Too Late for Goodbyes

Twenty-six years ago this month, Dave Mlicki ensured he would be remembered forever fondly by Mets fans, and I doubt the reason requires specific explanation here. But on the off chance anybody is just tuning into Mets baseball, Dave started the very first regular-season intracity game for New York’s National League team (which was shaking off the slumber that had enveloped them for most of the decade in progress) and he pitched a shutout against New York’s American League team (which also happened to carry the overbearing title of defending world champions). In the self-esteem standings, no Mets victory could have been bigger. It was the beginning of what was branded the Subway Series, an homage to Fall Classics past, except this was played on the cusp of summer as intrinsic to a heretofore sacrosanct schedule in which NL and AL would never meet until October. In retrospect, it should have been a Subway Solo. There never needed to be another Mets-Yankees game. We’d experienced the moral equivalent of perfection, and we had the heretofore ordinary righthanded starter to thank for it. For what he did in the Bronx that June night in 1997, Dave Mlicki immediately elevated himself into the upper echelon of “never has to buy himself another drink” appreciation in the borough of Queens.

Twenty five years ago this month, Dave Mlicki was traded by the Mets to the Dodgers for Hideo Nomo, and my reaction was, “We got Hideo Nomo?” In those early-ish Internet days when a Met of any tenure departed the premises, it was my instinct to log onto AOL, click on enough icons to reach the well-hidden Metcave message board where Jason and I first crossed paths, and attempt to craft a brief but heartfelt tribute for anybody who might be reading. I’d been doing those in my head for Mets who became ex-Mets in my head all my life, anyway. Somebody ought to fondly remember every Met who did something for us. Nobody could have done more for us in the late 1990s than grant us 24 hours as undisputed rulers of New York baseball.

But in June of 1998, I found myself largely unmoved by the departure of Dave Mlicki and I don’t recall writing a word of bon voyage, not even in my head, for the man who’d beaten the Yankees in June of 1997. The Mets had stepped up a notch in their aspirations over the previous year. Beating the Yankees had been great — the greatest — but now the object of being a Mets fan was to see the Mets beat all comers. In May of 1998, the Mets had acquired Mike Piazza. The nice, little team that at most received patronizing pats on the head from outside observers for its surprising 1997 run past respectability to the edge of legitimate contention now had to be taken seriously by everybody, not just us. With Piazza surgically inserted into the heart of their order, the Mets began to roll, winning nine in a row from the moment the trade for Mike was announced. Their streak ended only when Dave Mlicki threw another frustrating start. Almost all Dave Mlicki starts in 1998 were frustrating. His ERA after ten turns through he rotation was 5.68.

Thus, when it came time for the encomium I expected to flow from my fingers, I demurred.

Mlicki’s gone?
We got Nomo!
He was really good not that long ago, and not for just one night!
Maybe he’ll help us make the playoffs!

(He didn’t.)

This example of how the most loyal threads of lifetime fandom can get tangled up in contemporary concerns came to mind Friday night when Howie Rose and Keith Raad reported they had some breaking news to pass along while the Mets were playing and, of course, losing in Philadelphia. The club had made a trade. A couple of Angels minor league pitchers were mentioned as the Met gets for…

“Did we trade Vogelbach?” was my interjecting, fingers-crossed thought, but, no, going west to get them was Eduardo Escobar.

“Those guys we got any good?” I wondered next.

Missing from my thought process, at least at first, was anything resembling “Good old Eduardo! Eduardo with the smile! Eduardo with the cycle! Eduardo the National League Player of the Month last September! Eduardo who rescued us from the clutches of the Marlins right before we went to Atlanta with first place on the line! Eduardo who hit the Mets’ first postseason homer since 2015!”

All that came eventually, but not with any overwhelming force of sentimentality for a guy I liked fine— more than fine — but also a guy who wasn’t playing very much for a team that has revealed itself in 2023 to be nothing like the team it was when Escobar was playing most days in 2022…although it would be disingenuous to suggest the Mets’ general success or lack thereof over the past season-and-a-half has ever been Escobar-dependent. Eduardo’s moments and demeanor were enough to make a Mets fan mostly look past his daily struggles in 2022, because 2022 was 2022, and it was enough that Eduardo occasionally chipped in to what we can call its 2022ness. His productive interludes and his upbeat attitude felt like an essential element of all that made last year so special for so long. You want a guy like that around.

