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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 Jason Fry on 4 June 2021 10:58 am Well, at least the pig exited covered with lipstick.
The Mets fell behind 4-0 against a scintillating Yu Darvish on a night when Taijuan Walker didn’t have his best stuff, kept getting into trouble of his own making, and had very little in terms of bullpen and bench behind him – a situation that led to some conservative calls in the dugout by Luis Rojas. And yet they came within a couple of whispers – a great play without a disastrous reversal, a runner’s mad dash getting just a little madder, a sharp hit not hitting the mound – of erasing the deficit and maybe stealing a game from Fernando Tatis Jr. and his supporting cast.
The result was a Rorschach game: Maybe this long journey into Friday morning left you impressed with the pluck and spunk on display in a losing cause; maybe it left you annoyed with Rojas, fate or both; maybe you can’t make up your mind between the two. All valid – the older I get, the less interested I am in telling other people what to feel, and that forbearance goes double for anyone who slogs all the way through a West Coast night game. If you survived you get to pen your own memoir of the journey.
But we can all agree that Tatis is an electric presence, which baseball sorely needs, and that the Padres are a lot of fun, the kind of relentlessly uptempo outfit whose first impression creates lifelong fans. Retiring Tatis on a foul pop in the first felt like getting away with something, and the rest of the game seemed to revolve around him. Meanwhile, the Padres’ grabby, semi-reckless energy was on display from the very first inning: Manny Machado made a tricky play at third to throw out James McCann as if expanding the diamond by 10% was no big deal, and Jurickson Profar arrived at second faster and harder than one would expect on a sure fielder’s choice. Not to mention the crowd’s delight at Darvish’s unlikely hitting heroics – he’s their Al Leiter.
Darvish is one of those pitchers who seems like he should never lose. He’s got an arsenal with the depth of Bret Saberhagen’s and the ability to throw between 67 and 97 with pitches that comes from the same angle and follow the same apparent path before deviating from it too late for hitters to react. Now throw in that strange hesitation in his windup: He pauses with his knee on the way up, then raises it slowly and a little creakily, like an old winch that needs to be babied, and then he’s through his motion and the ball is on you faster than you think.
It was Tatis, of course, who drew first blood for the Padres, but it came with a painful asterisk: In the third, with Machado on first, Tatis hit a high arcing drive to dead center. Mason Williams went up for the ball, which thudded into his glove but also drove it backwards, so that the ball flopped out and went over the fence. Williams was left with his hands on his head in horror, the author of a great catch that somehow became a disaster. (Still, the mischance felt overdue – and the Padres’ post-homer “swag chain” is all kinds of awesome.)
In the fifth, with the Mets down 3-0, Williams got their first hit and the tying run came to the plate with two out. It was Walker, who’d thrown 81 pitches … but Rojas let him hit, mindful of how taxed the bullpen was because of David Peterson’s Wednesday woes and of his short bench. Walker grounded out, which was unfortunate; worse, he then yielded a fourth run (albeit unearned) on a Tatis dash for home on a wild pitch, and departed after five.
I’m not a Rojas detractor – he’s almost preternaturally even-keeled, which I suspect players appreciate even more than they did a generation ago, and his team seems to like him and play hard for him. And he has a far better gauge of his clubhouse’s injuries and levels of exhaustion than any of us do. That said, I would have called for a pinch-hitter in hopes of getting back in the game and worried about tomorrow tomorrow; from the state of Mets Twitter, plenty of my fellow partisans agreed. Rojas might counter that he’ll almost certainly need bullpen length with Joey Lucchesi on the mound tonight and such a move would have been missing the forest for the trees, but I don’t think I agree. This felt like letting a healthy tree get sawed down right in front of you because you were looking way off into that forest — I’ve seen too many seasons come down to a game or two and a regretful look back at the calendar at losses you can’t ever get back.
Still, the Mets hadn’t surrendered. In the sixth, they cut the deficit in half on a two-run homer by McCann that drove in Francisco Lindor, yet another pairing of two high-priced acquisitions a lot of fans would have gladly consigned to a yard sale a week or so ago. For the 400th or so time, don’t make big, confident conclusions in May.
Darvish departed in favor of Tim Hill, a Laredo thrower who confronts batters with impossible arm angles and a following cross-body kick. He walked Billy McKinney and got Brandon Drury to hit a grounder to second, which Tatis dropped in his haste to turn a double play.
Up came Pete Alonso to pinch-hit – the guy many Mets fans had wanted an inning before, now front and center in a perfect spot. Alonso always looks sad at the plate: closing his eyes, looking skyward, and trying to get his breath. I’m sure he’s just visualizing a good outcome, but it looks like he’s in agony – which he really was in after hitting into the DP Tatis had just missed out on.
The Mets got closer in the eighth, when McKinney slammed a ball off the top of the right-field wall to bring in Lindor, with only Machado’s playing deep in the shift beyond second preventing an inside-the-park homer for the tie. (When a team has two right fielders at the optimum moment, maybe it isn’t your night.) In the ninth, Mark Melancon yielded a leadoff single to Tomas Nido and walked Jose Peraza. That’s the one situation where a bunt’s defensible, but Travis Blankenhorn was told to swing away. He put together a very patient at-bat (his second in a row) but hit a grounder to third, which Machado only converted into a lone out. Up stepped Kevin Pillar, who spanked a ball up the middle – one that struck the mound and wound up right where Ha-Seong Kim had shifted.
Ballgame. Exit the pig, covered with blue and orange lipstick and protesting the indignity of such treatment. And exit a ballgame that the Mets had clearly lost and yet then somehow almost won. Might have won, except for the ball assisted over the fence and the second shot at an enemy double play and the backup by a third baseman in right-center and the ball that spent all its energy hitting the mound. Which is to say, the one they didn’t win.
by Greg Prince on 3 June 2021 3:09 am Welcome to YouTube! Based on your viewing history, these videos are specially recommended for you!
DELUGE OF OFFENSE OUT OF THE GATE
Six New York Mets come to bat right away at Chase Field, six New York Mets get hits right away — first time leading off a game since 1979! Jonathan Villar singles; Francisco Lindor singles; James McCann homers (!); Pete Alonso singles; Kevin Pillar singles; Dom Smith singles. The Mets score four first-inning runs!
