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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 15 July 2021 1:03 pm Baseball, that thing which I love and you love, still doesn’t feel quite like the baseball you love and I love. Not in 2021, not after 2020. The rule alterations that linger from last year have the sport askew and to no apparent useful purpose. We bought into the pandemic requiring trims around the edges. The pandemic isn’t exactly over, but it no longer provides much of an excuse for innings lopped from nine to seven and runners added to second and all the norm-nipping that has diluted the flow. Maybe the bulk of it will go away next year. Maybe it won’t. I’ve felt a little at sea where baseball is concerned ever since MLB sold Nike the right to slap swooshes on the fronts of jerseys. The logo just stares at me, telling me that if I don’t like it, too bad, it bought its way on. Nothing’s quite felt right since the first swoosh.
I keep waiting for a turning of the emotional tide, for a day or a game when baseball doesn’t feel off. DeGrom strikes out record numbers of batters, Bench Mobsters crowd their way into walkoff heroics, the Mets maintain first place. Yet something’s slightly and uncomfortably awry. I keep coming back to an aside from Richard Ben Cramer’s biography of Joe DiMaggio. The Yankees had won the 1947 World Series. “Now,” Cramer wrote, “the war was really over, all was right with the world.” Ptui! to that particular result as a bellwether of normality, yet I’d welcome something that decisively rips at least the metaphorical swoosh off baseball as it’s become these past couple of years.
Nevertheless, here I am. Dissatisfied? Perhaps. Dissatisfied enough to hand-sanitize myself of the whole thing? Like I said, here I am.
Pete Alonso hit 17 home runs before the regular season paused and 74 home runs before it resumed. The 74 don’t count in the way we count home runs that count, but for his non-counting trouble, Pete won a million bucks by taking the trophy/swag chain for his second consecutive Home Run Derby, along with the adulation of a packed Coors Field. TV stressed the presence of Shohei Ohtani most of all among the eight sluggers who competed, but Ohtani, who can do it all, couldn’t do it all in the Derby. Pete could. Pete’s very good at this event. He’s undefeated at winning it and he’s undefeated at loving it. If it wasn’t as invigorating as watching him take his first Derby in 2019 (second consecutive anythings rarely are), it was still a swell reminder of what an uncaged Polar Bear can communicate in the way of raw passion for the game.
My favorite part of Pete going deep wasn’t from any of his 74 exceedingly long shots flying over Denver, but rather the bopping around he did between pitches and rounds. Head up, head down, his head into his moment. I felt I’d seen that move before. I had. After the Mets completed their division-titlist schedule in 2015, the players took a goodwill lap around the track at Citi Field to thank the fans for our support. While “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” percolated over the PA, Daniel Murphy bopped his head in time to the music while cradling his son in his arms. Murphy was a Met All-Star once, as was Alonso. Not a bad connection to make.
That’s baseball when you’ve been at it for more than five decades. You see something, you feel something. You’ve probably felt it before. You don’t mind feeling it again. That’s why the All-Star Game itself was such a resounding disappointment on a couple of counts. First, there were those absolutely awful uniforms. One set was white. The other was dark blue. None was a uniform associated with any of the thirty clubs the players were representing. Pete wore his Mets garb in the Derby. He represented us, like Seaver in the ’70s, like Stearns in the ’70s after Seaver was traded to Cincinnati.
Taijuan Walker didn’t have that privilege when he pitched in the game. He pitched for white vs. dark blue. And not very well, honestly. The National League used to win these games annually. Tom pitched in eight of them. The NL went 8-0. Dude was named to four of them. The NL went 4-0. Tai was part of a losing NL team, just as almost every Met chosen in this century has been, leading me to the second resounding disappointment. I connect to the National League regularly topping the American League, but when I do, I connect to ancient times. That will happen when you’ve surpassed fandom’s half-century mark and the NL is losing all but six of the past thirty-two Midsummer Not So Classics. Then again, bemoaning that the All-Star Game isn’t what it used to be has become its own cherished tradition.
