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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 8 July 2021 12:48 pm Stop me if you’ve heard these before:
1) The Mets win a thriller of a first game of a jury-rigged doubleheader.
2) The Mets drop an uninspiring second game of the same jury-rigged doubleheader.
3) WTF seven-inning doubleheaders?
We’ve been down this two-lane highway that runs out of regulation road too soon too many times to count efficiently of late. The Mets have played five shabbily short doubleheaders within the past three weeks, constituting ten games that yielded five wins and five losses. All the wins came first, which is probably preferable to digging a hole and then attempting to climb out of it. Ten wins and no losses would be more preferable. No more rain that necessitates shorter games by the pair would be logistically best of all.
Yet rain it has, thus two at a time is what we’ve played over and over. The games are slated to go seven innings each. We mention that every time because it’s such an affront to nature that it should not be allowed to slip into the normative, as if we expect two fewer innings per game, even when the admission is separate for each game — the case three separate times in these past five “doubleheaders”.
I buy the larger box of tissues when I can find it. Each box has 190 tissues. The larger box used to have 210. Before that, it had 240. I still need tissues, so I grumble to myself and toss the boxes in my shopping cart. At some point, pandemic or not, baseball will tell us we’re getting a great deal on a bargain-sized five-inning game.
Some things do remain as advertised. A Jacob deGrom start is still a Jacob deGrom start, quality implied. Quantity? “I’ll have to check with the manager.” Luis Rojas was hands-off vis-à-vis deGrom for as long as the Mets’ Wednesday afternoon affair versus the Brewers allowed. Jake went the fine-print seven innings to which MLB wishes we grow unquestioningly accustomed. Complete games are suddenly theoretically more gettable.
The Brewers collected four hits against deGrom. Two of the hits were long fly balls that mysteriously flew over the Citi Field fence. Home runs, baseball has called them since the dawn of time. One of the three true outcomes, analytics tastemakers have dubbed them more recently. Jacob deGrom giving up two runs on two swings doesn’t seem true. It seems unreal. But those were the outcomes of the game’s leadoff at-bat by Luis Urias and another in the fifth from Jace Peterson. Nobody was on base in either instance, saddling Jake with only two earned runs for his trouble, or, as we’re used to viewing two runs given up by deGrom, a month’s worth.
The Brewers also struck out ten times and walked not once while deGrom pitched, just in case you thought the earth fell off its axis Wednesday. Still, our lone/reluctant All-Star saw his earned run creep over one for 2021. Between Jake finally floating above the ohs and word coming down that the Mama’s of Corona stand at Citi Field is no more, we had double-confirmation that nothing in this world is sacred.
Fortunately, we were reminded that some things you can continue to count on. You can continue to count on Jose Peraza coming off the bench and bending late-game narratives to his will. With the seventh serving as the ninth, Jose once more made like Rusty Staub and delivered Le Grand Blow, in this case a one-out home run off the presumed untouchable Josh Hader. In rough order of significance, our modern-day pinch-hitter deluxe tied the score at two; took deGrom off the hook; and ultimately forced what the doubleheader jury-riggers call extra innings. Peraza’s batting average has wallowed in the low .200s during most of his Metsian stay. Except anecdotally when everything is on the line. Then he never makes an out.
As long as we’re going with perception, Edwin Diaz NEVER makes anything easy, except the facilitation of opposition threats. Yeah, yeah, he has a hundred saves and a devastating slider and it hasn’t been 2019 — edwinnus horribilis — since the year before last. There was a time I’d comfort myself with Closer Facts, too. That was too many “no, no, he’s really elite when you delve inside the numbers” closers ago to fully shut the door to my closet of anxieties.
Two-two in the top of tenth-ish eighth. Runner on second, courtesy of Rob Manfred (he’s quite the tablesetter). Diaz proceeded to live up to both of his reputations. He struck out his first hitter. He got his second hitter on a groundout, moving the unearned runner to third. Then a walk. Then a steal of second. Then another walk. Then hitting former MVP Christian Yelich to force in the go-ahead run. Then a bases-loaded strikeout. “Diaz limits the damage to just one run,” Gary Cohen said, which isn’t usually the summation falling behind in an extraesque inning deserves. Somehow it wasn’t wrong. The Mets were behind, yet weren’t behind by a lot. It was a relatively true Edwin Diaz outcome, administered with a spoonful of Sugar.
The medicine went down rather than euthanize us because we got the same runner on second to start the bottom of the eighth that the Brewers got to start theirs. It’s nonsense, but it’s equitable. And every reliever’s got a little Edwin in him in these new age extras. Brent Suter hit Dom Smith. James McCann walked on a three-two pitch. Unearned runner Francisco Lindor was now on third. No Met had done anything but resist the urge to swing at ball four, yet we had the bases loaded. Jeff McNeil, who you’d have thought had recorded four or five walkoff hits during the long-ago salad days of his previously promising career (2019), singled up the middle to bring home Lindor and Smith. Squirrel that away as precedent! More surprising than the 4-3 comeback win or McNeil breaking out enough to execute its crescendo was that a ball hit up the middle wasn’t shifted into an out or two.
What could be better than the jaws of defeat being left unsated upon the very last swing of the afternoon? Obviously, nothing else that was going to happen the rest of Wednesday. It’s a Mets doubleheader. We win one, we lose one. It’s not guaranteed, but it does behave as destiny. Yet the night game awaited a couple of hours later, as did my seat for it, so I stuffed a little first-game, first-place optimism into my security-approved tote bag and boarded a train for Woodside looking forward to disrupting the established twinbill pattern. Like Jacob deGrom giving up almost nothing and Jose Peraza coming through clutchsistently, going to a game as if that’s something a person does is one of the happier developments of the 2021 season. I didn’t do that in 2020. I didn’t do it in 2021 until a couple of weeks before, a night I considered an epic milestone on my life’s journey — My First Game Since the Pandemic.
My second game since the pandemic was just my second game of the season. It didn’t feel a little strange or surprisingly exalted. It felt hot, which dovetailed well with informal Met promotion Humidity Night (first 12,000 received an endless shvitz). It also felt good to sit with my friend Brian, who graciously invited me, and talk baseball for seven innings. Nine innings would have been preferable, certainly on slightly less of a steambath of a night.
The Mets’ track record of winning first games and not winning second games hung heavy in the air, just like the air hung heavy in the air. Succeeding deGrom as starting pitcher was Robert Stock, the 1,141st Met ever and the first to wear 89. “Just give me whatever the temperature is at first pitch,” Stock presumably requested of clubhouse manager Kevin Kierst.
Stock started because, what, ya got somebody else handy? Shallow rotation depth is the soft underbelly of the first-place Mets (and I say that as one who knows from having a soft underbelly). It was either the guy the Cubs decided didn’t fit their needs anymore, or Nick Tropeano — a.k.a. Nicky the Trope; a.k.a. The 27th Man; a.k.a Guy Who Gets to Dress but Never Gets to Pitch. The starting staff is so shallow at present that this Sunday, Luis Rojas is considering Less Jacob deGrom as his No. 5 starter. Having declined his incredibly earned All-Star selection, DeGrom would be going on three days’ rest and giving the Mets not many innings by design. I didn’t realize it was the last week of the season already.
DeGrom is the best. Less deGrom is a sign of desperation. Robert Stock simply wasn’t the worst. He gave up a two-run homer in his three innings. He’s Robert Stock. It was steamy. It was fine. We faced Brett Anderson, not to be confused with the customarily brilliant Brandon Woodruff from Monday night nor the largely unconquerable Corbin Burnes (5.2 IP, 1 ER) from Wednesday afternoon. The Brewers have some excellent starters. Anderson isn’t necessarily one of them. Anderson as a Dodger was the Mets’ piñata from Game Three of the 2015 NLDS, their godsend of a breather from Kershaw and Greinke. Brett Anderson’s been giving up four earned runs every nine innings throughout a yeoman-style career that stretches back to 2009.
Somehow the Mets batters Wednesday night confused Anderson with masters of the mound past and present. Over four innings, New York mustered three singles. Nobody walked. Maybe it was too hot for a walk, let alone a run. The slightest breeze coincided with the one Met rally of the evening. Wait — is it a rally if it all it ends up doing is leaving its proponents dismayed? At first, there was no way grand first-game type events weren’t stirring. We had overcome Josh Hader. We had overcome Edwin Diaz. We couldn’t overcome Brad Boxberger?