STILL MAD AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Madison Bumgarner pitches against the New York Mets for the eleventh time since 2012 and never gets pinned with a loss! Hardly ever gets hit, either! MadBum beats the Mets over and over, including once with an entire postseason on the line! When a Met beats Madison Bumgarner, that Met (Justin Ruggiano with a grand slam) gets injured practically ten minutes later…and the Mets as a whole lose to Bumgarner anyway!
THE PITCHER WHO GAVE UP AN ENORMOUS LEAD
David Peterson is a young and unpredictable pitcher. Occasionally he’s as unhittable as Madison Bumgarner in his prime. More often he’s as hittable as Madison Bumgarner was during the top of the first inning in the Wednesday, June 2, 2021, Mets-Diamondbacks game televised exclusively on YouTube. During the bottom of the first inning in the Wednesday, June 2, 2021, Mets-Diamondbacks game televised exclusively on YouTube — in exactly one-third of an inning — Peterson outdoes Bumgarner, giving up five runs along with the four-run lead his team’s deluge of offense out of the gate provided him!
THE (OTHER) BEARD
Not as famous as James Harden, but longer-tenured in New York, hirsute Robert Gsellman puts his own moves on the Diamondbacks, bailing out the Mets after Peterson’s implosion and keeping the club viable from the first through the fourth, giving up only two hits and no runs of his own!
WHO’S A BUM?
Madison Bumgarner, hero (or villain) of multiple Octobers, cannot survive a June afternoon in the desert. He surrenders a fifth run and leaves after two innings of eight-hit ball to a team that had collected all of 47 hits off him in 72 career innings, the 2016 National League Wild Card Game included!
MORE HITS, ONE RUN
The Mets keep pounding the ball versus Madison Bumgarner’s successor, the less-celebrated Riley Smith. Six hits! But only one run. The one run gives the Mets a 6-5 lead in the fifth. It feels like they should be ahead by more (it always feels like they should be ahead by more!).
TRIUMPHANT RETURNS OF 2021 (UPDATED)
Kevin Pillar in a plastic mask! Pete Alonso going deep! NOW Seth Lugo emerging from mothballs!!! Lugo, the Mets’ most dependable reliever of recent years, comes off the injured list and throws a clean bottom of the fifth. Seth is back and everything is gonna be great!
DISPIRITING ABSENCES OF 2021 (UPDATED)
Met after Met after Met disappears from the playing field, usually in agony. The latest to depart from view is Jonathan Villar, the Mets’ de facto regular leadoff hitter and third baseman. Villar’s hamstring tightens. He is removed from a game that isn’t televised on television, though his hamstring remains tight on all streaming platforms!
MYSTERIOUS DEBUTS OF 2021 (UPDATED)
Travis Blankenhorn follows in the heretofore unforeseen footsteps of Jose Peraza, Patrick Mazeika, Jordan Yamamoto, Tommy Hunter, Jake Hager, Johneshwy Fargas, Khalil Lee, Cameron Maybin, Brandon Drury, Yennsy Diaz, Billy McKinney and Mason Williams, all of whom preceded Blankenhorn into a Mets box score over the previous month. Many are mentored by Hugh Quattlebaum!
QUESTIONABLE BULLPEN STINTS OF 2021 (UPDATED)
New York Mets manager Luis Rojas leaves Seth Lugo in for a second inning during the Wednesday, June 2, 2021, Mets-Diamondbacks game televised exclusively on YouTube despite Lugo not having pitched in 2021 until the Wednesday, June 2, 2021, Mets-Diamondbacks game televised exclusively on YouTube. Seth’s second inning ends differently than his first. (SPOILER ALERT: An Arizona run is involved!)
RANDOM METS SEEN SWINGING BATS, 2021
Jose Peraza strikes out! Billy McKinney strikes out! Travis Blankenhorn strikes out! All in the eighth inning of a 6-6 game because they’re pretty much all the Mets who are available!
RECOGNIZABLE METS SEEN SWINGING BATS, 2021
The New York Mets send three All-Star players — Francisco Lindor, James McCann and Pete Alonso — to bat in the top of a ninth inning of a 6-6 game and it becomes a 7-6 game!
CLOSER CLOSES
Extremely talented yet residually untrustworthy Edwin Diaz pitches the bottom of the ninth inning the day after a bad night and restores faith in his ability and constitution — three up and three down!
MILDLY SURPRISING ENDINGS, 2021
The Mets win, 7-6, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but because the Mets had so many more hits (16) than runs; because the Mets had to use relievers from the first inning onward; and because the Mets insert a new Travis Blankenhorn daily, it’s almost shocking!
HIGH-QUALITY BASEBALL AUDIO
Crack radio broadcasters Howie Rose and Wayne Randazzo provide excellent accounts and descriptions of Wednesday, June 2, 2021, Mets-Diamondbacks game televised exclusively on YouTube. YouTube’s great for going down video rabbit holes, but when it comes to following an SNYless Mets game in progress, stick with the voices that paint word pictures!
by Jason Fry on 2 June 2021 1:49 am To be fair, it’s only natural: As fans, we see everything through a certain-colored lens, in our case one split between blue and orange.
So let’s peer through it and see what’s what: Marcus Stroman was throttling the Diamondbacks, the Mets had the lead, and then everything went south. A minor but chippy on-field dustup between Stro and Josh Rojas looked like a pointless gesture from a team on a 1-15 streak, as Francisco Lindor tripled in a run to make it 3-0 Mets and Dom Smith just missed a three-run homer which would have been his second of the game. But he did miss it, and had to settle for a sacrifice fly. 4-0 seemed like more than enough, but a three-run blast by Pavin Smith that got Arizona back in the game, with Smith’s bat flip indicating a certain degree of unhappiness with the opposition. (I don’t mind bat flips in the least, but that one felt like it had an agenda.) Jeurys Familia shook off a leadoff two-base error from Jonathan Villar to keep the Diamondbacks from tying it and Aaron Loup was terrific, but Edwin Diaz looked a little off from the jump in trying to secure the save. With one out, Nick Ahmed singled and took second base on a Billy McKinney bobble, then moved to third on a groundout. The Mets were one out away, but Rojas — of course it had to be Rojas — drove in the tying run. In the tenth the Mets immediately cashed their free runner on a James McCann double, but proved unable to convert their earned runner, and in the bottom of the inning Trevor May blew up for the second night in a row: walk, two-run double, farcical replay review, ballgame.
