The pitching’s too good to ever get too down. There’s not a Shaun Marcum [1] reclamation project in the bunch, no Chris Capuano [2] dutifully sucking up innings as if that’s the goal of any given game. One start you get Jacob deGrom [3], who opposing batters can’t hit; next game it’s Noah Syndergaard [4], who they can’t touch.
In between, you hear bad news [5] about Steven Matz [6], yet even as you process it for discouraging words, aggravatingly fluid timetables and comprehension that something initially reported as a little nagging became a full-blown sidelining injury, you can cope, because it’s pitching — and pitching here is plentiful.
Almost as plentiful as uncertainty about how to process this Mets season.
Syndergaard should be all a Mets fan should want to talk about at this moment. Syndergaard Thors his way to the mound and hammers the Diamondbacks [7]. He gives up a run in the first and then none for the next seven. He scatters four hits. He walks only two. He strikes out thirteen.
He strikes out thirteen.
Thanks to the proprietary, complex algorithms inherent in the patent-pending Six-Man Rotation, Noah’s weekly night to pitch has become Friday. Nobody’s lighted Friday night this bright since Coach Eric Taylor was molding young Texans not much Syndergaard’s junior. In his previous two episodes, Noah stifled the Reds and shut down the Dodgers. The D’backs offered about as much resistance. On a staff without All-Star deGrom and pre-lat Matz — never mind social media gadfly Harvey and, for that matter, unsuccessfully hashtagged [8] closer Familia — we’d be buckling in for the Thor ride of a lifetime and gleefully screaming “WHEEEEEEEE!!!!!.”
A forest of pitching, however, almost obscures how beautiful each individual tree is when it is in bloom. Make no mistake, Syndergaard’s branches are exploding with promising new growth every start. He’s getting better all the time, not unlike deGrom was a year ago and continues to now.
This is a helluva baseline for a baseball team. It’s almost become a lock that the starter will go, at minimum, six, and give up, at maximum, three. It’s probably not a normal state, yet we treat it as if it is.
Never scoring enough in support of our starters also seems the uncomfortable norm, but that’s not always going to be the case. These Mets who never put enough runs on the board have, in fact, put enough runs on the board for two consecutive wins. I think they call that a streak. These same Mets have won five of seven. I think they call that a trend. If not for shrinking into their shell like a frightened turtle at the sight of the Cubs, the Mets as a whole — that’s the anemic Met offense in concert with the powerful Met pitching — would stand out as one of the hotter teams in the sport over the past two weeks.
Alas, the Mets have a hole, measuring on most nights from the top to the bottom of their order. Yet when just a little goes right…when Lucas Duda [9] remembers how to drive a pitch…when Michael Cuddyer [10] stands on one good leg and one leg that’s barely good enough [11]…when Kevin Plawecki [12]’s sinuses clear up…when Daniel Murphy [13] dives down long enough to get lucky…the Mets may not become unbeatable, but they don’t get beaten.
Those perfectly crafted Washington Nationals are two games away in the Eastern Division. Two. Two lousy games, or the same distance from which the Chicago Cubs peer back at us in the other potential Met playoff chase. Sounds close enough to make a summer of it. Yet ESPN’s Mark Simon tells us [14] why it’s a fool’s errand to even fathom making up two games with 75 to play. The Wall Street Journal’s Brian Costa says [15] there is no song and dance sincere enough to make us take the Mets’ chances seriously.
I don’t need well-credentialed baseball writers to keep me grounded. I’ve been here. I’ve seen the Mets creep around viability in recent years. I’ve seen the Mets do just enough to make me think maybe there’s a corner about to be turned, only to have the concrete and the clay beneath my feet [16] begin to crumble.
