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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Bingo cards are all the invocation rage these days, as in “I didn’t have that on my bingo card!” serving as a response indicating a state of surprise in reaction to whatever unforeseen event has just transpired in this wacky world of ours. It’s an inviting metaphor if not always apt, yet let’s go with it as our leitmotif of the moment.
Let’s say we were issued a Mets-themed bingo card where under “B,” as in Batting, we find a box inscribed, “MJ Melendez pinch-hitting for Eric Wagaman, who was announced as pinch-hitter for designated hitter Jared Young.” Put aside the size that box would have to be to fit all that information. Had that bingo card fallen into our possession prior to Opening Day, we would have scanned it for boxes more likely to be filled in during the season ahead. We didn’t know what kind of season it was going to be.
It turned out to be the 2026 season. Thus, in the bottom of the seventh on Friday night at Citi Field, Carlos Mendoza indeed pinch-hit righty Wagaman for lefty Young because lefty Cade Gibson was pitching for the Marlins in relief of righty Max Meyer. With Mendy having made his move, Miami skipper Clayton McCullough countered, removing Gibson and inserting righty Calvin Faucher to face Wagaman. McCullough could do that because Gibson had faced his required minimum of three batters. Two — Bo Bichette (walk) and Juan Soto (single that sent Bichette to third) — had reached base, creating the kind of opportunity that nudges managers into making moves and countermoves. You might call the engagement between Mendoza and McCullough a chess match, but then you’d be mixing metaphors.
But it might be more apt, as Mendy proceeded to make another move: Melendez for Wagaman. Wagaman homered just the other night. Melendez has been mostly frigid since a warm start. Still, lefties face righties most of the time if possible. It was possible here. Melendez validated the chess match within the bingo game by effectively putting the ‘B’ in RBI, driving Faucher’s fourth pitch to left field, amply deep for a sacrifice fly to score Bichette and extend the Mets’ lead to 7-5.
Great, we had our B. What about the rest of what we needed?
Under I, our Bingo card had “I see the Mets have gotten off the schneid quite quickly this evening, pushing four runs across the plate in the very first inning, perhaps setting the stage for a rare easy win.”
Under N, we became eligible to circle, “Nope, Freddy Peralta isn’t going to make this easy, instead struggling to get only as deep as two outs in the fifth as starting pitcher, allowing the Marlins to score four runs, which are still fewer than the six the Mets have at this point, but wow, Peralta and his 94 pitches over four-and-two-thirds are hardly the epitome of efficiency.”
Under G, maybe as a sign these bingo cards were printed during Spring Training, we had, “Gads, if it’s 7-7 at the end of nine, with both teams looking mostly like they’re here to get their work in — especially the myriad arms called in from the Mets bullpen to succeed Peralta — just call it a tie.” And, although it is late May, would have you been shocked to have seen Mendoza and McCullough make like it was mid-March in Port St. Lucie or Jupiter and wave to each other from their respective dugouts, the universal signal for “no need to trudge on like this any longer, the early bird special beckons.”
Under O, we already had “Oh wow, Mark Vientos’s blast landed in the Left Field Landing or whatever that section is labeled as these days” from the third inning, but you know how it is with bingo. You need to have your rows and columns line up just so. What we needed was a box under O that read, “OH WOW! MJ MELENDEZ JUST SOCKED ONE ONTO THE SPONSORED SOFT DRINK BRANDING OPPORTUNITY!” Sure enough, that’s just what MJ the erstwhile PH turned DH did in the bottom of the tenth. Because it was the tenth, a fugazi runner was placed second before anybody batted, so what Melendez launched after Soto led off by flying out was a two-run homer to win the game, 9-7. All we needed was one run in order to manufacture an OH WOW! in that situation, and surely you’re familiar with the chant that ends with If Juan can’t do it, MJ can!
It had stayed 7-7 entering the home tenth, thanks to Austin Warren preserving the tie in the top of the inning. Warren as bullpen best bet to come through in clutch situations also wouldn’t have been on our bingo card when the season began, no more than the previously invaluable Tobias Myers becoming the reliever who gets shuffled down to the minors after a game where the starter doesn’t last and before a game that demands a “fresh arm” in reserve. Myers gave up the two-run homer in the eighth that made it 7-7, making his option more relevant than might have been forecast when the Mets acquired him alongside Peralta in January. But we’ve already proved how unreliable these hypothetical preprinted bingo cards can be as predictors of what will happen in this wacky world of ours.
First we shouted “MJ!” Then “BINGO!” Then the Mets collected their prize on our behalf, a modest streak constructed of two wins that could have just as easily been losses. Sometimes these games of chance work out to our satisfaction.
The Mets won … it just feels kind of like they didn’t.