That’s a chronicle of the Mets riling up sleeping snakes, failing to add to a lead and seeing their bullpen falter, and seeing that way is perfectly accurate. I’m a Mets fan, after all. And more than that, I’m a Mets fan who finds the Diamondbacks … annoying. There’s their ceaseless quest for the worst uniform in baseball — they’ve now settled on switching color schemes seemingly at random, and the rattlesnake with a baseball in its mouth looks more like a heart than a serpent, which you now won’t be able to unsee either. There’s their weirdly sterile park, their uncanny-valley mascot, their creepy on-field race with former players turned into caricatures, and hovering above it all the general sense that they were born as half of an expansion no one particularly needed. (Sure, they beat the Yankees once, and I’m grateful for that, but enemy of my enemy etc.) I don’t hate the Diamondbacks, because that would require me to take them more seriously than I ever have, but if they moved to Portland or Charlotte or Montreal or Vegas tomorrow I suspect I’d shrug and hope they actually became a franchise with an identity and one I’d feel something about.
But enough with the blue and orange lens. There are Diamondbacks fans, even if you wouldn’t know it from the cascade of pro-Mets noise the last two nights, and they’ve been through a lot in the last month, watching in horror as their team plummeted into one of those baseball abysses that makes you wonder if your team will ever win again.
I don’t know what colored lens those fans would look through, because it’s the Diamondbacks, but put it up to your eye and you’ll see a come-off-the-deck victory, the kind that doesn’t erase a horrific May but at least makes you fantasize about resilience and newfound toughness and all those baseball cliches and a better June. Rojas had had enough and let Stroman know it, Smith showed the kind of emotion you admire in a rookie, and the team came back and stared down a gang of first-place interlopers from the east, shocking them with a walkoff loss.
As fans it’s of course all about us, and there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that perspective. But it’s not the only point of view. The other guys are trying to win too, and sometimes they do, and sometimes that’s as much the story as your own team’s failures.
by Greg Prince on 1 June 2021 1:16 pm Prior to nine years ago today, I regularly wove fantasies about a New York Met throwing a no-hitter. Then Johan Santana threw The First No-Hitter in New York Mets History, and I didn’t have to fantasize anymore. The Second No-Hitter in New York Mets History — perhaps one a little more spotless than The First — is still out there as a franchise goal, but if it comes, it comes, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I’ve gotten the one I closed my eyes and wished harder than hard for. On this count, I’m good.
Jacob deGrom, on the other hand, is extraordinary. Monday night he was pitching The Second No-Hitter in New York Mets History. The First Perfect Game, too. It was so obvious, it was routine. My muscle memory nudged me to get nervous, to overthink whether I should think this way or that way about what was unfolding in Phoenix. Do I sit over here? Over there? Did I just jinx everything? My contemporary mindset, however, transcended the traditional anxiety attached to following Met no-hit bids in progress.
It’s Jake. He’s got this.
Then he didn’t, after Carson Kelly registered a clean base hit in the fifth inning, yet it was no biggie as far as I was concerned. Maybe had it been deeper into the game, I wouldn’t have had to have just now gone back to the box score to look up which Diamondback it was who sullied Jake’s line. Maybe Kelly would’ve been synonymous already for Qualls or Wallis or Lyttle in my personal vernacular had it been the seventh or later. Maybe had it grown so close to taste, I’d be spitting regret right now.
But nah. Jake gave up a hit in the midst of a no-hit bid. Being Jake, he simply went back to pitching the same game, which felt as good as a no-hitter, minus the angst. Because the Mets are proceeding with commendable caution following his recent visit to the IL, they let him go only six innings anyway. There’d be one more Arizona hit, which could have been ruled an error — Billy McKinney made a nice diving play on a sinking Josh Reddick liner only to wind up dropping the ball — and everything else was deGrom to the nth degree: no walks, eight strikeouts, a run-scoring single of his own, an aura of hitless impenetrability that the two Arizona hits didn’t pierce whatsoever.
Jacob even got a W for his troubles, the beneficiary of other Mets besides himself lighting up the scoreboard, particularly the activated Pete Alonso, thriving in the desert as only this Polar Bear might. Pete homered and drove in four runs. McKinney compensated for his fielding faux pas with a grandstand shot of his own. Newest newcomer Mason Williams had himself a hit and a catch (the latter at the wall) for the first page of his Met scrapbook. Kevin Pillar donned a clear plastic mask to play the field after his brush with hit-by-pitch horror two weeks earlier and discarded it in order to swing and connect for a single in the seventh. The first-place Mets, comprised of a slightly different collection of first-place Mets every time they manage to take the field, played like whichever cast of first-place Mets they continue to be and beat the D’Backs, 6-2. A game that began on May 31 ended with the calendar in New York flipped to June 1 and a happy Johanniversary to what happened on this date in 2012.
DeGrom bookending Santana would have made it a greater story. DeGrom being deGrom made it a great game, per usual. On that count, we’re all good.
by Greg Prince on 31 May 2021 4:47 pm With so many roster transactions involving current Mets — including three more planned tonight to facilitate the deinjuring of a trio of heretofore injured Mets — we can be forgiven for not having taken note of every up and down involving former Mets. Yet we can’t let this AL Central subtraction from April 28 get caught in the breeze and blow away without noting its significance.
Cleveland Indians designated LHP Oliver Perez for assignment.
When next Ollie was heard from, on May 12, it was to say “hola” from Los Toros de Tijuana, where the old bull had signed to be a new Bull slightly south of where the Mets will be swinging through on their present road trip. Oliver Perez, 39 and no longer positioned to benefit from being an ageless lefty in these Three-Batter Rule times, is pitching in the Mexican League. Assuming he doesn’t return north of the border in a professional capacity (and perhaps assume nothing, given the recent renaissance of Wilfredo Tovar), that means we have a new LAMSA in the land.
