Blue Jays came a-courtin’ Monday night. They know how to woo the Mets on the Mets’ home turf, especially as the hour grows late. As they had on nine previous Shea-based occasions, they brought a ripe opportunity for the Mets to win. The Mets graciously accepted [1] what the Jays presented them and said “thank you very much yet again, kind birdies.”
It was kind of the Jays, wasn’t it? They could have extended their own winning streak to an unimaginable (to us) twelve; instead they enabled to the Mets to create a streak of their own: two wins in a row, two exhilarating comebacks in a row.
Everything they say about Canadians being so nice is apparently true.
The Jays weren’t necessarily so generous all night. Mark Buehrle [2] was stingy and Jose Bautista [3] was greedy. Noah Syndergaard [4] was everything a Jays fan could have hoped for when Toronto drafted him in 2010…and everything that same Jays fan might have rued when his team sent him to our team in 2012.
Noah went six, struck out eleven, allowed but two hits and laid down a bunt even. When he finished pitching, he and the Mets trailed, 1-0. When Carlos Torres [5] followed him to the mound, he and the Mets led, 2-1. Buehrle might have dolloped out few baserunners but eventually quit being perfect. A helpful throwing error from another wonderful if geographically misplaced Canadian (Jose Reyes [6]) set up consecutive doubles and the two six-inning runs that put Noah in position to win the game.
Bautista, the five-minute Met from 2004, had other ideas, tagging Jeurys Familia [7] in the ninth for a very sneaky home run just over the fence in the left field corner. Earlier Bautista hit one to Astoria, meaning it was 2-2 and the Mets and Jays were bound for extras.
Extras in Queens is usually where the Mets shine when they take on this particular opponent, though it should be admitted that “usually” equals that game in 1999 in which Bobby V donned the fake mustache [8]. That one went fourteen, foiled David Wells [9], featured Pat Mahomes [10] and the Mets won, 4-3. This one got to eleven and appeared futile when Curtis Granderson [11] couldn’t throw out Ezequiel Carrera [12] at the plate. Of course he couldn’t. You know what they say in the battery business: some run on Energizer, some run on Duracell, but all run on Granderson.
That likely would’ve been most of that, except the Jays wouldn’t let the Mets go gently into that good night. In the bottom of the eleventh, after Juan Lagares [13] was nabbed on a brilliant play by second baseman Danny Valencia [14], Ruben Tejada [15] walked. Michael Cuddyer [16] then hit the double play ground ball that was about to end the Mets evening when Valencia undid his good from two batters before and didn’t bother throwing to second. If he had, it’s 4-6-3, good night New York, let’s see if we can catch the end of the Stanley Cup (Canadians love that stuff). Instead, Valencia got it in his mind to tag Tejada, while Tejada — not lately anybody’s idea of heady — got it in his mind to make himself untaggable.
Ruben wiggled and jiggled and wriggled and Valencia was easily distracted. Eventually he got some combination of mitt and ball on the baserunner’s body, but it took so long that it provided ample running time for Cuddyer to cross the first base bag. In the fifth, when the Mets had their very first baserunner, I noticed something similar. Lucas Duda [17] was on second with two out. Dilson Herrera [18] grounded to third baseman Josh Donaldson [19]. All Donaldson had to do was throw to first. Instead, he saw Duda trundling in his vicinity and thought tagging him would be a better option. He missed Lucas. He was able to get Dilson, but it was a waste of motion. The same team impulse to tag instead of throw came back to bite them six innings later.
Fellas, a word of friendly advice for when you go back to playing everybody else (because we’d be plenty happy if you won the A.L. East): leave the tagging to Bautista.
With a two-out baserunner, the Mets had a chance. They had Duda up. John Gibbons [20] had an idea. Duda traditionally pulls the ball, so let’s take every Jay fielder dating back to Barry Bonnell [21] and shift them so far to the right they can shake hands with the ghost of William F. Buckley. This clever defensive strategy put Jays closer Brett Cecil [22] squarely on the firing line when Duda — who is not nearly as predictable as opposing managers tend to think — flared a 3-2 pitch to left that probably could have been caught or at least contained by a reasonably positioned glove.
Instead, the shift wound up handing Cecil his beanie. Cuddyer got to racing around the bases and scored all the way from first on what was ruled a single. Duda lumbered to second on the futile throw to the plate and, lo and behold, the camouflaged Mets revealed themselves in a 3-3 tie.
Exit Cecil. Enter the next victim, Liam Hendriks [23], who threw one pitch. Wilmer Flores [24] stroked it directly up the middle to score Duda with the winning run. The Mets won, 4-3, just as they had on June 9, 1999. No facial hair constructed from eyeblack. No sunglasses at night. Just 25 Mets not [25] named Dillon Gee [26] who were dressed to go Jay hunting and did so very successfully.
Of course they didn’t have to exert themselves all that much toward the end of the hunt. The Jays jumped in a barrel and invited their hosts to take aim and fire. It would have been undiplomatic to have refused.