Versus Brad Boxberger, or, as I reflexively call him, Bruce Boxleitner in the sixth, Brandon Nimmo worked an exquisite Brandon Nimmo walk. It had nine pitches, it had loud fouls, it had discernment, it had determination, it had “GOOD EYE,” it had all that stuff that makes a fan feel supersavvy for appreciating deeply. After Nimmo walked, McNeil the walkoff hero from daylight walked. It was also an accomplishment kind of walk — seven pitches. Boxleitner…er, Boxberger was clearly rattled. Or clearly ineffective. Let’s say ineffective, because calling him rattled would give too much credit to the jamoches sitting behind me shouting for the umpire to CHECK HIS BELT!!! Brian had us in very good seats, so the delusion that a person could be heard above the din was stronger than usual. As were the jamoches’ vocal cords.
Having lost two battles, Brad the Brewer (not Bruce the actor) went full farce on Jonathan Villar. Four balls, no strikes, bases loaded. How could you not love the Mets’ chances to crack eggs and make omelets on a night when Citi Field’s concrete was as hot as a frying pan? We had Lindor, followed by Smith, followed by Alonso coming up. Basically, all you have to do is not strike out three consecutive times and you’ll likely notch something on the scoreboard besides another zero.
Neither Brian nor I said in advance, “they’re all gonna strike out,” but we didn’t have to. Deep in our respective sweaty bones, we could sense the futility. It’s the Mets fan equivalent of a trick knee that can feel rain over the horizon. The rain kept away from the ballpark for a change. But not the inevitable futility in a night game that follows the euphoria of a day game.
Lindor struck out.
Smith struck out.
Alonso struck out.
Your first-place Mets, ladies and gentlemen, never getting too big for their britches.
Brad Boxberger’s 36 pitches hatched six true outcomes — seven counting the reality that the Mets were not forging another delightful comeback. Miguel Castro made certain the game would extend out of reach, and Hunter Strickland, another baseball nomad who numbers among the Silent Generation Met diaspora, came on to hear barely a murmur of protest from members of his former team in the seventh. The seventh, in case you’ve forgotten, functioned as the ninth. We lost, 5-0. Had there been more innings, we would’ve lost 8-0. The vibe was as inescapable as the humidity and, like the Mets, we in the stands didn’t put up much of a fuss about it (even the jamoches disappeared after the sixth). Brian and I were having such a pleasant score-oblivious conversation as the seventh ended that it took us a beat to remember the game was over.
Seven-inning ballgames certainly direct a person through the air-conditioned exits 22% sooner. At least we got to take home the memory of what happened during the eight innings prior to our arrival. Also our soaked shirts.
by Greg Prince on 6 July 2021 12:21 pm One half of a season is behind the New York Mets and so is the rest of the National League East. You can’t ask for a much better situation following 81 games. The chips don’t settle that way very often.
The Mets have finished the statistical first half in first place six times previously. They’ve won their division six times previously as well, but the direct correlation measures only 50 percent. In half of the relevant sample size, the halfway lead held like hell: 1986, 1988 and 2006. All those seasons’ Mets teams were in first at the half by a lot and all of those seasons’ Mets teams won their title by a lot. In the other half of the sample size — 1970, 1984 and 2007 — the halfway lead was more tenuous and hellishly failed to hold, mostly because a scientific study has revealed you can’t win ’em all.
The 2021 Mets hold first place today by four games, same margin as in ’07 (no trigger intended). It’s a cushion, not a fortress. It’s also better to have in hand than aspire toward. The 1969, 1973 and 2015 Mets didn’t need to be in first place after 81 games to finish first after 162, but every other Mets team straining to reach the top probably could have used the boost.
Ultimately, all historical data of this nature is anecdotal. Fun to invoke in early July, of limited utility by early October. If the second 81 games live up to the first 81 games, then we’ve got ourselves a narrative. Otherwise, we’ve got a four-game lead off a 44-37 record, our least gaudy first-place record at this stage of a season, incidentally. Your elementary math skills tell you, correctly, that 44-37 multiplied twice equals 88-74. Your sense of baseball numbers tells you, intuitively, that a pace to win fewer than 90 games isn’t a pace that equals a glide path to the postseason, even in a division where the universally sub-.500 competition has yet to straighten itself out. If the Nationals, Braves, Phillies and Marlins continue to stumble, we have fairly few worries, no matter how anxiety-riddled we tend to be as a people. If any among our rivals suddenly surges, well, we’re gonna need to pick up the pace.
That’s why they make second halves: to write the rest of the story. We’d prefer the inks used be orange and blue, please and thank you.
At the end of the first half, the Mets of this year were both very much the Mets of this year and the Mets for whom we’ve wished this year. They won on Monday night, 4-2. They’ve won four separate times this season, 4-2. That’s a quintessential 2021 Mets score. Sound starting pitching that ferries you safely between Port Jefferson and Bridgeport. Hippocratic relieving that first does no harm. Just enough hitting. You’d like more hitting. You’d always like more hitting, yet you understand you only have so many five-run sixths and six-run sevenths stashed in your holiday-weekend kit bag. Four runs off your fellow first-place Milwaukee Brewers — 11-game winning streak recently completed and, when they dress in navy and yellow, 26 neckerchiefs shy of certification as the world’s most mature Cub Scout troop — was a veritable towerful of them, especially considering how few you seemed en route to gathering as the 81st game got underway.
None. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Bupkes. That’s more ways to say “zero” than runs the Mets wound up scoring. Versus Brandon Woodruff and his 1.87 ERA (about twice what Jacob deGrom has posted), you would have given an eye tooth for 1.87 runs after a few innings. We weren’t getting any runs. We weren’t getting any hits. Woodruff started out totally stifling the Mets and then grew tougher. Nine up, nine down, the last three on strikeouts. Tylor Megill wasn’t as impenetrable, but he did match his opposing moundsman until the fourth, when Ghost Baby — Tylor’s family nickname, we were informed from Tylor’s mom during his parents’ charming interview with the charming Steve Gelbs — got nicked for a solo homer by Omar Narvaez. We were down, 1-0, which, in the moment, felt like the tallest terrain imaginable.
How do you scale such an imposing mountain? With as many steps as it takes. In the bottom of the fourth, Brandon Nimmo characteristically beamed and melted Woodruff’s base camp by doubling down the left field line. Francisco Lindor considered the challenge his team faced if the opportunity Nimmo represented was to be wasted and selflessly sacrificed one out for one base.
Our 21st-century sabermetric sensibilities may have been scandalized — DON’T BUNT! EVER!! OOH, BRIAN KENNY IS GOING TO BE SO MAD WHEN HE SEES THE TAPE!!! — but, son of a gun, the Met who is compensated more lavishly than any Met before him might have known what he was doing. Because Lindor, who doesn’t double at will (if he could, he probably would), moved Nimmo to third by any means necessary, it was going to take no more than one reasonably distanced fly ball to score Nimmo and tie the game against one of the best nondeGrominational pitchers in the league. Dom Smith came up next and delivered that exact fly ball.
It worked. I won’t complain about what worked.
Woodruff and Megill continued to work as well, Megill through five (two hits, two walks, no more runs on the board, a proud mom and dad in the stands), Woodruff into the seventh with no further incident…until The Third Time Through the Order. Act III was Woodruff’s undoing. It was where the mostly sleepy Met bats woke up and clattered. Lindor was satisfied to take ball four. Smith singled, however, and Pete Alonso — who still hasn’t homered more than once all year at Citi Field — lashed a double to score Francisco easily from second and Dom strenuously from first. Dom may not run fast, but he and his short strides, particularly between third and home, were to be neither deterred nor denied. The 3-1 lead Alonso provided was soon extended by Michael Conforto, busting out of his two-for-a-million slump with a solid single to bring in Pete.
Exit Mr. Woodruff, his ERA having ballooned over two. Don’t tell other NL managers, but only deGrom gets better the third time through a lineup.