LAMSA, of course, refers to Longest Ago Met Still Active, specifically in MLB terms. Ollie held the LAMSA title since the beginning of the 2019 season. With David Wright and Jose Reyes effectively retiring in tandem at the end of 2019, only Ollie remained active from the 2006 National League Eastern Division champion New York Mets. Only Ollie could sit in a major league clubhouse and regale youngsters with tales of Game Seven; of Endy with The Strength To Be There; of Edmonds scurrying back from when he came (first base); of a breathtaking twin-killing that Gary Cohen called “the play maybe of the franchise history”; of Ollie’s bacon being saved once the gopher ball he gave up to Scott Rolen was kept in captivity.
Actually, Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright could actively regale with that tale as well, but when Ollie told the story, no doubt it had a happier ending.
That’s all over now. There are no more 2006 Mets in the majors. And combined with Daniel Murphy’s previously announced retirement, we are down to only one Shea Stadium Met still active in either the AL or NL, thereby making him both the new LAMSA and truly the last of his kind.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joe Smith.
The Mets gave us Joe Smith beginning on April 1, 2007, a sidewinder who made the Opening Night roster out of Spring Training at the tender age of 23 (seemed younger) and pitched beyond his years as a Met for the next two seasons, or until Shea closed in 2008. Soon after, Omar Minaya packaged the 17th Met named Joe to Seattle as part of a master plan to secure the services of J.J. Putz. Also included in that complex deal — the Mariners threw in Putz’s bone spur — was Chavez. As long as they were tearing down Shea, Omar figured why not tear out our heart?
Putz, to put it mildly, was a disappointment. Smith, to put it even more mildly, has shown staying power. He recently passed the 800-appearance mark and has tied some guy named Walter Johnson for 49th all-time in games pitched (and is five behind a fellow named Nolan Ryan). The Mets couldn’t have known Smith would have quite the lengthy career ahead of him. They probably should have known about Putz’s bone spur, but that’s another story.
With Ollie having moved on and Joe still doing what’s he’s been doing for more than fourteen years, let us update the chronological LAMSA list.
LONGEST AGO MET STILL ACTIVE: Chronology
• Felix Mantilla, debuted as a Met, 4/11/1962; last game in the major leagues, 10/2/1966
• Al Jackson, 4/14/1962; 9/26/1969
• Chris Cannizzaro, 4/14/1962*; 9/28/1974
• Ed Kranepool, 9/22/1962; 9/30/1979
• Tug McGraw, 4/18/1965; 9/25/1984
• Nolan Ryan, 9/11/1966; 9/22/1993
• Jesse Orosco, 4/5/1979; 9/27/2003
• John Franco, 4/11/1990; 7/1/2005
• Jeff Kent, 8/28/1992; 9/27/2008
• Jason Isringhausen**, 7/17/1995; 9/19/2012
• Octavio Dotel, 6/26/1999; 4/19/2013
• Bruce Chen, 8/1/2001; 5/15/2015
• Jose Reyes, 6/10/2003; 9/30/2018
• Oliver Perez, 8/26/2006; 4/22/2021
• Joe Smith, 04/01/2007; still active
*Cannizzaro was Jackson’s catcher on April 14, 1962, at the Polo Grounds, so for LAMSA purposes, he debuted as a Met after his pitcher.
**During Isringhausen’s extensive injury rehabilitation period, Paul Byrd (debuted as a Met on 7/28/1995); Jay Payton (9/1/1998); and Melvin Mora (5/30/1999) could each temporarily lay claim to LAMSA status, but Izzy ultimately outlasted them all.
Let us also bring up to date the Last Met Standing story, a slightly different cataloguing from the one directly above. Last Met Standing refers to the last Met who is still lacing up his spikes and crossing the foul line in the majors after having done exactly that for a particular Met team. The last 1962 Met, you oughta know and probably do, was Ed Kranepool, a major leaguer until 1979. Eddie was also the last 1963 Met and 1964 Met…but not the last 1965 Met, as you’ll divine below.
LAST MET STANDING: 1962-2011
1962-1964: Ed Kranepool (final MLB game: 9/30/1979)
1965: Tug McGraw (9/25/1984)
1966: Nolan Ryan (9/22/1993)
1967: Tom Seaver (9/19/1986)
1968-1971: Nolan Ryan (9/22/1993)
1972-1974: Tom Seaver (9/19/1986)
1975: Dave Kingman (10/5/1986)
1976-1977: Lee Mazzilli (10/7/1989)
1978: Alex Treviño (9/30/1990)
1979: Jesse Orosco (9/27/2003)
1980: Hubie Brooks (7/2/1994)
1981-1987: Jesse Orosco (9/27/2003)
1988-1989: David Cone (5/28/2003)
1990-1991: John Franco (7/1/2005)
1992-1994: Jeff Kent (9/27/2008)
1995-1997: Jason Isringhausen (9/19/2012)
1998: Jay Payton (10/3/2010)
1999: Octavio Dotel (4/19/2013)
2000: Melvin Mora (6/29/2011)
2001-2002: Bruce Chen (5/15/2015)
2003-2005: Jose Reyes (9/30/2018)
2006: Oliver Perez (4/22/2021)
2007-2008: Joe Smith (still active)
2009: Darren O’Day (still active)
2010-2011: Justin Turner (still active)
WHOA! you oughta be saying after reading to the end of the Last Met Standing. Kranepool, McGraw, Ryan, Seaver and so on — it all passes the smell test (something Shea didn’t always, but we loved it anyway). Now and then over the years, we’ve paused from our day-to-day coverage to salute the later Last Mets Standing once we noticed they were the only ones left upright from their respective classes. When various Mets from the 1990s and early 2000s endured to outlast their contemporaries well into the 2000s and 2010s, it was a sign they and we were getting old, but that’s baseball and life.
But Darren O’Day?
WHOA!
Darren O’Day is the Last Met Standing from 2009?
Seriously?
Seriously. Joe Smith, as mentioned, wasn’t a 2009 Met. Oliver Perez was, but stopped being a 2021 major leaguer as of his final Cleveland appearance on April 22. O’Day, if you didn’t notice, pitched as recently as April 29. He pitched for the Yankees, so you’re forgiven (and congratulated) for not noticing. Then he went on the IL, perhaps to show a tiny little piece of him is still a Met. He may not be active at this very moment, but he’s an active major leaguer in the broader sense, a dozen years since arriving on the Mets and departing from the Mets in pretty much one blink. Darren pitched in four games for the 2009 Mets, all in April. His last one came that April 16, his and my first official visit to Citi Field. I was more interested in the Kozy Shack pudding than I was O’Day’s only home relief appearance as a Met. I don’t know if Citi Field still offers Kozy Shack. I know you can’t find Darren O’Day there.
