Saturday night’s Mets win over the Pirates had a certain family resemblance to Friday night’s win [1]: smothering starting pitching, enough offense to secure the victory, not enough offense to feel secure about said victory.
The margin was more comfortable, to be sure, but once again the Mets proved curiously allergic to the tack-on hit that would have made the rest of the game a formality: Eduardo Escobar [2]‘s three-run homer started the scoring, but the remaining two runs came on bases-loaded walks to Brandon Nimmo [3] and Pete Alonso [4].
But a critical thing to internalize as a baseball fan (and keep remembering every time you forget it) is that there are no style points. Wins don’t come with asterisks to indicate a whew or a meh, just as losses aren’t classified differently if an awww or an attaboy is involved. You win or you lose, full stop.
So let’s review:
- The key words up there are smothering starting pitching. If you get that night after night, most other flaws will prove forgivable. Chris Bassitt [5] was terrific as he so often is, using his Saberhagenesque arsenal to carve up the Pirates. His line looks uneventful, but Bassitt fanned hitters with runners on to finish the third, fourth and sixth innings. (His obliteration of Ke’Bryan Hayes to finish his start was particularly cruel.) To cite an antique, now derided stat that remains stubbornly dear to my heart, Bassitt now has 14 wins with a little season left to run, and he’s in good company: Carlos Carrasco [6] has 15 and Taijuan Walker [7] has 12, with the two-headed, oft-sidelined beast of Scherzer/deGrom combining for 14 more.
- An Alonso bases-loaded walk may not feel like thunder for the highlight reel, but just a week or so ago he was clearly out of sorts at the plate, with the greatest impacts coming from his bat meeting his knee while steam came out of his ears. Alonso not expanding the zone and taking what pitchers give him instead of chasing unobtainable heroics is the foundation for what we all want, even if it means he only trots only a quarter of the distance we have in mind. (More antique stats: He’s also still on pace to break the Mets’ single-season RBI record, though at current rates he’d edge it rather than obliterating it. Style points again!)
The Mets beat the Pirates. That’s what matters. Hopefully they’ll beat them again in a few hours. That matters too. The mechanics of a win’s construction are fun to dissect, whether giddily or with a side of fretfulness, but they’re of secondary importance to whether or not there’s something to dissect [8] in the first place.