The 4-1 lead was to be nurtured by the Met bullpen, a night care center you sometimes have no choice but to trust with your precious bundle of runs. After Aaron Loup in the sixth and Seth Lugo in the seventh had so beautifully handled the 1-1 tie, Trevor May looked after our bouncing, baby bulge in the eighth without dropping it on its head. In the ninth, the trumpets sounded for the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy himself, Edwin Diaz. The sound effects caused the Brewers to stir from their own slumber. Diaz gave up a single to Willy Adames, a walk to Narvaez and a single to Tyrone Taylor that scored Adames. Home viewers wavered between sticking pins in their Edwin Diaz dolls or extricating them from the last time he appeared on their screens. Again, whatever works.
A Potsdam Conference at the mound seemed to calm Edwin down. The closer proceeded to strike out Jace Peterson, strike out Keston Hiura, fly out Jackie Bradley, Jr., and snatch back our faltering faith in him. Yeah, Sugar, we knew you had ’em the whole time!
Same for our first-place Mets, comprised of names we haven’t seen in every lineup this year, but have ya noticed they’re almost all here again? The projected starters, save for reportedly nearly healed J.D. Davis, are starting. The valiant provisional starters who defended first place through May and June now constitute Depth City. You look to the bench, you see Villar, Pillar, Guillorme, Peraza, McKinney, Nido. In April, we considered them spare parts if we considered (or knew) them at all. Now we’ve learned for ourselves what they can do, and on the eve of the second half of a first-place season, they are a strength Luis Rojas can flex like they’re Donnie Stevenson’s biceps.
Conforto hinted at a personal comeback Monday night. Nimmo didn’t need one; he’s been “back” ever since he got back. McNeil is getting loose. Smith and Alonso may not be going deep, but they’re taking us far. Lindor may be leading us there. We’ll never fully embrace our bullpen when a game actively hangs in the balance, but I think relief pitchers understand they were born suspect (nothing personal, fellas). We’re down net-one starting pitcher from our rotation, but preternaturally poised Megill has kept us from being down two. He’s a big reason we won by two and still lead by four.
First-place Mets. Eighty-one games to go. At the risk of saying it out loud, this ain’t too bad.
by Jason Fry on 4 July 2021 11:45 pm By definition, a Sunday afternoon spent beating a pair of American League All-Stars en route to winning by five is time well spent.
That’s what the Mets did on July 4, racking up four runs in 3 1/3 innings off All-Star Gerrit Cole, whose situations were as sticky as his grip might no longer be, and then pounding All-Star Aroldis Chapman in an inning that went from tense to celebratory to anticlimactic in a hurry.
The Mets jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a first-inning home run by Dom Smith, which would have been a mere flyout in a park sized for adults, but hey, we didn’t set the dimensions. In the bottom of the second, though, a Francisco Lindor error turned a double play into two extra runners and the Yankees put up a three-spot against Marcus Stroman. That could count as an alibi, except Stroman’s location was poor on a number of key pitches and his stuff was missing its usual crackle — he recorded no Ks against a lineup not exactly bristling with high-average hitters.
The Mets were screwed out of a potential comeback in the top of the third, when they challenged a blown call on Brandon Nimmo at first only to have the replay-review umps insist that Nimmo was indeed out when he was clearly safe. Since things eventually turned out OK, I’ll spare you two or three indignant, venom-spitting paragraphs and instead simply note that baseball’s greatest tragedy is it has to be entrusted to the dick-self-stepper-onners who run MLB.
After the Yankees tacked on another run to make it 4-1, the Mets rose up in indignation against Cole in the fourth: Michael Conforto singled, Jeff McNeil singled, Billy McKinney walked, Tomas Nido singled in a run and Nimmo singled to drive Cole from the mound and cut the deficit to a single run.
The hits from Nido and Nimmo were excellent to see because they wounded the Yankees, which goes without saying, but even more appreciated because they were hard, clean singles over the infield rather than do-or-die uppercuts aimed at the farthest reaches of the ballpark — any road to victory is worth walking, but the Mets played the kind of relentless, uptempo game that’s been seen too rarely in 2021, and it was a welcome change.
Lindor snuck a ball through the infield to tie the score against Jonathan Loaisiga, though some bad baserunning by Nimmo helped damp a potential rally. (Honestly, Brandon — you’re not going first to third when there’s a catcher on the bases in front of you and Aaron Judge patrolling right field.) Loaisiga then held the Mets at bay and in the bottom of the 5th disaster loomed as some addled strike-zone judgment and a Stroman wild pitch (which fortunately didn’t decapitate Luke Voit) let DJ LeMahieu scamper home with the go-ahead run.
The top of the seventh was handed to Chapman, who had the recipe for success in his pocket: throw fastballs above the zone to Pete Alonso, who’d spent much of the afternoon swinging underneath them and then looking agonized about having done so yet again. On a 1-2 count, Chapman inexplicably opted for a slider that caught too much plate; Pete swung from his heels and walloped it over the left-field fence, leaving Chapman with his hands on his head and Aaron Boone staring at the field with the expression of a man trying to pass a kidney stone after four hours at the DMV.
It got worse: Chapman hit Conforto, walked McNeil (who ground out a terrific eight-pitch AB) and exited to boos, replaced by Lucas Luetge. Enter a parade of Mets pinch-hitters: Luetge walked Kevin Pillar, fanned James McCann and faced Jose Peraza with the bases loaded and one out.
Peraza drove a 2-2 slider to the left-field wall, over the head of Tim Locastro … and into the glove of a fucking idiot in a Conforto jersey who reached a good two feet below the top of the wall, turning Peraza’s drive into a ground-rule double and costing the Mets a run. I hope said fucking idiot was banned from all future baseball games and had RUN TIMO RUN tattooed on his forehead as a reminder that he is and always will be a fucking idiot, no doubt birthed of fucking-idiot stock and a lead-pipe cinch to bring yet more fucking idiots into a world that would be a better place without them.
(And what kind of flashback do you think Tony Tarasco had over in the first-base coaching box?)
Fortunately for our wanna-be Bartman, Luetge then served up a hit to Nimmo that it made it 9-5 Mets, followed by a Lindor single that scored Nimmo. The eruption buried the Yankees, who went down on eight pitches against Seth Lugo to give the Mets the game and the series.
(The schedule indicates a second game was played, but I cannot confirm this and so shall commit no further pixels to what might or might not have happened later in the evening.)
Look, it would be foolhardy to assume a two-day flurry of hits and runs have transformed the Mets’ hitters from meek to mighty; Sunday’s first game was a disorienting mix of patient, successful ABs and frantic ones built around swing paths aimed at the moon. One way for a team to look better is to run into a team that’s far more of a mess; that can be confused for actually being better but isn’t necessarily the same.
Still, six-run final innings will play well against anybody, and they play particularly well when they come against the Yankees, in their skeleton-friezed mausoleum, and on George Steinbrenner’s birthday. Hell, those are the kind of fireworks that make you want to put your hand over your heart and wave a flag, regardless of the date on the calendar.
by Greg Prince on 3 July 2021 7:04 pm Brandon Nimmo brightened the grim Bronx skies Saturday afternoon. Is there anything that ray of light can’t do?
Nimmo, like Jeff McNeil and Michael Conforto fairly recently, returned from the injured list and reminded us that, oh yeah, we had players in place before we fell in love with players who replaced them, and we liked that first bunch of players pretty well. Also like his predecessors in recovery, Nimmo came out ready to hammer the baseball. The veneer of optimism an 8-3 thrashing of crosstown rivals has provided will obscure the fact that since both McNeil and Conforto looked pretty good early, they’ve appeared less than fully healed from a hitting standpoint.
So let’s forget the slumps of Mike and Jeff and focus on the immediate exploits of leadoff man Brandon, getting on base via the base knock three separate times on Saturday and truly catalyzing the Mets’ victory over the Yankees. It was the 55th time New York (N) has beaten New York (A) in regular-season play since June 16, 1997, tying it for the 55th-best Mets win ever against the Yankees…because every time the Mets beat the Yankees is the absolute greatest event in human history.
True, the Subway Series doesn’t have much of that Dave Mlicki/Matt Franco zing left to it after a quarter-century of luxury-priced gimmickry, but would you have rather the Mets lost to this particular team? I didn’t think so.
