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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 26 June 2021 12:41 pm Perhaps you’ve heard or at least heard of the classic Jack Benny bit in which the comic entertainer who cultivated a notorious tightwad persona is held up at gunpoint. The robber makes clear he wants Benny’s wallet, and he wants it now.
“Your money or your life.”
There’s a pause.
The pause extends.
The pause simply will not end.
The robber grows exceedingly impatient.
“YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!”
Benny finally responds.
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”
That was basically me as Aaron Nola was rolling up strikeout after strikeout after strikeout after strikeout of the New York Mets in the opener of Friday’s doubledip (so named for Rob Manfred’s commissionership being twice as dippy as Bud Selig’s, which wasn’t thought possible). Nola was unstoppable. Not seemingly unstoppable, but unstoppable. The Mets couldn’t hit him. The Mets couldn’t lay a shred of wood on anything he threw, save for a few foul balls. The record for consecutive strikeouts, established by Tom Seaver on April 22, 1970, was clearly on the endangered species list. With a bullet.
This was where I got to dealmaking, at least in my own head. Would I trade a guaranteed Mets loss in order to keep the strikeout record in the family? Your record or Tom’s record? Would I be OK with the Mets getting flattened by the Nola steamroller as long as we could mix in a popup or a groundout and keep this interloper from laying his hands on one of our most precious heirlooms, a priceless performance that we have been trusted to maintain under a collective Mets fan conservatorship for more than 51 years?
As Nola got up to 7…8…9 strikeouts, I was ready to sign for being no-hit as long as some intermittent fair contact was made. Never mind that the Mets had a hit (along with a hit by pitch) to open the affair before Nola commenced his de facto game of catch with J.T. Realmuto. It felt like a no-hitter. It felt like the wrong side of perfection. It felt hopeless.
In the bottom of the fourth, Michael Conforto came up as prospective consecutive strikeout victim No. 10, the Al Ferrara of the 21st century. Conforto’s job was simple. Don’t strike out, Michael. Can ya do that for me? Can ya do that for all of us? Can ya do that for Tom, who I’m pretty sure ya never met, but ya work at 41 Seaver Way and his number is on your sleeve?
No, Michael Conforto couldn’t do that. He struck out, just as he had in the bottom of the first, just as every batter in between his two at-bats had. With Conforto going down on strikes a second time, Aaron Nola had struck out ten batters in a row. Ten Met batters in a row. Aaron Nola had just tied Tom Seaver’s most sacred record.
My trade offer of an eventual Met loss for something other than another consecutive Met strikeout was no longer valid. Technically, it never was. Fans know that, but don’t acknowledge it in the moment of cosmic bargaining. All I could do was instinctively grit my teeth, grudgingly tip my cap, and cease concocting no-win deals.
A batter later, Pete Alonso put an end to the immediate sacrilege by doubling, halting Nola’s streak at 10 Ks, meaning that for the rest of time — or until later today when Jacob deGrom pitches — the consecutive strikeout record will be referred to as having been set by Tom Seaver in 1970 and tied by Aaron Nola in 2021. Or “the record belongs to Tom Seaver and Aaron Nola”. Or something like that. Shared. Not solely Seaver’s. Seaver and somebody. As if Tom has a peer.
I guess he does, for this, if little else. It’s better than “…broken by Aaron Nola on June 25, 2021.” Most records are meant to be broken. This one wasn’t meant to be touched, yet Nola’s philthy Phillie phingerprints are all over it. He earned it (with help from an egregious called strike three on Dom Smith, but that’s a rabbit hole whose plumbing will cast only more gray area on Great Moments in Mets history). To be disgustingly decent to Aaron Nola, he’s no bum. A man with an accent — Egyptian, I think — who worked at a local gas station would tell my parents that about my sister after she’d recently pulled in to fill up our other car. “Your daughter — she no bum!” It was apparently the highest of high-test compliments the fellas at the Exxon dispensed. That’s as high as I’m willing to go with Nola. He was part of the thrilling three-way Cy Young derby of 2018, the one where he and Jacob and Scherzer headed for the final turn neck and neck and neck until Jake pulled away in the home stretch. Jake still hasn’t looked back.
Until now, that’s what I thought of when I thought of Aaron Nola. Now I think about Tom Seaver, too. If deGrom and Seaver are your company, who am I to begrudge you your half of statistical immortality? To Nola’s credit, he did tell reporters it’s “pretty cool being in a category with Tom.” Indeed, though he should’ve referred to him as Mr. Seaver.
Mr. Seaver would likely not begrudge his new junior partner the accomplishment. On the other hand, I can hear the Franchise inserting the needle. Listen, big boy, in my day we went nine. Oh, and on my day with the ten straight strikeouts, I won the game. Also, let it be known, from the office of the conservatorship, Tom Seaver posted a 27-14 record against the Phillies lifetime…and that the Mets beat the Phillies in the 1966 drawing out of a hat for the services to one George Feaver.
On Aaron Nola’s day with the ten straight strikeouts, neither Nola nor the Phillies won the game. Not that game, specifically. As noted, there’d be another game of the “decibet” variety later. The decibet, in case you don’t remember the SNL sketch from Season One (in which case, citing Jack Benny may represent a generation too far to bridge), was the new metric alphabet, introduced to America by Dan Aykroyd as a smilingly efficient bureaucrat in 1976, the year the USA was briefly gripped by metric system fever. The hook was the standard alphabet of 26 letters was now too long and the government would be smushing it down to 10 — or as many San Diego Padres as Tom Seaver had struck out consecutively six years earlier.
LMNO will be condensed to single letters. Incidentally, a boon to those who always had trouble pronouncing LMNO correctly. And “open” would then be “LMNOpen,” as in, “Honey, would you LMNOpen the door?”
Our Manfred-mandated doubleheaders still have the first four innings, just as the decibet started with A, B, C and D, but by the fifth, you’re convinced you’re in the seventh, because my the seventh, you’re effectively in the ninth. Got that? Also, Wednesday is Sundae at Carvel.
The Mets and Phillies honored the legacy of Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton and other aces of yore by hardly scoring in Gamelet One. Nobody was throwing balls out of play and passing them to the MLB authenticator for Taijuan Walker, but Walker was magnificent for five innings (experientially seven, but the stats still say five). One run snuck across the plate on his watch, driven in by Nola, whose Bizarro deGrom act was quite unwelcome in Flushing.
Nola’s pitches eventually met Met bats, but they had no useful greetings to return. Joe Girardi removed the man who had just tied Tom Seaver and replaced him with Jose Alvarado with one out in the sixth. Somewhere Tom laughed. “Hey Gil, come look, you’re not gonna believe this.” Alvarado squirmed out of trouble in the sixth, but in the seventh, the first-place Mets lived up to their descriptor by taking advantage of a Phillie error — Luis Guillorme was involved; he always is — with a Francisco Lindor RBI single. This Lindor can play a little, we are learning.
The seventh, having been the spiritual equivalent of the ninth, meant we were going to the eighth, better understood as, in essence, the tenth, which comes with a runner on second no pitcher put there. In circumstances that render numerical labels useless, Seth Lugo proved a strikeout machine in his own right, thus setting up the Mets’ own unearned runner, Lindor, to bring home the winning run following an intentional walk to Alonso and a single by Smith. Dom had convincingly threatened he would bunt, further phlummoxing thoroughly phlummoxable Phillie phielders. (If you don’t do the “ph” thing when Philadelphia’s in town, you’re just not living.)
With the Mets come-from-behind, demi-miraculous 2-1 win in the opener, we felt as unstoppable as Nola. Nola had a swell no-decision for himself, though his team — like Carlton’s Cardinals in 1969 when Steve struck out 19 Mets — lost. Lugo had a win to go with his 3 Ks, just as Seaver did in ’70 when he took care of 19 Padres in all, 10 in a row to end the game. Tom’s records are Tom’s records, no matter who else has a piece of them. And our momentum was our momentum after a thrilling eight-/extra-inning win.
