The goal of every baseball fan this time of year is to endure the All-Star break while complaining about its existence as much as possible. It’s interminable, it’s endless, it’s too long. Find some more synonyms. Traditionally, by Wednesday it’s completely outlived its utility, yet they went and extended it a few years ago to Thursday. What a cruel and unusual trick to pull on us smack in the middle of the summer.
Yet this All-Star break has been the best All-Star break ever, and I almost don’t want it to stop. Consider the context:
The Mets won their last game in San Francisco two Wednesdays ago. Jacob deGrom [1] struck out ten. Eric Campbell [2] homered.
The Mets were off on the Thursday that followed.
The Mets won last Friday. Noah Syndergaard [3] struck out thirteen. Lucas Duda [4] and Michael Cuddyer [5] homered.
The Mets won Saturday. Matt Harvey [6] struck out nine and homered, as did Duda and Ruben Tejada [7] (hit home runs, that is).
The Mets won Sunday. Kirk Nieuwehnhuis homered three times. Daniel Murphy [8] homered once. Jon Niese [9] was perfectly serviceable and Jeurys Familia [10] registered his fourth consecutive save.
The Mets were off on Monday. Jacob deGrom was about as perfect as could be during the All-Star Game Tuesday, striking out three batters on ten pitches and stealing Fox’s “look at how young everybody is!” promo. Tom Seaver [11], Keith Hernandez [12], Mike Piazza [13] and David Wright [14] were announced as the Mets’ Franchise Four [15] and, by my reckoning, they were the four who most deserved the designation (as the key players in each of the four eras when the Mets won something), no matter the emptiness of the exercise.
The Mets were off on Wednesday, allowing us to bask in deGrom’s deGrominance of deAmerican League. The Mets were off on Thursday, permitting us ample time to at least skim Tom Verducci’s profile of “the Flushing Six” starters in the new SI and process John Smoltz [16]’s assessment that the Mets pitchers of today are a) “way better [17]” than his Atlanta staff of yesteryear and b) possess “more talent than we could ever have”. (We were also offered independent testimony that it’s more emotionally satisfying to be a Mets fan [18] than any locally available alternative — hell, there’s even a t-shirt confirming our fun-ness [19] as fact.)
To sum up, the Mets presently linger at a moment in time during which their best pitcher this season was the starriest of all the stars; their overall starting pitching has been identified by trusted sources as among the best that’s ever been; they homer whenever they play; they win whenever they play; and nine days have passed since they lost. Also, they are very close to the leads in the two playoff races in which they are contending.
Why would we ever want this moment to end?
Oh right, because we like baseball.
Still, this is almost better than baseball. This is baseball without the risk. All we needed to make this break perfect was a break from not adding any offensive talent to the big-league roster, but given recent trends, we’re gonna hit five home runs in St. Louis tonight, six tomorrow and seven Sunday. Even if that projection somehow doesn’t hold, we still have hope that maybe something will be done by July 31. We’ve always had that hope, but usually expressed with a layer of hostility. This week, we’re too mellow to be too hostile. It’s more like, “Oh, this pitching is so good…hey, you know what would really make it awesome? Some hitting!”
Then we turn over to get back to soaking in the rays of the mid-July when the Mets simply didn’t lose. Glad we’ll have games again, but it’s kind of a shame this feeling can’t help but evaporate.
Before I learned to stop worrying and love the All-Star break, I contributed a few words to the latest edition of On The Sports Lines, accessible here [20]. Tune in around the 11:00 mark for my thoughts on our Mets.