They’re Out — Yesterday in Flushing

One of the greatest baseball anecdotes ever repeated flew off the bat of Pittsburgh Crawfords catcher Josh Gibson, who was reported to have hit a ball out of Forbes Field “so high and so far that no one saw it come down,” leaving the umpire no choice but to call it a home run without definitive evidence. The next day, legend would have it, the Crawfords were playing in Philadelphia when “a ball dropped out of the heavens and was caught by the startled center fielder on the opposing club”. The ump’s response? He pointed to Gibson, and told the slugger, “Yer out — yesterday in Pittsburgh!”

In that spirit, congratulations to de facto New York Mets Player of the Week David Robertson, who was awarded a win for his pitching from April 27 on July 12. A surprisingly long-simmering official scoring change shifted the W in what was nearly a Met debacle at Citi Field — the Mets led the Nats, 7-3, entering the eighth; trailed the Nats, 8-7, by the middle of the inning; yet righted their ship, 9-8, in the bottom of the frame — from Brooks Raley to Robertson. Raley had succeeded Tommy Hunter to the mound in the top of the inning in question after Hunter had hit two batters and was victimized by an error, then allowed each of those runners plus a couple more to score, with a CJ Abrams grand slam the temporary crushing blow. When the Mets came back, the stubbornly reflexive act was to call Raley the pitcher of record on the winning side, and when Robertson set down the Nationals in order, David was credited with a save.

Official scoring changed its mind 76 days after the fact, with Robbie deemed the more effective reliever than Raley and therefore the only one worthy of a win, whatever you consider the worth of pitcher wins these days. David Robertson now carries a record of 3-2 rather than the 2-2 he brought into the break, albeit with 12 saves instead of 13, perhaps not as desirable to a closer for whom saves are recognized as currency of the realm.

Nevertheless, we applaud David Robertson for having notched the only win by any Mets pitcher in more than a week, even if it required more than two months for it to arrive. We also congratulate the amiable veteran for not pitching in any of the Mets’ past four games, a.k.a. the losing streak that has straddled the sport’s midsummer vacation period. There are few 2023 Mets we don’t currently associate with losing efforts. Let’s cherish David Robertson’s ability to mine a W when nobody was looking before we turn our attention to valuing whatever potentially useful minor leaguer the Mets might acquire from a legitimate contender in exchange for David’s services.

A pat on the back is order as well for Kodai Senga, who has developed into a true Met ace. He pitches well, and his team doesn’t score for him. There’s a fellow not doing much in Arlington, Tex., these days who can tell him, through the multilingual skills of interpreter Hiro Fujiwara, how rewarding that can be. On Saturday night, Kodai was true to emerging form, no doubt helped along by the oodles of rest of he received from a) the All-Star break; b) not pitching in the All-Star game to thoughtfully preserve his arm for league competition; and c) a 46-minute pregame rain delay that provided him an extra three-quarters of an hour of rest. Senga hasn’t really adapted to MLB’s every-fifth-day rotational norm, so why forsake him his ideal recovery time? Not a lot of Mets are getting it done as the second half gets underway. Huzzah for a Met who is…however long it takes for him to resume doing it.

Kodai threw six innings, allowed four hits and one walk, struck out nine, escaped a bases-loaded jam, was tagged only for a Mookie Betts opposite field solo homer and left engaged in a 1-1 tie enabled by Brandon Nimmo’s fourth-inning blast that flew clearly over the center field fence with nobody on base. (One wonders how replay review would have handled Josh Gibson’s 1930s cloudbusters.) The Mets hit other balls hard or far off Dodger starter Tony Gonsolin, but they seemed to find gloves, as balls hit by Mets do when the Mets as a whole are being the way these Mets can be.

The tense pitchers’ duel aspect of Saturday night’s contest vaporized over time, just as the 2023 Mets have. The culprits felt familiar: the opposition running game playing havoc with a reliever whose occasional glances at first are no more than an optic tic; a somewhat challenging infield play that had to be made but wasn’t; a play one wouldn’t think couldn’t not be made but wasn’t; and a complete paucity of offense. Met losses are a veritable smorgasbord of indigestible possibilities.

In the eighth, Adam Ottavino, who must have registered as a conscientious objector to holding runners on when he signed his first professional contract, didn’t pay discernible or at least efficacious heed to Max Muncy on first. Muncy thus took off like lightning despite rarely being mistaken for a streak across the sky, while J.D. Martinez was in the process of poking a ball into right field. Runners were on first and third with one out. Pete Alonso fielded the forthcoming bouncer from David Peralta. Pete could have thrown home to cut off the go-ahead run Muncy represented after streaking from first to third. Alonso threw to second, instead. Not a terrible choice, for if the throw to second is on target, because if it is, it sets up a double play, and the inning is over, and the game is still tied.