Then came the second game, which presented itself with the same general leitmotif. Like Citi Field lacks a moderately priced tier of seating between the aspirational seats and the upper deck — wherefore art thou, Mezzanine? — these decibet games continue to miss their middle innings. So once again, we had a pitcher’s duel developing, this time David Peterson vs. Matt Moore, and it was as gripping as all get out until, in the sixth, a ball off the bat of Bryce Harper got out and it was 1-0. But wait! The Mets stitched together a nifty little rally off Philly’s bullpen and Philly’s gloves — Luis Guillorme was involved; he always is — and we had a tie and we had an eighth inning masquerading as a tenth. Sadly, we had Lindor and Guillorme not quite handling balls they usually absorb straight into their respective Roombas, and we were a run behind. And, sadder still, we didn’t get it back and had a 2-1 loss to go with our 2-1 win, which indicates intuitively this pair of one-step-up/one-step back games didn’t really have to happen, and if they hadn’t, the consecutive strikeout record would still belong to Seaver and Seaver alone.
But it doesn’t. Hence, I grit my teeth, I tip my cap, and I take the split. There’s no other deal to be made.
by Greg Prince on 24 June 2021 12:45 pm Purposefully preparing the game bag.
What to leave in, what to leave out. Two factory-sealed beverage containers? In. Two masks? In. Two phone chargers? In. Transistor-style radio because what if the phone chargers aren’t effective? Also in. I bow to progress where progress institutionalizes itself, but am, at heart, against the winds of change. It was hard enough for me to switch from mini-duffel to tote when so mandated by the Manfreds and Wilpons who made security theater the convenience fee of physically entering the ballpark. Yet preparing the game bag in the Age of Cohen remains essential and invigorating. Left over from the last time I had cause to tote it were 4,000 napkins, tissues and paper towels (mostly unused) and a 2019 pocket schedule. Wednesday afternoon I ditched about 2,000 of the napkins, tissues and paper towels. I kept the pocket schedule. You never know when an old baseball season will suddenly break out.
Intrinsically understanding the commute.
Stand here and wait for the train where you can grab a better seat, which is to say away from strangers. It’ll cost you some walking time when you get off at Jamaica, but you’ve got a lengthy enough wait at Jamaica. Position yourself for the car at Jamaica that you know will leave you off near the staircase to the 7 at Woodside — but it’s always crowded in that car. The LIRR now has diagrams to confirm that. Thus, stay up the platform at Jamaica. Get a seat. Relax. The game isn’t going anywhere without you and your lovely bride who you are so happy said, “sure,” to your suggestion of a Wednesday night ballgame. To be technical, the game has gone on without you for 633 days (59 home games) since you last did this. But commuting to it is a skill never unlearned. True, we wind up with a longer-than-average stroll to that staircase where we transition from suburban rail riders to gritty subway warriors. But we’re not in any rush. Except of course we are because who doesn’t rush to the staircase to the 7 because at any moment, the express could come rolling in. And here it is! Move! That extra burst of speed returns to my 58-year-old feet. I return to the 7 Express, mask and all. Mask furtively inches above my mouth for an instant so i can catch my breath from that extra burst of speed. I’m in a crowd for the first time since god knows when. I’m not as worried about that as I thought I might be. Everybody is masked. I’m vaccinated. What did I get a shot for twice if not for this?
Hearing my name, and not from being called in from the waiting room to see my doctor.
Other than my wife, my cat and professionals who intermittently examined my well-being, I haven’t been intentionally near a specific individual since the middle of March in 2020. Stephanie is with me for this first trip to Citi Field since two months before that (the January FanFest) and first game there since four months before that (September 2019’s Closing Day). Avery is presumably napping away at home. Like the game bag and the transit journey, this is old hat. Yet it’s new hat when you haven’t done it at, we hope, the tail end of a pandemic. New hat in 2021 was putting on my old hat as I descended the staircase from the Mets-Willets Point stop. I was so engrossed in this ritual of pulling my Mets cap from my game bag that at first I missed my name being called out. Then I caught it, but didn’t recognize the source. It was only the person I write this blog with for the past sixteen-plus years. I knew Jason and his family would be at this game. I didn’t know we’d be on the exact same staircase an hour before this game. Hence unfolds our not entirely random yet mostly unplanned reunion. It’s also the first time I’ve been intentionally near a specific individual outside the home since…well, you’ve lived the same calendar I have, I imagine. Jason and I do a double bro-hug. Maybe a triple. We’re both vaccinated, what the hell. I greet Emily and Joshua with something similarly bro-ey but, I assure you, just as sincere. I can’t bring myself to shake anybody’s hand.
Enhancing my baseball library.
I understood Citi Field didn’t want my cash. They wanted my money, but not my cash. I don’t understand cryptocurrency, but that’s not this. Just, you know, give us your card. It’s not a baseball season without a yearbook and a program. Even in 2020 I scrounged a yearbook, albeit by mail. I love that every year where I’m allowed inside the ballpark it’s my first purchase. The digging into the wallet and passing over the bills to the full-throated man announcing his inventory. “YEARBOOKS! PROGRAMS!” Such a man was on the job in 2021. He had both (nowhere in sight: printed media guides or current pocket schedules). I hand him my card. He hands it back to me with the latest additions to my baseball library, along with a useless pencil that will sit by my bed for the rest of eternity. The pencil never has an eraser. This time it doesn’t even say NEW YORK METS; did the warehouse finally run out? Before I turn for the escalator, I have to ask: “Hey, how much was that?” I’d request a receipt, but it’s the “YEARBOOKS! PROGRAMS!” man. I can’t imagine he gives receipts.
Choosing from the greatest menu in all of sports, maybe all of human existence.
I’ve been jonesing for a Hebrew National frank from the kosher stand. What is it Humphrey Bogart said? “Hebrew National at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz…and leaves what passes for Nathan’s in the dust.” The stand is right there when we come up from the Rotunda (where yesterday’s lineup’s oversized baseball cards are still posted because who has an enormous picture of Tylor Megill handy?). But Stephanie and I are going to walk the perimeter of Field Level, and I don’t want to eat on the run or drag it with me until I sit down. Our traditional first stop is World’s Fare, but World’s Fare isn’t open. Citi Field is open, but not quite every inch of it. No Mama’s of Corona. No Daruma of Great Neck. But no worries for we gallivanting gourmands of flushing. Arancini Brothers has no line. We stop for an assortment of risotto balls. The Chasins turned Stephanie on to them a few Augusts back. I’m along for the ride on this one. Blue Smoke also has no line. Brisket! Can’t ever go wrong with Blue Smoke brisket. No pickles included in the clever little Mets To Go bag, however. No dispenser for barbecue sauce. Hey, I’d forgotten there’s a third base side kosher stand, too! Hot dog! Literally! No sauerkraut, unfortunately. No condiment stands whatsoever at the tail end (we hope) of a pandemic. Nevertheless, the hot dog dressed by its humble packet of Heinz mustard is glorious. It’s what I was jonesing for. “I know it’s a cliché,” I tell Stephanie. “But I really wanted a hot dog.”
Emoting.
My emotions are pretty much in check until we land on Excelsior. I pictured my first game back ensconced in the 500s of Promenade, but Section 327 is Stephanie’s and my special spot, usually for Closing Day, and I only wanted to go to a first game in forever if I could go with Stephanie, the only person I’ve seen willingly in forever. The special spot is worth it for a special occasion. Special occasions don’t come along every day (thus the phrase). I wasn’t overwhelmed when we approached Citi Field by train. I wasn’t overwhelmed having my bag searched or buying $21 worth of content-free Mets publications or haggling with cashiers for my receipt after giving them my card for risotto balls or brisket, but the Proustian sense of being enveloped by the portion of concourse that borders Sections 330, 329, 328, just as we were in 2019, 2014, 2009…this is where a manly man makes an allusion to slicing onions. I’ve sliced quite a few onions, especially during quarantine when cooking replaced going to a baseball game as the thing I looked forward to doing on a Wednesday night. Onions really do produce tears. No condiment stands. No onions for the hot dog, either. Where was I? Right. Overwhelmed to be back.
