The Mets have now played the Mariners 16 times in their history, but such a matchup will always feel a bit like a videogame showdown with a weird little cousin. “You want to be the Mariners? C’mon, really? It’s the AL West — I don’t know any of those names. Hell, half of them look made up.”
Still, a surprising (at least to me) 103 Mets have also been Mariners [1], going back to original M’s Leroy Stanton [2], Doc Medich [3] and Tommy Moore [4]. Robinson Cano [5] and Edwin Diaz [6], inevitably, are the most famous members of Club M&M, though for fans of a certain age John Olerud [7] will always the one who hurts the most. And some recent Met discards have had success out in Seattle, most notably Chris Flexen [8] and Paul Sewald [9].
A bunch of Mariners possibly fictitious and apparently real showed up at Citi Field Friday night, minus former Met prospect Jarred Kelenic [10] and his .140 batting average, to face Max Scherzer [11] and the Mets. What followed was a taut, entertaining and ultimately frustrating game.
Scherzer put on what we’ve come to take for granted as his usual show — doing unspeakable things to hitters with his four top-flight pitches, stalking around in the dugout with his performatively terrible hair, and putting his team in position to win. He saved the best for last: After walking new Seattle import Mike Ford [12] on a 3-2 changeup that sure looked like it dented the bottom of the strike zone, a more-infuriated-than-usual Scherzer went back to work with the bases loaded and one out against Steven Souza Jr. [13], one of those Mariners I’m not sure wasn’t invented by a EA Sports intern. Scherzer’s final pitch of the night was a slider that Souza spanked to Eduardo Escobar [14] who converted it into a tidy 5-4-3 double play.
That just meant the game was tied, though — the Mariners had broken through for a lone run against Scherzer in the fourth, when chaos avatar and outfield provocateur Jesse Winker [15] slashed a cutter that got too much plate for an RBI single. Meanwhile, the Mets were stymied by Marco Gonzales [16], a soft-tossing lefty who kept changing the eye levels of their hitters, allowing him to throw 88 MPH fastballs past them up high. It was an impressive performance — Buck Showalter [17] would probably call Gonzales a low-heart-beat guy — marred only by the fact that it came in service of the wrong team.
Drew Smith [18] replaced Scherzer and hit his first bump of the season, losing the strike zone and then (it turned out [19]) the game on an RBI single to Ty France [20]. The guy on the long side of that score? None other than Paul Sewald, about whom my feelings are somehow complicated in a single direction [21]. Sewald was ill-used as well as unlucky as a Met, forced to work against his strengths, and became immediately more effective under a different coaching regimen. Good for him. But still — that was Paul Sewald out there. Doughty but doomed Paul Sewald, Jonah of the RMS Bullpen, forever tricking you with stretches of mild competence until he hung another slider and reminded you who he was and apparently always would be.
Sewald didn’t hang a slider Tuesday night, but he did leave a fastball in the middle of the plate to Pete Alonso [22] in the eighth. Alonso tattooed it. He demolished it. He vaporized it. The only problem was that the ball shed about 50 feet of expected trajectory in flight, somehow coming down in a Mariner glove on the warning track.
The same thing had happened to Jeff McNeil [23] against Gonzales — a home run transmuted into a long out.
Now, a rational person would blame the fact that the Mets and Mariners were playing in conditions typically found at the bottom of an aquarium, with every ball leaving the bat with a wet blanket over it. But I am not at the moment a rational person — not after watching Paul Fucking Sewald, who lost his 14 first fucking decisions as a Met, pick up the fucking win in his debut as a Citi Field opponent. Of course he did, because baseball is relentlessly weird, but get in my way during this rant and I’ll go Full Scherzer on you.
No, I choose to blame the ball, which Rob Manfred has apparently dictated should now have a core of lead instead of springy stuff. Or perhaps Manfred has messed up the Earth’s very atmosphere as part of his endless quest to inflict additional problems on baseball while doing nothing to address its actual ones. I mean, I wouldn’t put it past him.
It’s also possible that the Mets just dropped a close game because stuff happens. But I’d rather blame Manfred.