Omar Minaya — you’ll remember him from such exchanges as Joe Smith and Endy Chavez for J.J. Putz and J.J. Putz’s bone spur — had a bit of a roster backup and decided the best option for unclogging it was to ditch the guy who had a good twelve years ahead of him. Granted, Omar couldn’t have known how long O’Day would last or that he’d be pretty good throughout…but the general manager is supposed to show a little foresight to prevent fans like us from shaking our heads in hindsight.
But let’s not hit Omar over his head too hard with our collective elbow spur. Letting Darren O’Day go for nothing was nothing compared to letting Justin Turner go for nothing, and that was Sandy Alderson’s handiwork. Turner, you probably noticed if you read that last list, is the Last Met Standing from 2010 and 2011, which seems impossible because when did Turner get old enough to be the Last anything? (Other than the last Dodger to show common sense last October.)
Turner was a 25-year-old callup in 2010, filling in for a few days when the Mets were — stop me if you’ve heard this before — a little shorthanded. There’d be ampler opportunity for his services in 2011 once Citi Field’s resident starting third baseman started having back problems. The heretofore indestructible David Wright went on what we used to call the DL and Turner commenced to adequately plug every hole the Mets had for three seasons. When 2013 was over, he was judged utterly disposable by Alderson. The Mets didn’t tender him a contract. The Dodgers sure as shootin’ did.
Justin Turner has gone on to be one of the stars of the game since 2014, making his way to the postseason every season since. The Dodgers and he have been the perfect match. The Mets were left with shaving cream smeared all over their face.
The numbers add up, even though it seems too soon to slot Turner in as Last Met Standing for the first two seasons of his New York tenure given that Justin, whom we first knew at 25, couldn’t possibly be more than maybe 29 by now. But in actuality he is 36, or five years older than Ruben Tejada, who will always look 14. Tejada rates a sidebar shoutout here because the preternaturally youthful infielder was recently signed by the Phillies and assigned to their Lehigh farm club, giving him a theoretical shot at outlasting Turner. It will take Philadelphia getting particularly desperate to put Justin’s status in play. No offense to Ruben, but he’s played in all of 83 major league games since Chase Utley accosted him during the 2015 NLDS, none since his superbrief Recidivist Met stint of 2019. Tejada hasn’t recorded a hit in the majors since 2017, either.
Yet if he makes it back, we’ll take Turner off the Last Met Standing list and leave 2010 and 2011 blank in the interim. We don’t expect we’ll have to. Justin is still in a state resembling his prime and signed through 2022 for what Howie Rose would term a lot of glue, so he’ll probably outlast good ol’ Ruben. It’s just a matter of time.
It always is.
by Jason Fry on 30 May 2021 12:31 pm The Mets’ run of injuries has been Biblical — witness this recent post, from Fangraphs, noting that Mets on the injured list account for nearly 20 WAR, going by preseason predictions.
That’s by far the most WAR lost in the majors and should have been a recipe for disaster. And it still might be! But not so far. The Mets were handed a best-case scenario of “tread water until 26,000 guys are healthy again and maybe some other guys start hitting like we paid them to,” and they’re paddling around pretty happily, not only staying in first place but even opening up a little distance on their similarly battered rivals in the NL East.
How? Well, excellent pitching from starters and relievers sure helps. On Saturday Taijuan Walker looked superb, throttling the Braves over five innings and proving that injured Mets do occasionally return from those dreaded trips down the tunnel. Walker’s ERA is now down to a tidy 1.84, which will do very nicely.
Defense helps too — over at The Athletic on Friday, Tim Britton dug into how the Mets have climbed from the bottom of the MLB ranks in defensive runs saved to third. A key ingredient to the change, which might startle Keith Hernandez, is that they’ve become much more aggressive about shifting, helped by an analytics department that’s been reborn now that the Wilpons have been downgraded from meddlers in chief to paying customers like the rest of us. The Mets hired Ben Zauzmer from the Dodgers, paired him with a couple of Van Wagenen holdovers, and empowered Gary DiSarcina to blend better information with his own instincts and those of his fielders.
While what’s below is still a relatively small sample, so far the results have been pretty good:
(BTW, you should subscribe to The Athletic. It’s worth every penny.)
I know, numbers numbers numbers. But the improved defense passes the eye test too: Before last night’s game became a laugher, it was the Mets’ defense and the Braves’ lack of it that gave them the lead: Tomas Nido gunned down Ronald Acuna Jr. in the first, Jonathan Villar made a diving grab to keep a potential run off the board in the second, and Jose Peraza was perfectly positioned to turn a double play that ended the fourth. Meanwhile, the Braves endured balls that went off Guillermo Heredia‘s glove and through Dansby Swanson.
Then the Mets unloaded, which was of course all sorts of fun: Villar deposited a ball into the Apple Basket (after just missing a grand slam earlier), Brandon Drury hit a two-run pinch-hit homer, and Billy McKinney rocketed a blast into whatever SodaLand is called now. Even James McCann and Francisco Lindor homered, with their bats showing signs of life. Poor Cameron Maybin set a new club mark for futility to begin a Mets career, going 0 for 27 and so topping (or perhaps the term is limbo’ing under) Charley Smith‘s 0-for-26 start in 1964, but then tapped a little swinging bunt up the third-base line to get on base, an accomplishment greeted with rapturous applause from the stands and a flurry of jazz hands from his dugout. Maybin’s smile was a highlight in its own right, starting off low-watt sheepish and then brightening to big and genuine.
That’s the kind of game it was: A guy goes 1-for-28 and it’s a feel-good moment. But it brings up something else about this team, for which I have no graphic: They genuinely seem to like each other and enjoy playing the game, a vibe that begins with Lindor’s effervescent, seemingly slump-proof captaining of the infield but also gets a boost from Marcus Stroman‘s swagger on the mound and the sunny volubility of Pete Alonso and Dom Smith.
