Hit Me With Your Laser Beam

Two people at Citi Field were proven wrong Wednesday night in the ninth inning. There was Braves third base coach Ron Washington and there was me, perched in the first row of Excelsior on the right field side. We were both off in our projection of what was about to happen after Ehire Adrianza lined a single to right with Abraham Almonte taking off from second. Washington was certain Almonte was going to score and tie the game at two apiece. So was I. Washington, per Jerry Beach of the Associated Press, “emphatically waved home Almonte,” while I muttered to my friend Kevin with whom I annually watch the Mets scratch and claw with the Braves only to too often come away competitively gouged, “he’s gonna be safe.”

Not consulted by either Wash or me was Mets right fielder Michael Conforto. He returned Adrianza’s liner with a liner of his own — a clothesline of a throw upon which you could hang your unmentionables. Unmentionable were the thoughts one nurtured about Edwin Diaz for letting Almonte on base to lead off the ninth and now facilitating his crossing of the plate.

But not if Conforto had anything to throw about it. Oh, and he did. That clothesline…that Frankie Goes to Hollywood-level laser beam…that straight-on lightning bolt…insert your own metaphor of choice. It was a strike from Conforto to James McCann that didn’t waste time with grass or dirt. Instead, it landed square in the catcher’s mitt, just enough up the third side of the plate to enable a swift tag to the leg of Almonte. The throw beat the runner. The tag beat the runner. Video replay was called for by a desperate Brian Snitker, but all that accomplished was an entertaining interval for Kevin and me and the vast majority of fans who hadn’t believed our own eyes but were happy to believe the big screen.

He’s out from this angle.
He’s out from that angle.
He’s out from all angles.
Thanks for the highlight package, Snit!

The only other thing wrong regarding Conforto’s bullet from right, besides Ron Washington and I misreading the impending outcome, was that it was fired in service to the second out of the ninth inning. That’s a play at the plate designed to end a game that for three hours felt tighter than the trousers Tom Jones wriggled himself into a half-century ago.

Tylor Megill dueled Max Fried, zeroes at sixty-and-a-half paces. Jeff McNeil found a hole to push Megill across the dish for the game’s first run in the third. Tylor simply hummed along for the first five innings. He had a shutout, a hit, a run…some kind of 26th-birthday haul for the rookie. And how about the party favor McNeil brought when he unwrapped his fifteen-game hitting streak?

Kevin and I discussed and signed off on Tylor batting for himself in the fifth and going out to continue his budding masterpiece in the sixth. This sort of decision would have required no discussion in another era, say when Tom Jones references were, like Tom Seaver complete games, not unusual, but we were conscious of Megill’s pitch count, frequency through the order and generally slight (if extremely solid) track record. Two batters later, Austin Riley docked a Megill pitch at the World’s Fair Marina. Goodbye birthday boy. And eff you Austin Riley for ruining the party.

One of the many conversational detours Kevin and I took between innings, batters and breaths was whether there’s any Met on the current squad we distinctly dislike. Yes, I said, there’s one: whichever reliever is on the mound. I exaggerate, but only a little. But here we were, as we inevitably are, pacing about the waiting room hoping to be told the delivery of our bouncing, baby win is going to come through without complications. It’s out of our hands when it’s out of the starter’s hands. Technically, it’s never in our hands. We’re fans. At best we have a few pretzel nuggets in our hands (Kevin treated me to both a great seat in Excelsior and a new snack from its concession stands). But when our starter’s on the mound, especially if he’s throwing strikes and recording outs, we are one with him. We’ve been with him since the first inning, maybe since we found out he was going to start the game. When it’s a reliever, we’re inherently convinced control has been ripped from our fingers.

That’s my theory, anyway. I was wrong about Almonte scoring, maybe I’m wrong about this. Either way, my new least favorite Met, once Megill exited, was — through no fault of his own — Seth Lugo. But Lugo somehow didn’t get beaten by the always sadistic Dansby Swanson nor the foreshadowy man from the foreshadowy planet Almonte.