Not only did they win, they also did some things pretty impressively. They ground out lengthy ABs. Most everybody pitched well, with Jonah Tong emerging from the scrum of openers and serial relievers with a win and Luke Weaver pantsing Sal Stewart to shut down an eighth-inning threat. Carson Benge had two key hits, giving you hope he’s come through his rookie hazing ready to take the next step forward. Benge and A.J. Ewing made some nifty plays in the outfield. Juan Soto hit a home run and so did Eric Wagaman, who recently escaped Met Ghost status and now has proof he’s fully corporeal, if not necessarily for real.
They won. So why does it feel like they didn’t?
The most obvious reason was Devin Williams recording what might be the worst no-runs-allowed save I’ve ever seen. Williams somehow emerged unscathed, but he left no nerve among the fanbase ungnawed, pitching like the love child of Armando Benitez and John Franco. Williams has a problem with tipping pitches, which we’ve known ever since Pete Alonso famously ambushed him, but he also has a problem with affect: He’s about the most hangdog closer I’ve ever seen, moping around on the mound like he’s being dripped on by a bespoke little black cloud.
There was also the fact that Reds kept jumping out of closets and springing up from under the bed and carrying on like Citi Field had become the world’s most overstuffed haunted house. The Mets didn’t record a single 1-2-3 inning, which is kind of amazing. This was one of those games where disaster always seemed imminent and yet never arrived, which is the better outcome but still leaves those spared twitchy and haunted and incapable of trust.
Oh, and there’s the Reds’ bizarre love of drop shadows, about a decade after everyone else figured out they were a bit much and banished them from the design playbook. But then the Reds have always been eager to screw up a perfectly sound uniform with a bad idea: unnecessary pinstripes, white hats, sleeveless tops, the version of Mr. Redlegs where he looks dead-eyed and psychotic, black accents where none are needed. Given the Reds’ sartorial track record, clinging to a pointless drop shadow is as Cincy as that repulsive chili.
(OK, that last bit didn’t really have anything to do with the game, but my God do I hate those dumb drop shadows.)
And of course there’s the fact that the Mets are godawful, and everything they do is either a reminder that they’re godawful or a fakeout that sets you up to be sucker-punched by their godawfulness yet again. (Haha! You keep falling for it, Mets fans!) That’s what’s really going on here: a season where the absence of disaster feels like a mistake.
But hey, for one night let’s not talk about that part. Because the Mets really did win. You could look it up.
“Look for the helpers,” Mr. Rogers implored, and the wishful thinkers in Mets management listened. They didn’t know who was gonna help in Mr. Met’s Neighborhood, but they’d keep looking. As of Tuesday night, the Mets had sought help from 48 players in 55 games. As of Monday afternoon, they had tried only 46 different players in 54 games. The search for helpers is constant.
Throwing bodies at the situation is not proving all that helpful at effecting change.
The main Met who didn’t accomplish anything worthwhile versus Cincinnati was David Peterson, who last week in Washington seemed to solve whatever had been ailing him as a starter. Peterson previously required the training wheels an opener provides — first innings were too scary for him. Trusted to go get ’em from the get-go, he pitched well against the Nats for five innings. Trusted to do it again against the Reds, he didn’t. He really didn’t. Peterson was in trouble early and mostly, bailed out from digging a far deeper hole by the specific strengths of Luis Torrens, baseball’s version of a special teams player. Torrens makes throws to second and tags at home so well he could be named an All-Pro Despite the contributions of our Backup Catcher For Life, the Mets were down, 5-0, by the fourth. The cruelest blow came in the sixth, when Petey didn’t back up the plate on an altogether messy defensive sequence. The pitcher’s brain freeze cost the Mets a base, not a run (the run, Cincy’s sixth, was gonna score, anyway), but it placed an italicized exclamation point on the entire David Peterson experience for the evening, as in Wow, that was really bad!
And it was for just about every Met. Maybe not Juan Soto. Juan Soto called time in the sixth to put on a brief fireworks show that accounted for two runs and distracted the crowd from its miseries long enough elicit a few oohs and a couple of aahs. His was one of those home runs that parted clouds. It was also one of those home runs that couldn’t close a six-run gap with one swing. Not Juan’s fault the Mets couldn’t win. Not any of 48 individual 2026 Mets’ faults at this point that the Mets rarely win. The aggregation of talent or whatever you’d term it hasn’t jelled in any 26-man format that’s been shaped. The latest iteration that includes Young, Minter, and Wagaman is no exception. Young qualified as a revelation during the slice of the schedule that hadn’t yet revealed itself a slog to nowheresville; he went 0-for-1 with a walk upon his return. Wagaman sat on the bench for a single April afternoon before someone noticed he was optionable; he had the honor on Tuesday of staying in after pinch-hitting and becoming the Mets’ 194th third baseman (ever, not just this year). Minter had been gone thirteen months; the scoreless inning he logged following Tommy John surgery and rehab should feel like a win to him.
