldn’t be. That Keith was Mex. The new Keith explained on the air over SNY once that Mex was his ballplaying persona. Mex was intensity personified. Mex needed to bear down in order to compete, to win. Once there were no more games to contest, Mex wasn’t necessary. Neither, eventually, were the Marlboros, thank goodness. The Keith of the booth was an evolved Keith. Older, of course. Goofier, I suppose. The intensity that made him a must-listen on the local news at 11 o’clock and a must-read in the paper the next morning had evaporated. The Keith of the booth wasn’t getting an at-bat in the eighth between Backman and Carter. The Keith of the booth, between Darling and Cohen, could sit back and relax. I have to admit, it took some getting used to.
13. Beautifully, though, Keith was still Keith. Evolved, not overhauled. Goofy at times, but no less fascinating. And still a ballplayer’s ballplayer when ball was being played. I used to roll my eyes a little that Keith Hernandez spoke in the present tense — “I’m a first baseman” — when describing the game played in front of him. Yet once a first baseman, specifically the best-fielding first baseman most of us had ever seen, always a first baseman. Same for the hitter we still wish we could have up in the clutch, never mind that the only physical activity in which we’d seen him engage lately was a rerun of him stretching prior to meeting Jerry and that chucker George. Keith the announcer is still very much in the game.
14. Next game Keith is working, pay close attention when the broadcast begins. Keith really is working. He notices things and he tells us. He notices the pitcher is warming up off the rubber if that, in fact, is what he’s doing and wonders why he’s doing it (it happened with Sandy Alcantra in Miami recently). He’s all over the center fielder shaded this way or that. He’s analyzing the size of the lead taken off first base, both from the perspective of an eleven-time Gold Glover and as someone who plotted to go first to third on a single. The goofiness is still abundant, and it’s charming as all get out — who doesn’t want to know what Hadji is up to? — but you get your baseball’s worth from Keith Hernandez. As masterful as Gary Cohen is at all facets of announcing and as insightful as Ron Darling is when it comes to pitching specifically and life occasionally, the booth is never quite whole without Keith. It’s certainly not the highbrow cocktail party that gets a wee bit out of hand by the middle innings. Just as we cherished the Keith in the middle of the Met order, we cherish every bit as much the Keith in the middle of this lineup. If he’s a little impatient around the margins with modernity or a little anxious to adios and beat traffic or drifts off into Keithland for a pitch or two, so be it. He always comes back.
15. No. 17 is being lifted up where it belongs because Keith Hernandez has done it all for this franchise. He never stopped being Keith, not in a Met championship run, not in Met absentia, not on the Met air. If the less than seven full seasons of playing somehow didn’t seem impressive enough to whoever made number-retirement decisions for decades, the almost forty years of embodying what we wanted the Mets to be pushed him over the top. Like Ralph Kiner might say, the sum of Keith Hernandez definitely adds up to more than his totals.
16. So we thank the number 17 for its service to every Met not named Keith Hernandez who wore it, from Don Zimmer in 1962 to Fernando Tatis in 2010. Some of you did it quite proud and we appreciate it. We also acknowledge utilityman Keith Miller and journeyman Keith Hughes for having played their best for us. But just as there’s truly only one No. 17 to us now and forever, there’s also only one Keith in these parts.
17. He’s Keith Hernandez. But you knew that already.
I engage in a detailed discussion regarding Keith Hernandez with Murray Hysen’s son Jeff on the new episode of National League Town. Listen to it here or via any of approximately 17 outstanding podcast platforms.
by Greg Prince on 8 July 2022 11:42 am When cleaning up after dinner, I gather momentum. It doesn’t matter that the Mets are playing. It doesn’t matter that the Mets are batting. If I have the garbage together, I want to tie it up and take it to the Dumpster. Might I miss something momentous? Probably. My non-Elias statistics tell me approximately 70% of Met home runs are hit when I step away from the television.
Sure enough, as I briefly left the living room during the fourth inning on Thursday night, the Mets ahead of the Marlins, 3-0, James McCann came to bat at Citi Field. And when I walked through the door again moments later, I was greeted with the following eyewitness report:
“You missed a three-run homer.”
I simultaneously sighed and celebrated before reaching for the rewind button of our remote control to see with my eyes what I hadn’t sensed was remotely possible. Maybe McCann would get a hit, but it hadn’t occurred to me he could hit a home run. I don’t mean merely in that situation. I mean not ever.