Good to have Wyoming’s own ambassador of sunshine warming all five boroughs of New York on a chilly holiday weekend. And speaking of gifts from the western half of the USA, how about ex-Mariner and erstwhile Diamondback Taijuan Walker? Dude’s been dependable as the clocks in Arizona (where they mostly don’t observe daylight saving time) ever since he got here. Set him once, and he just keeps ticking. Against the Yankees, Walker was whirring away, giving up no runs and no hits, thus adding intrigue to a scoreboard that awaited crooked numbers from the visitors. Once Nimmo & Co. engineered a three-spot in the top of the fifth, there was opportunity to breathe on offense and tense up a bit when we were on defense. Was this going to be a serious no-hit bid?
No, not really. Our oughta-be All-Star was throwing a passel of pitches in denying the Yankees hits, so you kind of knew that the first chance Luis Rojas had to come and fetch him from the mound, he would take it. Sure enough, the first home team hit of the day — a lazy fly ball that cleared the right field fence a few feet beyond the basepath between first and second, fungoed with one out in the bottom of the sixth — gave the manager license to get his bullpen up and keep Taijuan’s pitch count in low triple-digits.
The score just before Aaron Judge swung and lofted his elongated can o’ corn was 8-0. We had the 8, so Luis could do what Luis needed to do. At the end of the sixth, the score was 8-3, spurring a touch of discomfort, especially at the sight of Miguel Castro, but former IL resident Jeurys Familia doused Castro’s potential blaze, and Familia and Drew Smith constituted a dual-nozzled fire extinguisher the rest of the way.
Dom Smith had three hits and three ribbies. Francisco Lindor was on base four times. Jose Peraza and Kevin Pillar came through. Even McNeil hinted at a breakout. They were all here when the week began and the Mets barely did anything with their bats. Now they’re joined by Nimmo, and Nimmo does what Fred Wilpon mistakenly believed Art Howe did. He lights up a room.
Even dreary Yankee Stadium.
by Jason Fry on 2 July 2021 1:07 pm Give this much to the Mets during their current run of troubles: They’re finding new ways to lose.
But then that’s appropriate for the ballpark they were trapped in Thursday night: White Flight Stadium (or whatever the Braves are calling their shameful taxpayer-extorted shrine to suburbia these days) may not quite be the house of horrors that Miami’s Soilmaster Stadium is for the Mets, but it’s awful close. Bad things happen here if you show up wearing orange and blue: walkoff homers, walkoff bunts, inexplicable errors, and a host of other mishaps and mischances.
On Thursday the bad things came early and then they came again late. Jacob deGrom, the Met most resistant to the Cobb County blues, was handed a 1-0 lead but gave up a leadoff triple to Ehire Adrianza, who came home on an Ozzie Albies single. (Adrianza is rapidly ascending the fraternal ranks of Braves Who Are Pains in the Ass.) DeGrom put Austin Riley in an 0-2 count and threw him a four-seamer on the outside edge of the plate — the pitch he wanted and the desired location pretty much dotted.
Riley hit it over the fence for a 3-1 lead, causing deGrom to rail at the cosmos in the relative privacy of the dugout.
(Let’s note here that Riley is another member of the BWAPITA corps.)
It looked like a night where deGrom might have committed the sin of pitching like a mere mortal — in the second, he allowed a leadoff double to Abraham Almonte, who should have scored on Kevan Smith‘s single but only advanced to third. But DeGrom, at this point no doubt stewing, then did what he does best in this park, fanning Ian Anderson, Adrianza and Freddie Freeman to extinguish the threat. From there he was all but unhittable, at one point striking out eight in a row. So much for flirtations with mere mortaldom.
The Mets drew closer thanks to a Dom Smith homer, then tied the game in the top of the ninth with another Smith longball off Will Smith. (It’s obligatory for me to note that the Braves’ pitchers for the night were Anderson, Chris Martin and Smith, three frontmen for a rather strange music festival. Fortunately, the Mets left Kenny Rogers by the side of the road somewhere.)
At this juncture we should consider an age-old baseball-fan quandary: If your team’s down 3-1 on a bleak evening, would you rather they go gentle into the night or claw back furiously only to lose ungently? Because the Mets opted for the latter, and the disaster came quickly.
It started with Seth Lugo, who two nights ago danced through the raindrops and came out dry but wasn’t so lucky this time. To open the Braves’ ninth, Lugo turned a Guillermo Heredia swinging bunt into man on second, nobody out by throwing a ball past Pete Alonso that he should have put in his pocket.
(What did the Mets do to Heredia during his brief time with them to make him such an enthusiastic member of BWAPITA?)
It looked like Lugo might get out of it: He retired Pablo Sandoval, with Heredia crossing to third, and struck out Smith for the second out. Ronald Acuna Jr. was given first base for free, which was only wise, and it looked like the regulation game would come down to Lugo vs. Ender Inciarte, whose BWAPITA credentials are impeccable. Lugo got ahead of Inciarte 0-2 and then tried to pick him off with everything in his arsenal, dotted on the edges of the strike zone. It was an approach that would have retired 90% of enemy batters, but Inciarte turned in a terrific at-bat, somehow resisting a nearly perfect 3-2 sinker just off the outer edge for an eight-pitch walk that loaded the bases.
Then, on the next pitch: fatality with a side of you gotta be kidding me. Freeman — not a member of BWAPITA because that’s reserved for guys who don’t scare the shit out of us in the first place — spanked Lugo’s first pitch off the pitcher’s foot, sending it caroming to Luis Guillorme on the grass in front of third. Guillorme threw it to first, Freeman beat it, and the Mets had lost.
In hindsight, Guillorme’s only play was a force at third — Acuna’s been slowed by injuries and got a bad break off second, and Guillorme might have beaten him to the bag. And yes, Lugo and Luis Rojas were screaming at him to make that play. But they could see what Guillorme couldn’t. Acuna was behind Guillorme as he was charging towards home for the first necessary ingredient of any play — the ball. To make the play at third, you’re asking Guillorme to register that Acuna has gotten a bad break behind him, secure the ball, arrest his homeward momentum, spin, locate third, and beat a by-now-accelerating Acuna to the bag. Guillorme’s one of the best Mets defenders I’ve seen in the last decade, but that’s asking too much even of him. He took the only play he had, and he made it as close as a fielder could. It wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t enough, and now the Mets get to play the Yankees for what will undoubtedly be three delightful evenings of low-stakes baseball with no additional emotional freight. If things go badly — or even if they go well but you find your anxiety spiking — just remind yourself that at least we’re not in Cobb County anymore.
by Greg Prince on 1 July 2021 1:48 pm Elton John’s “Levon” was “born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas Day when the New York Times said, ‘God is dead, and the war’s begun.’” What exactly does that mean? As Jimmy Rabbitte said in The Commitments regarding the lyrics to “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in the imaginary interview he conducted throughout the movie with Eurovision host Terry Wogan, “I’m fucked if I know, Terry!” But I do know it sounds like a pretty depressing beginning to a person’s life, fictional or otherwise.
Thomas Szapucki seemed destined for a better start than Levon, certainly Metwise.
The young man himself was born in Toms River, breeding ground for the eventual major league careers of Al Leiter and Todd Frazier. As identified with the town as Al and Todd are, they didn’t more or less share a name with it. Further, Thomas Szapucki was born on June 12, 1996. The perpetually overmatched Mets won for a change on June 12, 1996. They topped the perennial powerhouse Braves, 3-2. You might think if anybody was born to give birth to a Baseball-Reference page full of immediate ebullience, it might be Thomas Mathew Szapucki, especially given that he was wearing a Mets uniform upon MLB arrival and was facing the very same Braves franchise that fell to the Mets the day he was born.
The reality was not even close to that. So let’s call what Szapucki delivered Wednesday night in Atlanta a work in progress. But it was a start. And as Jimmy Rabbitte’s mystical foil Joey “The Lips” Fagan wisely intoned after the Commitments’ unpromising first rehearsal, “I believe in starts.”
Technically, Szapucki’s start to MLB statistics-keeping came in relief. Relief was desperately needed on a night that went awry long before young Thomas got loose in the visitors’ bullpen at Truist Park. Starter David Peterson didn’t have it, unless you want to count a sore right side as “it”. Why was David Peterson’s right side sore? Tests were to be conducted after the game. If David Peterson’s right side was watching the game rather than participating in it, we’d understand the getting sore…at least until falling frustratingly far behind gave way to falling laughably far behind.
