I went off to California for a week and while I was out there the Mets underwent some renovations, to say the very least.
Deep breath.
I’d barely registered the arrival of Jake Hager [1] before he got his first big-league hit and then was subtracted from the roster. The minorly heralded Khalil Lee [2] arrived, swung and missed a whole bunch, then collected his first hit when the Mets sorely needed it. Just before Lee’s arrival came that of speedy, skinny Johneshwy Fargas [3], who recorded his first hit and a marvelous catch or two but had joined the ranks of the battered before I returned. Cameron Maybin [4] showed up, and he isn’t new but his first Mets hit will be, and it’s taking long enough that one suspects a contributing factor is that Maybin is, well, old. Brandon Drury [5] joined the team and hit a rousing home run in a losing cause about half an hour after I stepped off a plane at JFK; Wilfredo Tovar [6] returned but almost counts as new because his first orange-and-blue go-round was a long time ago and not particularly memorable. Yennsy Diaz [7] showed up, and he was the guy for which I had no Holy Books card, a situation typically remedied by popping over to eBay — except Yennsy Diaz [7] cards are few, far between and oddly expensive. He’ll probably have a Syracuse card in a month or so, so I decided to improvise — an effort that caught the latest Met’s eye on Twitter, and won his approval, or at least his good-natured acceptance [8].
That’s a lot for one road trip!
[9]I doubt six new Mets in seven days is any kind of record, what with Midnight Massacres and September call-ups and all, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it is a club mark for late May. The Mets have already used 23 new players this season, tied for the fourth-most they’ve used in a Citi Field season, and again, it’s only May, which makes you wonder if the non-’62 club record of 35 is safe.
You know what? Give it a week — after Tuesday night’s game they swung a dog-and-cat deal with the Brewers for Billy McKinney [10], a recently DFA’ed but presumably ambulatory corner outfielder. He’ll be No. 24 on the list of arrivals, if not in our hearts.
While I was away, the Mets went 3-3, which isn’t bad for a team getting shorn of one or two players a night. But we all knew it was doubtful that they could keep treading water with lineups more suited to a split-squad game in March than a regular-season affair two months after that. So it was a relief to see at least one casualty return to the battlefield — and a greater relief by far to have that returnee be the best pitcher on the planet.
Jacob deGrom [11] only pitched five innings Tuesday, caution being what it is, but he was scintillating even by deGrom standards. He gave up a Ryan McMahon [12] homer, but the blemish seemed to annoy him, and goad him into honing his slider into a magic trick that started at the hands of Rockies hitters before diving at their back feet. Couple that with a 100 MPH fastball and the competition hardly seemed fair. The Mets, meanwhile, had clearly ordered their makeshift lineup to be aggressive, seeking to maximize the few opportunities that could be generated. This strategy might have worked except for dastardly replay review, which revealed Jonathan Villar [13] momentarily losing contact with third base as he stole it and deGrom ever so slightly lifting a foot above second in the act of stretching a single into a double.
Give me a moment, please.
OK. This is not what replay review is for, and every sentient baseball fan knows it. Replay review should be for correcting gross injustices (such as those umpires now routinely inflict on teams at first base) and for settling game-turning calls where someone’s safe or out by a whisper and the naked eye can only guess. Instead, replay review has become a wretched pantopticon that makes federal cases out of ticky-tack violations, setting technology against not only decades of sound judgment but also the very laws of momentum. It’s absurd — and not just when it goes against the forces of good.
Baseball could stop the madness with a simple remedy that would also curtail a related run of insanity: take challenges out of the game. Smart, reasonably observant folks are already watching all the games at MLB’s nerve center in New York, with umpires nearby. Instead of challenges, go to a centralized system where a potentially wrong call triggers a yellow light from New York, long enough for a quick review and — if necessary — an umpire’s appraisal. Take the teams understandably hunting for the slightest advantage out of the equation and there will be a lot less searching for slivers of light between the bottom of feet and the top of bases, or pondering whether a ball surrounded by a first baseman’s mitt is in said mitt or only about to be. Fix the obviously mistaken and the impossible to judge but critical, ignore the rest, and move on.
The Mets had no choice to move on; deGrom departed with his usual farcical no-decision and the game came down to the bullpens. But then we got a reminder that good things can happen, even to the Mets.
Tomás Nido [14] didn’t make much of an impression when he arrived as the final new Met of 2017 (he was merely the 17th new Met that year, by the way). About two minutes after recording his first hit, he got tagged out some 25 feet shy of home plate to end a game against the Cubs, which isn’t exactly what you want fans to recall years later. He won a game a couple of years ago, walking off the Pirates with a homer in the 13th inning, but mostly attracted the kind of attention backup catchers attract, which is to be observed arriving from or departing to Triple-A and to have people wonder about your job security. Last year Nido hit a little more than we were used to, but a bout with COVID-19 scotched any chance of making a further impression, and early this year he struggled for playing time behind expensive new arrival James McCann [15].
But McCann hasn’t hit and Nido has, which has meant more playing time and the possibility of moments like Tuesday night’s sixth inning, when Nido walloped a Chi Chi Gonzalez [16] slider over the center-field fence. The umpires signaled that it was in play, leading to Dom Smith [17] belly-flopping across home in the vicinity of a tag while Nido gesticulated unhappily at second and the Mets’ dugout became a Greek chorus of gnashing and wailing.
That really is what replay review is for, but the crew realized the mistake without technological help, sending Nido home and giving the Mets a 3-1 lead.
But Nido wasn’t done contributing. In the ninth, Edwin Diaz [18] fanned Charlie Blackmon [19] with a nasty slider, but then walked C.J. Cron [20] to set up a confrontation with McMahon. The slider then turned finicky on Diaz, who knew all too well what McMahon could do with an errant one. On 1-2, Nido called for a slider that could have been called a strike at the bottom of the zone but wasn’t. The next one was high and inside, and Diaz clearly wanted to throw something else. But Nido wasn’t having it, stepping out from behind home plate to make his case. Diaz’s third straight slider was just off the outside corner, an unhittable pitch that McMahon swung through. Five pitches later, Brendan Rodgers had been fanned as well and the Mets had won [21].
They’d won because Nido connected for a homer and because he coaxed an anxious closer through the toughest out in the enemy lineup — a sequence that reminded me of Rene Rivera [22] playing horse whisperer to a chronically spooked Jeurys Familia [23]. They won despite the Plan E lineup and rumblings of achy elbows in Florida and hand treatments needed in New York and other worrisome tidings.
They won and they’re in first place. For now, one says automatically, but history is made of for nows, isn’t it? Sometimes guys heal up as well as getting hurt. Sometimes backup catchers figure stuff out. Good things can happen, even to the Mets.