But James McCann — “Mac” to his manager and batterymate, I learned from the postgame interviews — is a real big leaguer with a real track record with a real ability to pop one over a fence rather than briefly above an infield. Mac homered once in April. He homered ten times last year. He’s now done it 77 times in his career.
 Dispose of the Marlins? You Bette. If I have cleanup momentum some night soon, I’ll still take out the trash when James McCann is batting, not because I don’t have confidence in the light-hitting catcher occasionally hitting heavier, but because if it worked this time, maybe it will work again. If not fully settling in and focusing my attention on a Mets game until the Mets are leading, 6-0, is what it takes, well, let’s get a 6-0 lead every night like it was Thursday night. I was settled and focused when J.D. Davis, somebody else whose at-bats I wouldn’t let the refuse fester an extra minute for, came up in the fifth with the bases loaded. A base hit, which is what Davis delivered when I was tying up the garbage an inning earlier, would have been nice. The grand slam he unloaded on Jimmy Yacabonis was four times better.
The Mets were on their way to a 10-0 win, produced in large part by the batters in the eight and nine spots in the order and protected mostly by Trevor Williams, the de facto sixth starter in the Mets’ normally five-man rotation. Williams has given the club yeoman relief in 2022 and oh no starting, mostly, except when the Mets score 10 runs. Williams has notched two wins this year, both that ended with finals of Mets 10 somebody else 0. Thursday night he shut out Miami on two hits for seven innings. Trevor is definitely a pitcher who can handle prosperity.
The Mets are looking pretty prosperous themselves again. As late as the ninth inning on Wednesday night in Cincinnati, I was beginning to wonder. They hadn’t hit on Tuesday. They hadn’t hit, at least in the clutch, for eight innings on Wednesday. I could feel myself giving into my lesser angels and wondering WTF is wrong with this team after a half-season of almost never removing my Buck-colored glasses. But then Starling Marte roped a line drive double to left that was just fair; the top of the tenth exploded with timely offense; and the Mets we remembered so fondly from previous weeks and months rematerialized. The bottom of the order and the addendum to the rotation took care of the Marlins. The Cardinals took care of the Braves in eleven with me digging deep, beneath my well of anti-Redbird animus, to urge them on — “c’mon you stupid Cardinals” was my polite suggestion. The lead in the division returned to three-and-a-half. Chris Bassitt, who might want to rethink his communications ethic (inform your team if you test positive for COVID; don’t tell everyone else you don’t plan to), is back. We occasionally lose our grip on our faith. The ballclub for which we root maintains its bedrock belief in its abilities despite our simmering fear. They know there are 162 games. They know they are capable each night.
Don’t throw that out. It’s a good quality to keep around.
Keith Hernandez is the focus of this week’s episode of National League Town. Settle in for a discussion of No. 17 here.
by Jason Fry on 7 July 2022 12:26 am With one out in the top of the ninth in Cincinnati Wednesday night, a baseball team and its adherents desperately needed therapy.
Mark Canha had just started the inning by fouling out against Hunter Strickland, conspicuously useless as a 2020 COVID Met and now somehow the Reds’ closer. The Mets had managed two runs against Cincinnati, an improvement over Tuesday night even if one of those runs had come on a Jeff McNeil grounder past a nearly sessile Brandon Drury and the other had come on a broken-bat parachute hit by Tomas Nido. But the Reds had tallied three on a night new father David Peterson looked … well, like a man who hadn’t slept properly in a couple of days.
The Mets had stayed in the picture thanks to some sparkling relief by Adonis Medina (who might get sent down by way of thanks) and the aptly named Colin Holderman, but it sure looked like they were about to lose, and it was just a little frustrating. Most obviously, there was the lack of hitting. More specifically, there was the lack of hitting against the thoroughly lousy Reds, a ragamuffin assemblage foisted on fans who deserve better. The Mets had 11 hits, which normally means three or four runs even when not firing on all cylinders, but their sequencing had been nonexistent and their luck had been inexplicably and almost comically bad. Now add in far too much Dada umpiring — I think home-plate ump Paul Clemons was using a Magic 8-ball for anything near the edge of the strike zone — and word that the horrifying Braves were winning again and it was suddenly just all too much.
Brandon Nimmo singled, but that felt like more proof that baseball is capricious and cruel and engineered to torture you. And then Starling Marte smacked a ball down the left-field line, over the third-base bag and foul. Except third-base ump Alex MacKay called it fair.