Streaming consciousness instead of streaming Netflix.
This is the first time I’ve seen Francisco Lindor as a Met.
This is the first time I’ve seen Kevin Pillar as a Met.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Michael Conforto as a Met, but I haven’t even seen him on TV for more than a month.
That’s what Tylor Megill looks and throws like.
Kevin Pillar, Jeff McNeil and Luis Guillorme all use walk-up songs from before they were born. I approve.
The trumpet entrance for Edwin Diaz isn’t nearly the riot they make it out to be on TV. I approve anyway. Blowing a trumpet is preferable to blowng a save.
This is what it’s like to cheer out loud in the company of others for the Mets in 2021.
This is what it’s like to bear witness to the Mets taking a five-run lead in 2021.
This is what it’s like not being convinced in person a five-run Mets lead is altogether safe. It’s not much different from lacking that conviction while watching on TV.
This is the first game I’ve been to in the 2020s. It doesn’t feel much different than it did in the 2010s or all the decades stretching back to the 1970s. This is what I’ve done for close to a half-century. I still know how to do this. I still like to do this.
The Braves fans in attendance aren’t really bothering anybody but their presence bothers me on principle.
Shut up presumably cute little girl shrieking a couple of rows back; and large not-so-cute man somewhere to my left, as Gary Cohen is likely ignoring your bellows of I LOVE YOU GARY COHEN!! so maybe stow your shtick already; and family in front of me, you’re neither the Incredibles, nor the Invisibles, so tell your kids to sit down when somebody’s pitching or batting; and how many bleeping beer and cocktail-in-a-jar runs do Stephanie and I have to literally stand for — I still have a knack for making people getting up in the middle of an inning generate two seconds of guilt for disturbing a fellow like me who’s just on hand to watch the ballgame and sip from my previously factory-sealed beverage containers.
Are we really still measuring noise by noise meter? Like these people around me need encouragement?
Yet I still like this, being here, being with the Mets and other Mets fans. I wasn’t sure I would, and if I couldn’t like being with the Mets and other Mets fans, where was I gonna like being at all?
I’m near people. My mouth opens at will. Theirs, too. What’s going into the air? Are we still worried about transmitting droplets and aerosols and whatever else? Geez, I sure hope these vaccines are as good as advertised. My masks are in my bag and so are everybody else’s.
Nice night. Very nice night. Slow game, though. Very slow game.
Fan appreciation.
Tylor Megill delivers thirteen Acuña-free outs in support of the Mets’ five early runs. He gives a couple of runs back because he’s Tylor Megill and not Dick Rusteck. We weren’t demanding a shutout in his major league debut like Rusteck crafted 55 Junes ago (still the only Met neophyte to have performed that feat). We weren’t demanding anything from Tylor Megill. Just use your arm, kid, and keep us from the bullpen for a while. That the kid did. Callup’s just another word for nothing left to lose. Good enough for me and my Tylor Megill. When Luis Rojas removes the rookie, we savvily applaud heartily for those thirteen outs in a first start. You don’t get to participate in that from home. Cardboard cutouts didn’t clap once in 2020. This is what being a baseball fan is all about. So is booing the umps for checking Tylor Megill for what, his baggage claim ticket? He just got here! We boo blue until they are done harassing our young man. Then we return to cheering Tylor until he’s in the dugout. Too many people play with their phones, too many people get up for beer, too many people are inane drones and made you fleetingly sorry you’re near them, but enough people are into the game at a game that you are so glad you’re with them at a game.
Cross-pollination as spring turns to summer.
I pledged I’d make minimal use of my phone, my chargers, even my radio. You came to the game to be at the game. You can distract yourself at home. It took me an inning to realize Ronald Acuña, Jr., was missing from the Braves lineup, yet I didn’t lunge for a device to search out why. Once in a while, though, I wanted an Islanders score. It was do-or-die Game Six in Uniondale. If I’d been home, I could have watched the entire second period between any two pitches. It was a reasonable tradeoff to get this night at the ballpark. Late in the baseball game, I gleaned that the hockey game had tied up. A highlight was beginning to be shown on CitiVision. If a local team is succeeding in the playoffs, the news is shared widely. If a local team is losing, why stoke discontent? Indeed, it was two-all by the time the 27th out was recorded. It was, we learned from crosstalk on our way out, headed to overtime. As we found seats on the 7 Super Express, we picked up on the Isles’ lightning-quick OT victory. They, too, would be on the 7, so to speak, in Tampa Friday night. I loved the result. I loved just as much that it infiltrated my baseball night out, good news bro-hugging good news. In 1983, when Joel and I were driving home from the Mets-Padres game at which Darryl Strawberry hit his first Shea Stadium home run, we listened to the Islanders clinch their fourth straight Cup. Mets won then, too.
Impatience.
This game in 2021 would last 3:42. That’s three eons and forty-two millennia. Maybe it’s not 2021 anymore. Maybe Tylor Megill is telling his grandchildren about his thirteen-out debut. Yeesh, what a slog. But the Mets slogged to a 7-3 win, so, you know, we’ll take it. Stephanie, a champ in every way, particularly sitting next to me during sporting events I’ve osmosised her into caring about, hung in there. The trains connected on the way home as they did on the way there, “there” being where our heart was even when we weren’t. We’re Mets fans. It was there right where we left it.
Piano Man.
If Faith and Fear was a CBS sitcom, the director would have cut from Jason in right field griping about what a crime against humanity the Billy Joel singalong represents, to me somewhere above third base heartily singing along to Billy Joel. I’d all but forgotten we do “Piano Man”. I’d been anticipating “Lazy Mary” after “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. Still hadn’t bothered learning the lyrics despite 633 days of solitude to study, yet bouncing in place and hoping the stands will move in time like they would at Shea doesn’t require mastery of the Eye-talian language. Stephanie and I don’t need a translator for “Piano Man,” though maybe we could have used an explainer when we were kids. When I first heard it at age eleven, I thought people were stuffing literal slices of white bread in a jar atop the narrator’s piano, and this was long before I knew someday the Mets would sell cocktails in jars. Stephanie assumed “nine o’clock on a Saturday” meant 9 AM, which as a child struck her as a tad early to be going out for drinks, “but maybe I just didn’t understand bar culture,” she confesses now. “Piano Man” at Citi Field has added a sponsor, which detracts from whatever organic charm it’s supposed to emit as a singalong. It also doesn’t have Luis Rojas’s head popping up on the big screen when “the manager gives me a smile” as it did for Terry Collins (they should use Terry’s head and see if anybody notices). But it has this line I never fully appreciated until I’d been gone from Citi Field and Mets games for 633 days: “…to forget about life for a while.” I was at Citi Field. I was at the Mets game. My only existential issue was fully trusting that Edwin Diaz would allow us to make 11:20 at Woodside. I forgot about life for a while. For as long as it took to prepare my game bag until plopping it down in the living room, with its new yearbook, its new program, its additional couple of dozen or so newly acquired napkins and the win I’d get to inscribe in the steno notepad I call The Log II upstairs. This was regular-season Game 277 at Citi Field, on top of the 402 games at Shea Stadium in The Log I. The Log II had been stuck on Game 276 for basically ever. Eventually, as Wednesday night drifted into Thursday morning, I took care of that little detail, half in pen, half in eraser-equipped pencil.