Bemoaning the presence of black jerseys was like that for some Mets fans during the denouement of their heyday. Bemoaning their disappearance eventually replaced that complaint for other Mets fans. Now we learn black jerseys are to return to the torsos of Met bodies two weeks from Friday. The big night will be July 30, a date drenched in Metsian overtones. Casey Stengel was born on July 30, 1890. Gil Hodges strode purposefully to remove Cleon Jones from left field on July 30, 1969. Jeurys Familia gave up a rain-soaked, ninth-inning home run to Justin Upton between rain delays to complete a lethal lead blow on July 30, 2015, except it turned out to be not lethal at all. A little over three months later, Jeurys would be among the Mets joining Murph bopping around the Citi Field track to celebrate the NL East flag and gear up for the playoffs.
Familia made his MLB debut in September of 2012, just missing the black jerseys when they were last an official element of Met gear that July. They were all but phased out after 2011, a nod to the Mets reaching their fiftieth birthday and the desire of so many to have the Mets hit the big five-oh in their birthday suit: orange and blue, hold the gimmickry (in 1962, Casey took care of the gimmicks). But black was on our backs for some very good years just before and a little after the turn of the millennium, and this iteration of Mets black is for home Fridays only. Younger fans admire the look — younger fans who are about twenty years older than when the Mets won a pennant in black and fans younger than that, too. I’m generally a shades of gray person when it comes to stuff that turns people goopy or irate, so I’m fine with a night every couple of weeks to turn black the clock.
I’m not fine with those All-Star uniforms, but I didn’t see any shades of gray in them.
Younger fans are said to be immune to baseball’s charms and in ever shorter supply. That’s why we get Nike swooshing up the apparel to the apparel’s detriment and why MLB hits us over the head with the idea that a player flipping a bat will make the game hep as heck to the under-my age set. Nevertheless, the last two games I’ve been to — and pretty much every game I’ve been to these many decades — I see plenty of what you’d call younger fans on hand. Not dragged by their parents or cool older relatives, either. I light out for Citi Field by Long Island Rail Road. I share my train with fans quite clearly in their teens and early twenties. Sometimes I think somebody’s slipped them free tickets, but there’s too much critical mass for their participation to be wholly anecdotal. These are fans who are wearing Mets gear, getting loud for the Mets miles from the Mets’ stadium, drinking many toasts en route to the Mets game. They missed Seaver’s career. They missed Piazza’s, too, probably. They’re not missing Alonso’s. The return trip — on the platform at Woodside and on the next train that comes — emits that vibe as well. Too much so, for my taste. The line about “keggers with kids” from Heathers springs to mind. But on some level, I don’t mind being the senior member of whichever car of the LIRR I board. The Grand Old Game isn’t gonna die off with me and my demographic ilk. The Youth of America hasn’t given up on baseball. Now shut up and let me listen to the highlights.
Speaking of listening, I experienced my first-half highlight less than a week ago. It wasn’t at Citi Field and it wasn’t via SNY. Talk about a connection. I’m the kid who walked around with a transistor radio if the Mets were playing and I couldn’t stay home to watch. I loved walking by any radio outdoors if it was broadcasting the Mets game. I loved just as much being the one to carry the play-by-play as if I were WHN, WNEW or WMCA. I got to enjoy that sensation anew last Saturday on the boardwalk in Long Beach. Stephanie and I had returned to my hometown for a barbecue at my friend Larry’s house. The last time I was there, it was to sit shiva for Larry’s mother. This was happier. This was a coming-out-of-COVID celebration of sorts, with a small-scale high school reunion on the side. My class is marking its 40th anniversary of graduating this summer. I won’t be going to the swanky affair some other classmates have cooked up. I went to two previous iterations and realized it was filled by old people. Five minutes later, most everybody with whom I’d exchanged middle age small talk had reverted to 17 or 18 in my mind’s eye anyway. But Larry’s in that handful of my LBHS compadres with whom I’ve found the years immaterial. Friends then, friends since, friends now. Like my friend Fred, who was up from Baltimore for the barbecue. Like my friend John, who was down from Boston. We had just enough members of our school newspaper staff to procrastinate on putting out our next edition. Why would I need more than that?