Nothing feels like a win to Mets fans. Five losses in a row have piled up, sinking the club to eleven under .500, matching this season’s nadir and echoing the exact record of 22-33 from two years ago at this juncture. That was as comparably grim a scene as this one, yet the 2024 Mets turned their nosedive around and our expectations on their head, ultimately winding up two games shy of the World Series. A giddy and special time indeed awaited us as we soared from grim to Grimace. We couldn’t see it developing then. We sure as hell can’t see something like it developing now. The temptation is to say Grimace is not walking through that door, but having cycled through 48 Mets in 55 games, there’s no telling who’ll be playing for this team next.
At the end of April I reclaimed my “have been to all 30 major-league parks” status with a trip to Globe Life Field to see the Texas Rangers take on the visiting Athletics.
I’d like to tell you that the rest of this piece is a celebration of baseball, but alas it isn’t — beyond the common-sense note that watching baseball is always at least an amiable diversion, and so any place that allows you to do that is worth visiting. Someone on a message board described Globe Life Field as the world’s largest Embassy Suites atrium, and that’s it exactly — the Rangers spent a lot of time and money to engineer a hulking non-place, so steeped in anonymity that the baseball within it feels incidental. And they did so just a quarter-century after moving into Globe Life Park, which I visited in 2019 and didn’t think needed a replacement. (It lives on as Choctaw Stadium and now hosts soccer.)
The best seats at Globe Life Field don’t feel particularly merit the name, as everything feels like it’s happening in another county. The sound design is a particular miss: It’s boomy but diffuse, muffled and lost in so gigantic a place. I have no desire to see another baseball game at Globe Life Field, but I also wouldn’t bother to see a rock concert here.
Some of the things that annoyed me at Globe Life Field, to be fair, are more about being a godless blue-stater in Arlington, Texas. The Rangers’ various doings are celebrated by the Six Shooters, a troupe of cheerleaders who prance around in jeggings and some-number-of-gallon hats — it’s very modern Texas, big and brassy and a little cringey. Less amusing is that the park is the new home of the “One Riot, One Ranger” statue, removed from public view years ago after community discussions about the history of the lawmen who gave the baseball Rangers their name and the role they played in anti-Mexican violence and stoking or failing to calm racial tensions. That was the broader context for the specific flashpoint, which was that the statue was modelled on Jay Banks, who became infamous for his conduct while leading the lawmen sent to stop desegregation at a Dallas-era high school in the mid-1950s, as captured in this searingly iconic news photo from the time. The team has halfheartedly claimed Banks might not have been the model for the statue, which is mildly hilarious given that Banks, the sculptor and the Texas Rangers museum are all on record that he was. (The Athletic has an excellent overview of the situation here.)
The history of the Texas Rangers is too big for this baseball blog, but this feels like an own goal, a move no one asked for that’s had the effect of alienating a chunk of a community one would presumably want to make welcome. Though this is the Rangers, the only MLB team not to host a Pride Night and one of just two to see maternity leave as too radical.
(They do, however, offer a sensory room.)
The Rangers’ answer to questions like this is to say that they do everything they can to make anyone feel welcome, and to their credit that was true during our visit. Everyone we dealt with — from the cop explaining the labyrinth of parking lots to the 50-50 raffle guy — was helpful and nice in a way that felt genuine, and I’ll give extra credit to the folks at the fan relations booth. I stopped there to explain that I’d now been to all 30 parks and to ask if the Rangers had a commemorative button, as teams including the Marlins do. They didn’t, but a man at fan relations painstakingly and charmingly customized my visit certificate to note the achievement, a gesture I appreciated more than getting handed a button.
So anyway, Emily and I watched the Rangers and A’s play, including old friends Jeff McNeil, once-upon-a-time Cyclone Carlos Cortes and Brandon Nimmo. Nimmo was interviewed in canned pregame footage while tootling around in a golf cart; he was of course charming, and a guy helping people find their seats lit up in discussing the energy he’s brought to the team. It was fun to see Nimmo again, and to spend a couple of hours watching baseball — even if it was in the world’s largest Embassy Suites atrium.
* * *
What’s that, you say? This is a blog about the Mets?
OK, sure — but do any of us want to talk about the Mets?
I decided to turn off Memorial Day’s late matinee after the Reds extended their early lead to 5-0 against Nolan McLean, and by the time I got myself together to relocate it was 7-0, which wasn’t exactly an invitation to reconsider.
