The Mets were supposed to be off Monday night, but instead they wound up in D.C., playing another one of their COVID makeup dates. Jerad Eickhoff [1] was ambushed by the crazed baseball-destroying cyborg formerly known as Kyle Schwarber [2] and the Mets continued to espouse their philosophy of nonviolence at the plate and before you knew it the seventh inning had rolled around and it was 5-0 Nats.
And then things started happening. Jeff McNeil [3] drove in an apparent lipstick-on-a-pig run in the seventh, but Pete Alonso [4] mashed a no-doubter of a two-run homer in the eighth and Billy McKinney [5] followed with a laser beam into the right-field seats and hello it was Nats 5, Mets 4. Up stepped Kevin Pillar [6], who scorched an errant Justin Miller [7] fastball high and deep down the left-field line. Gary Cohen and Ron Darling [8] studied the ball’s trajectory from whatever Citi Field utility closet they’d been stashed in (why the heck is this still a thing?) while we did the same from our couches and 50-odd uniformed Mets and Nats did the same from their dugouts and positions. For three glorious seconds or so, I figured that when Pillar’s drive came down the Mets would have hit back-to-back-to-back homers and the game would be tied.
And then it came down foul.
It’s a baseball truism that a hitter who sends a ball screaming past one of the foul poles will not, in fact, be able to recalibrate that swing subtly and hit a homer a pitch or two later. Which isn’t the same as saying it’s a law of physics — I remember Cliff Floyd [9] pulling off said recalibration in the Marlon Anderson [10] Game, for one [11] — but it sure feels that way.
Pillar struck out. The Mets didn’t score. Miguel Castro [12] came on in relief and walked Gerardo Parra [13] with one out, but got a tailor-made double-play grounder from Starlin Castro [14]. Tailor-made except it was to Travis Blankenhorn [15], playing an unfamiliar position and shifted in a way he’s most likely not used to. Blankenhorn was positioned more or less at shortstop, which of course is where Francisco Lindor [16] (on record as not a fan of the shift) has spent the bulk of his adult life intercepting baseballs.
Lindor instinctively moved hard towards the ball. Blankenhorn, already navigating unfamiliar waters, felt him coming and flinched, winding up with two errors on a play not made. Up came Ryan Zimmerman [17], the last Washington National anyone wanted to see in that situation who wasn’t named Kyle Schwarber.* Castro’s first pitch was an unsinker, which pitching coaches don’t teach because it has a tendency to wind up where Zimmerman’s bat redirected Castro’s. Just like that, the Nats’ lead was restored and the ballgame was effectively over [18].
It was a crummy demoralizing loss on a night the Mets should have been putting their feet up, and maybe there’s nothing more to be said about it than that. But I can see a silver lining. I suspect that lost chance will lead the Mets to make the next, much-needed tweak to their new defensive philosophy, which is to adjust how they employ the shift in double-play situations. After the inning mercifully came to the end, Lindor walked over to buttonhole Gary DiSarcina, which is the kind of thing you’d hope to see there, and not a guarantee when someone’s making $341 million. And ace baseball thinker and Faith & Fear pal Mark Simon [19] immediately noted that the Diamondbacks faced a similar reckoning [20] in their own defensive overhaul.
Gary and Ron, to their credit, used the misplay as fodder for a pretty interesting conversation about what had gone wrong and what needed to change. I say “pretty interesting” because the conversation was nuanced and began with the starting point that the Mets’ defensive rethink has catapulted them from the depths of the stat board to near the top, which we should all remember. (More here [21] from Tim Britton of the Athletic.) I also say that because the vaunted SNY booth has made its own much-needed overhaul on this point: A couple of years ago, most of its conversations about shifts were derailed by confirmation bias and quickly devolved into Not in My Day grumbling; now, more often not, you’ll learn from their observations and debates. That kind of shift (ahem) is hard for any of us to tackle in the private space of our own heads, let alone in public with a nightly audience of thousands of armchair critics.
Here’s hoping a couple of weeks from now we’ll see a double play pulled off because the Mets tweaked their defensive pattern; that Gary, Keith and Ron will spot it and break it down, with Steve Gelbs asking the relevant follow-up question in the postgame; and of course that the Mets will never have to face that night’s Ryan Zimmerman and they’ll actually win. That last change would be the best shift of all.
* Speaking of confirmation bias, Mark also pointed out [22] that Zimmerman’s pre-homer OPS against the Mets was actually 56 points lower than his career OPS, and not “higher by infinity,” which is what I would have very confidently predicted. Huh.