Between hot dogs and catching up, somebody suggested a late-afternoon stroll on the boardwalk, a must if you’re in town in summer. Stephanie welcomed it for the ocean breeze. I welcomed it for the opportunity to click on the game. I’d decided I was going to be a somewhat normal adult at the barbecue and not sneak an earbud into my ear or even a glance at my phone. Let the Mets open their truncated doubleheader without my attention for a change. But, you know, I get Met-curious and my phone is equipped with the At Bat app, so without fanfare, I clicked it on from my shirt pocket. No wire, so everybody who wanted to hear it could hear it. The volume was high enough for me to keep track, low enough not to bother anybody.
I was never more home than with the Mets game coming out of my shirt pocket on the boardwalk in Long Beach in 2021. This was me in the summers off from high school and junior high and elementary school. Wayne Randazzo narrating a Jonathan Villar homer meshed with the soft crash of the waves. It sounded like my life. That baseball radio play-by-play was emanating from my person didn’t merit commentary from my wife, who is very used to the sounds my body makes, nor from my old pal Fred, who knows what I’m all about. The first thing I can ever recall Fred and I doing outside of school involved a walk and a Mets game on my transistor radio. I told him I don’t like to miss the Mets when they’re playing, and I never had to tell him again.
Even when the Mets fell behind last Saturday, even with Wayne cautioning us this was a seven-inning game so there wouldn’t be as much time as usual to mount a comeback, it was as if nothing of substance that I would have wanted to change had changed. Long Beach was still there. The Mets were still there. I was still there with what and who I would have wanted nearby had somebody thought to ask. The strides on the boardwalk didn’t match those of Gil Hodges marching to left field for determination, but they had their own purpose. I was going somewhere I needed to be.
Nike might ruin uniforms. Manfred might ruin doubleheaders. The high bar of the National League romping through All-Star competition might be a thing of the very distant past. But I cheer Pete Alonso when he goes deep 74 essentially meaningless times. I join the Youth of America in the stands in Flushing and on the train out of Queens. I’m very happy to have the game on, even if it’s low and just for a couple of innings. It’s all still a little off, but not irrevocably.
The Mets play again Friday night in Pittsburgh, presumably in gray. Just like my sideburns.
by Greg Prince on 11 July 2021 8:24 pm What a way to get a game going!
A two run homer from Lindor!!
A three-run homer from Conforto!!!
In the first inning!!!!
The first-place Mets are ahead of the last-place Pirates, 5-0!!!!!
Which is where a Mets fan of tenure turned from dispensing exclamation points to issuing question marks. The way this Mets fan of tenure saw it, there were four possible scenarios facing us over the next eight innings.
Would it be…
1) A Mets romp, building on the early good vibrations worthy of a late-‘70s orange soda commercial, with more and more runs scoring and the absence of a starting pitcher no more than a technicality, even once Aaron Loup finished his limited engagement as a two-inning starter and transitioned seamlessly into an opener of Busch Light?
Maybe. But probably not.
2) A little disconcerting but ultimately fine, like a game I remember against the Pirates right around this time of year in 2006, when the first-place Mets also posted five runs in the bottom of the first, but then not only stopped hitting, but stopped scoring, yet it was OK because the last-place Pirates then weren’t having any better a season than they are now?
Maybe. But probably not.
3) Very disconcerting but ultimately exhilarating, à la one of those games that almost gets away — the lead may even temporarily change hands — yet some Met sets it right in the bottom of the ninth, and there’s a congregation shouting “HALLELUJAH!” at home plate or a jersey-tearing summer jam at first base, or perhaps both in celebration of the one that was deliriously snatched back?