Sure, everyone looks happy when you win by 11. Let’s see if the Mets can keep smiling if those defensive numbers erode and the pitching comes back to earth and the injured remain getting treatment for various ailments. But so far, whether through devil magic or winning personalities or a quirk of small sample sizes, Plan B’s been A-OK.
by Greg Prince on 27 May 2021 8:24 pm Dear Student:
The following is your remote learning unit for May 27, 2021. Please complete each assigned exercise, derived from this afternoon’s lesson plan, and submit your answers through your personalized educational portal, using code TWOFORTHURSDAY.
Please stay safe,
New York Metropolitan Teaching Technologies
—
1) A standard scheduled baseball game measures nine innings. How many innings would a doubleheader that takes place on the day that a standard baseball game was originally scheduled contain?
2) “It always rains” is a common refrain when it rains. If “it always rains” is a true statement, why might it be sunny the day after it rains? If it doesn’t always rain, why do people feel the need to say “it always rains”?
3) Explain the relationship between the phrase “keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars” and former All-Star pitcher Marcus Stroman reaching the end of the sixth inning having thrown mostly ground balls.
4) Jose Peraza leaves a team in Cincinnati, detours through Boston, and then without warning arrives in New York. How long does it take Jose Peraza’s second home run of the year to depart Citi Field?
5) Create a backstory for a fictional character named “Billy McKinney”. Please include details so as to make him seem real. Feel free to includes fictional characters you’ve previously created this term (e.g. “Johneshwy Fargas”).
6) How many saves in how many save opportunities will it take for Edwin Diaz to subtract a phrase like “Jarred Kelenic homered again” from common usage?
7) On the attached anatomical diagram, circle all the body parts NOT injured among the 17 members of the New York Mets currently on the injured list.
8) Calculate the difference between the six weeks Noah Syndergaard has been “shut down” and the period of time it will take Noah Syndergaard to pitch in the major leagues again.
9) If Cameron Maybin comes to bat a given number of times and never gets a base hit, how can Cameron Maybin be said to have a batting average?
10) True or false: $341 million buys a lot of defense and little else. Offer supporting evidence.
11) If a 27th man on a 26-man roster doesn’t participate in either game of a doubleheader, does he make a sound? If so, what kind of sound does he make? If he doesn’t, why not?
12) What is accurate about Connor Joe? (Choose all that apply.)
a) “Connor Joe” is a full name yet somehow feels incomplete.
b) Connor Joe Armstrong would be a more apt name than just “Connor Joe” for a left fielder who demonstrates a strong arm.
c) Connor Joe Wood would be a more apt name than just “Connor Joe” for a batter who gets good wood on the ball.
d) Connor I. Joe would get everybody in attendance at a large, socially distanced gathering up on their feet and clapping.
e) Connor Joe is a perfectly adequate name and any thoughts to the contrary demonstrate a lack of cultural sensitivity.
13) If a pitch is called a “churve” because it is a combination of a changeup and a curve, what would a combination fastball and knuckleball be called?
14) Jeurys Familia and Robert Gsellman are figures of local historical import. Why is it so easy to forget they continue to exist in the present?
15) Agree or disagree with the following statements:
a) Seven-innings games suck
b) Winning them doesn’t
c) The Colorado Rockies aren’t very good
d) Sweeping them is
by Jason Fry on 26 May 2021 2:16 am I went off to California for a week and while I was out there the Mets underwent some renovations, to say the very least.
Deep breath.
I’d barely registered the arrival of Jake Hager before he got his first big-league hit and then was subtracted from the roster. The minorly heralded Khalil Lee arrived, swung and missed a whole bunch, then collected his first hit when the Mets sorely needed it. Just before Lee’s arrival came that of speedy, skinny Johneshwy Fargas, who recorded his first hit and a marvelous catch or two but had joined the ranks of the battered before I returned. Cameron Maybin showed up, and he isn’t new but his first Mets hit will be, and it’s taking long enough that one suspects a contributing factor is that Maybin is, well, old. Brandon Drury joined the team and hit a rousing home run in a losing cause about half an hour after I stepped off a plane at JFK; Wilfredo Tovar returned but almost counts as new because his first orange-and-blue go-round was a long time ago and not particularly memorable. Yennsy Diaz showed up, and he was the guy for which I had no Holy Books card, a situation typically remedied by popping over to eBay — except Yennsy Diaz cards are few, far between and oddly expensive. He’ll probably have a Syracuse card in a month or so, so I decided to improvise — an effort that caught the latest Met’s eye on Twitter, and won his approval, or at least his good-natured acceptance.
That’s a lot for one road trip!
 I doubt six new Mets in seven days is any kind of record, what with Midnight Massacres and September call-ups and all, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it is a club mark for late May. The Mets have already used 23 new players this season, tied for the fourth-most they’ve used in a Citi Field season, and again, it’s only May, which makes you wonder if the non-’62 club record of 35 is safe.
You know what? Give it a week — after Tuesday night’s game they swung a dog-and-cat deal with the Brewers for Billy McKinney, a recently DFA’ed but presumably ambulatory corner outfielder. He’ll be No. 24 on the list of arrivals, if not in our hearts.
While I was away, the Mets went 3-3, which isn’t bad for a team getting shorn of one or two players a night. But we all knew it was doubtful that they could keep treading water with lineups more suited to a split-squad game in March than a regular-season affair two months after that. So it was a relief to see at least one casualty return to the battlefield — and a greater relief by far to have that returnee be the best pitcher on the planet.
Jacob deGrom only pitched five innings Tuesday, caution being what it is, but he was scintillating even by deGrom standards. He gave up a Ryan McMahon homer, but the blemish seemed to annoy him, and goad him into honing his slider into a magic trick that started at the hands of Rockies hitters before diving at their back feet. Couple that with a 100 MPH fastball and the competition hardly seemed fair. The Mets, meanwhile, had clearly ordered their makeshift lineup to be aggressive, seeking to maximize the few opportunities that could be generated. This strategy might have worked except for dastardly replay review, which revealed Jonathan Villar momentarily losing contact with third base as he stole it and deGrom ever so slightly lifting a foot above second in the act of stretching a single into a double.
Give me a moment, please.
OK. This is not what replay review is for, and every sentient baseball fan knows it. Replay review should be for correcting gross injustices (such as those umpires now routinely inflict on teams at first base) and for settling game-turning calls where someone’s safe or out by a whisper and the naked eye can only guess. Instead, replay review has become a wretched pantopticon that makes federal cases out of ticky-tack violations, setting technology against not only decades of sound judgment but also the very laws of momentum. It’s absurd — and not just when it goes against the forces of good.