Peterson and his right side left in the midst of an inning when the Braves scored seven runs on top of the four they already had. Those first four enemy tallies wiped out the blip of promise that began the night. Pete Alonso had homered in the top of the first, another “I’ll show you” swing apparently directed at me for suggesting the once-celebrated slugger mostly hits singles nowadays. That was Pete’s second homer this week (you’re welcome, everybody). Alas, the early 2-0 lead was gone with the wind provided by a hurricane’s worth of Atlanta offense.
Peterson exited, Sean Reid-Foley entered, and perhaps Sean Reid-Foley suffered from vertigo attributable to the half-dozen times he’s been sent down and called up this season. Reid-Foley’s latest recall was in response to a three-day roster opening that arose when Marcus Stroman went on bereavement leave. That opening is about to close, and likely with it, SR-F’s latest window to major league meal money. Between David and Sean, the Mets recorded ten defensive outs and allowed ten runs.
Exit Reid-Foley, enter Szapucki. No pressure, kid. Your team is down eight runs. Relax and have fun!
Also, nothing but pressure, kid. You’re in the big leagues now. You’ve been in pro ball since 2015, but this is where you’ve been aiming toward since those days at William T. Dwyer High School in West Palm Beach when you caught enough of the attention of the Mets to have them draft you in the fifth round. You climbed the ladder from the lowest rungs of the Gulf Coast League and made your way north slowly. You had to pause for Tommy John surgery, yet got back on those pegs, and finally it was your moment. You were put on this earth to skip the light fandango and turn cartwheels ’cross the floor.
On June 12, 1996, when the Mets edged the Braves at Shea Stadium, five of the players who represented New York could claim something in common with the just-born Szapucki. They could each go back into their archives of choice — the Internet was just learning to walk, so the library was probably the best bet — and find a box score recording the Mets’ doings the day he was born.
• Center fielder Lance Johnson went 1-for-4 and scored a run. On the day he was born, July 6, 1963, the Mets were beaten at the Polo Grounds by the Pirates, 11-3. Al Jackson fell to 6-9. The Mets fell to 29-54.
• Left fielder Bernard Gilkey went 2-for-4, drove in two runs and stole a base. On the day he was born, September 24, 1966, the Mets were nipped by the Reds, 4-3, at Crosley Field. Hawk Taylor singled in Ron Hunt in the top of the ninth, and Greg Goossen came up with the tying and go-ahead runs on base, but made the final out.
• Catcher Todd Hundley took an ohfer. On the day he was born, May 27, 1969, the Mets sprayed a dozen hits around Shea, but scored only a pair of runs en route to a 3-2 loss to Al Santorini and the expansion San Diego Padres. It was the Mets’ fifth consecutive defeat, a matter of probably no concern in the Hundley household, where Todd’s dad and catching mentor Randy could easily shrug off his Cubs dropping a 5-4 decision in San Francisco. For one, Randy had himself a new son (he played that night at Candlestick; times were different). For another, Chicago led the newly formed National League East by a whole bunch — 5½ over the Pirates, 8 ahead of the Cardinals, and nine over the two teams tied for fourth, the hapless Phillies and the ne’er-do-well Mets. Little did Randy Hundley know that the very next day the 1969 Mets would give birth to an eleven-game winning streak…or that his infant boy would grow up to set slugging records as a Met catcher in 1996.
• First baseman Rico Brogna went 2-for-4, singling and doubling before leaving for a pinch-runner in the eighth. On the day he was born, April 18, 1970, the Mets won, thrashing the Phillies, 7-0, at Shea. Nolan Ryan struck out a club-record fifteen, walked six and went the distance on a one-hitter that defied pitch counts (again, times were different).
• The starting pitcher for the Mets against Atlanta the night Thomas Szapucki entered the world? It was Mark Clark. Not a lefty like Szapucki, but let’s consider Mark the rookie’s patron saint. Clark, born on May 12, 1968, when the Mets split a doubleheader with the Cubs, set a fine example for the youngster, not only going eight and striking out nine when striking out nine wasn’t something a pitcher did every day, but outdueling Greg Maddux, merely the winner of the previous four National League Cy Youngs. Mark Clark gave the 1996 Mets their most consistent starting pitching, racking up fourteen wins for an outfit that posted Ws only 71 times in all. You could do worse for Met pitching in any year than Mark Clark.
You couldn’t do much worse for Met pitching in any year than what the Mets got Wednesday from Peterson, Reid-Foley and, sad to say, Szapucki. Thomas neither pitched particularly well nor fielded his position with aplomb. The first Brave to score on the rookie’s watch came home when a potential rundown imploded because Szapucki didn’t think to pursue the dead-to-rights Dansby Swanson between third and home. That runner was inherited from Reid-Foley. The rest that scored between the time Szapucki escaped the fourth down, 11-2, and before succeeding pitcher Albert Almora, Jr., (you read that right) surrendered a three-run bomb to Ozzie Albies, which was posted to Thomas’s ledger. Luis Rojas had hoped to ride his spanking new southpaw clear to the end of the horror show. As a minor league starter, Szapucki was positioned to give the Mets length. But in the ninth, it was fair to infer he was feeling kinda seasick as the crowd called out for more.
Still, he threw his first 82 pitches in the big leagues. He got those out of the way. True, seven of them became hits…and three more put a runner on base via ball four…and the three-and-two-thirds innings he pitched yielded six earned runs and inscribed a maiden ERA of 14.73 onto his Baseball-Reference page…and his team was down by fifteen runs when Rojas finally and mercifully pulled him…but it was a start.
The ending was Braves 20 Mets 2. How, you might wonder, are the Mets still a first-place team after a pounding of such epic proportions?
Fucked if I know, Terry!
***
Only slightly more stunning than an eighteen-run loss is the Mets’ embrace of their distinguished 1990s alumnus Bobby Bonilla. Our former third baseman/right fielder/goodwill ambassador joined with the Mets to promote sleeping in a suite at Citi Field. What a way to celebrate Bobby Bonilla Day, eh? Want a better way? Listen to this swell episode of the Hey Buddy! podcast in which I join co-host Ari Ecker to lovingly remember the Bobby Bo 1.0 era at Shea. (OK, maybe not that lovingly.)
by Jason Fry on 30 June 2021 12:43 pm James McCann sure has some strange at-bats.
I’m not talking about the crotch readjustment before every pitch, which I really want Steve Gelbs to inquire about one day. (Did his Little League coach try to get him to stop? Has his mom and/or wife ever wished he wouldn’t?) I’m talking about the fact that the Mets’ primary catcher has a fair number of at-bats where he looks absolutely hopeless for the first few pitches, so much so that you briefly wonder if he’s holding the bat upside down. There’s often a whiff on a ball past him, a wild swing at a ball out of the strike zone, and then either a desperate flick foul or a half-swing at bait that winds up barely held in check.
McCann had another one of those ABs in the seventh inning Tuesday night against Charlie Morton and the Braves, with the Mets down 3-0: He swung through a cutter on the outside corner, whiffed on a curve below the strike zone that he couldn’t have hit with an oar, and then managed not to be lured by a cutter in the dirt. There were no outs and McCann was the tying run, following a single by Dom Smith (on a curveball, no less) and a walk to Kevin Pillar. But it looked hopeless — so hopeless that I turned to Joshua, sitting next to me on our couch, and opined that it would be kinder if McCann just struck out.
And yet, McCann also has a fair number of ABs that start like the above, but end with him grinding more pitches out of the guy on the mound, evening up the count or staying alive until he gets something he can handle and puts it in play. It’s almost like another guy takes over at the point of no return and starts a salvage operation, one that often goes better than you’d expect.
On Tuesday night, ahead on McCann 1-2, Morton threw another cutter. This one was low in the strike zone but had too much plate. McCann made contact and I thought it was a fly ball to the warning track — not ideal but at least not fatal. Instead, it carried over the fence and the game was tied. I looked at the TV for a moment and then threw up my hands and laughed at the futility of trying to predict a cosmos ruled by whimsy and chance.
Like that McCann at bat which had gone from hapless to heroic in a single pitch.
Like the Mets once again doing absolutely nothing for the first six innings, then awakening from their offensive nap, looking at their bats with belated realization as to their purpose, and getting to work.