6/23/21 W Atlanta 19-15 Megill 1 155-122 W 7-3
I missed having the chance to do that more than I realized.
by Jason Fry on 23 June 2021 12:35 pm A review of some emotions we were feeling not so long ago: amazement at the tenacity and resourcefulness of the Mets’ “bench mob,” pinch-me gratitude that the team was in first place, and perhaps even a little optimism that the starting rotation’s continued excellence would see it through such ancillary difficulties.
The Mets are still in first place, believe it or not, but the rest of those emotions have drained away, replaced by foreboding, depression and gloom.
The bench mob has produced far fewer miracles as its various Plan B players have been either exposed by too much playing time or reverted to statistical norms (take your pick), with the Mets losing six of their last eight and being shut out in four of those games. On Tuesday night, they got their first hit on an excuse-me swinging bunt by pinch-hitter Jerad Eickhoff (there’s a sign of trouble right there) and didn’t tally another until James McCann doubled in the ninth.
The Mets have also been swamped by yet another wave of injuries. Robert Gsellman tore a lat muscle and may not be heard from until fall, while Jeurys Familia has been shelved with a hip impingement. Joey Lucchesi, who’d seemed to figure things out and enjoyed a run of success, tore his UCL and won’t throw a pitch in anger until late next season at the earliest. Then, on Tuesday night, it was Marcus Stroman at the center of a concerned group on the mound and eventually walking off and heading down that dark tunnel with the trainer, a phrase that’s taken on the air of a tragic Homeric motif, the baseball equivalent of clattering shields and faces in dust. The Mets didn’t seem too concerned about Stroman after the game, and the man himself tweeted that “everything’s gonna be okay,” but the Mets weren’t terribly concerned about Lucchesi at first, either.
And it’s not just the pitchers — Tomas Nido got hit in the hand, necessitating a hasty return for Patrick Mazeika, while the invaluable Jonathan Villar is dealing with a calf strain. Even the good injury news comes with you-must-be-kidding caveats: Michael Conforto returned earlier than expected but wasn’t available Tuesday because Syracuse had to do contact tracing after a Covid outbreak.
On Tuesday the Mets improvised after Stroman’s departure by calling on Yennsy Diaz, Drew Smith, Aaron Loup and Trevor May. Diaz didn’t warm up sufficiently (a frequent malady for young pitchers summoned in emergencies) and loaded the bases on an infield single and a walk, but somehow got out of it, fanning Ender Inciarte, opposing pitcher Charlie Morton and big bad level boss Ronald Acuna Jr. It was a heroic stand, encouraged by infield whip Francisco Lindor and then celebrated with emphatic Lindorian fist pumps, but Diaz’s luck ran out an inning later as Dansby Swanson crushed a pitch through the wind into the left-field stands for a 3-0 lead that was all the Braves would need. Smith, Loup and May were nothing short of heroic in following Diaz, but moral victories mean little beyond word count in recaps like this one. Meanwhile, the Mets could do nothing against Morton, a well-traveled journeyman who bedeviled and frustrated them with a seemingly infinite number of variations on sweeping curves for his 100th career victory.
Reinforcements? The Mets picked up Robert Stock on waivers — you may recall him as the big, action-figurelike Cubs hurler they beat last week, though perhaps you’re unfamiliar with his very entertaining Twitter account. They’re calling up Tylor Megill to make his major-league debut tonight, assuming he escapes Syracuse’s Covid woes. (Megill will also join Eickhoff in the ranks of Mets Who Frequently See Both Their Names Misspelled, if that’s a stat you track.) Nick Tropeano and Thomas Szapucki are down there at Triple-A, presumably doing something other than having swabs stuck up their noses. One figures all of these pitchers will have a role to play at some point soon; one also feels duty-bound to note that the list features no name to make you sigh with relief that the cavalry’s coming. Meanwhile, Noah Syndergaard remains idle and Carlos Carrasco isn’t throwing off a mound yet, with his hamstring injury having entered the realms of Lowrie-esque surrealism.
The Mets will have to endure these misfortunes, just as they endured the slings and arrows of May. Will they? Hell, if I could predict that with any degree of confidence, we’d have ads or be some kind of fancy subscription newsletter. I can’t and so we don’t. Stir the tea leaves, peer at the MRIs, and make your own forecasts. Share the optimistic ones with us; we’ve got the gloomy ones more than covered.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2021 10:08 am This town is called Splitsville. It was created by an act of Manfred. Splitsville measures seven innings wide and seven innings long — and seven innings wide and seven innings long all over again. Some folks say there’s a couple of innings missing on each side of town. I don’t know about that. But if we get through seven and it absolutely has to be any longer, we put a runner on second and see what happens.
In Splitsville, we take our coffee with half-and-half. Our bakery’s best-selling cookie is the black & white. The middle school math department has been recognized for excellence in division. There isn’t a self-respecting Splitsville jukebox doesn’t offer two plays of “One Way Or Another” by Blondie for the price of one song…even if both times it’s the short version.
We also have the dadburn hummingest MRI tube in the state. I’d give you a brochure to read more about it, but everybody who picks it up seems to get the nastiest paper cut or ligament tear or lat strain or hip impingement or calf strain and has to miss work for at least ten days, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Or you could ask Joey.
Or Robert.
Or Jeurys.
Or maybe Jonathan.
Between you and me, I can’t keep track, but I sure wish I had the MRI concession.
This is Splitsville’s busy season. We opened for business last weekend and will repoen for business this weekend. We were open for business yesterday, too.
We had a win. We had a loss. Upon reflection, it was neither wholly satisfying nor altogether gratifying. But it could have been worse.
Could have been better, too. As we say in these parts, “That’s Splitsville for ya.”
On this side of town, we have our ace starter, Jacob deGrom. We just call him ol’ Jake. He’s practically perfect. He’s the best.
On this other side of town, we have our contingency starter Jerad Eickhoff. We’re still checking on the spelling. At best, he’s perfectly adequate.
Ol’ Jake gets us nervous, but only in the sense that he might hurt himself and need the MRI tube. When he doesn’t, there’s nothing to be nervous about. Oh, maybe we’ll fret that he’ll give up a hit or, less likely, a run. That’s hardly a problem to get nervous over, but you know how folks are. Really, the fretting about his ERA ticking up a notch or notching up a tick is just for appearances — sort of like the town cops searching ol’ Jake up and down for so-called illegal substances. The men in blue are just doing their job. Another act of Manfred, I guess. What we don’t much fret is that ol’ Jake might give up too many runs. It could happen, but it hasn’t happened in so long most folks on this side of town barely remember what it’s like.
Jerad gets us nervous, but mostly because we just met him, we’re not confident we can spell him and we know he wouldn’t be here if we had somebody more obviously qualified to do what he does. He calmed us down eventually, but we definitely had the feeling he and we got lucky. He’s welcome to come back soon. It’s not like we won’t have room for him.
On this side of town, with ol’ Jake, we had ourselves a nice late afternoon and early evening with just enough clutch hitting and no overtly deleterious bullpen doings. Everybody was so pleased that some folks lobbied to change our name to Pleasantville. “Hold your horses,” the old-timers said. “It’s pleasant now, but let’s see what it’s like later.”
On this other side of town, with Jerad, the night wasn’t so pleasant. The bullpen doings weren’t quite undeleterious, the clutch hitting that was supposed to arrive before 10:30 PM must’ve gotten held up in shipping, and hoo-boy, you don’t want to know about the baserunning. Splitsville’s known for several things, but fancy baserunning oughtn’t be one of ’em. The visitors sure liked how it worked out for them, but while we do appreciate the tourism, the folks who live around here were pretty unsatisfied and ungratified. In fact, they lobbied to change our name to Doomsville. “Hold your horses,” the old-timers said. “We feel doomed now, but it was pretty pleasant earlier.”