Baseball could stop the madness with a simple remedy that would also curtail a related run of insanity: take challenges out of the game. Smart, reasonably observant folks are already watching all the games at MLB’s nerve center in New York, with umpires nearby. Instead of challenges, go to a centralized system where a potentially wrong call triggers a yellow light from New York, long enough for a quick review and — if necessary — an umpire’s appraisal. Take the teams understandably hunting for the slightest advantage out of the equation and there will be a lot less searching for slivers of light between the bottom of feet and the top of bases, or pondering whether a ball surrounded by a first baseman’s mitt is in said mitt or only about to be. Fix the obviously mistaken and the impossible to judge but critical, ignore the rest, and move on.
The Mets had no choice to move on; deGrom departed with his usual farcical no-decision and the game came down to the bullpens. But then we got a reminder that good things can happen, even to the Mets.
Tomás Nido didn’t make much of an impression when he arrived as the final new Met of 2017 (he was merely the 17th new Met that year, by the way). About two minutes after recording his first hit, he got tagged out some 25 feet shy of home plate to end a game against the Cubs, which isn’t exactly what you want fans to recall years later. He won a game a couple of years ago, walking off the Pirates with a homer in the 13th inning, but mostly attracted the kind of attention backup catchers attract, which is to be observed arriving from or departing to Triple-A and to have people wonder about your job security. Last year Nido hit a little more than we were used to, but a bout with COVID-19 scotched any chance of making a further impression, and early this year he struggled for playing time behind expensive new arrival James McCann.
But McCann hasn’t hit and Nido has, which has meant more playing time and the possibility of moments like Tuesday night’s sixth inning, when Nido walloped a Chi Chi Gonzalez slider over the center-field fence. The umpires signaled that it was in play, leading to Dom Smith belly-flopping across home in the vicinity of a tag while Nido gesticulated unhappily at second and the Mets’ dugout became a Greek chorus of gnashing and wailing.
That really is what replay review is for, but the crew realized the mistake without technological help, sending Nido home and giving the Mets a 3-1 lead.
But Nido wasn’t done contributing. In the ninth, Edwin Diaz fanned Charlie Blackmon with a nasty slider, but then walked C.J. Cron to set up a confrontation with McMahon. The slider then turned finicky on Diaz, who knew all too well what McMahon could do with an errant one. On 1-2, Nido called for a slider that could have been called a strike at the bottom of the zone but wasn’t. The next one was high and inside, and Diaz clearly wanted to throw something else. But Nido wasn’t having it, stepping out from behind home plate to make his case. Diaz’s third straight slider was just off the outside corner, an unhittable pitch that McMahon swung through. Five pitches later, Brendan Rodgers had been fanned as well and the Mets had won.
They’d won because Nido connected for a homer and because he coaxed an anxious closer through the toughest out in the enemy lineup — a sequence that reminded me of Rene Rivera playing horse whisperer to a chronically spooked Jeurys Familia. They won despite the Plan E lineup and rumblings of achy elbows in Florida and hand treatments needed in New York and other worrisome tidings.
They won and they’re in first place. For now, one says automatically, but history is made of for nows, isn’t it? Sometimes guys heal up as well as getting hurt. Sometimes backup catchers figure stuff out. Good things can happen, even to the Mets.
by Greg Prince on 25 May 2021 8:32 am It’s presumptuous to project thoughts onto the deceased. The deceased can’t speak for themselves, yet we the living haughtily decide what they might be thinking if they were still with us. I do anyway. For a decade now, I’ve done it with Dana Brand.
Though it’s presumptuous as hell, I do it because I miss Dana. Dana was a wonderful Mets writer and a wonderful Mets companion and a wonderful Mets fan. We actively knew each other for only a few years before he passed away out of nowhere at the age of 56 ten years ago today. We spiritually knew each other as Mets fans all our lives.
So forgive my presumptuousness when now and then since May 25, 2011, I find myself thinking, “Dana would love this,” even if I am confident that when he crosses my mind in this regard I’m hardly reaching to match projected emotion to absent emotee. When Johan Santana gave us our first no-hitter, there is no chance Dana wouldn’t have loved that. When the Mets rampaged to a National League pennant on the backs of Cespedes, Murphy and all that young pitching, there is no chance Dana wouldn’t have reveled in the result, let alone the process. Kirk Nieuwenhuis? Juan Uribe? This kid Conforto, the fresh prince of Binghamton? Lunky Lucas Duda? Wilmer Flores in tears? Grumpy, soulful Terry Collins? Those were Dana’s kinds of characters.
Dana never got to describe a Harvey Day or deGrom’s unforeseen ascent or the mythology of Thor. He would have been all over those guys. Same for Matz’s debut in front of Grandpa Bert and Bartolo’s world tour of the bases in San Diego and Cabrera’s bat flip that Tugged at our miracle instincts and Pete the powerful Polar Bear. Those were all Dana Brand essays waiting to happen. He’d have ruminated on the ‘F’ that infiltrated LGM. He’d have embraced from a safe social distance Dom Smith when Dom felt all alone on Zoom. He’d have said a proper goodbye to David Wright and Jose Reyes, the last of the Mets still on the Mets from when Dana and I went to games at Shea together.
I mean I think he would have. I can’t say for sure. But I do, because it makes me feel better to have his voice in my head. That goes for great Met moments and blah Met moments. The blah has outweighed the great for much of the past ten years. Dana, I believe, wouldn’t have had a problem coping with that. He understood the Mets weren’t designed to secrete success on a nightly basis. When they were good, they gave us something special. When they weren’t, they gave us themselves, and if it wasn’t always special, it was life. The right man picked the right team to interpret.