Like the team’s strange inability — in defiance of recent history, career statlines and basic sense — to hit pitches with a wrinkle, regardless of spin rates, artificial assistance or the CV of those throwing them. (The Athletic’s Tim Britton digs into this curious problem today, which should be your latest reminder to subscribe.)
Like Tylor Megill‘s second straight impressive/disappointing start against Atlanta. You could basically have photocopied his debut, minus the offensive support from teammates, subbing a three-run homer by Ozzie Albies for a two-run homer by Ender Inciarte as the only blemish.
While we’re talking randomness, add the amoeba-shaped strike zone of home-plate ump Andy Beck, who I kept expecting to pull up his mask and reveal himself as Angel Hernandez on a Coals to Newcastle vacation. That was a little too much whimsy and chance for me, actually. (To be mildly fair, Beck seemed to get better acquainted with the boundaries of the strike zone in the final couple of innings.)
Anyway, McCann hit the ball over the fence, sending Morton packing in favor of A.J. Minter, who gave up a scorching double to Jose Peraza and a go-ahead hit to Francisco Lindor. The Mets, perhaps startled by this sudden change of fortunes, scored no more runs and handed the game to Seth Lugo and Edwin Diaz. Lugo somehow wandered through a fair-sized rainstorm without getting wet, giving up hard contact all over the place with no damage, and I held my breath as Diaz began his labors — it’s statistically unsupported as well as spiritually unfair, but I don’t think I will ever trust Diaz, no matter how deeply he buries the disaster that was 2019.
Diaz, indeed, almost blew the game with a fastball that caught way too much plate and was socked down the right-field line by Ehire Adrianza, missing the foul pole by a couple of feet. Somehow, though, that was the extent of the damage: Diaz retired Adrianza on a less frightening flyout, then coaxed first-pitch outs from Pablo Sandoval and Ronald Acuna Jr.
The Mets had won, though I still wasn’t quite sure how they’d done that. After Tuesday night’s game, I’m not quite sure about anything.
* * *
Here’s a Twitter moment that crystallized something for me. Todd Radom, the ace designer of team logos and identities who’s also a first-rate baseball historian, tweeted out this description of Mets’ colors and logo from an early media guide:
I’d seen that before, and so I added my own little amplification, which is that New York City’s official colors come from the Dutch Republic’s 17th century flag, which is derived from the flag of William of Orange, the father of Dutch independence, who died in 1584. I love the historical connections there, and the odd fact that it gives quite a pedigree to an expansion team that can’t hurt curveballs.
But that’s not why I added this little bit you’re reading now. It’s that I realized something new. I grew up reading the story that the Mets took Dodger blue and Giant orange as their colors, but after re-reading that blurb from the team, I doubt it’s true. I think the connection is a bit of opportunistic, after-the-fact sis boom baa added by an astute PR man — that note about “further significance” has, well, further significance — and the real story is simpler. Blue and orange were chosen because they were New York City’s colors (beating out the pink and black of the Payson family’s stable silks), the NY logo was nicked from the Giants (in an era when logos were reused and shared in ways that wouldn’t happen today), and that’s a wrap.
Hey, even if I’m right, it still counts as a happy accident. The cosmos does allow those, even for Mets fans.
by Jason Fry on 29 June 2021 1:19 pm The Mets were supposed to be off Monday night, but instead they wound up in D.C., playing another one of their COVID makeup dates. Jerad Eickhoff was ambushed by the crazed baseball-destroying cyborg formerly known as Kyle Schwarber and the Mets continued to espouse their philosophy of nonviolence at the plate and before you knew it the seventh inning had rolled around and it was 5-0 Nats.
And then things started happening. Jeff McNeil drove in an apparent lipstick-on-a-pig run in the seventh, but Pete Alonso mashed a no-doubter of a two-run homer in the eighth and Billy McKinney followed with a laser beam into the right-field seats and hello it was Nats 5, Mets 4. Up stepped Kevin Pillar, who scorched an errant Justin Miller fastball high and deep down the left-field line. Gary Cohen and Ron Darling studied the ball’s trajectory from whatever Citi Field utility closet they’d been stashed in (why the heck is this still a thing?) while we did the same from our couches and 50-odd uniformed Mets and Nats did the same from their dugouts and positions. For three glorious seconds or so, I figured that when Pillar’s drive came down the Mets would have hit back-to-back-to-back homers and the game would be tied.
And then it came down foul.
It’s a baseball truism that a hitter who sends a ball screaming past one of the foul poles will not, in fact, be able to recalibrate that swing subtly and hit a homer a pitch or two later. Which isn’t the same as saying it’s a law of physics — I remember Cliff Floyd pulling off said recalibration in the Marlon Anderson Game, for one — but it sure feels that way.
Pillar struck out. The Mets didn’t score. Miguel Castro came on in relief and walked Gerardo Parra with one out, but got a tailor-made double-play grounder from Starlin Castro. Tailor-made except it was to Travis Blankenhorn, playing an unfamiliar position and shifted in a way he’s most likely not used to. Blankenhorn was positioned more or less at shortstop, which of course is where Francisco Lindor (on record as not a fan of the shift) has spent the bulk of his adult life intercepting baseballs.
Lindor instinctively moved hard towards the ball. Blankenhorn, already navigating unfamiliar waters, felt him coming and flinched, winding up with two errors on a play not made. Up came Ryan Zimmerman, the last Washington National anyone wanted to see in that situation who wasn’t named Kyle Schwarber.* Castro’s first pitch was an unsinker, which pitching coaches don’t teach because it has a tendency to wind up where Zimmerman’s bat redirected Castro’s. Just like that, the Nats’ lead was restored and the ballgame was effectively over.
It was a crummy demoralizing loss on a night the Mets should have been putting their feet up, and maybe there’s nothing more to be said about it than that. But I can see a silver lining. I suspect that lost chance will lead the Mets to make the next, much-needed tweak to their new defensive philosophy, which is to adjust how they employ the shift in double-play situations. After the inning mercifully came to the end, Lindor walked over to buttonhole Gary DiSarcina, which is the kind of thing you’d hope to see there, and not a guarantee when someone’s making $341 million. And ace baseball thinker and Faith & Fear pal Mark Simon immediately noted that the Diamondbacks faced a similar reckoning in their own defensive overhaul.
Gary and Ron, to their credit, used the misplay as fodder for a pretty interesting conversation about what had gone wrong and what needed to change. I say “pretty interesting” because the conversation was nuanced and began with the starting point that the Mets’ defensive rethink has catapulted them from the depths of the stat board to near the top, which we should all remember. (More here from Tim Britton of the Athletic.) I also say that because the vaunted SNY booth has made its own much-needed overhaul on this point: A couple of years ago, most of its conversations about shifts were derailed by confirmation bias and quickly devolved into Not in My Day grumbling; now, more often not, you’ll learn from their observations and debates. That kind of shift (ahem) is hard for any of us to tackle in the private space of our own heads, let alone in public with a nightly audience of thousands of armchair critics.
Here’s hoping a couple of weeks from now we’ll see a double play pulled off because the Mets tweaked their defensive pattern; that Gary, Keith and Ron will spot it and break it down, with Steve Gelbs asking the relevant follow-up question in the postgame; and of course that the Mets will never have to face that night’s Ryan Zimmerman and they’ll actually win. That last change would be the best shift of all.
* Speaking of confirmation bias, Mark also pointed out that Zimmerman’s pre-homer OPS against the Mets was actually 56 points lower than his career OPS, and not “higher by infinity,” which is what I would have very confidently predicted. Huh.
by Greg Prince on 28 June 2021 1:31 pm MLB announced its All-Star finalists on Sunday. No Mets were mentioned. No Mets came close to being mentioned. Off all the choices that could be ranked, no critical mass ranked enough Mets for the runoff. A first-place team in the nation’s largest market has gone so under the radar on a positional basis that even one of its longtime fans who’s never missed the opportunity to a) vote for the All-Star teams and b) find a shred of an excuse to vote for at least one Met among catchers, infielders and outfielders if it was remotely defensible never got around to virtually punching out names. Hence, I can’t complain that no Met position players have a chance to be elected in 2021. I promise I won’t complain. There isn’t a 1971 Harrelson, a 1987 Strawberry, a 1999 Piazza or, for that matter, a 2019 Alonso in the bunch.
