This is the stretch that will send the Mets down one of two postseason roads: a newfangled bye that advances them to the division series, or a dogfight in the scrum of the wild-card round. Three with the Phillies, four with the Braves, four more with the Phillies, two with the Yankees.
Well, so far so good.
Our good friends from Philadelphia came into Citi Field, scored a conventional run off Max Scherzer [1] immediately on Friday night, sent a ghost runner home against the luckless Mychal Givens [2] later that evening, and … oh wait, that was it.
Nothing against Jacob deGrom [3] and three relievers on Saturday. And nothing [4] against Chris Bassitt [5] and four relievers on Sunday.
Bassitt doesn’t have the raw stuff of Scherzer and deGrom, which is no insult whatsoever, but he’s cut from a similar mental cloth: intense, furiously competitive, ornery. There are the long shake-off sessions with catchers, the chess games he likes to play with hitters, and the “grind you till you break” philosophy articulated in spring training and now immortalized in his heavy-rotation Mets profile ad. (Hapless customer: “Uh, sir, I just came to this weird deli to get a pack of smokes — please no grinding or breaking. Also, why is this place infested with ballplayers?”)
I’ve come to admire Bassitt’s gunfighter stare and that violent pitching motion — the knee coming high as the arm cocks low behind him, then whips overhead at a slightly odd angle. Not to mention the array of pitches that might emerge from that delivery: three varieties of fastball, with the sinker most prominent; a slider; and a curve.
Bassitt had all of those pitches working Sunday, and needed them for heavy lifting in the fourth and fifth innings, facing two on and no out in each frame. No matter: In the fourth he fanned J.T. Realmuto [6] on three pitches, got Nick Castellanos [7] to fly out, and elicited a comebacker from Darick Hall [8]; in the fifth, facing second and third, he fanned Matt Vierling [9] and Bryson Stott [10], walked Rhys Hoskins [11] after a lengthy duel, and erased Alec Bohm on a liner to second.
Runs had been hard to come by for the Mets, too, but on Sunday they finally woke up and swung the lumber against old friend Zack Wheeler [12], with a four-run fourth putting the game effectively out of reach. That inning’s scoring ended with a bonus run, as Jeff McNeil [13] scrambled home to punish a bit of lackadaisical defense from Brandon Marsh [14] and Jean Segura [15].
(I’d say Keith Hernandez [16] must have uttered a belated “told you so,” but between Keith’s being elsewhere this weekend and his living in a highly Keith-centric world at all times, I’d put decent money on him having no idea that he gave the Phils bulletin-board material or that they responded by playing essentially airtight defense until then.)
The lone blemish of the Mets’ series win, if you don’t count the Marlins’ pacifism in getting steamrolled by the Braves, was the sight of Luis Guillorme [17] limping home in the Mets’ uprising against Wheeler.
It’s been a joy to watch Guillorme have the breakout season I’d stubbornly insisted he had in him, sometimes without much evidence. That was a long time ago. Now, with two outs, I’ll urge enemy batters who can’t hear me to “hit it to anybody,” but with games on the line my plea is more specific: for some opponent to hit it to Guillorme, because I know he’ll do exactly the right thing. And none of that admiration has touched on his emergence as a useful if not terribly powerful bat; his glorious beard worthy of a Babylonian bas-relief; or his vaguely ironic mien in going about his business.
Guillorme has also been a key to the Mets’ positional flexibility, able to move seamlessly between second, short and third in various infield alignments. Hopefully the Mets will be without him only for a few days as this critical stretch continues. And, hopefully, said critical stretch will continue to be a showcase for smothering starting pitching, hitting in whatever quantity necessary and that most vital currency of all, series wins.