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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 22 November 2024 5:04 pm Lest unanimity get a bad name, let us forget the myopic groupthink that infected 30 members of the Baseball Writers Association of America and let us all instead commit to a Metsiastically agreeable concept:
No Met was more valuable in 2024 than Francisco Lindor.
Perhaps you have an opposing viewpoint. It takes all kinds, one supposes. In this forum, however, we’re not hearing it. Francisco Lindor is clearly Faith and Fear in Flushing’s Richie Ashburn Most Valuable Met. The vote is by acclamation.
It’s the least we can do for our most valuable player, a Met who received 23 second-place and seven third-place votes in the BBWAA National League MVP voting, a robust showing until you remember first place votes were theoretically available to him, and none of the writers thought what Lindor did was worthy of being considered most Most Valuable in the senior circuit.
Shohei Ohtani posted an offensive season for the ages. Hit 54 home runs. Stole 59 bases. Drove in 130 runs. Prevented no runs. Ohtani wasn’t available to pitch, something he did in the course of winning two American League MVPs, which is what made him a legend the likes of which no living fan had ever watched and what made him so attractive for the long term when he reached the free agent market last winter. Recovery from Tommy John surgery meant all we got in his first year in the NL was Ohtani the DH. And what a DH! Those numbers and plenty of others attest to his otherworldly productivity.
Yet he never put on a glove in a game as a Dodger in 2024. Never saw the field when L.A. was on defense except from the dugout. Didn’t contribute whatsoever to half of every game.
Lindor? He went out to shortstop every day until his back wouldn’t allow him, and then worked it into shape to make sure it would. Played the position brilliantly. Ran the infield. Guided his teammates in the midst of patrolling the busiest of positions. And when not doing so, got better and better at the plate as the season went along, leading a team that needed him in every way and delivering in every way until his ninth-inning home run lifted them to the lip of the postseason.
Two different kinds of value between Ohtani and Lindor, to be sure. An absolutely reasonable case to be made for Shohei the hitter who didn’t pitch and didn’t field on his star-studded squad, just as there was an absolutely reasonable case to be made for Francisco the shortstop who hit and did most everything else for a team he practically willed into the playoffs.
Somehow not one of thirty voting BBWAA members found Lindor’s case more compelling than Ohtani’s. Perhaps Ohtani’s stats short-circuited a system that’s traditionally allowed for interpretation that wasn’t 100% digitally driven. Shortstops who fueled their teams, like Barry Larkin and Jimmy Rollins. Gritty, gutty guys who made a tangible difference like Kirk Gibson and Terry Pendleton. Francisco Lindor’s season was the stuff of a classic MVP choice: 33 homers, 91 RBIs, 107 runs scored, a batting average that soared from nowhere (.190) to beyond respectable (.273) once he took over the leadoff spot. The consistent, stellar defense. The well-documented clubhouse leadership. The clutch — yes, clutch — performances every time you turned around every time you needed it.
Yet not one first-place vote for NL MVP. Go figure.
But all the votes for MVM, we figure. All the votes because we remember that Lindor’s back ached mostly from carrying a team that needed to hop on his shoulders as it ascended the Wild Card standings. Francisco didn’t rest until he absolutely had to, and even then it wasn’t rest so much as rehabilitation so he could return to the field and get the Mets where they needed to go. He’d been there for them despite a miserable slump that could have buried a lesser player early. He’d been there for them day-in, day-out, flu-ridden one afternoon when he won them a game in extras. He was there ensuring a summer of climbing didn’t go to waste at the end of August. This was at Arizona, against a primary rival that was poised to oust them from realistic contention. Lindor homered to tie that one, less than 24 hours after a debacle of a Met ending. Francisco got the Mets all even in the sixth with a leadoff homer, changing their trajectory so they could prevail in the ninth and keep going into September. And speaking of September, how about that no-hitter he ended in the ninth inning in Toronto? Another leadoff homer, another altering of direction, another huge win with his signature all over it.
Then he goes down for more than a week; gets back up; gives everything he has on the final scheduled Sunday in Milwaukee from the literal get-go (leads off; walks; steals second; scores two batters later); eventually homers to put a must-win out of reach; and sets the stage for, the more I think about it, the biggest regular-season home run any Met has ever hit. On the Monday that extended the schedule, in the ballpark where no Mets fan could imagine anything turning out for the best, the club put six on the board in the eighth — Francisco was in the middle of that rally — only to drop behind the Braves in the succeeding half-inning. Lindor is due up third in the ninth with the season as on the line as it could be. With one out, Marte singles…and Lindor homers. Like Ohtani, Lindor doesn’t pitch. But I swear the bottom of the ninth, when he reels in a pop fly for the first out and fields the grounder that becomes the third out minutes after that two-run bomb…give him the save, too.
MVP voting doesn’t take into account the postseason. MVM selection takes into account everything. The grand slam to seal the NLDS triumph over the Phillies therefore gets the credit it deserves. So cool, so calm, so Francisco. Bases loaded, one out, Mets down by a run in the sixth and Lindor up. What’s gonna happen? Something Lindor makes happen. It was obvious he’d drive home at least one Met. Four was an ideal total, accented by the way he rounded the bases — head down, no frills. The game wasn’t over yet. The series wasn’t over yet. The goal Lindor had in mind wasn’t yet reached. All business in an OMG frenzy was the way to go.
Anywhere this man went was the way to follow. We follow him to a second consecutive MVM presentation. In grim 2023, Francisco shared the honor. In celebratory 2024, the honor is all his. Also, ours.
