Taijuan Walker [1] looked to be experiencing back discomfort on the mound and in the dugout throughout Thursday afternoon at Nationals Park. He pitched seven shutout innings while fielding his position like an athlete who happens to be the pitcher. We should all experience such discomfort. “A little tight, nothing serious,” was Tai’s postgame self-diagnosis.
The National League East race is also nothing serious, with the Mets at the moment leading the pack by 6½ games. It’s not even a little tight. Your first-place New York Mets continue to reign over their division with the greatest of ease, though I’m sure it’s not as easy as it’s appeared playing ten series to date in 2022 and losing none of them. The closest thing to a complaint one could muster is there hasn’t been a Met winning streak that’s exceeded three games. There also hasn’t been a losing streak that’s exceeded two games, and there’s been only one of those. So you’ll forgive the complaints department if they hear your gripe; shut their window; and knock off early for the week.
The matinee victory that bumped the Mets up to 22-11 was mostly methodical. They didn’t hit a ton, but they got on base effectively and crossed the plate enough so that sweating wasn’t in the forecast. Thanks primarily to three ribbies from Mark Canha [2] (two in the first on a single, one on a solo homer in the ninth), the Mets filled the runs column sufficiently. Thanks to Walker achieving adequate looseness, they were covered for run prevention. And thanks to the Nationals traversing the bases without regard for likely outcomes, we can add a sparkling web gem to the season’s developing highlight reel.
We’d call the defining defensive play of the season thus far a breathtaking double play, except the official scorer says it was a pair of outs that just happened to occur in the wake of the same batted ball. However you scored it, the Nationals got lost in the agate type. In the fourth, Juan Soto was on second after a leadoff double. Josh Bell grounded sharply to the third base side. Soto, having heard Bell, responded like Pavlov’s baserunner and took off for third, salivating for the treat he was convinced awaited him. Luis Guillorme [3] noticed and chased Soto back toward second, tossing the ball to Francisco Lindor [4] like Luis does everything — professionally. Soto responded with a 180 toward third. Lindor calmly beat him there with a throw to a fundamentally sound Walker. Prodigy Juan tried to take the pitcher out with a slide that would have fit better during Washington Commanders blocking drills. Whatever sport Soto was playing, he reached neither the end zone nor the bag. One out.
But wait! Taijuan saw Bell making for second and alertly threw over. This part wasn’t pretty until it was. Walker wound up flinging the ball into right field, but maybe that was intrinsic to some greater plan, for Bell, not satisfied by simply replacing Soto on second, took his own shot at third. Unfortunately for Josh, Starling Marte [5], not satisfied to be a spectator, backed up the throw, grabbed it, and whipped it in to Lindor, who had Bell beat by the approximate length of the Washington Monument if you were to lay it on its side. Speaking of notably placed statuary in the nation’s capital, Soto was still loitering facedown in the dirt in front of third while Francisco was tagging his wayward teammate. The Nationals entered the day 11-21. Maybe the three-year plunge from winning the World Series to/through the NL East basement is taking its toll on Washington’s wunderkind.
You really wanna mark those two outs 5-6-1-9-6, but, for the record, it was 5-6-1, then 9-6. However it gets put into the books, it was paving the way for the rest of the game to arrive there eventually. Seth Lugo [6] pitched the eighth without incident. Soto got a shred of revenge by taking Edwin Diaz [7] deep in the ninth, but at that instant, there was a four-run lead, there was nobody on base, there were two out, and not even the tableau of the most menacing of Nats homering off our formerly beleaguered closer in what used to be his personal house of horrors could ruin a pleasant afternoon. The Mets finished their Acela jaunt with a 4-1 win [8], having taken four of six from the Phillies and Nationals, with last weekend’s rain the only truly vexing opponent they encountered along the way. Next, in a vagary of Interleague scheduling, they welcome the Seattle Mariners to Citi Field for the very first time.
These Mets seem to engage in the business of the unprecedented quite often of late.