But, y’know, that was last year. It’s a recurring theme this year that by now ought to be pounded into our heads. Similar personnel, different results. Very different. After 75 games in 2022, the Mets of Eduardo Escobar et al. stood tall at 47-28. Their successors with largely the same cast currently wobble at 34-41. A little further inside the numbers, we find that over the past 54 games — a third of a 162-game season — the Mets have gone 20-34, a significant sample size that followed on the heels of the Mets’ best span of 2023, when they won 11 of 14. An 11-3 spurt is just that: a spurt, not even 10% of a regulation campaign. A 20-34 record times three equals an easily calculable and pretty telling 60-102 over a full year of Amazin’ futility. There isn’t a playoff format alive that accepts that caliber of applicant. Except for the reputations of the individuals who have executed it, there is little about the 20-34 stretch that doesn’t feel as if it accurately reflects what the 2023 Mets have become.

The other day, after the getaway day debacle in Houston, Daniel Vogelbach, who’d been hitting well enough to serve as team spokesman for the spate of inevitable postgame “what’s wrong?” questions, said, “We’re going to get out of it. We’re going to go on a winning streak. I don’t know when that is. I wish I could tell you when. But I truly believe it’s going to happen and we’re going to get right back to where everyone believes we should be.”

I bought into this type of thinking as the Mets tumbled away from the top tier of their division and down through the Wild Card rankings for as long as I could. Yeah, they’re not that bad. Just wait, everybody goes on some kind of tear and our turn will come. Finally, it has sunk in that a) they are this bad; and b) they already got hot. That 11-3 joyride in April, the one that brought them to 14-7 and “where everyone believes we should be” is as functionally distant from the Met present as Dave Mlicki or Hideo Nomo. These Mets have been mostly lousy for about four times as long as they looked splendid. Gotta go with the larger sample size after having subjected myself to it night after night these past two months.

With all the respect and affection I can muster for a Met who was part of a playoff team, and the sort of person who made rooting for the Mets a pleasure whether he hit for the cycle or went 0-for-4, I have to admit I’m largely unmoved by the trade of Eduardo Escobar. And, honestly, I don’t really care who they got for him. I’m mostly glad they did something and got rid of somebody. The way they’ve been playing, they can get rid of everybody. The names of the pitchers received for Escobar are Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux. At this juncture of their affiliation with the Mets, they are slightly less familiar to me than Vinny Nittoli, the journeyman reliever who made his Met debut in the 5-1 loss at Citizens Bank Park Friday. Nittoli pitched a scoreless inning once it became apparent that, in the scheme of the game he entered, it didn’t really matter what he did. In the scheme of the season in which the Mets’ 75th game was played, it has become apparent that no individual game really matters, either.

Kodai Senga pitched not terribly, but not great for five-and-two-thirds innings. He was undermined by his defense twice, each time on marginally tricky pop flys that fell in on misplays by two Mets who also used to be known for their smiles, Brandon Nimmo in the first and Francisco Lindor in the sixth. The Mets produced more hits than pivotal defensive flubs, but barely: three in all. One was a home run by Nimmo, off Old Friend™ Taijuan Walker. If good old Eduardo isn’t traded again, we can greet Escobar as an Old Friend™ when the Angels visit Flushing in late August. Perhaps the mammoth video board that seems to have electronically sapped the Mets of all their competence will beam a video revisiting Eduardo’s cycle from last June, which might as well be from 1997. I don’t know how much historical staying power that enormous night in San Diego will have in the collective Mets fan memory. I do know that when Dave Mlicki was interviewed at Citi Field shortly before the Subway Series this year, Steve Gelbs didn’t ask him about all those awful starts from 1998, and trading for Hideo Nomo surely wasn’t what I thought of when I heard the name Dave Mlicki.