But this is the year when, for a while, it felt different, no? Then it felt all too familiar. Then, though, there was a twist. There was deGrom reaching elite status and Syndergaard rocketing up the rotation and Niese maybe not relentlessly disappointing us as usual and Colon still riding that donkey pretty effectively [17] and Harvey struggling a bit as he continues to find himself, but if Harvey struggling a bit amounts to the most of your starting pitching problems, then you don’t really have starting pitching problems, Matz’s absence notwithstanding. I was falling in love with East Setauket Steve, but at this point two weeks ago, he had pitched exactly as many innings for the Mets as Sidd Finch.
And with pitching like that — and perhaps just enough going right when you’re two games away from the almighty Washington Nationals with 75 games to go — how exactly do you not find a way to derive a few encouraging words?
How do the Mets not use the twenty days between this very moment and the trading deadline to enhance themselves at least along the edges?
How is there not one help-us-now player among 29 other organizations just waiting to be plucked?
I’m not asking for a superstar ingeniously wrangled with magic beans and Dillon Gee [18]. I’m just asking for a little assistance, a utilityman of true utility, one stinking bat that doesn’t splinter at the sight of .200 [19].
Who is that guy and how do we get him? My job is to hope within reason. It’s this front office’s job to make good on my reasonable hope. As a lusty Duck Phillips suggested to Peggy Olson when she tried to beg off a Friday afternoon rendezvous on account of too much work to do, “C’mon creative. Be creative.”
Somebody wrote a book about how creative this front office is [20]. It needs an addendum for the paperback version.
You don’t have to pick up Troy Tulowitzki [21], throw his back legs over your shoulder and drag him Pete Campbell fantasy-style [22] through the snow to Citi Field, but my goodness, is it that hard (and that expensive) to hunt down a 2015 version of, say, Bob Bailor [23]? A bench player whose talents transcend those of Danny Muno [24] is not an unreasonable request. Marginal upgrades aren’t necessarily insignificant when the margin is two games. To shrug, “ah, you know, we made a couple of calls, but nobody would immediately give us what we wanted for almost nothing, so we gave up,” and point to 2016 as The Year is to abdicate responsibility.
Same goes for we the people who call ourselves Mets fans. Two games. It’s after the halfway point. It’s not two games heading in the wrong direction, either. The Nationals have had every opportunity to bury all competition. They have neglected to follow through and somehow we remain a going part of their lives. The Cubs hold a 7-0 edge in intramural competition, yet we sit stubbornly in their rearview mirror. Teams like the Braves, the Giants and the Diamondbacks have been poised to blow right by us. They haven’t.
All those clubs, good if flawed clubs, have weapons that could destroy us if deployed properly. And us? We have deGrom and Syndergaard and Harvey and Familia and too many decent-plus players who are due to get going. We’re good if flawed. We could use a little help. A little. Give us that and I don’t think the final 75 games are doomed to the status of full-priced glorified scrimmages.
Listen, I’m not by nature optimistic where the Mets are concerned [25], or at least I’m not any longer. Too much has beaten the Met optimism out of me. I should be ready to pack it in while waiting for Matz’s lat to heal; knowing Wright’s spine lacks proper width; never sure where d’Arnaud is on the recovery spectrum; being reminded Jerry Blevins [26] is weeks, months, years away from returning (it’s been so long since he’s pitched that his general manager called him “Jeremy” yesterday). Trust me, if the Mets follow up their current 5-2 stretch with a 2-15 funk, I’ll be leading the reflexive retreat into innate 21st-century Mets fan pessimism [27]. Honestly, it would be easier to just default into here-we-go-again mode than get even my reasonable hopes up, knowing there’s every possibility they will crash as they usually do.
But at two games out with 75 to play and this kind of pitching, that’s not a good look for us.
Ed Kranepool [28] knows something about Mets teams overcoming unflattering perceptions, let alone daunting margins. Listen to what he has to say when he joins Michael Garry, author of Game Of My Life, at the Book Revue in Huntington [29], Monday night at 7 PM. Michael and Ed will be talking Mets history and signing copies of that very fine book [30].