I don’t know, maybe it was fair. That’s one of the most difficult calls for an umpire. But it sure didn’t look fair to me — or to Strickland, who stared at Nimmo in disbelief as he scampered home and then spent the bottom half of the inning glowering at MacKay with cartoon steam whistling out of his ears. The game didn’t make any more sense than it had a moment earlier, but now it was the Reds who were gape-mouthed with disbelief.
(By the way, how did a game with so much farcical umpiring not feature a big moment from that cackling gremlin Angel Hernandez?)
Tapped to pitch next for New York was Adam Ottavino, whom I like while not particularly trusting. The lack of trust is a product of that sometimes disobedient slider he depends on; the liking is a product of the fact that Ottavino always looks deeply weary on the mound, weighed down by the psychic tonnage of being a veteran reliever who’s Seen Some Shit.
On Wednesday night Ottavino’s pitches were riding high, but the Reds did nothing with them. On we went to extra innings and ghost runners, with Ender Inciarte replacing Pete Alonso as the Mets’ unearned passenger. McNeil flied out, but Dom Smith snuck a double past Drury (who really shouldn’t be forced to play first) and the Mets had somehow scored. Dauri Moreta — if nothing else there are some wonderful names in that beleaguered Cincinnati pen — buzzed Eduardo Escobar, leading to some barking and brief on-field milling before Escobar flied out. (I was mostly worried that Strickland would use a brawl as cover for an opportunity to shank MacKay, which would probably lead to at least a moderate suspension.) Moreta then intentionally walked Luis Guillorme to get to pinch-hitter James McCann, which is what I would have done, seeing how McCann is 1 for 342,612 in his tenure as a Met with 342,611 ground outs.
Make it 2 for 342,613: McCann somehow lashed an RBI single to give the Mets a two-run lead, because nothing made sense any more. And then Nimmo unloaded, burying a homer in the right-field corner much as he did against St. Louis. It was one of those baseball moments where frustration gets transmuted into joy, a balloon carving madcap zigzags beneath the ceiling as all that stale imprisoned air escapes and blares a PPPPPPTTTTTTTT of amazed happy defiance.
The Mets led by five, a lead they turned over to Edwin Diaz in a non-save situation. That’s not always been a recipe for success, but Diaz was apparently feeling some frustration himself, because he simply erased the Reds with 101 MPH heat and that deadly slider. Seriously, the man had a five-run lead and that was probably the most impressive he’s ever looked in a Met uniform. Maybe the Mets should try to figure out how to keep him frustrated. Or maybe the lesson is the same as it was when the Mets were losing — that some nights nothing makes sense, because baseball is like that, and it’s maddening but OK because this time your team staggered out of the funhouse having somehow won.
by Greg Prince on 6 July 2022 9:13 am You’d prefer a win. No doubt about it, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you’d look at a 1-0 loss and gnash your teeth. The hundredth, you’d gnash a little, then grit them, then take a deep breath, then rub your eyes, then take in the image at the center of the bigger picture.
Max Scherzer went six innings in his return from an oblique injury Tuesday night, expertly mixed fastballs and sliders, gave up two singles, walked nobody, hit one batter and struck out eleven.
That’s an image that will carry you past a 1-0 loss in Cincinnati. That’s an image that will eclipse your disgust at the Mets managing fewer runs off five Red pitchers than the Reds did off Scherzer, Joely Rodriguez, Tommy Hunter and, ultimately, Seth Lugo, the only hurler on either side who clearly didn’t succeed. Lugo, who gave up the game’s lone run in the bottom of the ninth, was not alone among Mets contributing to your dentist’s askance glances come your next checkup. Starling Marte was an on-base machine (two hits, two walks) and Mark Canha went two-for-four, but nobody else in the lineup did anything terribly useful, which is definitely a drag. Gnash away if that’s where your emotions take your teeth.
Yet Max Scherzer did everything he could after being missing from action for nearly seven weeks. I guess he could’ve gone longer than six innings — so did Max, judging from his expression in the dugout after he was told he was done — but he’d been out too long to take too many chances. Now he’s as back as we could have hoped for. He looked great, he says he feels great and we have him for the second half that begins tonight.