FAITH AND FEAR’S PREVIOUS RICHIE ASHBURN MOST VALUABLE METS
2005: Pedro Martinez (original recording)
2005: Pedro Martinez (deluxe reissue)
2006: Carlos Beltran
2007: David Wright
2008: Johan Santana
2009: Pedro Feliciano
2010: R.A. Dickey
2011: Jose Reyes
2012: R.A. Dickey
2013: Daniel Murphy, Dillon Gee and LaTroy Hawkins
2014: Jacob deGrom
2015: Yoenis Cespedes
2016: Asdrubal Cabrera
2017: Jacob deGrom
2018: Jacob deGrom
2019: Pete Alonso
2020: Michael Conforto and Dom Smith (the RichAshes)
2021: Aaron Loup and the One-Third Troupe
2022: Starling Marte
2023: Francisco Lindor and Kodai Senga
Still to come: The Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2024.
by Greg Prince on 31 October 2024 9:22 am Elimination Day is a bit like Rosh Hashanah. You never know when exactly it’s going to show up on the calendar, yet it always fits the description of High Holy. This year, Elimination Day — no need to layer it with qualifiers, as there is only one elimination we as a Sheadenfreudic people celebrate perennially and heartily — appeared on Halloween Eve. Perfect timing, given all the sweets within easy reach for those who indulge. Treat yourself to a fun-size bar today. All the bars will be fun this weekend. No Yankee games will be on.
Twenty-six American Leaguers dressed as fundamentally sound baseball players. Their costumes weren’t very convincing. Working the other side of the street, the National League champions pretended they had adequate pitching depth, and here they are, flying all the candy back home.
Congratulations to the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team we might have forgotten to congratulate the last time they completed a series of baseball games. Where were our manners? Not every postseason set-to hits the same. The Dodgers hit plenty all October. We didn’t care for some of it. Personally, I relished the last waves of it.
METS FANS FOR FREDDIE FREEMAN is never going to be a prize-grabbing Banner Day entrant, but you never know who you’re going to wind up rooting for when fall baseball goes on without your direct participation. Let’s just say the New York Liberty had a wonderful ticker-tape parade recently, and I saw no reason for anybody to immediately follow in their confettied tire tracks.
As bases went uncovered, balls clanked off gloves, and fans were escorted out by security, thoughts turned to the National League Runners-Up. This was the third time the senior circuit representative’s road to ultimate reward ran through the New York Mets via the NLCS. The Dodgers in 1988. The Cardinals in 2006. The Dodgers in 2024. I ostentatiously avoided most of those first two World Series. That should be us there, not them. This time, I was less allergic from that standpoint. Maybe because the Series That Was started in Dodger Stadium and the Series That Could Have Been would have started in Yankee Stadium, I didn’t stare out at Game One introductions and mentally insert our guys on the field. We would have hosted Games Three, Four and, if we hadn’t swept, Five. Hypotheticals didn’t tempt me much. After the way we got clobbered in our four losses to L.A., I wasn’t telling myself the worthiest team didn’t win.
When the World Series was over, of course I was delighted by the outcome locally, but I also didn’t mind who was putting on the commemorative t-shirts. The Dodgers loaded up in the offseason, withstood a torrent of injuries, showed themselves to be better and better with each round, and no longer include Chase Utley in their ranks. Instead of that could have been us, I believed after the final out of 2024, that can BE us, as in 2025. I haven’t felt so enthusiastic on our behalf watching somebody else celebrate in a long time.
Maybe that’s the real treat to take away from this postseason. In the meantime, grab yourself another Snickers. Or just snicker.
by Greg Prince on 22 October 2024 3:53 am And yet, it felt fantastical. I wasn’t entirely sure the road I walked was even there anymore. And even if it were there as the map said, and even if I went to walk it again on another day, another season, maybe in a different pair of shoes, it wouldn’t be the same road. I had found a proper seam at the start of that one spring and had slipped into it. The road I walked was there on that one day. Other roads and other seams await. But that road is no longer there.
—Neil King, Jr., American Ramble
I hope to someday awake from a dream postseason to find the dream reached its optimal conclusion, and that my first thought come daybreak is, “I’m really gonna have to get rolling if I wanna make that parade.” Such a morning hasn’t happened for the longest time. Instead, I follow a pattern I inadvertently established a quarter-century ago this week and have repeated as applicable.
The Mets’ valiant attempt to attain a championship lands shy of its goal.
I stew for several wee hours.
I nod off jarred by the reality that has set in.
I rise sleepily to confirm that, after weeks/months spent navigating the edge of heaven, joy has morphed to void.
Postseason has become offseason.
The Mets of this year are, at once, the Mets of last year.
No matter how great it all was — and in the part of 2024 we shall recall as “2024,” all but four miserable NLCS losses of it was great — it ends. The siren song of possibility was extremely loud. The sense of ultimate reward was incredibly close. These opportunities have proven intermittent over the past 25 years. How can the absolute most not be made of them? At minimum, another game should await. At maximum, paper shredders should be revving on our team’s behalf in the office buildings of Lower Broadway a couple of weeks hence to ensure an adequate supply of ticker tape. Instead, there’s no game the next night or any night soon, and we’ll have to wait for another collection of Mets to have garbage thrown out of windows at them with adoration. Another opportunity has gone by the boards, and another inadvertently established pattern takes hold. In our virtual councils, we pat one another on the back. In real life, we graciously accept well-meaning pats on the heads from those outside our immediate sphere of interest. Everywhere, we necessarily move on from what we perceive as a Met job well done, if not thoroughly completed.
After living in a veritable highlight reel for nearly two months, leaving it is a drag. The first day realizing that the montage won’t be added to is inevitably cold and barren, even if we are convinced that inside we should be feeling warm all over. On the Monday after the Sunday that ended the 2024 Mets’ ride through euphoria, I mustered the wherewithal to peer over the horizon toward conceivably happier endings. Maybe, I told myself, we’re the 2015 Cubs, who we were chuffed to watch get swept by the 2015 Mets in that year’s NLCS. Those Cubs didn’t reach a conclusion. They had finished only their prelude to the world championship they went on to capture in 2016. That’s a template I can envision bridging the disappointment I’m sorting through presently and the celebration I seek eventually.