Good news, Seth, you’re off the hook. I can go back to liking you.

In the seventh inning, Trevor May, in whom I currently invest zero faith, retired the Braves in order, including the preternaturally vengeful Guillermo Heredia. If you blinked, you missed Heredia’s seven-game Met tenure last September. Heredia remembers it, however, and he’s clearly pissed his unimpressed employers gave him the Eickhoff’s rush, DFA’ing him as winter wound down. I shall make them pay, he cackled demonically as he signed his contract with Atlanta. I shall make Ender Inciarte expendable and then I will BECOME Ender Inciarte!

Why else would Heredia bat approximately .864 against the Mets and basically nothing against everybody else? Again, another theory of mine. I’m full of them.

Brandon Drury came off the bench and homered to give the Mets the lead in the bottom of the seventh. I thought I’d say that casually. Brandon Drury casually gets hits off the bench. They’re often homers. Considering that this one was off Fried and gave the Mets the lead and that it soared very high and that it landed very far from whence he initially made contact, casual may not be the proper tone to take when it comes to Brandon Drury’s pinch-homer. Our reaction in Section 310 as the Mets went up, 2-1, was actually quite delirious.

We thought we had a chance to calm down in the eighth with the arrival of Busch Light spokesmodel Aaron Loup. Loup is the reigning exception to the Whichever Reliever is Pitching is My Least Favorite Met rule. It used to be Lugo. Maybe I’m doing this in reverse alphabetical order. More likely it’s based on Loup’s extraordinary effectiveness. I’m easy that way. Naturally, Loup didn’t make it easy. Two hard-hit singles from Joc Pederson and Ozzie Albies and a productive tapper from Freddie Freeman led to Braves on second and third with one out. Three batters meant a change could be made. To which about–to-be reviled reliever, though?

Jeurys Familia? I didn’t want to revile Familia. Familia has revived too much to be reviled. Kevin had earlier wondered if, generally speaking, a 1986-style Lee Mazzilli was in our future, somebody who’d come back to us from the mists of time and contribute memorably to championship drive. Kevin once thought that was a job for pre-retirement Daniel Murphy. I remembered that I predicted it would be the fate of a late-’90s Dave Magadan. Our respective scenarios never came to pass. But Kevin insightfully determined we were looking on the wrong side of the ball, for we were watching our modern-day Mazzilli trot in from the pen right this very instant.

It was Familia. Never mind that he’d made his return to the Mets in 2019 after being away for the equivalent of a semester abroad with Oakland. It’s the not the lack of recent recidivism that tells Familia’s comeback tale. It’s that he hadn’t looked anything like the Jeurys we remembered at his best from ’14 to ’18 in ’19 or ’20 or our first queasy sightings of him in ’21. Yet slowly, almost imperceptibly, he’s become a bona fide bullpen asset. True, now that I’ve said that, he will soon go the way of Lugo and Loup, commit the sin of imperfection, and force me to revile him.

We’ll put aside recriminations for another day. On Wednesday, we had to trust Familia to go after Riley and Swanson with runners on second and third with one out. And wouldn’t ya know it — Riley struck out and Swanson grounded out. It was a renaissance inning of the highest order, as if Mazzilli was sparking a rally against Boston while burning down the wilderness years he’d definitively left behind him.

Just as it would’ve been great had Conforto’s eventual “WHOA!” throw secured the final out of the ninth, it would’ve been great had Familia’s bacon-securing outing represented the save. You’d think Rob Manfred might have slipped in a rule about dramatic eighth innings precluding ninths. Nope, we still needed three more outs. Those would be on Diaz. He was hit hard — the Almonte ground-rule double that led off the ninth was no joke — but he gave up no runs and therefore was credited with a save as if the scoreless last half-inning was implicitly his doing. Edwin could thank his right fielder for throwing with better command than he had, but it’s a team game and this was a team win. The team was the Mets. That part is 100% correct.