Maybe. But probably not.
4) The first-place Mets blowing a 5-0 lead and losing to the last-place Pirates, 6-5, because the Mets demonstrated minimal pitching and absolutely no hitting after the first, while the Pirates forgot they were dead, buried at sea and not in the Mets’ class?
Yup.
The fourth, it turned out.
Exactly the fourth.
I mean on the bleeping nose.
While I considered the first, second and third scenarios as legitimate possibilities, straining in particular to believe the third was our destiny when Luis Guillorme led off the bottom of the ninth with a single to spark our potential comeback-as-destiny rally, I felt in my Metsian gut that we were gonna lose the way we lost. Not because “the Mets suck!” or because “we always lose!” but…I don’t know. Yet my gut knew. Michael Conforto wasn’t across the plate in the first with the fifth Met run when, on the advice of my gut, I was moved to publicly all but predict something like this was coming (and if you doubt my reluctant prescience, here’s my receipt).
Thus, the fun of the first — with Loup nice and loose, Francisco Lindor ablaze (he’d add two more base hits to his total) and Conforto homering for the first time since approximately 1963 — evaporated into stone-cold Sunday afternoon somnambulance. The Pirates, led by their defiant starter Chase de Jong sticking it out for five and their sudden slugger Rodolfo Castro going deep twice, made the comeback and didn’t deal in givebacks. Guillorme did get that leadoff single, but Brandon Nimmo grounded into a double play, and Lindor couldn’t arrange the drama necessary to turn the beat around. In between Loup and the losing, there was little dependable Met pitching of which to speak. The glaringest culprit was Edwin Diaz in the ninth not getting the fifth of five outs Luis Rojas requested after Diaz took over for Miguel Castro in the eighth. Diaz wasn’t 24 hours’ removed from his nearly immaculate Saturday night inning (10 pitches, 9 strikes, 3 outs). It’s hard to pin this loss on Edwin, even if he was, in fact, pinned with the loss.
Jerad Eickhoff, Jeurys Familia and Castro weren’t much help. Nor was whichever rainout pushed Jacob deGrom from his scheduled Sunday start into the All-Star break abyss. Kumar Rocker simply wasn’t drafted, developed, promoted and inserted soon enough. Regardless of whoever was available; wasn’t available; or could have been leaned on a little with a quartet of off days in the offing, let us not ignore that the Mets did no scoring from the second inning on. Not a load of hitting, either.
My gut having courteously prepared me for the nominal Worst Loss of the Season, I wasn’t nearly as disturbed by the least optimal outcome as I would have been had it come out of nowhere. Nope, my gut was on target. I hope it took SNY up on its offer of betting $415 to win $100 or whatever it is Gary Apple goes on about in the postgame show as he touts the network’s wholesome gambling sponsor.
The Mets are still in first place. They are still the first-place Mets as baseball pauses and they will still be the first-place Mets when baseball again presses play. They don’t emit unbeatable first-place vibes most recently evinced in these parts in 2006 and there’s not really that slam bang tang reminiscent of gin and vermouth and 1984 when you step back and consider their lofty status. Nevertheless, here they are: first, and by more than a hair. We’ve got that to sate us for the four-day void, which, if we think of it as one big rainout, we’ll make it through as if it’s just another week on our perpetually soggy calendar. Once the break is over, we’ve got another series on deck with these last-place Pirates, who are not to be taken lightly, just as the first-place business isn’t to be taken as a given.
We’ve got a good team. Greatness they need to work on.
by Jason Fry on 11 July 2021 3:01 am You know what? I’ve come around on the idea of the Mets playing the Pirates again right after the All-Star Break.