Still, I take my cues from Francisco Lindor. I look at Lindor the way Mr. Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, looked at George Washington in 1776. John Adams wondered whether this man Thomson, whose responsibilities in the movie consisted of calling the roll and reading aloud dispatches delivered from the front, stood with the pro- or anti-independence forces in Congress. “I stand with the General,” Thomson replied. When Adams found this response unsatisfactory, Thomson explained, as he unfurled another military missive from G. Washington, “Well, lately, I’ve had the oddest feeling that he’s been writing to me.” Lindor blasted a grand slam that effectively clinched the Division Series, yet treated his trip around the bases as if it were just another drill in Port St. Lucie: head down; one foot placed in front of the other at a brisk and steady tempo; every base and then home plate touched; priority shifting from offense to defense upon the recording of the third out. Taking a 4-1 lead in the sixth inning and simultaneously dealing a death blow to the Phillies’ chances wasn’t Lindor’s mission. Winning the World Series was. Six games versus Los Angeles later, it still is.
Mine, too. It wasn’t something I considered within reach when 2024 commenced, but there it was, two handfuls of wins away. Too close for consolation pats. I think that’s why I valued our MVP’s trot as much as his blast. So when Lindor was asked, following the Mets’ elimination, if he considered the organization well-positioned to maintain the level to which the club had surprisingly ascended this fall, he expressed positivity, though added quickly, “Nothing’s promised in this game.” He repeated the phrase twice more, and a moment later reminded reporters, “Every year, whether you have the same guys or not, it’s a different year.”
I stand with the shortstop.
He’ll be back. Many if not all of the Mets with whom we made common cause will return, too. Some won’t. We’ll know who’s not here anymore by the way the montages are edited for 2025 viewing. Lindor’s myriad dramatic hits will be included, as will those stroked by Brandon Nimmo and Mark Vientos. Nimmo, like Lindor, is under contract for years to come. Vientos is under team control and won’t be going anywhere, except perhaps across the infield, depending on whether the incumbent first baseman who homered four times in the postseason is afflicted by lucrative wanderlust.
I sure hope Pete Alonso stays. Maybe there can be another postseason without him. It won’t be as awesome a party. Same for the several other key Mets who will file for free agency. You can’t keep everybody, and our discerning president of baseball operations understands that you probably shouldn’t. Nevertheless, who wants to bid adieu to Alonso, Manaea, Severino, Quintana, Iglesias, Winker and whoever else imprinted themselves on our souls over the past few months? Who would ever want what we had going in 2024 to end? Besides the Dodgers, I mean?
It was gonna end sooner or later. It could have ended better. It couldn’t have proceeded with a whole lot more elation. That’s what’s beginning to fill the void for me as the second day of the offseason that used to be the postseason prepares to dawn. This oughta be a time for revel rather than regret. That reel we lived in contained the highest of highlights. Close your eyes and watch them on a loop. You won’t be sorry.
A discussion of how the Mets’ postseason ended and why the end hardly defines the whole is up at National League Town.
by Jason Fry on 21 October 2024 12:19 am The Mets lost, and their season is over.
Sean Manaea didn’t have his putaway stuff, Phil Maton looked gassed, and Kodai Senga turned in one good inning but not a second. Meanwhile, the hitters worked solid ABs and kept creating traffic, but couldn’t get the big hit they needed: They were 2 for 9 with runners in scoring position, and left 13 men on base. And — because it’s not always about us — the Dodgers were relentless and effective, with a new fearsome hitter popping up for every formidable one a Mets pitcher dispatched. The Dodgers beat us; they earned their pennant and the opportunity to renew their ancient grudge match against the Yankees.
Emily and I are in Tacoma visiting the kid, a trip put on the calendar before anyone could imagine our rocket ride through Atlanta and Milwaukee and Philadelphia and L.A. The three of us wound up watching in a bar in our hotel, without sound (not a big deal as I’ve heard enough John Smoltz for a lifetime), while everyone else around us was fixated on Jets-Steelers.
It wasn’t the strangest arrangement of the series: I watched Game 5 on the plane from JFK to SEA, relying on my laptop, MLB.tv and Delta’s Wifi. (The seatback TV’s lineup of live channels didn’t include FS1.) Occasionally I was watching in full HD; most of the time the feed was blurry and blocky; multiple times it failed entirely, including with two outs in the ninth. Fortunately the Mets had a reasonably comfortable lead at that point, meaning I was only seriously agitated by having to wait 15 minutes for the Wifi to come back so I could find out what had happened. If the game had been in the balance, I suspect an air marshal would have wound up writing up an incident report.
Emily and I would have watched Game 7 the same way, probably with the same obstacles. There’s the tiniest of silver linings, I suppose. Well, that and the fact that I’ll fly back to New York wearing clean clothes — the lucky 7 Line jersey and Mookie shirt were getting a little suspect.
The Mets are done. We’ll have more to say about that in the days and weeks ahead. But right now I know this much: This team will be loved. Loved, and remembered fondly, and cherished years from now.
Playing October baseball doesn’t guarantee such fond remembrances: The chilly, vaguely misaligned ’88 Mets aren’t loved despite their many ’86 alumni; the ’22 Mets’ season-ending fizzle and quick exit ensured we’d rather not talk about them. And failing to secure a title doesn’t consign a team to also-ran status: The ’99 and ’15 Mets fell short but will be source of joy as long as there are Mets seasons to chronicle.
So it will be with this team, the Mets of Grimace and OMG and “My Girl” and Zesty Mets celebrations, the Mets of unlikely resurrections and unforeseen comebacks. They gave us a magical summer and a joyous fall. Did we want a little more than we got? Of course we did. But I will always think back on what we did get and smile.
Thank you, Mets, from the bottom of this fan’s orange and blue heart.
by Greg Prince on 20 October 2024 12:05 pm Twice, they’ve been intended to wrap things up; once, that worked. Four times, they’ve been meant to stave off an ending; that purpose was served thrice. Now, the seventh time. We’re striving for staving.
Welcome to the two most underrated words in sports: Game Six. Game Seven gets all the laurels before it becomes necessary. Quite understandable, though the fuss over a Game Seven reminds of Fonzie (Henry Winkler, not Edgardo Alfonzo) explaining to Richie Cunningham on Happy Days why he didn’t bother going out on Saturday nights: “I like to stay home on amateur night.” Judging by the Nielsens, Game Seven attracts the lookie-loos. The networks love Game Seven. Game Six can be the emotional pinnacle for those of us who’ve been tuned in since Opening Day and lived and died the Full 162 and then some. Game Six is something you couldn’t have imagined, can’t take for granted.