In Splitsville, we always want more, but we’re glad we didn’t get less.
by Jason Fry on 21 June 2021 1:34 pm A few of you who read us probably know that I have some other geeky pursuits besides living and dying with a baseball team. Among other things, I collect baseball cards, including making my own custom cards for Mets lacking such an honor; I write fiction, a good chunk of it set in the Star Wars galaxy; and I’m a pretty good self-taught genealogist. That last pursuit has caught me a fair amount about the various origins of last names. Some reference fathers and mothers (hence endings -son and -dottir), some refer to clans (the famous Scottish Mc-), others are left over from physical descriptions or places of origin (my own family features a Leffingwell, derived from a place called Lepping’s Well in England), and still others come from ancestral professions. Some of those job-based surnames are obvious — Butcher, Smith and Carpenter, for instance — while others are not. (“Fry” came from “Frey” and was likely a signifier of being a freeman, meaning my Swiss ancestors enjoyed more rights than the unlucky peasants.) Occupational surnames get trickier when you change languages: Zimmermann, for instance, is the German version of Carpenter, and I have collateral relations who changed their name from the former to the latter after arriving in Pennsylvania.
Which got me wondering if the last name Schwarber memorializes some long-gone profession.*
You’d think this would be simple, but Google isn’t much help — Schwarber isn’t a terribly common name, and most of the link results turn up dopey placeholder pages with a few demographic stats, links to fanciful coats of arms and assorted nonsense. But after Sunday’s matinee against the Nats, I’ll hazard a few guesses.
A few years ago, I might have surmised that “schwarber” meant “emergency reinforcement.” After a successful 2015 rookie season with the Cubs — which included a postseason bomb of a homer off the Mets — Schwarber played in just two games in 2016 before colliding with Dexter Fowler and destroying his knee, ending his season. His regular season, to be more precise — Schwarber tuned up with an Arizona Fall League while the Cubs were battling through the NLCS, was activated for the World Series, and hit .412 as the Cubs finally won it all.
A bit later, I might have concluded that “schwarber” was related to “indifferent harvester,” though that would be adding a bit of editorial commentary to a profession. Still, it would have made sense, given the number of baseballs that went unharvested by Schwarber during his labors in left field. That was the Cubs’ puzzle: finding a way to enjoy Schwarber’s bat while enduring his glove. Schwarber came up as a catcher but was soon moved to left, the position where those able to field the least are hidden as best they can be. (He’s also played a little right and a single game at first.)
Those troubles suggest a more logical origin for the name — “designated hitter,” though it’s possible the nature of that profession has wandered a bit since early modern Germany. Schwarber’s never been an American Leaguer despite the obvious logic of such a change: He was cut loose by the Cubs in December (along with future Met Albert Almora Jr.) and signed a one-year deal with the Nats.
After the last week, though, perhaps we need a new onomastic hypothesis. Maybe “schwarber” means “demolisher of spheroids.” Or perhaps that’s what it will come to mean, in much the same way that “molina” could logically become a Spanish synonym for catcher, given the number of Molinas related and un- who’ve played the position.
Schwarber’s Nationals Park barrage started last Saturday, when he homered off the Giants. A day later, he crushed two more. The day after that, he victimized the Pirates. A peaceful period followed, but in Saturday’s Game 2 against the Mets Schwarber was at it again, connecting off Robert Gsellman and then off Sean Reid-Foley. And then on Sunday Taijuan Walker was in his sights. In the first, Schwarber took a 2-0 pitch from Walker into the left-field stands to create an immediate problem for the Mets. His homer off Walker in the fifth was even more impressive — he clubbed a high sinker over the right-field fence, pulling a ball up around his eyes with enough force that it entered the Nats’ bullpen as a line-drive threat to life and limb.
Walker, though clearly not himself, acquitted himself well enough against non-Schwarber Nats, and a Pete Alonso homer in the seventh brought the Mets to within 3-2. Kevin Pillar walked and Luis Rojas sent Dom Smith up to pinch-hit for Brandon Drury. Dom spanked a ball past Kyle Finnegan, seemingly ticketed for center field and destined to put the tying run on third with nobody out. But alas, Starlin Castro was shifted into that exact spot, allowing him to snatch up the ball and start a nifty double play.
In the bottom of the seventh, a one-out double by Gerardo Parra spelled the end of Walker’s day. Jeurys Familia was brought in to solve the riddle of Kyle Schwarber, and instead added to his legend: His second pitch was a sinker that didn’t live up to its name. Redirected by Schwarber, it struck the top of the left-field wall and bounced into the Mets’ bullpen for our antagonist’s third home run of the day and the cessation of any faint Mets hopes. (A sore knee denied Schwarber a shot at connecting a fourth time, which was simultaneously a little disappointing and a blessed relief.)
But perhaps you read this recap expecting more existential musings on the meaning of Kyle Schwarber. If that was the case, sorry. Schwarbers happen — players ride hot streaks and cold ones, blandly offer reporters Just So Stories by way of explanations, and all you can do as a fan is hope that the various enemies’ and allies’ hot and cold spells work out in your favor. (Ask Schwarber about October 2015 and trying to combat a magical Daniel Murphy.) Schwarber’s now off to inflict cruelties on the Phillies, which we wouldn’t mind at all; the Mets will see him again a week from today, and can only hope the baseball ebb and flow is more to their liking by then, rendering Schwarber more indifferent harvester than demolisher of spheroids. We’ve seen enough of the latter, thanks all the same.
* If you want to be less fun, the name’s probably related to “schwarz,” which is German for “black” and often denoted a black-haired or ruddy-faced ancestor. But don’t be less fun.
by Greg Prince on 20 June 2021 12:40 pm On Saturday night in Washington, the Mets made like a banana and split — happy dad joke to all you fathers out there. As soon as they were done ensuring they wouldn’t follow up on their afternoon success and sweep, I flipped from SNY to TNT and USA. Mostly TNT. The leagues that are in playoff mode and their network partners kept scheduling the Nets and the Islanders simultaneously. Here inside the Nassau Coliseum c. 1975 Venn diagram of my wintertime affections, it made for a vigorous remote control workout. On nights when the Mets were also active, I needed to keep a stockpile of AA batteries handy.
This time, I was out of the Barn, mostly. I would have liked to have immersed myself in the Isles’ defense of Uniondale against Tampa Bay, given that any game at the Coliseum is potentially the last game at the Coliseum, but I had only so much bandwidth to give to must-win playoff action. The fact that I’m using the phrase “bandwidth” in this regrettable context indicates I could process only so much tension-tinged sports at once.
Mostly, I watched the Nets on Saturday night. Their must-win was the mustest, both mathematically, as they were tied with the Bucks at three games apiece, and personally. The Nets are my team in a way no other team is my team besides the Mets. To be fair, no team is my team the way the Mets are, but if there’s a slot available for waking minutes if not hours obsessing over the fortunes of somebody else, the plurality goes to the Nets. Maybe not every season. Definitely this season.
Fellow Mets fans, no matter what it felt like in the late ’90s in New York, aren’t hard to find if you’re a Mets fan. There is community in Mets fandom. There is community right here. A Mets fan can align his social media to never be out of the Met loop whether it’s for news or opinion or just blowing off steam. If I walk outside, as I used to with regularity prior to March 2020, I’ll give off Met vibes and as often as not have them returned. It’s both organic and earned. I’ve been a veritable full-time Mets fan for a long time.
This has never been my experience as someone whose favorite basketball team is the Nets. There are Nets fans out there, but I’ve never much connected with them. When I let my Netsness be known in polite conversation with those who have no particular interest, or dare to read what strangers have to say on the subject, I get little satisfaction. Well-meaning older types will invoke Rick Barry and Dr. J, two idols of my youth, yet neither of whom were available Saturday night; it’s as if the last four-and-a-half decades never happened. Embittered North Jerseyans inform me they’re still sore about the move to Brooklyn. Aloof Brooklynites sniff they aren’t impressed that they received their very own major league franchise. Knicks fans haughtily wave their participation ribbons. #NBATwitter is harsh, selectively memoried and mostly in it for the memes. Save for a few virtual fist bumps, I’m all alone in my Nets fandom.