The throw to second was not on target. Francisco Lindor had to pull it down to keep it from sailing to parts unknown. Martinez was out at second, but Peralta beat the relay at first. Muncy, natch, scored. The Dodgers were ahead, 2-1. Ottavino proceeded to put two more runners on base but wriggled from danger. Danger became the Mets’ middle name (briefly supplanting “York”) in the bottom of the eighth when Tommy Pham pinch-walked and Francisco Alvarez singled, together accounting for one-third of the Mets baserunner contingent to that point. Earlier, you had that Nimmo homer in the fourth, an Alonso single way back in the second, and two Lindor walks. The single and the walks were erased on double plays.

The fifth and sixth Met baserunners of the game, Pham and Alvarez, would be the last of their kind. The three Mets who came to bat following their exploits devoted eight pitches to making three outs, with Mark Canha popping up the first pitch he saw as a pinch-hitter, Brett Baty striking out on three pitches, and esteemed count-worker Luis Guillorme striking out after four. Futile became the Mets’ first name (nudging ahead of “New”).

A splendid start cast into no-decision territory, a key double play attempt that became a run-scoring fielder’s choice, zero clutch hitting, and even less hitting in general all became obscured by Saturday night’s highlight play in the top of the ninth, if only a highlight comparable to those contained in the home team clips Marv Albert used to show when he anchored the sports on Channel 4 and called them lowlights (which I found incredibly clever when I was seven years old). Baseball coroners might wish to exhume this lowlight when they are compelled to investigate the death of the Mets’ 2023 season.

Muncy, the Dodger who from a distance resembles Justin Turner if you tossed Turner and too many ColorCatchers in the washing machine, pops up a rally-pausing pitch from Grant Hartwig. One is out. Runners are on second and third. The Dodgers are bearing down with insurance run possibilities a gecko would gladly endorse, but a popup to third is a popup to third. If Max Muncy doesn’t run like Max Carey (few have; Carey stole 738 bases), he also doesn’t necessarily hit balls so high and so far that no one sees them coming down à la Josh Gibson (Muncy has smacked 165 career homers, but legends are legends). A popup to third with one out should have “second out” written all over it, presuming you can make out the printing in the misty night atmosphere above Seaver Way.

Brett Baty did not have that capability. This particular product of Rawlings Sporting Goods must’ve got caught in one of those “gusts from the gods” that vexed Kevin Costner as Roy McAvoy in Tin Cup. Getting it caught in Baty’s glove was going to be more difficult than imagined by the home viewer. Ye olde horsehide swirled from foul to fair. Baty morphed from promising rookie we all embrace into the second coming of Luis Castillo. Buoyant Brett in an instant became Lost Luis as he dove onto the infield dirt, grasping for a miracle. The last one apparently left Citi Field with Dead & Company. The ball bounced to the ground, then, in a desperate attempt to add injury to insult, clanked off Baty’s face. Another Dodger run crossed the plate. It wouldn’t be the last one in what turned into a 5-1 Met defeat we can only hope a diligent official scoring oversight board will overturn eleven weeks from now.

Your New York Mets, if you still care to claim emotional possession of them, are now 42-50, or one game better than their predecessors from four years before, a crew invoked here for the benefit of the kind of good-hearted lunatic who can conjure a future for the contemporary bunch. The 2019 Mets lost their first game out of the All-Star break, looking as dead as a company of ballplayers could, falling to 40-51. Then they won their second game, touching off a probably already forgotten spurt for the ages. The 2019 Mets won 46 of their final 71 games — more or less the pace cockeyed optimists have plotted in their wildest dreams for the 2023 Mets — and injected themselves into the Wild Card race well into September. It took more than a hundred games for us to invest any faith in the ’19 Mets at all. By Game 116, the night when shirts were torn with force, fury and glee, we believed anything was possible. Succeeding events would disabuse us of that notion, but they gave us a helluva show, and if MLB’s powers that be had been as generous with playoff spots as they are now, we might have gone somewhere besides home that October.

I don’t intend to suggest 2019 presents an applicable precedent for 2023. I’m simply providing a less loaded yet still somewhat satisfying example besides 1973 to hang your aspirational hat on. Your aspirational hat is probably best stored in a cool, dry place, but some Mets fans never give up, and that strand of our DNA should not be allowed to curdle into extinction. This season will soon enough, if three-and-a-half hours later than scheduled, with first pitch today reslated for 5:10 PM in deference to the impending awfulness forecast to assault Flushing.

The weather, I mean. To what did you think I was referring?