That’s where we are.
The first Mets Game Six was supposed to be a wrapper-upper. The Mets led the A’s three games to two in the 1973 World Series. We couldn’t have imagined any of it, not when we were in last place on August 30, not when Dave Augustine hit that ball that was surely going out, not when rain soaked Chicago for consecutive days at the end of the schedule, not when the Big Red Machine got to chugging. Not, for that matter, when mighty Oakland made off with Games One and Three by a run apiece. Yet here we were, in the sunny Coliseum, one Tom Seaver start from our second world championship. Somehow, Seaver — and his opposite number Catfish Hunter — are reduced to asterisk status in the regretful retellings of the first Mets Game Six. It usually boils down to a pitcher the visiting manager didn’t use. Maybe a Stone’s throw would have made all the difference. As was, Seaver gave up a pair of runs over seven innings, with Tug McGraw allowing another in the eighth. Catfish, as much a legend as Tug and ever bit the Hall of Famer Tom was, scattered four hits in seven-and-a-third of one-run ball. The omnipresent Darold Knowles and the Cooperstown-bound Rollie Fingers finished up. A’s 3 Mets 1. There’d be no wrap on the Series that day. There’d be a rap on Yogi forever after.
The second Mets Game Six did wrap things up. Not nice and tidy, but whaddaya want after sixteen innings fueled by an intense desire to not face Mike Scott the next day? 1986 National League Champion Mets 7, 1986 National League Runner-Up Astros 6. No matter what happens in L.A. tonight, the 1986 National League Championship Series remains for the foreseeable future the only postseason series the Mets have ever taken in six. Of all the Mets Game Sixes, this, to the Metsnoscenti, can be referred to as simply “Game Six,” and everybody in earshot oughta know which one you mean.
 No real argument. Unless you mean the third Mets Game Six, which was also a doozy. The other team was the one looking to put a wrap on the matter at hand. If there’s a Game Six, somebody is one game from clinching. In the 1986 World Series, it was the Red Sox, up three games to two, not to mention up five runs to three with two out and nobody on in the bottom of the tenth, Gary Carter coming to the plate. This is the Levy’s Rye Bread of Game Sixes: you don’t need to be a Mets fan to know it (though it helps if you want to love it). They even made a movie out of this Game Six. It wasn’t a good movie, but the real-life footage of Mets 6 Red Sox 5 will always be timeless.
 Real life was better. The fourth Mets Game Six did its job. It staved off elimination. I’m comfortable in asserting that “nobody” talks about it or remembers it. Of course some people don’t have selective amnesia, but when the 1988 National League Championship Series stirs conversation, it’s rarely to revel in recalling the 4-for-4 performance of Kevin McReynolds that included a homer and three RBIs, or the way David Cone redeemed his idiotic ghostwritten column by going the distance (a.k.a. nine innings, lest you not believe such pitching stamina is impossible) in defeating the Dodgers, 5-1. It happened. You can look it up. Actually, you don’t have to. I just told you about it. You can go back to spitting at the thought of Mike Scioscia now.
The fifth Mets Game Six was a Viking funeral for a saga of a season that could be properly laid to rest only by setting it ablaze at sea. That’s what Braves 10 Mets 9 slamming shut the 1999 National League Championship Series felt like to me. It’s still the grippingest Mets game I’ve ever experienced, and that includes the aforementioned “Game Six”. I was crushed and I was elevated. Even the Game Sixes that get a little lost to the mists of time can do that.
The sixth Mets Game Six, and the most recent, started with a bang in the form of a Jose Reyes leadoff home run. Who doesn’t like a tone being set? The Mets needed to win this Game Six if they wanted a Game Seven in the 2006 National League Championship Series. They built a 4-0 lead, they carried it to the ninth, and Billy Wagner, bless his heart, gave half of it back. Whoever bought the red Shea Stadium seat I sunk into at the instant of the final out of Mets 4 Cardinals 2 probably wonders what that residue they can’t quite scrub clean is from. It’s from the portions of my soul that seeped out of my body as Wagner made the game we needed closer and closer and closer. That’s why they call them closers. John Franco came out to wave a towel prior to Game Four of the 2024 NLCS, and I was delighted to see him, because it wasn’t a late inning in some year when Franco was a Met. I know Franco piled up tons of saves. I know Wagner piled up tons of saves. I know Franco and Wagner are two of the best lefty closers ever. I’ll applaud Billy should he make the Hall this January. I think Johnny deserved a closer look. But Jesus H. Alou, does every outstanding Met closer have to be the way they are — close your ears, Edwin — especially in a Game Six? Franco gave up a crucial run in 1999’s. Armando Benitez did the same. As for Wagner, he never saw action in Game Seven of the 2006 NLCS. And no Shea Stadium seat can claim to be 2006 World Series-used.
So there you have it. Six Game Sixes thus far. Four Mets wins. Two Mets non-wins. In the seventh Game Six, only one result is an option. When we get it, we’ll invite the lookie-loos over for Game Seven, no hesitation.
But first, Game Six.
by Greg Prince on 19 October 2024 12:19 pm Thursday night I came home from Game Four of the National League Championship Series resigned to the 2024 Mets season being imminently over. Friday morning I awoke thinking only that there’d be a baseball game come late afternoon and that the Mets would be playing in it, and between the regular season and the postseason, the Mets had won ballgames 95 times this year, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe they might win another. I didn’t stress about it. I didn’t worry over the odds of coming back from down three-one. I didn’t shrink at the specter of Ohtani and Betts and Muncy (oh my). I just knew the Mets would be playin’ some ball, and that the Mets have some pretty good ballplayers, and, well…play ball!