Well, not totally alone. I’ve got Stephanie, my first-round draft choice 34 springs ago, still next to me on the couch for Nets nights. We don’t call them that, they just develop that way. Hey, the Nets are on tonight. We’re set for the evening. Ian Eagle. Sarah Kustok. “Wear Brooklyn at” with its photos of Nets gear being modeled around the world. Our team. Like the Mets, but a little different from the Mets. Stephanie watches the Mets with me. Stephanie and I watch the Nets together. Not as intently or urgently as we do the Mets, but, suddenly, for a very long time and with undeniable continuity. Most years they get winter nights and whatever sliver of non-Met spring they can claim.
Oh, and we watch them of the frigging YES Network. We sit through commercials for Yankee programming and propaganda. Tell me that’s not devotion to a cause.
In the house where I grew up, we had what we called the sloped room. It was a small room upstairs whose ceilings were low and sloped (thus the name). The decor was cramped, dank and dusty. I was supposed to close its door when company came. Yet it was also a very important room because I piled very important stuff in there. Books and magazines that didn’t make the cut in my bedroom. My team-classified shoeboxes of baseball cards. My LPs and 45s, arranged alphabetically within one of the iron milk crates my mother insisted we stash in the trunk when she spied them by the curb of the local Masonic temple. She considered herself an interior decorator who was going to do creative things with those crates. Little did she know she invented dorm decor.
The Nets are the sloped room of my sports consciousness. The New York Nets. The New Jersey Nets. The Brooklyn Nets. Maybe a scrap of paper on which there is scrawled in pencil “New Jersey Americans,” as if I was going to do something with that one day, like my mother and the milk crates. I’ve got my Nets stored upstairs. Now and then I take my Nets stuff out of the sloped room upstairs (points to his head) to look through it. Romance for the red, white and blue ball. Regret for the sale of Julius Erving — embers of anger at Roy Boe, too. The spelling of Piscataway. Stoic admiration for Buck Williams. Lingering sorrow over the loss of Wendell Ladner and Drazen Petrovic. Stray playoff appearances and their corresponding early exits. Uniforms that gave way to other uniforms. Arenas that gave way to other arenas. Jason Kidd & Co. for the extended moment that you couldn’t have a greater Association conversation without the Nets. Brook Lopez bridging a couple of rivers. Remembering it’s “Spencer Dinwiddie” and not “Spencer Dinwiddle”. Cold winter nights. Losing records. Records edging past .500. Hope, but no expectations. Quiet affinity that rarely left the house.
Then the current era, which couldn’t have been more current or more vibrant or more crackling with expectation. It either began in late June of 2019 with the shock announcement that Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were coming to Brooklyn or this past January when James Harden managed to join them. I’m not a huge basketball fan — if I were, maybe I’d be writing a blog about it — but even I understood who these guys were.
They were Nets.
For my 50+ years of Nets allegiance, even in the days of Doc and Billy Paultz the Whopper and Bill Melchionni and Super John Williamson and the ABA championships they pulled down, the best you could hope for was a pat on the head. The Nets? Hey, they’re really building something, maybe. Good for them. That was the most they got when Kidd led them to consecutive NBA finals they never had a legitimate shot of winning. That was what they were aiming toward the year before the pandemic when a carefully constructed young team was coalescing and surprising and suggesting that maybe someday they, too, could compete on the edge of the Eastern Conference before losing in the postseason, which would be quite an accomplishment when contrasted against the worst you could hope for, which was, inevitably, The Nets? HA! There was always a lot of HA!
Now, leaning forward from the pandemic viewing couch of 2021, I was rubbing my eyes and seeing megastars dressed as Nets and being Nets and taking the Nets to heights no Nets had elevated the Nets toward. They weren’t together often — you think the Mets are injury-plagued? — but when they were, it was 1986 up in here. The long slow climb that hinted at success if we got a couple of breaks was replaced with a rocket booster. Tom Brady had come to Brooklyn, in triplicate.
The only downside to the Big Three, besides each of them using a human-type body and being susceptible to sprains, strains and what have you, was you couldn’t love the Nets making strides and coming close. These Nets weren’t constructed to progress. These Nets were constructed to win in one fell swoop and dazzle you while they did it. Title-free for the past forty-five years, which encompassed every second of the franchise’s NBA membership, was long enough in the long view, but there was no long view to see here. These Nets had to get it done ASAP.
Which is why Saturday night’s Game Seven against Milwaukee was the most essential Game Seven of my life since Game Seven against the Cardinals in 2006. Much the way 2006 was our — the Mets’ — year to win the World Series (which we didn’t), 2021 was the year we — the Nets — had to go all the way. No law said they couldn’t do it in 2022. The Big Three would still be under contract, but next years do not come with warranties. It’s why 2007 still burns Metswise. I spent the winter after Called Strike Three convinced it’s OK, we’re gonna get ’em next year. Still waiting.
If you paid the slightest bit of attention to the Brooklyn Nets these past few weeks, you know The Big Three forged playoff forces only briefly. Round one was fine, with the Celtics properly disposed of in five games. Round two got off to a rollicking start, the Nets trampling the Bucks twice. But Harden’s hammy tightened up and then some. Irving’s ankle landed on the wrong foot (that of a very large and very imposing Buck). Durant was all alone out there. A supporting cast was visible but only intermittently effective. For a night it didn’t matter. For a night, during Game Five, it was spectacular. Kevin Durant was Jacob deGrom except Jacob deGrom playing all nine innings and all nine positions. Just as I’ve lately heard myself think that as great as Seaver was, I’ve never experienced anybody like deGrom, I’ve dared to ask Julius Erving to at least nudge over a bit in the front seat of my Netsian esteem. I’d never asked him to do that for Jason Kidd or anybody else since the ABA.
As we’ve seen when nobody but Jake scores for Jake, team sports are rarely executed wholly and successfully by one man. God knows Jake has tried. And Stephanie and I know from our TNT vigil last night that KD tried. Almost pulled it off, too. Problem is the Nets were taking on a very tough customer. Second rounds of playoffs only have tough customers. Seven-game series are brutal in the familiarity they accumulate. I came to know the Milwaukee Bucks more than I ever wanted to know them.
Toward the end, it came down to Kevin Durant’s “big-ass foot,” as the man himself referred to the shoe that barely touched the three-point line when the Nets were down by two as regulation wound down. Durant took the biggest shot of the Nets’ NBA life. Of course he made it. We thought it was a three. A smaller shoe, or perhaps one whose toes curled upward a tad, would have added an extra point. Instead, it was a two. A clutch two, but still a two. Overtime beckoned.
The Nets failed to score. Durant took the collar. Joe Harris — a three-ball demon all winter, yet in June the possessor of the most nettlesome slump in Brooklyn since Gil Hodges inspired a priest to tell his congregation to go home, keep the Commandments and pray for their first baseman — stayed ice bleeping cold. Bruce Brown and Jeff Green went pale in the stat column. Blake Griffin fouled out. James Harden’s lone good hamstring could carry only so much load.
The Bucks won in OT. The Nets’ season was over before I was ready to accept conclusion as a conclusion. I was in October of 2006 again. The Mets were supposed to keep it going, straight to Detroit and the franchise’s third world championship. I was in October of 1999 again, the Mets in Atlanta, pushing a miracle run to an eleventh inning of a 10-9 score in which we had only the 9 and couldn’t get one more run or one more inning or one more game. That’s how much this hurt. Seventh-game hurt, like ’06. Overtime hurt, like ’99. Wanting it to keep going in ’21. Wanting to wake up thinking about the Nets and go to sleep thinking about the Nets the way I’ve been as this spring blends into this summer.
When I’m not thinking about the Mets, that is.