Turns out McLean’s rookie struggles were merely deferred instead of skipped, as he’s hit a rough patch that will demand adjustments to escape — understandable but still no fun to witness. The team continues to not hit at all, looking gripped by a collective nervous breakdown, and they can be relied on to fail in any of a number of other ways in a given game. Errors, mental mistakes, inept ABS challenges, simple bad luck? One or all of those things will befall the Mets if needed to push them closer to another loss.
It’s a long trudge into pointlessness, one that’s going to lead to firings and a fire sale unless some kind of miraculous turnaround presents itself, and the only hope to grasp at is that miraculous turnarounds by their nature don’t signal they’re on the way. We all know this and to belabor it further would be to add insult to injury. We just all — from agonized principals to helpless bystanders — would like it to end.
What does Christian Scott have in common with Bob Moorhead, Chris Schwinden, Brent Strom, Mike Birkbeck, Collin McHugh and Tommy Milone? They are the only pitchers in Mets history to start at least five games as a Met and never record a victory as a Met starter. Scott holds the record by a mile, with the no-decision he racked up Sunday in Miami serving as his fifteenth start in search of a win. The previous markholder was Moorhead, who never won in seven Met starts. Schwinden tried his luck six times. The others listed took five shots at a W. Honestly, Christian resides in an undesired statistical league of his own here, but I didn’t want him to feel as if he’s the only Met something like this ever happened to.
Unlike his predecessors in this category, Scott still has a chance to win a start for the Mets. Or he would if the Mets didn’t go about their business so Metsishly.
In his fifteenth career start as a Met, Christian was as good as he’s ever been, going five-and-two-thirds innings and allowing no runs. He could have departed as the pitcher of record on the winning side had his teammates given him one run with which to work. They did not. He shouldn’t take it personally. The Mets were shut out for the sixth time in 2026. In 23 of their 53 games to date, the Mets have scored no more than two runs. They are 1-22 in those contests. Christian Scott did not start all of them.
Sunday’s game stayed nothing-nothing from the top of the first clear to the bottom of the ninth. If Scott was on his game, so was everybody else who pitched for both sides. It was a good day most of the day to be someone who threw the ball. Like Scott. Like Huascar Brazobán, Brooks Raley, and Luke Weaver, who blanked the Marlins for a combined two-and-a-third. Like A.J. Ewing, who fired a strike from center to home to cut down the Marlins’ most imminent scoring threat, nailing Javier Sanoja running from second.
The arms had it. The bats didn’t. Maybe there was mound wizardry afoot from Tyler Phillips, Calvin Faucher, John King, Anthony Bender, Michael Petersen, and Pete Fairbanks, too. The piscine sextet must have done something right to notch nine scoreless innings. My guess is the Marlin hurlers held a meeting and voted to face Met hitters. Joke was on them, as the Mets don’t seem to have any hitters, just players tasked with hitting. Those tasks went largely unfulfilled, with the Mets gathering five hits all of Sunday. That’s both not very many and the most they put together in any of their three weekend games.
The bottom of the ninth’s trajectory seemed inevitable. Devin Williams, so good for so long, may have been due for an off outing, though if we’re invoking the “due” theory, the Mets players tasked with hitting were due to do something/anything, thus maybe due had nothing to do with it. Williams gave up a leadoff double to Christopher Morel, wearing only one thick schmear of eyeblack on each side of his face instead of his usual two thin whiskerlike lines that make him look like positively feline. Every time Morel bats, I announce to my wife, “Hey, it’s the kitty cat guy!” I wonder if he changed his cosmetic approach in order to appear more fierce. If he did, that Morel cat sure knew what he was doing.
A pinch-runner, a sac bunt to third, a walk that wavered in its intentions (three-and-oh; full count; ball four), and a fully intentional walk loaded the bases. There was one out. The Met infield was in. The Met outfield was in. The pitch Williams threw Heriberto Hernandez traveled too deep for any Met to catch, particularly once it cleared the fence. What left the bat as a harmful fly ball turned into an ostentatious walkoff grand slam. Once a Met loss was ensured, it didn’t matter — except to Devin’s ERA — that the final was 4-0 rather than 1-0, except losing by a final of 4-0 understates the futility of the Met afternoon. It was a game more futile than the final score suggests. Losing by four makes the defeat sound a little too routine, whereas 1-0 really makes the zero pop.
I’ve watched the Mets score very little or not at all nearly two-dozen times these past two months. I’m becoming a connoisseur in the ways of coming up empty.
Ready for the understatement of the year? The 2026 Mets are frustrating.
On the one hand, I love that they’re playing the kids, instead of giving no-longer-deserved time to Proven Veterans™. The latest kid? 2025 Momentary Met Jonathan Pintaro, whose inaugural 2026 outing went a lot better than his last one. Progress! Pintaro joins the likes of Jonah Tong and Zach Thornton and Nick Morabito and A.J. Ewing, with Carson Benge and Nolan McLean not exactly grizzled old-timers themselves.
