The Mets Declare Independence

The Mets have spent the better part of the 2023 season thralls to disappointment, mostly of their own making. Yet they’d somehow won two in a row, a modest accomplishment except that June was such a horror show that two in a row seemed like ascending a fair-sized mountain.

They didn’t play Monday, leaving their winning streak intact; Tuesday saw them in the Arizona desert, where it was 109 degrees and the Diamondbacks were waiting — the same D-Backs whose young hitters have seemingly arrived all at once, lifting them to the top of the National League West.

The Mets were lucky enough to miss Zac Gallen in the series; instead they drew Zach Davies, who entered with an ERA near 7. Davies’ opponent was Max Scherzer, who flipped spots with Kodai Senga at the last moment.

As for me, I tuned into the game a couple of minutes after turning onto the Mass Pike, en route from Connecticut to Maine. More through luck than planning, the timing was right for the Mets to carry me to my destination, with Keith Raab and Pat McCarthy as guides in the absence of Howie Rose. Despite the Mets’ recent struggles, I was happy as the game got under way — I adore having baseball as a companion when I’m driving, letting me measure out a journey by innings as well as by miles.

I’d be a lot happier if the Mets kept me coming while winning, of course.

It was an odd game. Scherzer’s performance was hard to scrutinize: He struck out Diamondbacks left and right but seemed allergic to good fortune, surrendering both leads that the Mets handed him, the second time on a bases-loaded walk. The Diamondbacks are awfully good, particularly their young phenom Corbin Carroll, but Scherzer once again was missing the put-away stuff he showed as recently as last year. One wonders, not for the first time, if power pitchers of a certain age are the ones most punished by the pitch clock — unfortunate since the Mets built their rotation around two of them.

It was also not exactly a riveting game, heavy on home runs, strikeouts and walks. For all baseball’s tinkering with its own rules, including some basics long held to be sacrosanct, games don’t look all that different than they used to. This was very much a “three true outcomes” game, as so many still are these days, which meant it was dull. It sure doesn’t seem to me like all that tinkering has changed the fundamental problem baseball’s critics agreed it faced. 2023’s dull games are half an hour shorter than 2022’s dull games; does that mean the sport is fixed? If it isn’t, what’s the point of all this mucking around?

Anyway, when Scherzer allowed the Diamondbacks to tie things up on a bases-loaded walk I was on I-95 a little short of Portland, and yes, I was bashing my fist into the steering wheel and saying less than kind things about our starting pitcher. But then around the time Freeport slid by on my right Francisco Alvarez faced off against old friend Miguel Castro and had the kind of AB that put a spotlight on how he’s maturing. Alvarez couldn’t do anything with Castro’s first two sinkers, but fouled off two more of them and refused to bite on a changeup just low and away. That was the pitch Castro had been working towards as an exit strategy; when it didn’t work he went back to the sinker, only it was the fifth one Alvarez had seen and Castro left this one in the middle of the plate. Alvarez destroyed it — the ball came down 467 feet away, which is to say basically in New Mexico.

The Mets had a 6-4 lead, which they then extended without (gasp) needing more home runs to do so. Which was fortunate, because Drew Smith got into trouble in the ninth and David Robertson got into more trouble, walking in a run for the second time in the game.

By then I was on the outskirts of Wiscasset, just a few minutes from my parents’ summer house, where I’ll be for the next few days. Robertson was in trouble but had two outs; normally I would have sat in the car and waited to hear what transpired, but the 2023 Mets have not exactly inspired that kind of loyalty. I took my phone into the grocery store to pick up a few things, and around the produce aisle the feed cut out.

Oh that’s right, there’s a Verizon dead zone here, I remembered a little too late.

And then I said fuck it, because I was tired and it was only the 2023 Mets. Robertson would get out of it or he wouldn’t, and my hearing what transpired wasn’t going to have any bearing on the outcome. I got my cheese and crackers and some cherries and a bottle of Prosecco and seltzer and other things from the staying in a summer house food groups, paid, got back in the car and revived MLB At Bat from its no-signal torpor.

Mets 8, Diamondbacks 5 FINAL.

Good, I thought to myself. At least for a day, the Mets had declared independence from disappointment. Not exactly worthy of fireworks, perhaps, but a small celebration was in order, so I pumped my fists in the car and started it up to finish my journey.