On May 18, the night Max matter-of-factly announced no mas, the Mets elevated their record to 25-14. At the halfway point of the season it’s 50-31, indicating the club held its own in the Scherzerless interregnum. They won 25 games with Max, 25 games without him. They went 16-10 when the three established mostly healthy starters — Taijuan Walker, Carlos Carrasco and Chris Bassitt — took the ball and held the fort. They didn’t play the Braves at all. By next week, when they visit Cobb County, the Mets will have the opportunity to fend off their closest rivals with a much-bolstered rotation. Scherzer is not on track to pitch in that series, but he will pitch twice before the All-Star break. And he’ll pitch after it. Every start Max Scherzer makes is one an inevitably lesser pitcher doesn’t. The effect can’t help but elevate the entire staff and the entire team. Bulletins regarding the co-ace’s progress on the IL and plans for his rehab are no longer in the news. Ruminations on the ups and downs of identifying as a Rumble Pony will emanate from somebody else. When you see Scherzer’s name, it will be because he’s pitching for the Mets.
Did we mention Max is back? That’s the news. The very good news. More to come.
by Jason Fry on 4 July 2022 11:39 pm The Mets, wearing blue, beat the Reds, wearing red and white, by a score of 7-4 on July 4th, and what could be better than that?
OK, both teams were wearing god-awful hats from which independence should have been declared, and the Reds continue to ruin their perfectly good uniforms with a black drop shadow that fell out of MLB vogue about a decade ago. But the basic premise holds. Note also that — as Greg pointed out on Twitter — the Mets celebrated 1990’s Independence Day with a 7-4 win. (That one came against the Astros, whom we have had considerable difficulty beating in 2022.)
Midway through Monday night’s game, my kid asked me a question: Since I’d fumed about how boring the Mets’ home-run-heavy loss to the Rangers was, was I also bored tonight? After all, at that point the Mets led 4-3 and once again the only runs had scored via dingers: Brandons Nimmo and Drury had hit equal and opposite three-run shots and Francisco Lindor had put the Mets back in front with a solo homer.
It was a fair question, and I thought about it for a little bit. My answer was no, for two reasons: For one, Taijuan Walker was pitching marvelously for the Mets, continuing a recent run of solid starts that have the feel of a guy taking the next step in his development as both a pitcher and a pitching strategist. For another, Cincy’s Hunter Greene was interesting to watch — a big raw talent who doesn’t look like he’s ready but should be a lot of fun once he calluses up and figures some things out.
There was also the sight of ex-Mets everywhere: Brandon Drury is having a terrific year for the Reds after being a valuable member of 2021’s bench mob. Matt Reynolds — whom I’d completely forgotten was a 2022 Met for approximately 20 minutes back in April — looked solid with the bat and in the field. There was Albert Almora Jr., who did us a solid on Sunday by beating the Braves. I even caught sight of Hunter Strickland in the bullpen, and you could say that Alexis Diaz counts at least a little. And of course there’s the possibility that the Mets are contenders for the services of Luis Castillo or Tyler Mahle before the the month is over, potentially sending more players to the team with the other baseball-headed mascot.
And then the Mets courteously differentiated their attack after my kid and I had our conversation, with Dom Smith and Eduardo Escobar doubling in crucial extra runs (though Escobar nearly short-circuited his own rally in doing so). Drew Smith somehow survived an inning in which he was strafed by everybody except the bat boy, but Colin Holderman and Seth Lugo acquitted themselves blamelessly and the Mets had won.
They won, and on Tuesday Max Scherzer returns for the last game of the first half of the season, with Jacob deGrom down in Florida throwing actual pitches in anger against actual opponents. That’s worthy of a celebration, wouldn’t you say?
by Greg Prince on 4 July 2022 11:47 am Jacob deGrom pitched to six minor league batters on Sunday night. Five of them turned into smoldering holes in the dirt adjacent to home plate. I didn’t notice what became of the sixth. As far as we can tell, nobody was actually harmed, neither the young Jupiter Hammerheads whose future still remains ahead of them nor deGrom, he whose shoulder was pronounced as feeling “100%,” by the only person with authority on the matter, deGrom. Just as Max Scherzer declared he didn’t wish to any longer be a Rumble Pony after his first rehab start and was therefore ready to move on from facing fodder for his recovery, it’s not surprising Jacob would intimate he speeding along the road to the majors once more.
Grains of salt all around, but Max will be competing in a New York Mets uniform Tuesday night and Jacob, after testing his scapula in St. Lucie, is suddenly visible on the long-range radar. If exchanging Fourth of July presents was how we celebrated Independence Day in this country, happy red, white and blue to us!
