Well, that’s better.
Steven Matz [1] was superb, watching a Chris Carter [2] home run in the first and then allowing next to nothing after that. The Mets, meanwhile, didn’t exactly light up Wily Peralta [3], but they did enough to win and chase the blues away, at least for a night.
We’ll return to those blues in a minute. (Of course we will, we’re Mets fans.) For now, though, Matz becomes a more and more interesting story. He’s 10-1 in 13 regular-season starts, a beginning that in a different era would have the Mets trying to craft him into a face of the franchise. Instead, he’s almost an afterthought. Which I suppose is understandable: He doesn’t have the star presence of Matt Harvey [4] (or the reversed-polarity epic misery of his current predicament), the jaw-dropping arsenal of Noah Syndergaard [5], or the track record and TV-friendly locks of Jacob deGrom [6]. Matz is underwhelming to look at, a kid from Long Island who looks a bit like Joe DiMaggio [7].
Except that kid from Long Island is 10-1. Sure, none of his Matz’s pitches is as lethal as what his moundmates possess, but they’re all pretty good and come with natural movement, he has pinpoint control, he’s left-handed, and he seems to think about what he’s doing out there on the mound. Which is a pretty impressive combination. On Friday afternoon Matz was part of the avalanche of Metsian panic, having been shelved with elbow pain; by late Friday evening he’d become the soothing balm we desperately needed [8].
Still, it was a respite, not a resurgence. The Mets still look like they’re holding the bats wrong-side up; Wily Peralta’s been a tomato can all season, one of the few guys who’d gladly switch stats with Harvey, and he hung in there into the sixth inning, undone only by a windblown Michael Conforto [9] flyball that flopped into the party deck and left Conforto himself looking mildly startled. Take that away and … well, let’s be glad we don’t have to.
What would change this? A better showing from Harvey would help, obviously — and if you want some optimism, here are two pieces from smart folks suggesting Harvey’s woes may be symptoms of the oldest baseball malady [10] of all, bad luck [11]. More than that, though, some consistent hitting would sure help. The late April Mets could simply bash away their troubles at the plate; the May Mets have been more problem than solution with bats in their hands.
We’ll see — it’s a long season. (Perhaps you’ve heard.) It’s far from crazy to think the luck will even out, guys will seek their historic means, Lucas Duda [12] will go on another of his bipolar baseball rampages, Travis d’Arnaud [13] will return, Neil Walker [14] will find a happy medium between hitting like John Buck [15] and hitting like the other John Buck, and the Mets will find someone (Wilmer Flores [16]?) to partner with David Wright [17] as the captain negotiates uncharted spinal-stenosian territory. Perhaps some of those things will happen but not others. Perhaps none of it will. Sometimes that happens too.
But that’s for the future. For a night, Matz was crisp and the Mets hit enough and we could all exhale. For a night.