So the Mets did. They played the hell out of ball in Game Five, hitting balls particularly hard and in a timely fashion, while their pitchers stopped throwing quite so many balls. It all added up to a glorious chorus of “Stayin’ Alive,” which you could hear in the echoes of “My Girl,” which was actually performed live by the Temptations pregame. “My Girl” was for Francisco Lindor, who doesn’t come to bat without the song’s first verse echoing through Citi Field. “Stayin’ Alive” was the mission.
Mission accomplished. For Game Five, that is. The temptation is to look beyond the Mets’ 12-6 throttling of the Dodgers — is it possible for a score to simultaneously not indicate how close and not close a game was? — and think about what it will take to win the next two contests and therefore the pennant. Tamp down that temptation. The next mission is Game Six and Game Six solely. Peer too far ahead and you’re standing on shaky ground.
But we ain’t too proud to beg for a whole lot more of what kept us alive in Game Five.
Pete Alonso, in his third final-ever game as a Met at Citi Field, changed the tenor of this NLCS in one mighty swing, golfing a Jack Flaherty pitch to the western edge of the 7 Line Army seats, where the night before, I can personally attest, it grew chilly and hopeless. Francisco digs the Temps. Pete raises the temperature. Two Mets had been on when Alonso attacked, meaning the Met lead was 3-0. The message to Dave Roberts, regarding his starting pitcher who stymied us in Game One, was (and I’m borrowing this Karl Ehrhardt-worthy line from author Michael Elias) Flaherty will get you nowhere.
Go back, Jack, and do it again, the Mets lineup had to be thinking. The second inning saw a leadoff double from Francisco Alvarez wasted, except for the notion that Alvy was suddenly off the schneid, but the third crumbled Dodger pitching in Sensurround. Flaherty walked his first two batters, proving that it’s not only Mets pitchers who do that. Starling Marte, very much living up to his first name’s first syllable, doubled both runners home, and it was off to the Met races. With two outs, there was an Alvy single, a Lindor triple, a Brandon Nimmo base hit, and an 8-1 Met lead lighting up the Citi scoreboard. Yeah, the Dodgers had snuck a run up there off recurring lifesaver David Peterson in the second, but who was worried about the Dodgers when the Mets were ahead, 8-1?
Everybody, obviously. Have you seen these Dodgers? I saw them with my own eyes in Game Four and I considered looking away. Geez, they’re dangerous. For two nights, they were Murderer’s Row taking batting practice in-game, and the Mets might as well have been the 1927 Pirates calling it a day, per legend, before a single pitch was thrown in competition. Except we know the 2024 Mets are not a give-up crew. Maybe they wouldn’t be a champion crew, but they weren’t going to go down without a fight.
Nor would the Dodgers. They indeed got to Peterson enough to rattle Carlos Mendoza’s nerves sufficiently to call on Reed Garrett to protect what was now an 8-2 lead in the fourth. But then Jesse Winker added an RBI triple to the one Lindor hit the inning before (because triples are just that easily come by), and good ol’ Mets fan favorite Jesse got driven in by the blessedly active Jeff McNeil. Winker and McNeil replaced J.D. Martinez and Jose Iglesias in Mendoza’s lineup once Mendy remembered Jeff and Jesse are his guys, too. Gotta love an adaptable skipper.
Garrett now had an eight-run lead to safeguard, until it was a five-run lead, courtesy of Andy Pages’s second home run of the game. Pages was L.A.’s nine-hitter. If their last batter can swat two home runs, I’d hate to see who they have batting first.
Oh right, Ohtani. Mendoza knew that and brought in Ryne Stanek to strike out Shohei to end the fifth. Excellent plan.
Stanek, more or less the Mets’ primary setup man, stayed into the sixth, which started nervously with a Mookie Betts homer, but then settled down via three quick outs and not a single base on balls. Peterson had walked four and Garrett one, but the bullpen was now out of the carousel business. It made a world of difference. From a throat-clearing advantage of 10-6, McNeil contributed his second sac fly of the day to provide an extra firm cushion, and, in the eighth, Marte’s fourth hit brought home the Mets’ twelfth run. By then, Edwin Diaz was in the midst of succeeding Stanek’s two-and-a-third of scoreless ball with two superbly effective frames of his own, and, yes, the Mets were alive. Certainly not dead yet.
Big change from the night before when I felt compelled to wake my wife around one in the morning and debrief her on the somber scene at Citi. Yes, it was fun for many reasons, and I was delighted to get the call from Jason to join him in the center field orange grove — and thanks to not-my-first-rodeo layering, I didn’t even shiver very much — but yeesh. The joint was half-empty when it was over, and who could blame the Mets fans who didn’t want to push midnight just to take in every last inch of a 10-2 debacle that had pushed us to the brink of elimination? At least their departure made the diehard trudge to the subway a breeze.
Anyway, that, along with every trip to the edge of every 2024 abyss, feels distant in the wake of Game Five, a Game Five that now precedes a very necessary Game Six. The way the Mets do the things they do might eventually end us. But they also keep us going.
by Jason Fry on 18 October 2024 10:11 am With the Mets batting because they had to in the eighth inning of Thursday night’s game, I got out of my seat at Citi Field and took a walk.
The immediate reason was straightforward, but there were other reasons, too. My feet were cold. My legs were stiff. I was upset. And I knew that for various reasons it was unlikely that I’d see Citi Field again in 2024.
I wound up circumnavigating the lower level, going from my seat with the 7 Line low down in 141 past the postseason Fox pavilion and over the Shea Bridge, along the first-base line around to the top of the rotunda, up the third-base line, then through the plaza of eateries and back to my seat. Five innings earlier that would have been a foolhardy mission guaranteed to chew up multiple innings. But now it was easy: Most of the crowd had departed, leaving behind Dodger visitors and Met diehards. It reminded me of a meaningless game in May, one that hadn’t drawn too many people in the first place because it was a little cold and had seen the attendance diminish from that low base because things weren’t going the Mets’ way.
If that sounds like a terrible comparison to wind up making in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, well, you’re right in some ways and not in others.
