Brandon Nimmo [1] brightened the grim Bronx skies Saturday afternoon. Is there anything that ray of light can’t do?
Nimmo, like Jeff McNeil [2] and Michael Conforto [3] fairly recently, returned from the injured list and reminded us that, oh yeah, we had players in place before we fell in love with players who replaced them, and we liked that first bunch of players pretty well. Also like his predecessors in recovery, Nimmo came out ready to hammer the baseball. The veneer of optimism an 8-3 thrashing [4] of crosstown rivals has provided will obscure the fact that since both McNeil and Conforto looked pretty good early, they’ve appeared less than fully healed from a hitting standpoint.
So let’s forget the slumps of Mike and Jeff and focus on the immediate exploits of leadoff man Brandon, getting on base via the base knock three separate times on Saturday and truly catalyzing the Mets’ victory over the Yankees. It was the 55th time New York (N) has beaten New York (A) in regular-season play since June 16, 1997, tying it for the 55th-best Mets win ever against the Yankees…because every time the Mets beat the Yankees is the absolute greatest event in human history.
True, the Subway Series doesn’t have much of that Dave Mlicki/Matt Franco zing left to it after a quarter-century of luxury-priced gimmickry, but would you have rather the Mets lost to this particular team? I didn’t think so.
Good to have Wyoming’s own ambassador of sunshine warming all five boroughs of New York on a chilly holiday weekend. And speaking of gifts from the western half of the USA, how about ex-Mariner and erstwhile Diamondback Taijuan Walker [5]? Dude’s been dependable as the clocks in Arizona (where they mostly don’t observe daylight saving time) ever since he got here. Set him once, and he just keeps ticking. Against the Yankees, Walker was whirring away, giving up no runs and no hits, thus adding intrigue to a scoreboard that awaited crooked numbers from the visitors. Once Nimmo & Co. engineered a three-spot in the top of the fifth, there was opportunity to breathe on offense and tense up a bit when we were on defense. Was this going to be a serious no-hit bid?
No, not really. Our oughta-be All-Star was throwing a passel of pitches in denying the Yankees hits, so you kind of knew that the first chance Luis Rojas had to come and fetch him from the mound, he would take it. Sure enough, the first home team hit of the day — a lazy fly ball that cleared the right field fence a few feet beyond the basepath between first and second, fungoed with one out in the bottom of the sixth — gave the manager license to get his bullpen up and keep Taijuan’s pitch count in low triple-digits.
The score just before Aaron Judge swung and lofted his elongated can o’ corn was 8-0. We had the 8, so Luis could do what Luis needed to do. At the end of the sixth, the score was 8-3, spurring a touch of discomfort, especially at the sight of Miguel Castro [6], but former IL resident Jeurys Familia [7] doused Castro’s potential blaze, and Familia and Drew Smith [8] constituted a dual-nozzled fire extinguisher the rest of the way.
Dom Smith [9] had three hits and three ribbies. Francisco Lindor [10] was on base four times. Jose Peraza [11] and Kevin Pillar [12] came through. Even McNeil hinted at a breakout. They were all here when the week began and the Mets barely did anything with their bats. Now they’re joined by Nimmo, and Nimmo does what Fred Wilpon mistakenly believed Art Howe did. He lights up a room.
Even dreary Yankee Stadium.