Not because I think the Pirates are a bunch of tomato cans — that’s a dangerous thing to think about any opponent, and if the Bucs win Sunday they’ll have split the series — but because all of a sudden I’m tired, and baseball’s mid-season break seems well-timed. Let Taijuan Walker justifiably beam with happiness at going to the All-Star Game and Pete Alonso hit some dingers in the Home Run Derby while the other Mets rest and the missing Mets heal and/or rehab some more and everyone enjoys some Ohtani-mania, and then we’ll pick up right where we left off with these same two teams. Though hopefully with fewer doubleheaders.
The first game of the Mets’ 10th (!!!!) doubleheader of 2021 started off well enough for the Mets, with Brandon Nimmo making like Ender Inciarte and going above the outfield fence to take a home run away from Bryan Reynolds, a play he never would have made before the Mets convinced him to play more deeply. Nimmo was at it again in the bottom of the first, swatting a leadoff single and coming home on Kevin Pillar‘s RBI hit, and with Marcus Stroman holding the Pirates hitless into the fourth it looked like the Mets were preparing for another romp: throttle the enemy with pitching and defense and ambush them late in the game.
But both the pitching and defense faltered, with John Nogowski slapping a ball down the left-field line that just eluded Jonathan Villar‘s dive and got past Dom Smith in the corner. The Mets’ defense is so greatly improved that it’s now faintly startling to see such plays not made, but that one wasn’t, and it put the Pirates up 2-1. Villar tied it with a home run, but opposing pitcher Tyler Anderson got his Camarena on in the fifth, homering off Stroman for the lead, Trevor May had a clunker of an outing that culminated in a Reynolds home run that Nimmo could only watch, and it was goodnight sweet Mets.
Hey, sometimes the other guys just play better, y’know?
The nightcap began for me on Gameday while we were out with friends, with the radio feed keeping me company via a single earbud after dinner concluded. I saw Jeff McNeil‘s IN PLAY, RUN(S), though I noted little of Tylor Megill‘s latest pretty good start — when you’re one-eyeing Gameday, solid pitching for the good guys means not being particularly aware of anything happening. It was hours before I read Megill had tied the Mets’ mark by fanning 26 in his first four starts, equaling Dick Selma, Dwight Gooden and Matt Harvey. While I think that says more about baseball’s current era of windmilling bats than anything else, it’s not bad company for a guy who was Plan D or E or F on the starting-pitching depth chart not so long ago.
I had my earbud in to hear Pete Alonso slam a ball off the foul pole, a blow that made an impressive crack in my left ear and sent Howie and Wayne into paroxysms of delight. I heard Seth Lugo surrendering a homer that let the Bucs draw closer, then Billy McKinney supplying an insurance run, and then “Timmy Trumpet” blaring as Edwin Diaz arrived for the latest episode of I Know the Stats But Our Closer Still Makes Me Nervous.
Baseball, of course, is an ever-renewing lesson that no one knows anything: Diaz put the Pirates down with almost contemptuous ease, fanning the side on a mere 10 pitches in what had to be his most dominating inning as a Met. There’s a superlative he’s welcome to challenge as many times as he likes.
* * *
The Mets have played a strange season so far, to say the very least: There’s the overhauled defense, the Biblical plague of injuries, the mysteriously MIA hitters, the contributions from unlikely sources, deGrom’s unbelievable run, the rain the rain oh lord the rain, and the thoroughly welcome disappearing act so far by the rest of the supposedly robust NL East. (Not welcome at all, though: word that Ronald Acuna Jr. tore his ACL Saturday night and may be out until late spring 2022 — no matter what the standings or who plays in your division, baseball losing one of its brightest young stars is something to mourn.)
