One of my favorite parts of a new baby season is how for a little while you can remember every game.
We lost that horror show in KC, then played well and won a squeaker, walloped the Phils, then lost that taut little one the next night.
See? Easy. Depending on your attentiveness and memory, you’ll be able to do that for another week or so. Then things will start getting muddled and tangled, and then the season will elongate and elasticize into feelings and narratives invented to fit a selection of facts.
It’s the way of things, just as it’s natural to record firsts. We got the first heartbreaker out of the way early on Opening Night — before Opening Night, even, if you want to count enduring the Royals’ flag-raising and ESPN’s hammering the defenseless carcass of Lucas Duda [1]‘s throw home. We got the first taut victory out of the way two nights later, and recorded the first runaway on a chilly Friday at Citi. And then Saturday night’s game brought us another inevitable first for the menagerie: the first unsatisfying shrug-your-shoulders affair, a game whose only flaw was the final score.
The Phillies are a dumpster fire, no doubt — take a shaky bullpen as an anti-foundation, then atop it assemble a general lack of experience, iffy outfield defense, Ryan Howard [2]‘s albatross of a contract, and whatever the hell it is Cesar Hernandez [3] thinks he’s doing at any given moment. We can guess what that will mean over 162 games, but it doesn’t say anything about what the Phillies will do during one of those games.
Tonight they were a little bit better than the Mets. The difference was teeny — Bartolo Colon [4]‘s 66th pitch was a 88 MPH fastball with not enough movement and too much plate, transformed by Howard into an arcing liner destined for the third row above the old Great Wall of Flushing. Colon was pretty great the rest of the night, punctuated by an over-the-shoulder catch of an airborne Freddy Galvis [5] bunt that looked a little like a high-school drama class’s re-enactment of Willie Mays [6] retiring Vic Wertz [7]. Yes, Bartolo got his man then, but the failure to get Howard would doom the Mets by a thin yet inarguable margin.
Meanwhile, the Phillies’ Vince Velasquez looked like a punching bag early, racking up a slew of hitters’ counts while hunting for a stubbornly elusive curve ball. Unfortunately for the Mets he found it, throttling them with that curve and a lively fastball through the middle innings before a high pitch count forced his exit and ensured the Mets would have three cracks at the Phillies’ bullpen.
Three cracks, lots of opportunities … and nothing accomplished. Alejandro De Aza [8] was picked off first with two outs in the seventh, but reached second when Howard did everything but balance the baseball on his nose; no matter, as Curtis Granderson [9] flied out. The eighth inning, though, was the one that really hurt: between Asdrubal Cabrera [10], Yoenis Cespedes [11] and Lucas Duda [1] the Mets saw no less than 12 pitches in 2-0, 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2 counts. That’s a good recipe for a big inning, but hold your compliments to the chef: they Mets converted not a single one of those pitches into a walk or a hit, then meekly departed after a six-pitch ninth.
It wasn’t a forgettable game — the final score, head-scratching Phillie misplays and taut starting pitching elevated it above that. But one we’d like to forget? That fits well enough [12].