Perhaps you’ve read of the unique public perception of Howard Cosell at the peak of his fame. He was simultaneously the most popular sports broadcaster of his time and the most unpopular. People loved him. People hated him. People listened when he spoke.
I thought of Mets PA announcer Colin Cosell’s grandfather as I watched Javy Baez [1] return from the injured list in Los Angeles and administer a shock to the Mets’ moribund system. He ripped doubles in the first and seventh, one that drove in Brandon Nimmo [2] from first with the game’s first run and prefaced two more in the inning, another that set the stage for a critical two-out, two-run homer. The first double may have represented the keynote address of the day, given that it put the Mets on the board almost ASAP, but the second was the more startling in the moment, as Baez turned a single into a double because he could. After lashing his hit to left, Javy zipped around first and pulled yet another of his marvelous now you see my hand, now you don’t slides, this one confounding Trea Turner (and, boy, haven’t we wanted to confound that guy?).
Baez scored from second in the first when J.D. Davis [3] singled him in and scored from second in the seventh when J.D. Davis homered for the first time since just after the All-Star break. Davis was a microcosm of the Mets, looking lifeless for too long, yet springing to life with Baez suddenly on the scene. That’s the sort of impact we were aware Javy had on the Cubs. That’s the sort of impact we saw in isolation before Javy got hurt shortly after coming to the Mets.
We might not remember how Baez helped the Mets in his first ten games in our colors because when he wasn’t sparking us toward a couple of victories, he was weighing us down badly (.171/.216/.343) as we commenced losing chronically. It thus dawned on me Sunday that Javy Baez is something akin to our Howard Cosell. He’s the best player we have on the field when he’s not playing worse than everybody else. He’s Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s little girl with the curl to whom Ralph Kiner was so fond of referring. “When she was good, she was very good,” Ralph liked to say. When she wasn’t, she struck out a lot and threw wide of first.
Javy’s here for the duration of 2021, and maybe he and we will bottle his lightning, especially when it’s paired with that hopefully produced by his pal Francisco Lindor [4], who looms as the co-best player we have on the field when he’s not pressing or slumping. Let’s not kid ourselves: these are talents. Let’s also not kid ourselves: Lindor excelled in all ways except consistent hitting, which made us less impressed with the rest of his game; and all we’ve had from Baez are flashes overshadowed by flailing — salivating blips at most. It’s been a small sample size from Javy either way. Sunday’s sliver of that sample, however, was the brightest light we’ve seen from any Met hitter for a while.
The runs in the first particularly benefited starting pitcher Marcus Stroman [5], who had some room to breathe for six innings. The Dodgers got two back in the fourth, but they never headed Stroman and made Luis Rojas’s decision to send Marcus to bat for himself in the top of the sixth with two out and the bases loaded a reasonable one. If the Mets are down as they’ve been so often, then it’s a tougher call. But keeping the pitcher who was effectively defending a lead to defend it a little longer seemed like the right move to me. Stroman didn’t drive home an additional run, but he did proceed to put up an additional zero. Davis’s homer and the splendid bullpen work from Familia, May and Diaz that covered the seventh through ninth made it academic, as the Mets posted the 7-2 salvage job [6] they desperately needed, yet regardless of outcome, I really loved seeing Stroman go back to the mound for the bottom of the sixth. I think I loved it almost as much as I would have loved seeing Stroman somehow poke a ball through the infield.
These are the intervals I’m going to miss should the National League take the bat out of pitchers’ and the decision out of managers’ hands. The tactical rubber meets the strategic road here: a pitcher with a one-run lead and relatively low pitch count versus an enhanced opportunity to extend the lead, but with the caveat that you’re removing the guy who’s keeping the opposition down while burdening your bullpen with yet another inning of work and therefore adding another layer of uncertainty to a close game. Of course you don’t know that Stroman’s not going to give up the tying or go-ahead run when he goes back out. You don’t know what a theoretical pinch-hitter (Conforto and Smith were on the bench with a righty on for L.A.) is going to do. You don’t know how the impact of using a pinch-hitter in the sixth shakes out innings later and that bat is no longer available.
A chance to be right. A chance to be wrong. A chance to find out. This is what I hate to think will be absent from half of baseball in the near-immediate future.
The Mets, meanwhile, are almost absent from the division race they once led. From four games ahead on July 31 (Javy’s first night as a Met) to a barely plausible seven games behind three weeks later. The Mets didn’t do it alone, though. The Braves went crazy, winning 16 of their last 18, including a just-completed 9-0 road trip. Can you imagine a team that gave up a longstanding first-place lead and dropped like a rock in the heat of summer recovering both their dignity and their perch?
You don’t have to imagine it. It happened. Why, it happened to the Braves! Granted, it happened 39 years ago, but just because they don’t offer straws at Citi Field anymore, it doesn’t mean we can’t grasp at them. On July 29, 1982, the Cinderella Braves — managed by an on-the-rebound Joe Torre after five seasons muddling along in Flushing — led the NL West by nine games. Then they spent about three weeks blinking. In the span of that veritable blink, on August 18, they trailed the Dodgers by four games. That’s a thirteen-game swing in almost no time at all, roughly equivalent to what’s happened between us and the contemporary Braves.
Those 1982 Braves picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and started all over again, taking back the Western Division lead before August was over…yet falling behind by three games as late as September 22…then picking/dusting/starting once more to rally and clinch the division on the final day of the year.
By the way, the Mets will finish this season in Atlanta. I wouldn’t suggest the scenario described above could repeat itself nearly four decades later. I’m just saying it did happen.
Listen, if the Braves are going to keep up their current pace, well, good night NL East for 2021. But if you subscribe to the theory that what runs hot eventually turns cold, Atlanta is bound to cool off. And maybe we’re bound to warm up. That’s kind of what we’re down to in terms of hope: the law of averages evening out— plus second-place Philadelphia not getting in the way.
Other than we’ve got one occasionally all-world middle infielder back and we’re about to get our other occasionally all-world middle infielder back, there is nothing beyond a one-game winning streak to indicate this is a team on the verge of a hot streak. Simply not being hopeless would be a good first step, and they took that to end their visit to California.
Welcome home, fellas. Try not to be terrible.