The Third of July left us with a nice gift beyond the apparent upward turn in fortunes for the two absent righties. The Mets stopped looking sluggish and returned to slugging against the Texas Rangers. Starling Marte lined a ball out of Citi Field in the first. Eduardo Escobar, who suddenly can’t stop homering, launched one with Jeff McNeil on second, in the fourth. McNeil being on second was particularly sweet because the double to deep right that landed him there felt exactly like what the Mets have been missing of late (besides their two aces). Peaks and valleys notwithstanding, I don’t worry about the top four in the lineup. Nimmo, Marte, Lindor, Alonso…splendid. Things felt dicey from there as June ended and July began. Everything after the cleanup spot dropped off a cliff.
McNeil is well again after nursing his tight hamstring. He was batting fifth Sunday. It’s a good fit. When Jeff doubled, it showed he was in pouncing form — he and the Mets. The fourth had commenced with Pete Alonso striking out, but the pesky third strike got away from Ranger catcher Jonah Heim, which Heim deserved to have happen to him for having homered in the third and making me aware of who he was (like I don’t have enough players to bristle at in the National League). Alonso hustled to first. Heim’s throw went awry. Somewhere J.C. Martin smiled. The ball ricocheted away and Pete vamoosed to second. Opportunity knocked. Jeff knocked it in. Eduardo knocked twice.
Those are the Mets I knew the previous time I’d been at Citi Field, at the end of May. Then came June, with the Mets very much holding their own on the West Coast (5-5), taking care of schedule-mandated business against Miami and Milwaukee (7-3) and appearing sparkless versus Houston (0-4), all while Atlanta swallowed invincibility pills. Splitting the first two with Texas had me, on the eve of my return to the ballpark, if not uneasy, then just a touch antsy. We’d be in first place on the Fourth of July, everybody’s favorite mythical marker, but even the optimist that I’ve become in 2022 acknowledged a division lead that had reduced from 10½ to 2½ represented a disturbing trend. Yet that was OK, I told myself and anybody who’d listen. Take two of three from Texas, then we’re doing what we need to do. We’re winning series. We’re beating who we should beat. We should’ve beaten the Astros at least once, but no season played within the confines of the mind exactly matches reality.
The Mets did take that series from the Rangers, winning on Sunday, 4-1, and sending Texas back to wherever they came from (Arlington, I believe), while Atlanta coughed up a ninth-inning tie in Cincinnati. Three-and-a-half ahead on the Third of July would do nicely. Watching the visitors leave the field in Queens, I thought how much I enjoyed how defeated they looked. Then I thought how odd it is that for three days these Texas strangers were my concern. Interleague play, of which there’ll be more in 2023, continues to strike me as a less than optimal use of time, but what do I know? I’m just a lifelong baseball fan who tunes into every game except for the ones I attend.
 Blue skies shining on Mets fans, whatever section they were supposed to be in. I was in Promenade Sunday courtesy of my triviameister friend Mark Simon, who Saturday posed one of his best questions in ages: “Any interest in going to the game tomorrow?” A deceptively simple query, as “no” wouldn’t have necessarily been wrong (you mean I have to get my ass of the couch?), but yes was definitely the right choice. Rising, shining, commuting…it was all worth it for a beautiful day of talking and watching baseball at Citi Field. We talked more than watched, as is usually the case. This time we didn’t watch the big sign that identified the section that aligned with our tickets. A couple showed up around the bottom of the second and politely implied we were sitting in their seats. That was nonsense, we politely responded, as we’re the kind of people who get here before the first pitch and nonchalantly work references to J.C. Martin into our game recaps. We were just about to ask them to name the two statistical milestones* that would occur if the Mets beat the Rangers when we realized we were one section over from where we were supposed to be and humbly apologized for our mistake. Yet it was too nice a day for that to go down as a costly error. We climbed one largely unoccupied row up, benefited from the extra shade and everybody returned to holiday weekend splendor.
Nobody lived up to Bobby Darin’s ideal of Sunday in New York more than Carlos Carrasco, who experienced neither back tightness nor a surfeit of a baserunners, each of which doomed him in his two previous starts (both against the doomy Astros). Jacob deGrom taught us to not stare at won-lost records. Carlos Carrasco can point to his 9-4 and we can still nod appreciatively at his comeback season. We can also enjoy, as Mark and I did when not yakking, the smooth bullpen work of Joely Rodriguez, Adam Ottavino and Edwin Diaz. Only that pesky Heim, who singled with a man on, got us squirming in the ninth, but Edwin wriggled out just fine. It’s so odd that Edwin Diaz appears and we don’t feel dread. Really, my only gripe with our elite closer coming into nail down saves is that Mr. and Mrs. Met continue to pretend to blow into trumpets on “Narco” when Diaz enters. They’re faking it. Blasterjaxx is for real. Timmy Trumpet is for real. Diaz is for real. And these Mets are for real.