More of this! Let’s actually investigate possible futures, instead of handing it to mercenaries and guys with wide error bars, which is the fancy new way of saying “crapshoot.” Let Brett Baty play third, as a consistent fielding address seems to have perked up his bat, at least to the extent that’s possible given a baseline of Metsiness. Let Mark Vientos play first, where he’s shown undeniable signs of improvement. I don’t need to see Jorge Polanco ever again, thanks — that was a bad idea from the jump. Give second base to Bo Bichette once Francisco Lindor returns, and thank Marcus Semien for his service. Let’s see Jack Wenninger and Nate Lavender and Jonathan Santucci and Jacob Reimer and Ryan Clifford and other guys who might actually be part of the future, instead of guys whose bios tout years-old down-ballot MVP votes.
On the other hand, the Mets look offensively comatose regardless of the birthdates on their drivers’ licenses. On Saturday the team did nothing against the Marlins: Until the ninth their lone hit was a little dribbler by Vientos that wouldn’t have gotten a speeding ticket on the interstate, with a little ninth-inning flurry amounted to lipstick smeared haphazardly on the pig of another noncompetitive game.
There have been far too many games like that one, where you want to pause your TV and verify the Mets are holding their bats with barrel up and handle down. Little spurts of competence are followed by slides back into being not just awful but deeply boring. (Honestly, the most interesting part of Saturday’s game was when Gary and Ron started talking about Yale professors and residential colleges.)
What’s wrong? Sometimes it’s the enemy pitching, though the 2026 Mets sure seem to bring that out in everyone. Sometimes it’s old guys looking like the giant forks sticking out of their backs are hampering their ABs while the young guys look like they’re learning hard lessons in the bigs. Sometimes it feels like a teamwide nervous breakdown has resumed, with everyone trying too hard and snapping bats over knees and looking down in the mouth. It’s Carlos Mendoza looking grim and staring into the middle distance; it’s rookies hanging on the dugout rail looking faintly stunned; it’s guys challenging or not challenging at exactly the wrong times. It’s about a dozen things, honestly, shifting as part of an ever-changing kaleidoscope of queasy depression.
And it’s us too, sitting on our couches with our hands out in the universal WTF? gesture, or looking up in faint dismay because we couldn’t stand it anymore around the fifth and so started looking at our phones or leafing through a magazine.
Frustrating. Super frustrating. And I’m not sure a youth movement fixes that, though to be clear I’m all in favor of one anyway.
After watching this team stumble around for two months of this season, I’m not sure anything can fix it.
What’s that saying about how if you watch a baseball game, you’re bound to see something you’ve seen repeatedly? Occasional outlier notwithstanding, the 2026 Mets are expert at rolling out slight variations on the same old same old.
Take Friday’s game — please.
Another cobbling together of à la carte options from the pitching menu: a reliever as an opener; a fallen starter as a bulk guy; a rookie granted an unforeseen opportunity to make a favorable impression. You might prefer a prix fixe deal along the lines of one starting pitcher, six solid innings just so you have an idea of what you’re getting, but the kitchen has sent word that they don’t have what it takes to offer that every night.
Another home run from the superstar on a tear. Can’t argue with one of those.
Another couple of deep fly balls caught near the wall by an opponent. We hate when that keeps happening.
Another low-scoring affair. Those can be tense. Those can be futile.
Another 2-1 final, this one in Miami instead of Washington, this one with the Mets scoring the 1 rather than the 2.
Similarities permeate, but the little differences tend to prevail.
Juan Soto did his part on Friday, going deep in the top of the first as has become his nearly nightly custom. Carson Benge tried to do his part, but he kept getting robbed in the vicinity of the center field fence by Jakob Marsee, not to be confused with Peppermint Patty’s pal Marcy. Nobody else among Juan and Carson’s teammates much joined in offensively. Tobias Myers was trusted to record four early outs. Sean Manaea filled in admirably afterwards, finishing the second inning, then processing the third through fifth in competent fashion. Jonah Tong took over the role of intriguing ingénue from Wednesday’s spotlight neophyte Zach Thornton. Jonah appeared sharper than when he was thrust onto the big league stage for his 2025 playoff chase audition, shutting out the Marlins in the sixth, seventh, and eighth. The theme of youth being served continued to resonate, with not only Tong replacing Craig Kimbrel on the roster, but all three outfield positions assigned to the rookie class.
So you had the things you like to see, the things that worked pretty well, the things that didn’t click whatsoever, and a bottom line that didn’t cooperate. The Marlins were held to five hits, the Mets three. Eury Perez gave up only two hits in six-and-third, both to Soto. The Fish bullpen was just as smothering. As a unit, the Mets’ lineup remained inept clear to the end of this 2-1 loss. Unlike the last time the Mets played at the former site of the Orange Bowl, New York wasn’t eliminated from postseason contention. This year’s edition has yet to approach postseason contention.