I’d say I went to sleep thinking about the Nets last night, except I couldn’t sleep. I sat shiva for my basketball team, for the half-century they’ve resided in the sloped room of my mind, how, at the risk of sounding self-pitying, nobody understands what they mean to me except me. The NBA ethos generally doesn’t allow for “good try, let’s reflect on what we’ve done” rumination. The Nets were supposed to win. The Nets intelligentsia knew that. Those who were gunning for the superteam knew that. If you wanted to mourn, do it yourself after your wife goes to bed.
Which is what I did until I nodded off at about 5:30 this morning. I was glad the Islanders won their almost incidental Game Four and tied their series at two. It, too, was thrilling, especially at the end, but I had to squeeze them in during TNT commercial breaks. The breathtaking non-goalie save that sealed their victory had the good graces to take place during a Nets-Bucks timeout. I wanted to watch the old Barn (the Coliseum, not the Dairy) shake for a few extra seconds and take in the YES! YES! et al chant that my neighbors four miles up the road have perfected, but as I said to Stephanie, “no time to soak this in.” Click went the remote once more.
When I woke up today, the door to the sloped room was still ajar. I rarely show it to company. Maybe we’ll do it again next year.
by Greg Prince on 19 June 2021 5:06 pm The Washington Nationals opted to charge their fans (and discerning fans of their opponents) once for one short game this afternoon and charge them again later for another short game this evening.
Bah, Natbug! Here at Faith and Fear, we give you a regular-sized blog post for each discrete game of the Saturday day-night doubleheader, especially since we’re in an outstanding mood following the result of the afternoon game. Admission will be complimentary, per usual.
There were only seven innings to the 5-1 Mets win over the Nationals, but much pleasure was packed into those seven innings. Francisco Lindor did the most packing, packing a pair of wallops: a two-run homer in the first of seven innings and a two-run homer in the fifth of seven innings; it can’t be stressed enough that the game lasted only seven innings…by design. Anyway, in between homering, Lindor drove in another run via a single. Say, that’s all five runs off the bat of the most accomplished shortstop in the National League East. Somebody should make sure the Nats’ social media team is made aware.
Francisco, however, wasn’t alone in his pleasure-packing. David Peterson scored two of the runs Francisco drove in, once after being nicked with a pitch and once after delivering a ringing double. Don’t ya love that doubles and triples ring? The bell sounded sweet to a pitcher who hadn’t gotten a major league hit before. David smiled quite a bit when asked about his hitting in the postgame interrogation room, perhaps the only time in recorded history that Peterson has smiled when asked about the game in which he just competed. That’s probably because he’s a dead-serious pitcher, but for the first time, as he noted, he feels “like a full baseball player”.
He was a pretty comprehensive pitcher as well, nullifying whatever thoughts the Nationals had of more than nicking him. David came within one out of qualifying for a win. Seven-inning game, five innings required for a W. You do the math. MLB hasn’t. Then again, seven-inning affairs are a scam, a pitcher’s win as a reflection of a pitcher’s effectiveness is flawed and the Mets as a unit were victorious. Never mind the math. Do the emotion.
Luis Rojas was careful with Peterson, given that by the time there were two out in the home fifth the kid had thrown 94 pitches and had rounded the bases twice. In came, over the next two-and-a-third, Aaron Loup, Miguel Castro, Seth Lugo and Trevor May. The Mets carry 43 relievers, what the hell, have a parade. The win was officially the work of Loup (0.1 IP), who let in the only National run, even though it wasn’t charged to him because it was inherited.
Somewhere there’s a caller to a talk radio show, or perhaps a petulant child (same basic thing), insisting Aaron Loup is a real winner, he got the win and maybe the Mets oughta trade Peterson because he had a 5-0 lead and couldn’t even get the win.
Argue away, strawman figures I’ve just concocted for my day-night interregnum amusement. We got a win. Maybe we’ll get another later. Another blog post, too, I imagine.
No charge.
by Greg Prince on 19 June 2021 10:00 am MEMORANDUM
DATE: June 18, 2021
FROM: Department of Analytic Analysis
TO: Luis Rojas
RE: Upcoming Schedule
As you know, previous postponements have us playing a day-night doubleheader tomorrow (Saturday) in Washington as well as a single-admission doubleheader at Citi Field on Monday, meaning we face a gauntlet of five games in a span of approximately 58 hours. Even though four of those games are scheduled to last only seven innings, this presents us with a challenge regarding resources, or “players”. Complicating this challenge is the scheduled Friday night game tonight at Nationals Park.
We have discerned through proprietary calculus the most desirable manner at which to proceed for Friday night’s game so as to best preserve our players and their finite energy for the games directly thereafter. It is outlined below.
Please implement this plan with minimal managerial improvisation.
1) Pitch Joey Lucchesi into the sixth inning. We have revised our previous metrics and concluded Lucchesi will not physically disintegrate should he pitch beyond a fifth inning. We have also discovered the “churve” is an actual pitch, not just an unpleasant sound our announcers make every five days.
2) Alert our fielders to the possibility of ground balls that can be converted into double plays. Numerous simulations confirm the likelihood that two outs are twice as good as one.
3) Our hitters should make contact if possible but otherwise avoid long innings full of rallies and scoring threats. If one of our hitters can drive a ball over the fence, that would be ideal. Otherwise efficient outs — deep fly balls, infield grounders, line drives hit directly to Washington defenders — will be considered optimal.
4) Hitters who reach first base, whether by hit or walk, should try to steal second base. If they are thrown out by Yan Gomes, that eliminates the possibility of an overlong inning; gets us back on the field one batter sooner; and gets us closer to getting the game over without event or incident. If they are safe, please have the next hitter swing for a home run.
5) Use Seth Lugo judiciously. It’s OK for him to get an out. Two or more might be an issue.
6) If Edwin Diaz has something to save, use Edwin Diaz. If Edwin Diaz has nothing to save, use Edwin Diaz. Probability indices indicate it’s bound to work one of these times.
A game managed according to the above plan, supplemented by presumably sound umpiring, delivers us a 50.0% chance of winning or losing by the thinnest of margins. A win would be preferable. A razor’s-edge loss would be regrettable in the short term, but should complete the game in far less than, say, three hours and four minutes that seem so much longer to our home viewers who struggle to maintain alertness, focus and interest on a game that aesthetically goes nowhere and takes forever. The key objective here is to have our resources/players as fresh as possible for the surfeit of makeup games ahead.
Remember, win or lose, this particular Friday night game is just one game. Good luck with the doubleheaders.
cc: Gary DiSarcina, Jeremy Hefner, Dave Jauss, Hugh Quattlebaum
by Jason Fry on 18 June 2021 12:43 pm Maybe the Mets just needed a day off.
You’ve probably heard that they’re playing a lot of games. More games than there are days. Including enough doubleheaders to give you the baseball equivalent of an ice-cream headache. Lots of those games coming against good teams. Which will be played with a roster still beset by injuries, and that lacks both enough starting pitchers for the slots needed and clear and obvious candidates for those slots.
Oh, and then Jacob deGrom — the best pitcher in baseball — left his start after three innings. Three perfect innings, because it’s deGrom, but just three nonetheless. Cue muttering in the stands, the anxious wait for Jake’s postgame reactions and self-diagnosis (he’s not a doctor but he’d probably have an absurdly positive WAR at that too), and then the even more anxious wait for the verdict from the MRI tube.
It’s been a lot! For us, and for the actual 26 guys who had to go out there and play baseball.
Anyway, that’s the context for the Mets going out Thursday night and doing essentially zero against Kyle Hendricks and the Cubs’ bullpen. Hendricks never cracked 90 but didn’t need to, tormenting the Mets with fastballs (of a sort), sinkers, curves and changeups. In this era of Lamborghini-speed pitches, it was like navigating around Amish horse-drawn carts with big reflectors on the back. The Mets couldn’t break through against Hendricks and then were stymied by Andrew Chafin, Ryan Tepera and Craig Kimbrel. Meanwhile, Marcus Stroman was wonderful … aside from a first inning in which he hadn’t settled in, resulting in a ball deposited into the Apple Basket by Javier Baez. It didn’t seem like that would be enough to beat the Mets, but it was.