*Buck Showalter secured his 1,600th regular-season managerial win and the Mets notched their 4,600th regular-season franchise win. Now I’ll get out of your seat.
by Jason Fry on 2 July 2022 10:19 pm During the early part of 2022 the Mets were deadly in the clutch.
They were a lot of other things too — strong defensively and gifted with solid starting pitching — but their uncanny ability to collect big hits with games on the line felt like their defining characteristic.
Move forward into summer, and things look a bit different. Suddenly the Mets are coming up empty with runners in scoring position, leading to strings of games defined by frustration, riddled with the coulda woulda shouldas of at-bats that went the other guys’ way. Other things have changed too — most notably the starting pitchers proving physically vulnerable and/or human after all — but as fans, hitting in the clutch looms larger than everything else.
If a team has a run of hitting in the clutch, particularly in the beginning of the season, we confuse it with a lot of qualities that may or may not be present: We see grit, fortitude, preparation, battlefield cool, leadership, camaraderie and a whole lot else. Replace the hot dice with cold ones, as has happened to the Mets of late, and we wonder what moral failings have crept into the clubhouse, turning our baseball Eden into a dismal Nod.
Anyway, these problems were on display in Saturday’s thoroughly dull, dispiriting loss to the Rangers. The Mets did next to nothing in the clutch, scoring on a pair of homers by Starling Marte and Eduardo Escobar; the Rangers scored six of their seven runs on homers, making for a game that was like watching paint dry.
I suspect streaks like this weigh more heavily on fans than on players, who know far better than we that it’s a long season and luck runs hot and cold in ways that can’t be explained and will drive you crazy if you let them lure you down a rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the Braves can do no wrong and have cut the Mets’ seemingly insurmountable double-digit lead to a skinny two and a half games.
The Mets weren’t as good as they appeared then and aren’t as hapless as they’ve looked of late; reverse those characterizations and you’ve summed up the Braves. Despite how things may feel, the Mets are in fact still in first place, with the prospect of adding a pair of Cy Young winners to the rotation. Your inner fan, like mine, is probably screaming otherwise, and I’ve learned it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to argue with one’s own fandom, but there are other perspectives to keep in mind and consider quietly when fandom tires of howling alarm and needs to take a breath.
Or, if that fails, you could wait for the Mets to regain their moral compass and rediscover their better qualities, with results to match, and praise them when that day comes.
by Greg Prince on 2 July 2022 12:16 pm The Mets are 3-0 in games streamed by Apple TV+. If the only way we can have wins is by exclusivity that’s wrong, then as Luther Ingram declared in 1972, I don’t want to be right. But it was just one night…on top of two other nights…on top of the Peacock wagging its tail this past Sunday. Novelties have a funny way of becoming norms. I opted for the dependable word pictures delivered via WCBS-AM, so let’s just say that on Friday night versus the Rangers at Citi Field, the Mets sounded real good.
I don’t know if Eduardo Escobar wants to be Wright, but he delivered like the best of Met third basemen, socking the differencemaker in the fourth inning. Mark Canha had already driven in one run to tie Texas. Eduardo gave us immense momentum with his three-run shot. The Mets had four on the board. It was more than they’d accumulated in their previous three games, all losses, not coincidentally. It also represented half of the RBI total Escobar had managed in the 22 games between his cycle on June 6 and his swing off Glenn Otto. Esco’s 2022 has been rather all or nothing. Having experienced a little too much nothing, we prefer the bursts of all.
The Mets in the other seven innings they batted were all nothing, extending a disturbing trend that began in Sunday’s finale in Miami, continued during Houston’s visit to New York and lingered through at least the beginning of the Rangers’ drop-by. In their last four games, the Mets have scored in no more than one inning of each game. In the third game, they scored in no innings, which was most troubling. In the fourth game, it worked out all right, as the four runs in the fourth were enough for David Peterson, Seth Lugo, Adam Ottavino and Edwin Diaz to steer home a 4-3 victory. David was dynamite (6 IP, 10 SO, 0 BB), when not being a tad disturbing (3 ER, featuring 2 HR). If one of the veterans had produced Peterson’s line, I’d probably praise the savvy and write off the gophers. Or if the Mets had provided more of a cushion, I would have relaxed a little more. Fortunately, Lugo, Ottavino and Diaz did not require the GEICO, Progressive or Liberty Mutual insurance runs of the game.