I’ll tiptoe a little further out onto the limb of presumptuousness and tell you I think Dana would have gotten Monday night’s 3-2 loss to the visiting Rockies, an evening when the blah (as engineered by Colorado starter Austin Gomber) was in full effect. Wouldn’t have loved it, but he would’ve gotten it. The absurd wave of injuries — learning Conforto and Jeff McNeil will be out far longer than initially suspected, seeing Johneshwy Fargas crash frighteningly into the same wall that took the measure of Albert Almora — would have left him grasping for answers, whether scientific or supernatural. The repositioning of heretofore hapless James McCann at first base and McCann responding to the challenge with a diving stop in the field and a home run at bat would have tickled his karmic fancy. Tomás Nido retrieving a passed ball/wild pitch before it became either because it bounced off the backstop bricks and into his bare hand, allowing the catcher who supplanted McCann to cut down a Rockie runner who’d naturally assumed third base was his would have provided the basis for a morality play. David Peterson’s intermittent struggles would have elicited Dana’s empathy. Francisco Lindor’s continuing struggles would have strained it.
And then, the bottom of the ninth. I can feel Dana next to me at Citi Field in the bottom of the ninth. Never mind that I wasn’t there and he wasn’t there. In my mind, we were both there. Rising and cheering as Brandon Drury pinch-hit and pinch-homered to lead off. Staring at each other with the same wisfhul thoughts in our eyes as Patrick Mazeika (with a beard totally unlike Dana’s, but nevertheless bearded like Dana) delivered a single off the bench. This was where Shea in 2007 and 2008 and Citi from 2009 to earliest 2011 would get loud around us and we’d begin to gameplan the possibilities of a stirring Mets comeback drawn to its giddiest conclusion.
It’s also where it would sink in just as quickly for each of us that, no, they’re doing it to us again. They’re raising our hopes only to inadvertently pinprick them before they rose too high. The Mets weren’t being malevolent, Dana and I would communicate either garrulously or wordlessly. They were just being the Mets. Losing 3-1 entering the ninth. Catching up to 3-2 two batters into the ninth, but with the pinch-homer coming before the pinch-single and the complement of unlikely “pinch me!” heroes used up and the disappointing regulars all who were left, ultimately left to disappoint us.
Unless they didn’t! We’d allow for that possibility, no matter that we deep down knew different…and we didn’t have to plunge that deep to know it. Jonathan Villar strikes out looking (but that’s OK, it’s only one out). Lindor just gets under one but predictably flies out (still, that was a pretty good swing, maybe he’s coming around). McCann, the focal point and lightning rod of our night, is up to push the point clear up to our face. He’s anxious. He’s aware we expect him to be the hero. He has to forget that. Still, the resolution we desire is so close we can taste it. A wild pitch moves Mazeika to second. James the Met so clearly from somewhere else has a chance to become a true New York icon here, to elevate Drury and Mazeika alongside him into legend, to turn around his season and our season, as if our season has ever stopped spinning topsy-turvy since it commenced. If only the count weren’t one-and-two.
Dana and I knew McCann would strike out to end the game. I mean we just knew it. I mean I think I know that we both just knew it.
Technically, I knew it, and I’m otherwise projecting on behalf of the deceased again. I’m presumptuously projecting that ten years since he died Dana Brand and I are still in touch, still talking Mets, still going to Mets games in one another’s company, still telling one another that once Mazeika singled after Drury homered that they’d depleted their reserves of ninth-inning mojo and we knew it, but we kept rooting and kept believing because we’re Mets fans.
I can’t prove it. But I do it anyway. I like having those moments with my late friend.
by Greg Prince on 23 May 2021 5:24 pm Six hits. Five for singles. Only two — the lone double, followed by one of the singles — were grouped in helpful proximity to one another, generating an entire run to cut the scoreboard deficit from gaping to yawning, but either way insurmountable most of the afternoon.
Sit indoors on a sunny Sunday in New York and watch the Mets play indoors on a sunny Sunday in Miami, and that’s what you get. One run produced by a bunch of batters not performing as hitters, few of whom you’d more than barely heard of or thought about weeks ago. Plus a pitcher who seems like a really nice guy, which wouldn’t be the first thing you’d say about him if he seemed like a really good pitcher. Or fielder.
Nobody’s really good among those who don uniforms indicating their affiliation with the New York Mets right now, including the few who’ve been here since the season began. We keep up with them anyway. It’s not hard. They’re only six hits better than us.
I kid. I kid because I love. Of course they could beat me and eight people off the street at a game of baseball. Implicit in that appraisal is the Mets come across as nine people off the street, but baseball is their profession. They’ve got that on we who note their shortcomings for free. They get paid for 5-1 losses to the Marlins. Theirs is not a performance-based compensation system from series to series. Thank goodness, for their sake.
Jordan Yamamoto (who seems like a really nice guy) had a rough second inning, featuring a couple of misplays he had a hand in, and five runs crossed the plate against him. He also has a sore shoulder. All of the above is enough to make a pitcher at least the No. 4 starter on the New York Mets this week. The Marlins let him go. I can see why, if only because between Pablo Lopez on Saturday and Cody Poteet on Sunday, they wouldn’t have room for a righty who can provide three pretty good innings and one sorta unlucky frame in between. Lopez and Poteen pitched very well versus the Mets this weekend. I guess they did.
It was the Mets, after all.
Ouch! Again, I kid. Not really, but the Mets remain in first place, which is the preferred destination for any baseball team in any division, even this one. It is the National League East, after all. I doubt we can count on the prevailing mediocrity of our semi-circuit as a mitigating factor much longer, however. We also can’t point to the daily presence of the “C” team as a Met-igating factor much longer if we choose to take the Mets seriously as a contender in 2021. Games remain scheduled whether or not you come prepared with an optimal assortment of players. It’s not the fault of the journeymen who are populating the roster currently that they were nobody’s first or second choice to be “the Mets” of the moment. They arrived in the organization as depth. They hoped they’d avoid alternate sites and get a call individually, but they didn’t expect to ascend to the majors en masse. I doubt they rallied one another in St. Lucie or Syracuse or wherever they crossed paths and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if all of us among the overlooked, undernoticed and generally dismissed got our chance together?”
But they have. Sometimes, as on Friday, it works. Sometimes, as on Saturday, it almost works. Sometimes it’s Sunday, when Johneshwy Fargas doubles, Wilfredo Tovar singles him in and Yennsy Diaz looks good for an inning…and that’s it, basically. Throw in perennial holdover Robert Gsellman pitching some decent relief and that’s really it. The Mets couldn’t withstand the Marlins defensively and they could barely bother the Marlins offensively and, geez, it’s the Marlins, though at this point who are we to overlook, undernotice or dismiss any opponent?
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