The season’s one-third mark arrives Monday. There’s still time for the Mets to gather momentum. Intermittent Metropolitan microsurges suggest they are capable of a sustained rise toward the middle of the pack, and if your team gets there, you can at least delude yourself regarding the surfeit of Wild Cards and your team’s possibility of nabbing one. There’s also still time for the Mets to keep groping for answers and sputtering in place while most of the pack sits stubbornly on their head. There’s way too much time for that, actually, and a little too much evidence indicating that’s how the remainder of 2026 will be spent. Dog days don’t necessarily wait until August to begin barking.
I was nervous for much of Thursday afternoon’s game, as the Mets refused to expand on a 2-0 lead that quickly got halved to 2-1. That was too close, with the Nats lurking around waiting to do Natty things (which used to be equally offensive Expo things) and the Mets still laboring beneath 2026’s dark cloud.
Nervous, but forgiving. For openers, I forgave the braintrust excusing David Peterson after 82 pitches: Peterson had endured stretches where his location essentially vanished, and given his 2026 struggles I saw the wisdom in having him exit with a lead, a job fairly well done and a selection of parting “attaboys” and “something to build ons.”
And I (mostly) forgave the Mets staying stubbornly peaceable: Cade Cavalli was pretty good for Washington, and a stiff wind was blowing in, a meteorological uh-uh waggling in the face of any hitter who tried to hit a ball in the air with authority. The Mets’ two runs came on single up the middle by Bo Bichette: clean, but earthbound and humble.
I even forgave Mark Vientos‘ frantic flailing at sliders low and away — yes, he needs to stop doing that, but he also preserved the Mets’ lead with a legitimately nifty tumbling snare of a hot shot by CJ Abrams that sure looked like a dispiriting double. I still wouldn’t call Vientos a good first baseman, but he’s improved dramatically over there, and the “Mark Vientos, pickin’ machine” jokes are heard a little more often in our house while landing with a bit of actual sincerity.
But despite forgiving these things, in the ninth everything seemed to have aligned for a narrative turned sour. First the Mets loaded the bases with nobody out, courtesy of two singles and a Nats error on a sacrifice bunt. But it all came to naught: MJ Melendez chased a high fastball to strike out, Luis Torrens lined out on a nice play by the annoyingly capable Nasim Nunez, and Carson Benge smoked a ball only to see the wind downgrade it from fan souvenir to out.
And the wind wasn’t done. The Mets sent Devin Williams out to secure the save, following superb relief from Huascar Brazoban, Brooks Raley and Luke Weaver. Daylen Lile (yes, that fucking guy) hit Williams’ second pitch, and you saw immediately that A.J. Ewing was in trouble: He broke back, realized the wind was hauling the ball back toward the infield, sprinted in and made what I tried to convince myself was a tumbling catch but was actually a near-miss. Lile wound up on second with an exceedingly windblown double; three pitches later Luis Garcia Jr. moved him to third with a groundout.
It was the Manfred Man strategy, just minus the extra innings part, and I could see the rest of the narrative unfolding with dreadful clarity: The Nats would tie it, then win in some excruciating fashion. Maybe they’d win it in the ninth, maybe it would take a little longer, but they’d win it and it would be ulcerous and vile and I wouldn’t like it at all. And it would all seem preordained: stupid wind, stupid not adding runs, stupid getting nothing from bases loaded and nobody out, stupid Mets, stupid me for liking baseball despite it not liking me back.
Except Williams broke out the airbender — interspersed with one synapses-scrambling fastball — to fan Jose Tena. (The Athletic has a good piece about a tweak Williams has made to his delivery, though it really amounts to Williams deciding he doesn’t give a fuck if he’s tipping.) He still had Keibert Ruiz to deal with, and Ruiz was on a hot streak, but hey, there was a path. Ruiz smacked a Williams changeup to Marcus Semien, who tossed it over to Vientos, and the Mets had won.
I exhaled, and — storytelling monkey that I am — immediately rearranged the facts at hand into a new story. The Mets had won, and their inability to do that on Tuesday or Wednesday no longer felt like a descent to familiar horrors but just like a blip, the kind of stumble that befalls all teams, even ones that are good or at least OK.
Just another narrative? Undoubtedly. But it’s one I like better.