The “VOTE METS EVEN IF THEY ARE FEEBLE AND IT IS UNMERITED” campaigns of recent decades have rubbed my inner seven-year-old the wrong way. My inner seven-year-old objects to the rampant homerism. The actual seven-year-old I used to be didn’t have the opportunity to vote — no trip to the ballpark for bunches of ballots for me in 1970 — but as a kid, I took it very seriously. I wrote in “Rico Carty” in theory because he was on his way to a batting crown, and I never held it against the Brave that he wasn’t a Met. I celebrated Carty’s election as a write-in the way only a seven-year-old whose only interest is baseball would. I’d like to think I’m at least as sophisticated a fan as I was when I was seven.
The fan I am today doesn’t necessarily hang on day-to-day statistics like I did in my youth or my earlier let’s say middle age. Competing for a batting title will get my attention. In 2019, Jeff McNeil was competing for a batting title in his first full year in the majors. As a result, I had a clue what Jeff McNeil’s batting average was on any given Sunday just I was on top of Pete Alonso’s minute-by-minute home run total. I didn’t need an excuse to vote for both of them two years ago, and I cheered their richly deserved ascension to stellar status heartily.
This year, before I mostly forgot All-Star voting was in progress, I wondered what Met could earn my vote on a shred of merit. There was a brief “MOB THE VOTE” movement instigated by the Mets to get us to Carty our unlisted reserves to Denver. Write-ins are longer-shot efforts now than they were in the ’70s, but it’s all by app, so it’s not that hard to do. I wouldn’t have blushed at the idea of writing in either Jonathan Villar or Kevin Pillar. There may be worthier third basemen and outfielders in the NL, but all I need is a shred of an excuse to be a little shameless in my selections. Villar and Pillar, whose combined initial calling card was appearing to rhyme but not actually rhyming, have probably been the Mets’ co-MVPs within the non-deGrom division of the roster. They’ve each saved our season on a periodic and going basis. Each is an example of a veteran player who’s easy to dismiss as excess baggage until you spend some time watching them and you realize you’d be somewhere below your current standing without them.
Though it was too late to vote, I checked the Mets’ stats on Sunday night, just out of curiosity. How high was Villar (before he detoured to the IL) and how high was Pillar batting anyway? Must be pretty high by now, I intuited. Turns out my intuition was waaay off. Villar: .246. Pillar: .231. I was pretty sure they weren’t pounding down the door to .300, but I was surprised neither had cracked .250.
Less surprising, yet still bracing, is that almost no Met who has batted more than anecdotally and come to the plate in the past eight weeks has what you’d call a pretty decent average. Even acknowledging that batting averages are not the be-all/end-all they were in the days of Rico Carty, it’s still a little dispiriting to have no Met averaging encouragingly. Nine Mets have as many as 100 at-bats. The highest average from any of them is .261. Patrick Mazeika (18 ABs) is at .278, though his primary offensive weapon is clutch fielder’s choices. Brandon Nimmo and J.D. Davis are well above .300, but their sample size is smallish and encased in dust. Jacob deGrom is batting .414. Of course Jacob deGrom is batting .414. Alas, Jacob deGrom bats only every fifth day, and sometimes he’s instructed not to swing so much.
Alonso leads the Mets’ relative regulars at the aforementioned .261, on a par with where he finished his breakout rookie season (.260) and blessedly above his mostly slumpbound sophomore sag (.231). On Sunday, Pete singled three times. Singles are always welcome in that they aren’t outs; one of them drove in a run. “If a walk’s as good as a hit, then a hit’s as good as a walk” is a perfectly valid sentiment for most species. Alonso is one of two Met regulars/semi-regulars with an OPS+ above 100 (Villar is the other). If Pete is still finding out exactly who he is as a hitter, particularly in a year where balls aren’t flying out of ballparks at dizzying rates, well, okey-doke, the Polar Bear doesn’t go as deep as he once did. Homers aren’t everything.
Though when it comes to Pete Alonso, homers by the bushel are why we decided to fall in love with the Polar Bear and residually treat him like E.F. Hutton still, listening closely whenever he publicly shares his thoughts. Last week, Pete said he’ll be competing in the Home Run Derby at Coors Field. He earned the invitation by being defending champ from 2019, a belt he did not abdicate when the 2020 schedule completely overshot the All-Star break. Nevertheless, when I think of Pete showing up to compete in the 2021 Home Run Derby, I think of Rudy from Rudy attempting to board the bus for the trip his high school has arranged to Notre Dame for students interested in attending the prestigious university, an institution clearly out of reach for a student with Rudy’s grades. A very condescending priest with a clipboard asks Rudy, in essence, how in heaven’s name does he think he deserves to be on this bus with numbers like his.
Maybe returning to an atmosphere of swinging and soaring will snap the 11 HR Polar Bear out of his slugging hibernation. Until he’s on the power prowl again, I have to admit I find it a little dissonant to consume Pete’s discussion of derbies or watch him “working out” with Diesel Donnie Stevenson. Pete doesn’t have to be designated for assignment to the the Brotherhood of Life monastery upstate where Brother Lou will monitor his vow of silence, lest he have to rise at 4 AM to bake the bread for all the other Brothers, but until he’s rounding the bases four at a time, maybe Pete is best suited to board the singles-hitter’s bus.
McNeil won’t compete for a batting title in 2021. He’s missed a mess of time and he’s rolled over to second when he’s attempted to hit. Jeff’s excused for rustiness or creakiness or an internal watch that doesn’t offer Carl Douglas-authorized expert timing when he swings. He had four hits in his first four games off the IL after being out more than a month. He’s had no hits in the four games since, including Sunday’s, when he wasn’t alone among Mets as regards ineffective hitters.
Francisco Lindor went 2-for-4 with a double, raising his average to .219. Michael Conforto, whose long stretch of inactivity can’t be dismissed any more than McNeil’s, took the collar and sunk to .220. James McCann was an oh-fer, too; he’s at .240. So is Dom Smith, an unsuccessful pinch-hitter for a day. Beloved sparkplug Luis Guillorme’s at .233. Esteemed replacement part Billy McKinney’s at .216. Pillar homered to get our hopes up late — our Mets never give up, even if never giving up sometimes just gets us more aggravated when we fall one big hit short — but as mentioned, he’s down in the average dumps with all of his teammates.
On Sunday, the lack of hitting throughout the lineup added up to a frustrating 4-2 loss to the Phillies. So did the Citi Field presence of Zack Wheeler in gray and red, Marcus Stroman going only three innings and a couple of Met errors. Wheeler’s the one who got away (a bad idea in 2019, a worse idea now). Stroman’s given the Mets far more splendid outings than not. Defensive Runs Saved has become a statistic we now speak of fondly, thus a couple of balls that aren’t thrown (Guillorme) or scooped (McNeil) cleanly have to be chalked up to just two of those things on one of those days where we get on our knees and thank our maker for a long reliever like Corey Oswalt (4 IP, 0 R)…and little else.
On July 8, 1969, as the second-place Mets were emerging from a lifetime of futility into sudden contention and moving up in class to take on the first-place Cubs, Ron Santo was said to look at New York’s lineup and sniff, “I know Los Angeles won with pitching, but this is ridiculous.” Indeed, a few years earlier, the Dodgers hung consecutive pennants and a World Series flag on the strength of Koufax, Drysdale and a lot of pinging from base to base. This year, the Mets are in first place on the strength of a few arms and an array of gloves. The hitting has been, more often than not, ridiculous, and not in that way TV anchors would use “RIDICULOUS!!!!” to describe the fantastic feats of your younger Tatises and Guerreros. Even the 1969 Mets Santo meant to denigrate included Cleon Jones, hitting .354 when Chicago came to Shea, and Tommie Agee, brandishing a robust .283. And that very Tuesday afternoon, Ferguson Jenkins would be bested in the ninth inning by Ed Kranepool, who’d come in at .227. Batting averages weren’t everything then, either.
