I’ll accept the title of Fan Who Had Nothing to Do With the Outcome But Can Be Forgiven for Thinking He Did: a couple of seconds before the turning point of Saturday night’s marathon against the Twins, I looked up at the scoreboard and told my friend that “if this keeps up we’ll somehow be the last game on the MLB schedule.”
CRACK!
Nope, time to go home — and go home happy.
It was a late-developing thriller, though: for most of the night this was one of those close games that feels more sleepy than taut. Ervin Santana [1] was dealing, changing speeds and leaving the Mets helpless at the plate; Seth Lugo [2] was wild but managed to escape the jams he created, his night marred only by a curveball to Eddie Rosario [3] that didn’t break and became a souvenir.
Nobody much minded — it was an absolutely perfect night for baseball, clear and comfortable. The 15,000 who arrived early enough to get their Jacob deGrom [4] hair hats wore them proudly, even amid news that the man who’d inspired the giveaway would be pitching in front of the first zero fans for the rest of the 2016 season, felled by ulnar-nerve compression. (Oh, the maladies you learn about as a Mets fan.)
I was there in the company of kind friends gathered for a birthday outing, at the front of a section that contained a substantial minority of Twins rooters. Enemy fans are a fact of life in the online age, and a few fanbases — the Giants spring to mind — have become reliably irritating presences at Citi Field in recent years. The Twins fans, though, were excellent guests: heard from when something good happened for their side and otherwise conspicuous only by their gear. Chalk it up to a combination of Minnesota Nice and, well, rooting for a team destined to lose 100 games.
On our side, there was anxiety but also a steely-eyed sense that there was still a lot of baseball to be played. (We didn’t grasp just how much.) The crowd stirred when the Mets did, and really came to life when Yoenis Cespedes [5] or Jay Bruce [6] arrived at the plate. Our faith in Cespedes was rewarded, as he hit a soft liner over the infield to tie the game in the eighth; on the other hand, I’m worried about Bruce not just as a player but as a person, as he’s worn out his welcome to the point of getting a rough ride even on routine plays. He did hit a couple of balls on the nose, with buzzard’s luck; for his sake as well as ours I hope things turn for him posthaste.
The game ground on, with Jeurys Familia [7] besting Joe Mauer [8] in a nifty 11-pitch duel in the ninth before giving way to Hansel Robles [9], which can be an iffy proposition. Robles looked fine for one inning, but then surrendered a truly mammoth blast to Byron Buxton [10], one that hit the facing of the third deck above the Acela club. And while the Mets were now into the Parade of Unreliable Relievers, the Twins still had their closer.
Uh-oh, except Brandon Kintzler [11] arrived in the 11th and discovered it was one of those dreadful nights for a pitcher when he’s brought a cocked thumb and pointed finger to an actual gunfight. Curtis Granderson [12] lashed Kintzler’s second pitch into the left-field party deck; Bruce just missed ending the game with a drive to center; T.J. Rivera [13] and Brandon Nimmo [14] singled; Kevin Plawecki [15] nearly won the game with a liner that hit Kintzler and became a stupendously unlucky out; Kintzler hit Matt Reynolds [16]; and finally after all that up stepped Jose Reyes [17].
The Reyes AB was the flipside of Familia vs. Mauer: a nine-pitch marathon, but one that ended with Kintzler slipping a fastball onto the inside corner. Somehow he’d survived, on we went to the 12th, and I started telling my friends that yes, there was a 14th inning stretch.
Josh Edgin [18] came in and did nothing wrong; Michael Tonkin [19] came in and got Asdrubal Cabrera [20] on a loud but inconsequential flyball, then coaxed a pop-up from Cespedes, then departed in favor of Ryan O’Rourke [21]. I confess I looked past Granderson and started fretting about the 13th, not because I doubted Granderson but because an extra-inning homer to win the game seemed like an awful lot to ask of a man who’d just hit an extra-inning homer to tie it.
It wasn’t. Granderson worked the count full (getting the benefit of a couple of calls, if we’re being honest) and then hooked an offspeed pitch down the right-field line. It wasn’t a bolt like the one he’d hit an inning before, but a looping drive headed for the shortest porch in the park. Max Kepler [22] tracked it to the wall and then watched it plop into Utleyville for the win [23].
For those keeping track at home, Granderson now has 28 home runs and just 51 RBIs; a future generation of fans will scan his 2016 numbers and assume they’ve found a typo. But then the 2016 Mets are baffling as a group, too: they’re second in the NL in homers but just 13th in runs. More interesting stats here [24] if you’re so inclined.
To keep track of happier things, the Mets are now tied with the Giants for the first wild card, and that’s not really a tie because we have the tiebreaker for home field in the play-in game.
Yes, I said happier things. DeGrom is the latest young gun to be snatched away, leaving the Mets rotation as Syndergaard and Colon and Hold the Phone and the lineup as a grab bag of Plan Bs and Cs. We all know this, just like we know that if the Mets survive to the play-in game and make it to the NLDS they’ll be given approximately zero chance of getting any further.
But so what? This is a patchwork team that keeps sewing up holes and rips, and now somehow controls its own destiny with two weeks left to go. No 163rd game is ensured, but in mid-August who even thought we’d be having this conversation? Get to that 163rd game and you’re into the Land of Random Outcomes, where strange things happen so routinely that we ought to stop thinking of them as strange.
We’re playing with house money when we thought we’d be out on the street with empty pockets. May as well double down, right?