In 2014, the New York Mets traded Ike Davis to the Pittsburgh Pirates for two minor leaguers who seeped deep into my baseball subconscious, each of them laying low down there for a very long time. One of them was named Blake Taylor, a pitcher who rose slowly from rookie ball in the Gulf Coast League until he made it to Syracuse. Syracuse is the giveaway that Blake Taylor’s rise was slow, because the Mets didn’t replant their Triple-A flag in the Eastern half of the United States until 2019. Taylor pitched for Las Vegas the year before that, when the Mets’ maintained a more transcontinental relationship with minor league geography. Blake had worked his way up the Met chain in classic fashion, stopping at Kingsport, Brooklyn, Columbia, St. Lucie, and Binghamton before plateauing near the top of the ladder. At the end of his Met journey, he was assigned to the Scottsdale Scorpions of the Arizona Fall League, where he pitched on the same staff as current Met David Peterson. Peterson selected by the Mets in the first round of the 2017 MLB draft, nine years after the Mets selected Ike Davis in the first round of the 2008 MLB draft. If nothing else, Blake Taylor was a bridge between eras.
On December 5, 2019, the Mets traded for veteran outfielder Jake Marisnick, sending the Houston Astros two minor leaguers, one of them Blake Taylor. “Blake Taylor, guy we got for Ike Davis? He’s still around?” Indeed he was. Soon enough, Taylor would do what Ike had done in 2010, earning a promotion to the majors. It took Taylor longer, but the destination was the same, whatever the city. Blake pitched three seasons for Houston, 2020 to 2022, making it into postseason action in his first two years. I watched the 2021 World Series and saw Blake Taylor strike out Freddie Freeman to end an inning. “Hey, it’s that guy again. The Ike guy.” Ike Davis was out of baseball for four years by then.
The other minor leaguer the Mets received from the Pirates in 2014 for Ike Davis was named Zack Thornton. Not paying attention to our farm system that closely, it’s quite possible I blurred Blake Taylor and Zack Thornton into one prospect who never pitched for the Mets but sure hung in there. Maybe they became Zack Taylor, not to be confused with Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor or twelfth president of the United States Zachary Taylor. Neither of those namealikes ever pitched for the Mets, either. If one half of the Ike Davis haul took his sweet time ascending, maybe the other was still at it. That is if there had been two; I couldn’t remember for certain. Thus, when I began to read the name “Zach Thornton” as a Mets comer, I thought once more, “The Ike Davis guy? Wait, didn’t he already make it? Well, if he didn’t, good for him progressing at last.”
When word went out that Zach Thornton was about to be called up to take a start in Washington on Wednesday, I had to check. Nope, Zach Thornton is not Zack Thornton, just as Carlos Mendoza the September 1997 Met outfielder didn’t materialize again at a November 2023 press conference to be introduced as new Mets manager Carlos Mendoza. In that case, the spellings were the same, but I already knew they were different Carloses, with Mendoza the manager too young to have been Mendoza the player.
For the record, Zack Thornton, who celebrated his 38th birthday this week, never advanced beyond Las Vegas in the Mets’ system. He last pitched as a 51 in 2016. The next year, he was a Southern Maryland Blue Crab in the Atlantic League. Those 2017 Blue Crabs also gave shots to former Mets Robert Carson, Danny Muno, Robert Carson, and Pat Misch. In between his Las Vegas and Southern Maryland stints, Zack Thornton threw a few innings in the WBC for Team Israel, the Mensch on a Bench squad that made more noise than expected before bowing out of the tournament in the second round. One of Zack Thornton’s teammates that March? Ike Davis, who drove in three runs, batted .471, and conjured memories of a promising future past.
Zach Thornton, 24 years old, arrived in D.C. to bring the future back to its rightful place, the here and now. He’s on the same roster as 2026 freshmen Carson Benge, A.J. Ewing, No. 55 in your program Nick Morabito, and at least two other starting pitchers in the early stages of their MLB journey, Nolan McLean (technically still a rookie) and Christian Scott (technically no longer a rookie, but still getting his feet and arm wet). Jonah Tong might be back soon as well. The Mets who loaded up on veterans you’d heard of from other places during the winter are leaning increasingly on kids you were waiting to find out more about. The learning process, ours and theirs, is underway.
That’s why when the Mets of the rookie outfielders and the pitcher making his debut — along with their more experienced teammates — fall as they did on Wednesday night, 8-4, to Zack (!) Littell and the Nationals, the disgust level is surprisingly minimal. Aside from Juan Soto belting two homers, it wasn’t a good game for the Mets, and it was no more than an adequate start from Thornton. Zach with an H went four-and-a-third, which doesn’t necessarily tell an observer anything these days. Eighty pitches indicates a little less efficiency than desired. But the trajectory was encouraging. Thornton’s first inning left him behind, 3-0, after a soft single, a walk, and a CJ Abrams blast threatened to bury the kid alive. The second went better, with only one run allowed. The third and fourth saw Zach get comfortable and the Nats go down in order twice. All told, four earned runs on four hits and two bases on balls (the latter keeping us from going with Thornton Wilder as our headline). He struck out three, so it can’t be said he’s Zach without a K. Best of all for the young lefty, his family was in attendance, which is always a heartwarming sidebar, but this one was extra special, given the serious health issues his dad has been negotiating. Soon, Paul Thornton will be up on his feet again, and we will hope Zach Thornton might bring us to ours in appreciation for the type of outing we instinctively rise to applaud.