A win, however it’s eye/earwitnessed, is always welcome. Breaking a losing streak is always welcome. Escobar is welcome to make raking more than something he does on special occasions. Fifty years ago, when Luther Ingram was weighing the pros and cons of fidelity, General Foods was introducing Stove Top Stuffing with the message that it was something you could have any night, not just for Thanksgiving. Think of it that way, Eduardo. Hitting isn’t only for eleventh cycles in franchise history or Blackout Fridays. Feel free to bust out that Fogo Power again real soon. Peterson, meanwhile, is beginning to feel essential to the meat and potatoes of the rotation, with his last three starts yielding 25 Ks, only two walks (none in his last pair of outings) and exactly what the Hefner ordered.
So put me down as in favor of Eduardo Escobar and David Peterson as well as winning. Sometimes I’m all about the last thing I heard.
The next thing you hear? Hopefully it’s the latest episode of National League Town, which explores the orange and blue blood pumping through the geographic and spiritual heart of the METropolitan Area.
by Greg Prince on 29 June 2022 9:31 pm It was tight. It was tense. It was pitched the way you would swear under oath you prefer your games to be pitched. It was the kind of game you could really enjoy for the sake of sublime baseball until you remembered you had a rooting interest.
To be fair, if your rooting interest emanated from Astroland, then it remained a good game to the not at all bitter end. But here our interests lean mightily to the Mets, and the mighty Mets, they made outs. They made twenty-seven of them, which happens most games, but they usually make offensive noise between the silences. Not in this game that ultimately grew difficult to really, really enjoy. Two hits. One walk. That was it. The most dramatic moments the Mets engineered while attempting to hit involved Jeff McNeil hanging in for twelve pitches in the first inning and Dom Smith extending an at-bat for nine in the fifth. The attempts went nowhere, mirroring the Mets’ Wednesday afternoon destination.
Justin Verlander’s watch chain was gaudily bedecked following his eight innings of shutout ball, considering all the Met batters he wore on it. There was a touch of a threat in the first — Brandon Nimmo’s leadoff double, Pete Alonso’s two-out walk, McNeil’s flirtation with a run batted in (coupla loud fouls in there) — and then there was no hint at all of a Met attack. Verlander, even at 39, will do that to a first-place team that’s been slumping. We made decent contact. Once in a while, I thought balls would fall in. I was mistaken.
Taijuan Walker’s matinee performance at Citi Field was no less impressive. Tai entered the eighth for the first time all year, barely scathed through seven. He was assigned one final batter, coinciding with the conclusion of his third trip through the Houston order. Walker — with no small hand lent by Luis Guillorme at third (at least one assist or putout in every inning from Los Manos) — held up his end of a scintillating zero-zero duel, passed it over to Edwin Diaz, and Diaz no more than played footsie with trouble. The game stayed scoreless until the ninth.
We knew Walker wasn’t going to finish the eighth and we could figure Sugar wasn’t going to be asked to pitch the ninth. For one, he threw fourteen high-leverage pitches to finish the top of the eighth. For another, the bottom of the eighth encompassed a delay following a collision on a popup in short left between Jeremy Peña and Yordan Alvarez. Alvarez got the worst of it; both had to leave the game (the popup somehow stayed in Peña’s glove). Other than presumably filling him with concern for his teammates, the lingering pause to help both Astros off the field didn’t affect Verlander, but it did mean a little extra time for Diaz to cool down. Yeah, he wasn’t coming back.
Drew Smith was Buck Showalter’s choice to maintain the tie. Drew hadn’t pitched since Saturday, the last time the Mets won (the day before Adam Ottavino set the tone for recent ninth-inning setbacks). Then there was an off day Monday, a blowout Tuesday and, with another blank space in the schedule ahead Thursday, a sense on Showalter’s part that Drew shouldn’t sit too long. Once Walker was done and Diaz was out of consideration, I didn’t have a more clever ninth-inning solution than Smith.
The Astros had all the answers in their pair of two-game series against the Mets. The last one, not counting Ryan Pressly retiring the Mets with ease (plus an umpire’s assist) in the bottom of the ninth, was provided by Jason Castro, who transformed a Smith slider into a two-run homer that put Houston up by essentially twenty. We went down to both Verlander and defeat, 2-0; are saddled with our first three-game losing streak of 2022; and have scored all of three runs in our last three games.