The Mets had fallen behind as early as one can on a leadoff line-drive home run from Shohei Ohtani, but tied the game in their half of the first when Mark Vientos cracked a homer of his own off Yoshinobu Yamamoto. But the Dodgers got two more in the third and kept battering away at Jose Quintana and the Mets pen; by the time I took my walk they were up 10-2 and Danny Young was on the mound, left to absorb whatever further harm L.A. had to administer.
As fans our natural inclination is to see losses as failures. The sports-talk radio version is to filibuster about desire and will; the sophisticate’s version is to spotlight various guys on our side who didn’t get it done for various reasons to be explored via analysis. The former is straightforwardly stupid; the latter looks smart but is often misguided.
Out in center field in the 7 Line’s orange domain, there was muttering that Quintana was being squeezed. I couldn’t tell from ~450 feet away, where I was sitting between my father-in-law and Greg (our first game together since last June), but between innings I peered at previous Dodger ABs on Gameday and found no obvious signs of injustice.
What was happening was more telling: Quintana succeeds by not throwing strikes, with his pitches darting or drifting out of the confines of the zone with hitters enticed to follow, leading to swings and misses and weak contact. That worked against the Brewers and Phillies but not against the Dodgers: They refused to expand the zone, either taking free bases or forcing Quintana to relocate those pitches to where they could be squared up.
Calling that a failure of Quintana’s is a stretch; it’s far fairer to give credit to the Dodgers. Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman all had big nights, while Max Muncy set a postseason record by reaching base in 12 straight plate appearances before Young finally (and mercifully) retired him in the eighth. Watching the Dodgers’ relentless lineup reminded me of watching the Mets during their joyous summer run: AB after AB driving up pitch counts and squeezing out an enemy pitcher’s margin for error until the breakthrough felt inevitable.
A few Mets heard it from the crowd, most notably J.D. Martinez, but that was mostly frustration needing an outlet. The team looks tired, and understandably so — I’m exhausted and all I’ve done is watch them. And the nagging injuries look like they’re piling up: Brandon Nimmo literally limped through the evening and delivered one of the Mets’ two runs by beating out the tail end of a double play on basically one foot, which is the kind of thing that will get lost amid bigger storylines but shouldn’t.
But again, turn that around: The Dodgers squeaked past the Padres nagged by worries about their starting pitching, which is in tatters after the kind of season that called for a MASH unit. They’re on the brink of the World Series because of that relentless lineup but also because they’ve had three suspect pitchers — Jack Flaherty, Walker Buehler and now Yamamoto — come up big.
The TLDR of the above, offered by Greg in an aside that was gloomy but clear-eyed: Maybe they’re just better.
All of this was competing for space in my brain when I took my walk. I stopped for a moment in the plaza beyond the home run apple, looking up at the frieze above Shake Shack and remembering it in its old place atop the scoreboard at Shea. (Its reclamation was one of the few things we agreed the Mets had got right while Citi Field was in the growing pains of its first few seasons.)
Those Mets had been on my mind all night, partly because Robin Ventura and Edgardo Alfonzo had returned for the first pitch and John Franco had led a pregame hollering of LET’S GO METS. But looking up at the old frieze with its remembrance pin over the outline of the World Trade Center, I realized I wasn’t disparaging the 2024 Mets by comparison. I found I wasn’t angry at them, or dismayed at seeing their season shoved to the brink. All of a sudden it really did feel like a May game, one that hadn’t unfolded the way you wanted but still meant a night at the ballpark, which always feels like getting away with something.
I know myself well enough to grasp that some of my acceptance is me trying to outfox the baseball gods: During my walk a fan yelled “Mets in seven!” to no one in particular and I smiled and thought, “Well, why not?” And some of it is stubborn faith in how often this edition of the Mets has delivered a surprise; on the subway I nodded at Francisco Lindor‘s postgame declaration that “if you have no belief, you shouldn’t be here.”
I won’t be there Friday afternoon — not with the 7 Line, and not on my couch. I’ll be on an airplane heading for Seattle, investigating seatback channel options and hoping I don’t have to spring for in-flight Wi-Fi. But if I have to, I will — and you better believe I’ll be wearing my Mookie shirt under my 7 Line jersey, with Derpy Flag in my lap and talismanic utterances on my lips.
In other words, I’ll be there in the way we always are, in the way that matters. There’s clear-eyed assessment of one’s chances and there’s belief. I’ve got room for both.
by Greg Prince on 17 October 2024 11:20 am Sometimes when I go grocery shopping, I’ll grab an item that I’m pretty sure we’re out of, only to come home, start putting things away and discover, oh, we didn’t need another of these.
The Mets can surely relate. They went out and mindlessly tossed another NLCS Game One in their cart on Wednesday night at Citi Field when what they really needed to grab was a fresh NLCS Game Three. Instead, they rolled down the aisle with a hope-depleting 8-0 loss that was far too much like the series-opening 9-0 defeat from Sunday at Dodger Stadium.
What are we supposed to do with two of practically the same thing?
Check the shopping list a little more closely tonight, fellas. Seriously, we truly don’t need another game that begins to get away a couple of innings in; stirs here and there like something good might happen; fizzles; and then altogether drifts out of reach. As in Game One, slippery defense, unclutch hitting and relief pitching that doesn’t keep things close constituted a recipe for futility. The wrinkle differentiating Game Three from Game One, besides autumn’s chill back East and a diving Tyrone Taylor evoking Tommie Agee at the warning track, is we had a known 2024 quantity on the mound in Luis Severino, as opposed to Kodai Senga pitching for the third time all year. Severino wasn’t absolutely dreadful à la Kodai, except in the field (apparently Francisco Lindor’s Gold Glove nomination was accidentally forwarded to him). Between Sevy’s and his batterymate Francisco Alvarez’s combining for three misplays, two Dodgers scored in the second and an eight-ball instantly appeared in front of the Mets.