I don’t know how this year will end, but the 2021 Mets have two little-remarked franchise marks in their sights: Nick Tropeano‘s underwhelming debut Friday night made him the 51st player to appear in a game this season. Of those 51, 31 are new to the Mets, and seven have made their MLB debuts. The Mets’ record for players appearing in a season is 56 in 2018, their record for newcomers (not counting ’62 for obvious reasons) is 35 in 1967, and their record for MLB debuts is 16 in 1995. That third mark appears safe, but the first two are very much in danger, as the ever-expanding Holy Books can attest.
by Greg Prince on 10 July 2021 11:02 am “Hello, may I speak to Luis Rojas please?”
“This is Luis.”
“Luis, my name is Dave Roberts, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.”
“Hi, Dave. No need to be so formal. I know who you are.”
“I wasn’t sure, seeing as how our teams have never played one another while we’ve each been in our present positions.”
“Dave, I was a coach on Mickey Callaway’s staff in 2019, and my dad is Felipe Alou. Our paths have crossed.”
“My apologies, Luis. You meet so many people in this job that you don’t always remember everybody.”
“No worries, Dave.”
“The reason for my call, Luis, is — and I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but my team, the Dodgers, won the World Series last year.”
“Of course I’m aware, Dave. I planned to congratulate you in person when you guys come to New York in August.”
“Well, as manager of the defending world champions — really, even if we’d lost the World Series…just being in the World Series means you manage the All-Star Game the next year.”
“Dave, I’ve been around baseball all my life. I know how All-Star managerial assignments work.”
“You do? Oh, OK. So anyway, in that capacity as All-Star manager for the National League, I’m calling to inform you I’d like to replace Jacob deGrom on the All-Star roster with Taijuan Walker.”
“Hey, that’s great! I was hoping Tai would make it regardless of Jake’s decision to go or not go. I know he was a little disappointed to not make it initially, just like he was disappointed he couldn’t give us more than five pretty gutty innings Friday.”
“As you may know, Luis, as manager of an All-Star team, I have many tough decisions on who to put on, who to leave off.”
“I can imagine.”
“The easiest was taking Jacob.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Yeah…hey, any chance you can get him to reconsider?”
“I don’t think so, Dave. Jake’s been a little banged up, and with the wonky schedule we’ve played, he could use the extra rest.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“No, that’s OK.”
“Jake’s really good. Best pitcher there is.”
“No doubt.”
“A real shame to have an All-Star Game without the best pitcher there is.”
“Yup, it is too bad. But Jake’s gotta take care of Jake first.”
“Either way, we’re thrilled to have Taijuan join us in Denver.”
“I know Taijuan will be thrilled to get the news. It’s his first time being picked. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Hey, listen, Luis?”
“Yeah, Dave?”
“As long as I have you on the phone here, maybe I could ask you a favor?”
“Sure, Dave. Anything for a fellow National League manager.”
“I’m kind of feeling the heat after managing losing All-Star Games the last couple of times I’ve had the honor. We lost in 2019. We lost in 2018.”
“Yeah, Dave, I’ve noticed. The National League’s been kind in a rut. Not like when we were kids.”
“Tell me about it. That relates to the favor I need.”
“What’s that?”
“See, I’ve been watching your club a lot lately. With the time difference between L.A. and New York, I come into the office early and tune in the Mets games. You’ve got some really good players there.”
“Thanks, Dave. They’re good guys, too.”
“So maybe you can help me make some changes to the NL All-Star roster.”
“How so?”
“I was watching your Friday night game against the Pirates, and you guys were smoking. I need some of that at Coors Field Tuesday.”
“I’d love to have more Mets representing the league, Dave. I mean we’re in first place, we get one selection, and we don’t get a second until the first one says he isn’t going.”
“Great, great. So here’s what I need. I need Pete Alonso.”
“Pete? Really?”
“I figure he’s gonna be in town for the Home Run Derby and on Friday he got a heckuva head start with that three-run opposite field bomb versus the Pirates. The Polar Bear is heating up!”
“Well, I’m sure Pete would be honored.”
“And Francisco Lindor. Ask him for me, would ya, Luis?”
“Lindor? Really? I mean, Dave, I love him, and we think the world of him, but I’m surprised after the rough start he got off to.”