Which is not to say pitching duels are to be sneezed at, as allergic as we consider ourselves to defeat. For the longest time Wednesday afternoon, it felt like a great game. It felt like Seaver vs. Reuschel that day at Wrigley when Tom had a no-hitter going for eight-and-two-thirds but the Mets forgot to score on his behalf (we lost both the no-hitter, in the ninth, and the game, in the eleventh). This was about as close as you’re likely to get to two elite starters going the distance in 2022. Verlander’s credentials come without question. Honestly, he’s the only active pitcher whose mound presence puts me in mind of Seaver — so much so that I’ve mysteriously convinced myself that Verlander, an alumnus of Old Dominion, went to USC. Walker has been a Maxless/Jakeless godsend. This is the pitching we pay and pray to see, even if it’s not the result we request. Even with everybody waiting for the Astros’ injury situation to resolve, the whole affair took 2:43. Earlier in the day, I was reading Don Van Natta’s profile of Rob Manfred on ESPN.com in which a theme the commissioner struck continually, besides a desire to be loved, was the need to get games moving faster. This one moved relatively quickly and was absorbing as all get out, never mind the lack of runs for the bulk of 163 minutes. If it didn’t have wispy-hitting Castro’s ball getting out of the yard, it would have been perfect. Or at least better.
Houston left the National League following the 2012 season. I was sorry to see them go, given their fraternal connection to our birth. Can’t say I’ll mind not seeing them the rest of this regular season. They are, to put it in senior circuit context, Dodger-good. When we played the Dodgers in Los Angeles the first weekend of the month, I thought it was a validating series, boisterously splitting as we did against an opponent with too much talent to lose too often. After we dropped the two games at Minute Maid Park a week ago, I looked forward to some measure of getting even or balancing the books or just a sense that nobody on our slate was out of our figurative league. Despite Taijuan, Edwin and Luis doing their things exquisitely, the Mets didn’t show they were up to the task that faced them in these two games. Mind you, it’s only two games, and, as noted, Manfred’s predecessor was kind enough to nudge the Astros out of our immediate business, so there needs to be a bit of a shrug inherent in the irritation of the moment. Yet this 0-4 ink smudge on our otherwise marvelous 47-29 record — hint of 1969 at the Astrodome notwithstanding — will glare at me until 7:10 Friday night gets us the Rangers on (groan) Apple TV+.
Bring on the other team from Texas. Bring out the bats while we’re at it.
by Jason Fry on 29 June 2022 12:58 am Somehow it took me until June 28 to get out to Citi Field to see a Mets game. What happened? Well, there was a rainout and my usual aversion to freezing my ass off in April, but mostly life got in the way.
With July rapidly approaching, it was Emily who put things right, engineering a Father’s Day outing for her, me, her dad and Joshua. Tasked with obtaining seats, I splurged a little for a view I’d never had — the front row in left field, just to one side of what used to be the M&M’s Party Deck. I say that because I assume it’s something else now, not that I care.
It was fun watching left fielders go about their business and looking straight down at the oddly maroon warning track. Just like it was fun finally being at the park getting an up-close look at the Tom Seaver statue and wandering around Citi Field in the company of other loons in Mets regalia. It was fun, and then the game started.
Carlos Carrasco didn’t have it, which has been true far too often recently. My unique vantage point was mostly good for watching Houston home runs sail into the seats, though occasionally I could make out Mets failing to advance on the infield, or being dispensed with by Astro starter Framber Valdez. In the fifth, Carrasco was excused further duty and left in favor of Chasen Shreve, who gave no indication that he belongs on a big-league roster any longer. After that the vaguely competitive portion of the game was over and the only questions were a) if Buck Showalter would get over his aversion to putting a position player on the mound (no) and b) if Ender Inciarte would make his Mets debut (yes).
Oh, James McCann was up with two outs in the ninth and somehow didn’t ground out. That counts for something, I suppose.
One of baseball’s less celebrated but nonetheless important qualities is that even a team that cakewalks its way to a World Series title will have three or four days a year in which it gets the snot beat out of it, quite possibly by a thoroughly inferior opponent. These beatdowns keep fans humble and philosophical — those games happen, and if you’re in the park when they do, well, there are worse things to do with a beautiful summer evening than sit under a big sky and watch a balletic game played on emerald grass.
There are also better things to do with such an evening, of course — such as watching your baseball team actually win, or at least look like a competitive outfit in failing to do so. But we don’t get to pick. Some nights, all we can do is smile tightly and bear witness and tell ourselves that next time things will be better.
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