Mets management was impatient enough with its own dreadful start to promote several of its most promising youngsters. In return, granting a team slipping further from .500 and glued stubbornly to the bottom of its division a little grace in those games when they don’t immediately make strides onward and upward seems a fair deal. Patience isn’t always rewarded. Sometimes it’s called for.
It was the bottom of the second in Tuesday night’s game, with two out and nobody on. The Mets led 5-0 and a laugher seemed to be on tap, with good feelings aplenty. Bo Bichette had escaped the back of the milk carton with home runs in the first two innings, Steve Gelbs had conducted the usual sweet pinch-me interview with the parents of Nick Morabito (making his debut wearing the long-put-aside No. 8 for what we’re told will be a single day before a new number is issued), and Nolan McLean was on the mound.
And then it all came crashing down.
McLean gave up a double, hit a guy and yielded an infield single, after which James Wood hit a drive to the fence in left-center which bounced off the heel of a leaping Morabito’s glove. Morabito crashed into the wall, briefly stunned, and Tyrone Taylor … well, I’m still not sure. Taylor, who’s been bafflingly inconsistent of late on defense, seemed to think the ball had been caught, or been bumped over the wall, or taken up to Heaven in some cowhide version of the Rapture. None of these hypotheses was correct: By the time Morabito sprang up and scrambled after the ball, Wood was chugging home for an inside-the-park grand slam.
It got worse from there: McLean didn’t have it and got shellacked; Marcus Semien, of all people, made a hideous error; Luis Torrens failed to catch a throw at home; McLean lost an out at third; and Torrens had to endure the Full Lourdes on an ill-advised ABS challenge. It went on and on and on before the merciful conclusion, which saw Old Friend Richard Lovelady roaring like a lion after securing a 9-6 victory over his old comrades.
Sure, Morabito made a nifty hell-for-leather catch reaching into the stands (a run scored anyway, because that’s the kind of night it was), Daniel Duarte prevented further indignities in his own debut, and at the end of the game the Mets had the Yout’ of America Outfield on display: A.J. Ewing in center, flanked by Morabito and relatively crusty veteran Carson Benge.
But those were a paltry number of oats for an enterprising sparrow to pick out of … you know what, let’s not finish that metaphor. And let’s not dwell further on this game. It’s over, the Mets play again tomorrow, and until Wednesday’s first pitch they and we should all work on being goldfish.
Piazza: Catcher, Slugger, Icon, Star by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.
Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.
I’d like to tell you that the rest of this piece is a celebration of baseball, but alas it isn’t — beyond the common-sense note that watching baseball is always at least an amiable diversion, and so any place that allows you to do that is worth visiting. Someone on a message board described Globe Life Field as the world’s largest Embassy Suites atrium, and that’s it exactly — the Rangers spent a lot of time and money to engineer a hulking non-place, so steeped in anonymity that the baseball within it feels incidental. And they did so just a quarter-century after moving into Globe Life Park, which I 
Some of the things that annoyed me at Globe Life Field, to be fair, are more about being a godless blue-stater in Arlington, Texas. The Rangers’ various doings are celebrated by the Six Shooters, a troupe of cheerleaders who prance around in jeggings and some-number-of-gallon hats — it’s very modern Texas, big and brassy and a little cringey. Less amusing is that the park is the new home of the “One Riot, One Ranger” statue, removed from public view years ago after community discussions about the history of the lawmen who gave the baseball Rangers their name and the role they played in anti-Mexican violence and stoking or failing to calm racial tensions. That was the broader context for the specific flashpoint, which was that the statue was modelled on Jay Banks, who became infamous for his conduct while leading the lawmen sent to stop desegregation at a Dallas-era high school in the mid-1950s, as captured in this 
The Rangers’ answer to questions like this is to say that they do everything they can to make anyone feel welcome, and to their credit that was true during our visit. Everyone we dealt with — from the cop explaining the labyrinth of parking lots to the 50-50 raffle guy — was helpful and nice in a way that felt genuine, and I’ll give extra credit to the folks at the fan relations booth. I stopped there to explain that I’d now been to all 30 parks and to ask if the Rangers had a commemorative button, as teams including the Marlins do. They didn’t, but a man at fan relations painstakingly and charmingly customized my visit certificate to note the achievement, a gesture I appreciated more than getting handed a button.