“Luis, did you see that grand slam he hit? He’s breaking out of that slump. His defense, his leadership and now some power…I gotta have that to beat the American League.”
“If you think so, Dave.”
“Oh, and Jonathan Villar.”
“JV — an All-Star?”
“Luis, that guy is fire! A home run from the left side. A home run from the right side. It’s like you don’t even remember he didn’t start the season as a starter. You don’t think that’ll play in Denver?”
“No, I’m sure.”
“Listen, while I have ya on the line, get Brandon Nimmo for me, too, would ya?”
“Brandon? He’s been out a whole bunch this season.”
“Luis, do you realize what a sparkplug that guy is? I know it’s a relatively small sample size, but between the way he hits, the way he runs, the fact that he’s from Wyoming which is next to Colorado — people won’t care about the All-Star Game unless we make them care about the All-Star Game, and who better to show enthusiasm for the ‘Midsummer Classic’ than Brandon Nimmo?”
“I’ll add him to the list of guys I need to share good news with.”
“And Luis?”
“Yes, Dave?”
“James McCann’s a real good catcher.”
“You have good catchers, Dave. It’s an All-Star team.”
“Yeah, but James has handled your pitchers so well and he’s started to get big hits.”
“He could probably use the rest, but McCann’s a gamer, so I doubt he’d turn it down.”
“As long as you’re sending us your catcher, maybe a couple more pitchers?”
“Who’d ya have in mind, Dave?”
“Stroman would be great on the big stage. And Megill would represent fresh blood.”
“Tylor’s had three starts, Dave.”
“Three good starts, Luis. I can see him shining.”
“OK, lemme just start a new page.”
“Luis, I really appreciate this — oh, damn.”
“What’s wrong, Dave?”
“I almost forgot to ask you for relievers.”
“Diaz? Oh, absolutely. He drives some of our fans crazy, but he’s been stellar this year.”
“Yeah, we’d like to add Edwin. And can we have Loup, too?”
“Aaron Loup? I guess so.”
“And Trevor May?”
“May…uh-huh.”
“And Kevin Pillar?”
“Kevin Pillar’s not a reliever, Dave.”
“I know, Luis, but he’s such an inspiration, the way he recovered from that pitch to the face and how all the guys in your clubhouse look up to him. The National League has been missing that kind of presence. I gotta have Kevin Pillar on the All-Star team — I gotta!”
“Dave, on behalf of the New York Mets, I’m honored you suddenly want so many of my players.”
“Luis, the National League has gotta go with the best we can get. One more thing.”
“Yes, Dave?”
“That tarp you use at Citi Field is clearly one of the strongest they make. It withstands all that rain, and your grounds crew removes it, and you play right away. Seven-inning games, nine-inning games…and the weather can be so unpredictable in Denver this time of year.”
“Dave, you want to name the Citi Field tarp to the National League All-Star team?”
“Luis, there’s a lot of pressure on me. I’m 0-2 in All-Star Games.”
“What pressure? It’s an exhibition fewer and fewer people watch. Players switch leagues all the time. The uniforms are an abomination. We don’t even have actual league presidents anymore.”
“The ghost of Warren Giles visits me in my sleep, Luis. He wants to know how come I haven’t used Clemente.”
“That’s tough, Dave.”
“Yeah, so how about it, Luis? Maybe you can you just send me your whole team — and the tarp — and we can beat the American League at last. I mean look at the way you throttled Pittsburgh, 13-4, especially that ten-run sixth!”
“How about this, Dave: we’ll keep playing the Pirates at Citi Field until the break, we’ll keep the tarp on the field until it’s time to take it off, and I’ll give Taijuan Walker the good news he made the All-Star team.”
“OK, Luis. I figured it was worth a try to ask for more.”
“See you in August, Dave.”
“And maybe October?”
“Goodbye for now, Dave.”
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.)
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