Also, neither the pitcher nor catcher did a damn thing at the plate. Sevy’s excuse is the DH exists. Alvy’s? He found his way to Citi Field, but is otherwise lost. Can’t even blame the wind for his lack of hitting. A couple of Met fly balls that might have flown farther seemed to have gotten caught in gusts, preventing the Mets from competing early, but those are the sorts of things a fan points to when his team had nothing else going for it on offense. And the Mets had nothing going for it on offense.
Walker Buehler, still in something of a post-Tommy John phase, navigated four scoreless innings and then turned matters over to that Dodger bullpen we’d heard so much about. We’d hear more about them if we could hear over the sound three Dodgers sluggers made with their bats off Met relievers. Kiké Hernandez — POW (if just barely over the left field fence). Shohei Ohtani — BAM (with runners in scoring position, natch). Max Muncy — ouch (there wasn’t much noise left to be made by then).
The only good thing about a series that has produced a 9-0 loss and an 8-0 loss is there was a Met victory in between. The lopsided shutouts feel like microsweeps, but they’re each just one game. Just two games out of three thus far, with as many as four to go. Math class doesn’t need to be in session to tell you how many of those the Mets need to win.
The correct answer is one tonight. Without that, the cart might as well roll into the parking lot as empty as it was when our trip to the postseason supermarket began.
by Greg Prince on 16 October 2024 1:12 pm The first pitch that will carry the most weight in Game Three of the National League Championship Series will be thrown by Luis Severino. Our emotions will ride on that pitch and however many more Luis throws, each guaranteed our overwhelming support — despite Luis’s fondness for the black jerseys that will infiltrate our heretofore purely orange and blue postseason at Sevy’s behest (“I like black,” the starter shrugged.) But should FS1 deign to treat home viewers to the full gamut of pregame ceremonies, the first pitches certain to hit with their own kind of emotional power will be delivered by players who haven’t worn a jersey of any Met shade in competition for quite a while.
Minutes before Severino adjusts his cap to confirm he’s on the same PitchCom wavelength as Francisco Alvarez, Darryl Strawberry will set and fire to Dwight Gooden. Thursday night, in advance of Game Four, it will be Robin Ventura doing the honors, with Edgardo Alfonzo on the receiving end. And before Game Five Friday, Matt Harvey will look in at the target set by Yoenis Cespedes. You live long enough, even Matt Harvey and Yoenis Cespedes are old guys you bring back for special occasions.
Also, you live long enough, and you can’t help but notice that you begin to run out of older guys.
Is it really a Mets postseason extravaganza without the 1969 Mets and the 1973 Mets represented at Citi Field except on the flags they earned? It is, apparently. Time inevitably nibbles away at the front end of what you consider ages ago. The 1986 guys Straw and Doc, they’re the ones from way back now. Robin and Fonzie have matured into fellas from a past that doesn’t carry a patina of present anymore; the turn of the century, when they thrilled us most, is suddenly about a quarter-century gone. Harvey and Yo? They played in the majors as recently as 2021 and 2020, respectively, which is barely a blink. Yet they’re representing 2015, a fabulous Met year that occurred nearly a decade ago.
Perhaps a Met or two from an October more than fifty years ago will make the Citi scene if there’s more autumnal scenery to adorn beyond the NLCS. 1969 Mets and 1973 Mets were always first-pitch staples when later Met clubs attempted to live up to their accomplishments. Perhaps a family member of some player or manager since departed and still missed will be announced to the crowd and accept in Dad’s absence the warm embrace of a chilly 44,000. I don’t doubt outreach has been made. I also don’t doubt it’s not as easy as it used to be to get a 1969 Met or a 1973 Met to the mound or for those gentlemen to toss a ball to their liking. Too many we cheered for, not only when they were winning pennants but when we were trying to win more, simply aren’t around in as great numbers as they once were. For those who are, maybe the trip to Flushing is not one easily traversed.
Fifty-five years ago today, the 1969 Mets became world champions. No living 1969 Met is younger than 76. As we’ve been reminded repeatedly in 2024, too many 1969 Mets are no longer with us. That’s just the way it goes across 55 years. The distance from 1969 to 2024 is the same as the distance from 1969 in the other direction to 1914. I couldn’t tell you how many world champion Boston Braves from that year (“Miracle Braves,” no less) were showing up at ballparks and delivering ceremonial first pitches in 1969. On the other hand, what happened on October 16, 1969, is forever young. The Mets were in their eighth season. Winning at Shea Stadium was a wholly new phenomenon. You can’t look at photos or film clips or video footage from then and not feel as if something eternal had just been born. In my case, it was lifetime fandom for this franchise. That, I’ve learned anew of late, is also forever young.
Reaching October, succeeding in October, the possibility of once again winning it all in October transcends the wear and tear of chronology. It’s 1969 forever. It’s 1986 forever. It could be 2024 forever.
It’s definitely time for another first pitch.
The latest episode of National League Town adores Mark Vientos and feels pretty good about his teammates. You can listen in here.
by Jason Fry on 15 October 2024 10:54 am Eight pitches.
They were the first sign that Monday afternoon’s Game 2 might go better than Sunday’s steamrolling. Happily, they weren’t the last.
Leading off against Ryan Brasier, the first man in a parade of Dodger relievers, Francisco Lindor worked a 2-1 count, then fouled off four sliders and fastballs. Brasier, possibly a little frustrated to see the debut hitter chomping away at his small allotment of pitches, opted for a cutter and didn’t throw a good one — Lindor walloped it into the right-field bullpen, which I’ll always think of as Daniel Murphy Land, the place where a ball thrown by Clayton Kershaw once returned to earth with Murph’s first name literally burned into it by the contact with his bat.
Mets 1, Dodgers 0, and the sigh of relief was audible all over Mets Land.
That sigh got a little deeper and easier once Sean Manaea reported for duty and looked sharp, erasing Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, then retiring Freddie Freeman on a first-pitch fly ball after a walk to Teoscar Hernandez.
Before we return to our usual battle with Mets-fan anxieties, consider this series from the Dodgers POV: In April they lost the first two games against us at home before administering a 10-0 corrective; they then curb-stomped the Mets at Citi Field at the end of May, with the finale featuring Jorge Lopez writing his own pink slip with a glove tossed into the stands.