Our offense at the moment, a moment that stretches back almost without pause to Opening Day, has been woebegone. But we’ve been in first place all by our lonesome since May 9, despite players physically unable to play and hitters apparently unable to hit. If MLB was holding an election to choose finalists for the postseason, I’d definitely vote for us and I’d do it on merit. I hope we still have more than a shred of an excuse to VOTE METS by Closing Day. Hitting more — a lot more — will go a long way toward ensuring we sweep that ballot by acclimation.
by Jason Fry on 27 June 2021 1:33 am For my birthday I went back to Citi Field, and that was wonderful, even with zip-tied seats for social distancing and vaccination checks and mandatory masks. Last week I went to my second game and it was even nicer, because those three things were gone and the only strange note was how normal all the old routines felt. (It helped that the Mets won both games.)
But something was missing from this year: I hadn’t been to see the Brooklyn Cyclones, in their ballpark by the sea on Coney Island.
Emily and I had tickets for the end of May, but rain scotched those plans and then the usual complications of life (which all seem to be back too) got in the way. Until Saturday night: The Cyclones were playing the Jersey Shore Blueclaws at 6 p.m. We’d be there.
We started going to Cyclones games in their inaugural 2001 season, a giddy ride that screeched to a halt when 9/11 canceled the winner-take-all finale of the championship series between the Cyclones and the Williamsport Crosscutters. (It had been scheduled for the evening of Sept. 11.) That year the Cyclones were a hot NYC ticket, with jaded Manhattanites and Brooklyn hipsters trekking out to the beach to watch new draftees led by heartthrob center fielder Angel Pagan play baseball (with wildly varying proficiency) and gape at the antics of Sandy the Seagull, their cheerfully shambolic Big Lebowski of a mascot. Over the years Emily and Joshua and I watched good Cyclones teams and bad ones, learned about the pitiless realities of life in the New York-Penn League, and got used to the idea that this year’s players would be mostly gone next year, with the successful or favored ones moving up in the organization and the unsuccessful or overlooked ones moving closer to a return to civilian life.
I was there in 2019 as the Cyclones played another winner-take-all game for a title, this one against the Lowell Spinners. I was in the stands as the Cyclones came from behind and held off the Spinners and celebrated on the field, with skipper Edgardo Alfonzo in the middle of the happy scrum. I had no way of knowing I’d watched the last pitch in the 80-year history of the New York-Penn League (and that of the luckless Spinners); that the Cyclones would be idle for all of 2020, with their ballpark repurposed as the Mets’ alternate site, to use the creepy terminology of pandemic ball; or that when they did return they’d have moved up a minor-league level as part of a league called — with all the originality bureaucrats can muster — High-A East.
A lot would be different. But it would still be baseball by the sea, with neon rings around the stadium lights and the Parachute Jump coruscating in the darkness and the wind off the ocean making home runs to center or right all but impossible and all the other wonderful little things I’d become used to over nearly two decades.
The only problem was that the Mets were playing the Phillies that same afternoon — and Jacob deGrom would be on the mound. Not a big deal, I figured — I’d navigated overlapping Mets and Cyclones games before, so I figured I could do it again. What I hadn’t thought through was that Saturday would also be our first visit to Coney Island since the pandemic. Emily and I were overjoyed to be plunged into its ragamuffin charms, once again strolling down the boardwalk, putting our hands up and screaming on the Cyclone, biting into a Nathan’s hot dog, and lolling high above it all in a car (swinging, of course) on the Wonder Wheel.
We were having such a good time that I did the unthinkable: I forgot all about deGrom, the Mets and the Phillies, and the opening act of our baseball evening.
When I came to my senses it was 1-1 in the second, which seemed impossible. DeGrom had given up a run? It was like hearing that Einstein had muffed long division. That’s simultaneously a tribute to the extraordinary things the Mets’ ace of aces has done in 2021 and a hideously, horribly spoiled thing to find yourself thinking. I did a little math in my head and realized if deGrom went nine and gave up just that one run, his ERA would still go up, which was self-evidently absurd. In fact, it would do up even if he went 18 innings and gave up just that one run, for which I have no words whatsoever.
DeGrom didn’t go 18 innings, or even nine. He departed after six, having given up two runs — a strong game for most any starter, but not for him. Less shocking was seeing that the Mets weren’t scoring runs, news I absorbed from Gameday with weary disgust. By the seventh we were in our seats at the rechristened Maimonides Park with the Cyclones and Blueclaws preparing for hostilities, and I turned on the WCBS feed, letting Howie and Wayne burble up at me from my drink holder (and hoisting them up to my ear at critical moments) and wondering why the Mets and Phillies kept insisting on playing the exact same baseball game.
Kevin Pillar homered to get deGrom off the hook and the game ground along in my ear while I sized up the new Cyclones with my eyes. The current team is in the cellar, yet features a trio of bonafide prospects in Ronny Mauricio, Brett Baty and Francisco Alvarez, the 3-4-5 hitters on Saturday night.
Mauricio is rangy and grasshopper-legged, with a million-watt smile and an easy grace no matter what he’s doing. I wonder if he’ll outgrow shortstop, particularly if he bulks up, but for now he’s a superlative fielder there, with a rifle arm, phenomenal range and soft hands. Baty made less of an impression, at least until he scalded a ball to left for a home run late in the game, showing off quick hands and plus power. Alvarez then followed with a blast of his own to much the same spot, but I was already riveted by him: He carries himself with an easy confidence and a swagger that we’re going to love, approaching every pitch like it’s a chance to do something extraordinary.
It was early for the Cyclones, but late for the Mets — and seemed about to get downright dark when Edwin Diaz came in to hold the fort and pitched like he does too often in non-save situations, a recurring problem that makes me want to shake Luis Rojas and scream at him to stop doing that and undoubtedly makes Rojas want to shake Diaz and scream at him to stop doing that. Diaz turned a HBP and a lack of interest in holding runners and a walk and a wild pitch and a sac fly into a one-run Phillie lead, and was saved far worse by the wizardry of Luis Guillorme, who jammed his foot between Luke Williams‘ shoe and the third-base bag, turning yet another stolen base into a critical out once the Mets challenged the call.
Guillorme also provided a priceless moment, which I caught on video on the subway and then revisited via MLB.tv. Here he is as captured by WPIX’s cameras as the umpires talked to New York (not so far away for once) about what had or hadn’t happened:
Guillorme already knew, because he’s Guillorme. Also very Guillorme: that bit of sly deadpan as he waited for the rest of the relevant personnel to catch up with him. My goodness do I love him.
Guillorme is always involved, and would play a key role in the bottom of the ninth as well. So would the Phillies’ star-crossed bullpen and execrable defense, which are so chronically terrible that I want to feel bad, except for the fact that we’re talking about the Phillies. I can muster this bit of empathy: There’s nothing that torpedos fan enthusiasm more completely than a chronically terrible bullpen, because even when your team’s ahead you feel like you’re being set up to be the butt of the joke once again.
The maroon perpetrators this time were Hector Neris and Rhys Hoskins. Hoskins began the ninth by fielding a hot shot from Travis Blankenhorn with his knee and fumbled for it just long enough for Blankenhorn to beat Neris to the bag. Neris then walked Billy McKinney and surrendered an infield hit by Pillar that caromed between Williams and Ronald Torreyes, loading the bases with nobody out.
A chronically terrible offense isn’t a lot of fun either, and about now I told Emily that I didn’t know why I did this to myself and announced I was going to throw my phone into the sea to avoid further torment. Instead, I listened as Guillorme walked on a splitter from Neris that was low and inside by an eyelash each way, tying the game. Francisco Lindor then struck out in an AB that was both ineffective and weirdly panicky, sending my anxiety spiking once more. With the sea too far away, I declared that I was going to smash my phone underfoot.
I didn’t do that either; a couple of minutes later Michael Conforto socked a hanging splitter to center, deep enough that McKinney could slide across home on his belly, looking for all the world like Robin Ventura having fun on the soaked Yankee Stadium tarp a generation ago. The Mets had won, even on a day that had seen me be shamefully negligent and deGrom dare to be merely excellent.
The Mets had won, and a little over an hour later so had the Cyclones, powered by those back-to-back homers from possible future Mets. It wasn’t so long ago that I was keeping an ear on the Mets while watching Conforto in a Cyclones uniform; perhaps not so long from now I’ll listen to Baty and Alvarez win a game at Citi Field while watching Cyclones I’ve not yet heard of continue the baseball cycle. That would be a nice thought on any evening; it was an even sweeter musing after a year without nights like that.
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