(As an aside, don’t tell me “Apple Basket” isn’t going to happen. Because I’ll just become more stubborn about it.)
DeGrom, it turns out, is fine — or at least fine in the context of being a big-league pitcher who’s pushing the limits of what the human arm and its associated parts can do with a baseball, which is to say he’s always dealing with what us mortals would consider unacceptable pain and plying his trade knowing he’s one unlucky pitch away from a date with a surgeon and then a year of profound uncertainty. (As always, the seminal text is this bracingly honest piece by Bob Ojeda, which should be required reading for baseball fans.) Both deGrom and the Mets and the Mets’ doctors think his recent run of maladies — the side, the forearm, the shoulder — are bouts of discrete bad luck and not related indications of some larger problem. Our only course of action is to hope that they’re right, which makes this a good time to remind us all that hope is both free and a renewable resource.
Still, it’s been a lot. Too much, perhaps, to process in conjunction with an enemy pitcher working at throwback speeds backed up by a tough bullpen. Add it up and you got an inadvertent day off during a punishing stretch of schedule.
But hey, more context: The Mets have begun their hellacious run of games by going 5-2 against potentially playoff-bound teams. DeGrom doesn’t seem destined for a lengthy layoff. (Add however many asterisks here that you need.) One of his understudies pitched beautifully again. Reinforcements should be here soon, at least on the offensive side.
We worry — we’re Mets fans, after all — but let’s be thankful for what hasn’t happened so far.
by Greg Prince on 17 June 2021 1:36 pm Helluva win for the Mets on a Wednesday night in the middle of June. Timely hitting, nice show of power, six runs on the board, solid bullpen work capped by another save for the closer and, of course, a fine start for the starting pitcher for as long as the starting pitcher lasted.
Yet come Thursday morning, no one was really talking about the 6-5 victory the Mets posted over Atlanta on June 15, 1977. Every year right about now when we are inundated by “this date in…” reminders for That Date, it has nothing to do with Jon Matlack’s six-and-a-third sound innings, Bruce Boisclair’s homer or Skip Lockwood’s 1-2-3 ninth. Some wins and their salient on-field details tend to get lost in the bigger picture.
June 16, 2021, doesn’t appear to be a date which will live in the sort of infamy that taps us on the shoulder every June 16 for 44 June 16s and counting. Let’s hope not, anyway. Especially the part about the shoulder. This particular Wednesday night in the middle of June included but was decidedly not highlighted by the Mets’ 6-3 victory over Chicago. Despite the knee-jerk recitation that “we can’t have nice things”, it was a nice win and we still have it. The bullpen did its duty, from Sean Reid-Foley coming on without warning in the fourth through Edwin Diaz nailing down the last out in the ninth. A couple of our sluggers, Dom Smith and Kevin Pillar, also stepped up, each of them homering. Defensive replacement Mason Williams defended against a last-gasp Cub rally with a diving grab that made his insertion an instance of brilliant managing by Luis Rojas. The win, our third consecutive, pushed the Mets to ten above .500 for the first time since the end of 2019 and kept us five ahead of the NL East pack.
Very nice. And excruciatingly irrelevant versus the only thing anybody is really talking about the day after.
Jacob deGrom made another early health-related exit. Any time your franchise pitcher is absented by circumstances we’d rather not countenance on a Wednesday night in the middle of June, it commandeers your attention and activates your darkest anxieties. The Mets could trade Tom Seaver only once on June 15, 1977. When the deal was done, we’d have the rest of the week, the month, the season and our lives to regret it. DeGrom, however, keeps leaving us. Not leaving us in the pushed-out-of-town sense (god forbid), but sooner than anticipated practically every time he pitches. The short-term accumulation of angst mounts a little more every time.
That’s mostly because we don’t know a) what precisely is wrong; b) if anything precisely is wrong; c) how nothing precise could possibly be wrong if something like this keeps happening. All we have to reassure us is the sight of deGrom pitching. That part eases tensions, calms worries, tranquilizes anxieties. That’s extremely nice.
And we can have that nice thing. We just don’t know for how long on a given evening or why, exactly, it can’t be longer. It will be recalled from five days prior that Jacob was disposing of the San Diego Padres with customary controlled fury. Then he felt a little something. He left the game. Later, he wasn’t overly concerned. If he wasn’t, we weren’t. When his next start came around, we saw not a question mark but an exclamation point.
The pitcher who entered Wednesday night’s game against the Cubs at Citi Field with an 0.56 earned run average proceeded to perform better than he usually does. Grasp that, if you can. His fastball sped for itself. His slider eluded any all points bulletin the visitors might have wished issued. Nine batters came up. One drove a ball to the right field wall, where it was caught. The other eight struck out. It didn’t feel like a perfect game was percolating. It felt like Jacob deGrom was pitching per usual. No. 48 so represents excellence in Queens that Kevin Durant played 48 minutes Tuesday night en route to scoring 49 points in Brooklyn.
And, naturally, he drove in a run. DeGrom, I mean, though I imagine Durant would have, too, had the Nets asked. (Alert the authorities — GOATs are running rampant across the boroughs of New York!)
Then there’s a shot of Jacob deGrom in the dugout spewing venom into his glove. We’d like to believe it was because he’s tired of opposing batters not providing him with a sufficient challenge, but no, it was because he knew his anatomy was betraying him again. This time, it was his soreness in his right shoulder. He pitched for an inning not feeling right. He pitched a perfect inning in that condition, mind you.
He pitched no more after the third. After hiding his face and cursing the darkness, he headed down the tunnel, not to return for the rest of Wednesday. He couldn’t risk the shoulder getting sorer, just as the right flexor tendon couldn’t be messed with last Friday, just as the Mets had to be careful about his lat and his right side earlier this season. For someone whose body you’d think was disintegrating after listing the sum of its nettlesome parts, he’s in otherwise excellent shape. For the second consecutive postgame, he told us there doesn’t appear to be anything significantly wrong and he expects to pitch again as scheduled, pending finding out more from doctors and their machines.
We believe in Jacob deGrom, but we are forgiven for doubting his diagnosis might serve as the leading indicator of whether we can expect to see him being deGrominant next week. Even DeGrom doesn’t deny that this is plenty discomfiting, mentally if not physically. “I don’t even know what to say,” he said of his two latest departures. “I’m pretty aggravated with it.”
My sense as someone sitting and watching intently on television is maybe he shouldn’t pitch next week, but my medical bona fides are limited to scraping together a co-payment and requesting a receipt. My wildest guess is Jacob’s otherwise fit and trim body can no longer accommodate all the talent that busts out from inside him. If this were Heaven Can Wait, Jake would demand Buck Henry deliver him a new one, maybe a Colon model. And with a decently cushy divisional advantage in hand, maybe the next couple of starts by The Best Pitcher in Baseball can wait.
I’ve heard it supposed, not illogically, that throwing as hard as Jacob deGrom throws can’t possibly be ideal for the preservation of Jacob deGrom. He routinely throws 100 miles per hour like a person might tie one’s shoes (I wonder how fast he ties his shoes). Yet you keep your eyes on Jake and he doesn’t appear to be overdoing it. There’s no violence to deGrom’s motion, no grunting with each pitch, no groaning except from the would-be hitters when they swing and miss, and his devoted fans when we are suddenly impelled to miss him. Is urging Secretariat to take it slow down the home stretch at Belmont even viable?
I don’t want to be without Jacob deGrom for a single start. Or longer. Especially longer. I’d advise him and the Mets to be extraordinarily careful in case they haven’t already thought of that.
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