They must be thinking, “Who are these guys?”
All that came before OMG, before Grimace, before the Zesty Mets, before all the other delightful oddities of a cherished summer. To shift from narrative to W-L statistics, it was before the Mets rose from the dead to the top of the MLB ranks the rest of the way. And it was before Manaea saw Chris Sale at work on the mound and thought, “maybe I should try that.”
When Manaea was on, which he was for most of his Monday tenure, he had a terrifying lineup looking frankly befuddled, with Ohtani unbalanced by his cross-fire mix and Betts unable to square anything up. It was odd — odd with a side of delightful if you’re a Mets fan — to see the best hitter on the planet and a fellow perennial MVP candidate groping for answers.
With Emily stuck on a Zoom call for work (she was far more horrified than you are, so cut her some slack), I watched all this from the unfamiliar confines of our downstairs bedroom, but with every cherished talisman either on my body or close to it. 7 Line jersey with the Mookie shirt beneath? So clad. When a Met was in scoring position I called upon the powers of Derpy Flag, a somewhat wan little felt Mets pennant handed to me by Mr. Met himself. And of course I had my usual exhortations aimed at players on the other side of the continent: look for your pitch, don’t help him, eight guys behind you, hit it to anybody, and of course plenty of hang with ’em and c’mon babe and you got this.
All that worked very nicely in the top of the second, with Landon Knack (whom I knew only from a not particularly distinguished tenure on my fantasy-baseball roster) replacing Brasier. After a first-pitch single from Starling Marte, Jesse Winker wrung out a walk. Jose Iglesias popped up, but Tyrone Taylor smacked a double down the left-field line for a 2-0 Mets lead. An overeager Francisco Alvarez popped up his first pitch, leaving a precious gimme run on the table, and Dave Roberts ordered Knack to put Lindor on first and face Mark Vientos.
Vientos then put together one of the best ABs of his burgeoning young career, hunting fastballs while fouling off sliders in the zone and ignoring ones below it. Knack’s ninth pitch was not only a fastball but a middle-middle bullseye, and Vientos whacked it over the fence for a grand slam and a 6-0 Met lead.
(I’ll pause here for a bit of wisdom from Ryne Stanek in the Athletic, offering a pitcher’s perspective on long ABs: “You only have so many tricks. It makes the at-bat substantially harder when you’ve exposed everything you’ve got.”)
Six-zip in the second and then slowing pull away is an excellent recipe for scoreboard success and calm fans, but would that it were so simple.
The Mets kept putting together good ABs — Pete Alonso had a 10-pitch one before being called out on what might or might not have been a strike, and even Alvarez looked more disciplined in his last go-round — but they couldn’t get the big hit against the next two acts taking the stage at Relieverpalooza: former Met Anthony Banda (“Banda MACHO!” I hollered, as I did when he was pitching for us with considerably less success) and Brent Honeywell Jr., whose career is a study in perseverance. (He’s also the cousin of former Met Mike Marshall — the dogma-defying pitching guru, not the former Met first baseman and hulking ex-Dodger. Though genealogy suggests Honeywell is likely a more distant cousin of that Mike Marshall too — not to mention, quite possibly, you and me and Greg and Charlemagne.)
While the Mets slumbered in key spots, the Dodgers started to do what a lineup like theirs will do. (I had moved upstairs post-Zoom call and will accept that I changed the luck and should be castigated, since I Ought to Know Better.) Max Muncy hit a solo shot off Manaea in the fifth and Betts and Teoscar Hernandez opened the sixth with walks. At which point the Mets defense sprung an ill-timed leak: Iglesias started a double play before he had properly secured a Freeman grounder, one that came with an added degree of difficulty after kicking off the back of the mound. Instead of two outs Iglesias had none, the bases were loaded with nobody out, and oh boy.
Exit Manaea, enter the affectless Phil Maton. Maton coaxed an infield pop-up from Will Smith and then got another grounder, this one from Tommy Edman in the hole between first and second — a difficult play to begin with, made harder by Freeman screening Alonso. The ball went under Alonso’s glove and it was 6-3.
Maton walked Muncy and had to face Kiké Hernandez, who’s infamous for being death to baseballs in the playoffs. Maton got a hard grounder to Vientos, who bobbled it for about the 8,000th heart stoppage of the inning before regaining his grip and starting a double play, which the Dodgers challenged for reasons best known to them.
With the Mets still unable to tack on, Stanek took over for Maton in the seventh but looked like he ran out of gas in the eighth, yielding a two-out single to Edman and walking Muncy. Which meant it was time, yet again, for us all to be strapped into the Edwin Diaz Rollercoaster, and with Kiké Hernandez at the plate as the tying run, no less. The same Kiké Hernandez who’d hit into that big double play.
Oh boy.
Diaz’s fourth pitch was a slider that sat middle … and which Kiké got under for a harmless fly ball.
The Mets finally scratched for a badly needed run in the ninth off Edgardo Henriquez, who looks like he’ll be wipeout reliever but is still finding his way a bit. And so it would be Diaz against Andy Pages to lead off the ninth, followed by Ohtani and his attendant Furies.
Diaz’s first three pitches to Pages were distressingly high; the third was hit just hard enough to float over the infield for a leadoff single. Diaz then walked Ohtani, with his pitches elevated and looking a little flabby.
Oh boy yet again, but unlike against the Phillies, Betts wasn’t the tying run. (Thank you and bless you, Starling Marte.) And Diaz found his fastball and punched Betts out. Then he threw all fastballs to Teoscar Hernandez, erasing him on six pitches. That brought up Freeman, who looks more formidable playing on one leg than most guys look on two. Diaz worked the count to 2-2 on fastballs, then uncorked a beauty of a back-foot slider, which Freeman swung over to put the game in our column.
Can 6-0 feel like not enough? Yes. Can 7-3 feel too close? Also yes. Did the Mets win the game and even up the series? Three times yes. Three times yes, a big exhale, and back we come to New York and whatever awaits. Gather your talismans, find your center … and buckle up.
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