A grab bag of Mets drawing Adam Wainwright during his farewell tour, with John Smoltz and Fox painting the word picture? Hasn’t 2023 been mean enough already?
That’s what we got Thursday night, with the only reasonable source of hope that baseball’s innate cussedness and delight in confounding storylines would come to the fore.
Which, in fact, was what happened.
Wainwright is just shy of 42 and in his final season, having authored a track record sufficiently impressive that some years ago he crossed the line between Villain Who Ruined Everything to Respected Adversary, one of those borders that’s unmarked but you somehow always know has been stepped over. Of late Wainwright has looked like he’s stayed too long at the fair, gathering tarnish as he staggers toward 200 wins, but in the early innings against the Mets he looked entirely too much like the Wainwright of old, leaning on that fabled curve to dispatch Buck Showalter‘s lineup without appearing to break much of a sweat.
This is a good place for a reminder that it’s not all about us. Other teams have their own devoted fans who craft narratives out of the season’s ebbs and flows, and the Cardinals are having a year every bit as discouraging as ours — more so, in fact. They’re hopelessly below .500, in last place in a crummy division, and you better believe there are Cardinals fans (a couple of them are even friends of mine) who tuned in last night thinking, “Oh great, now we have to watch the Mets ruin things for Waino and listen to John Smoltz? Hasn’t 2023 been mean enough already?”
Wainwright matched zeroes with a sharp-looking Jose Quintana into the fourth, but Jeff McNeil hit a drive to the fence that looked like it would be a home run and then an out stolen by Jordan Walker and wound up as a double. That brought up Pete Alonso, who did terrible things to a Wainwright sinker, redirecting it 437 feet away to center and giving the Mets a 2-0 lead.
The Mets added another run and backed up Quintana with solid defense — Jonathan Arauz has been quite good at third, not that we aren’t ready to hold our breaths again watching Brett Baty think about things when he shouldn’t — but Quintana ran out of gas to start the seventh, surrendering a homer, a walk and a single to put the tying runs on base with nobody out.
That put the Mets in a familiar, undesirable spot: looking for nine outs’ worth of firefighting from an assortment of arsonists. Drew Smith was first up and limited the Cards to a sacrifice fly, cutting the Mets’ lead to one but leaving us thinking things could have gone a lot worse.
Enter Grant Hartwig, whose initial impression of competence and grit has been replaced by sighs and chronic worrying, which is to say he’s simultaneously a rookie and a middle reliever. Hartwig’s location was best described as theoretical, with the always demonstrative Francisco Alvarez coaxing him through the inning looking like a slightly insane orchestra conductor. Somehow — and this morning I’m still not sure exactly how — Hartwig emerged unscathed.
The Mets got an insurance run from the unlikeliest of sources, as Tim Locastro mashed a 419-foot shot to center for his first Mets hit, which is definitely damning with faint praise but hey, good timing. Closing things out fell to Trevor Gott, whose own location was also abysmal. Gott immediately surrendered a single, but then got a foul flyout courtesy of a nice play by Brandon Nimmo and retired Cardinal newcomer Richie Palacios on a scorcher hit right at DJ Stewart.
Two outs the hard way, and a Tommy Edman single brought up Paul Goldschmidt — not exactly the guy in this lineup you’d pick to face while showing no ability to command your pitches. Gott in Himmel!
Gott got (sorry) a strike on what was actually a ball, tried a pair of bait cutters in that same location without success, and then left a cutter in the center of the plate which Goldschmidt should have turned into a walkoff souvenir, except he missed it. As Gott came set, I braced myself for Gott in Hölle and counseled myself that it would be undignified to throw things after a garbage-time loss.
So of course, Gott threw his best pitch of the inning and possibly his only good one: a sinker that caught the outside corner at the bottom of the strike zone. Goldschmidt looked at it, straightened up in dismay and trundled off to think about the unfairness of the universe.
Because baseball, and because it’s not always about us.
They better keep Pete. He blasted a homer that few others could have equaled.
With smoke, mirrors, and a just a pinch of Araúz, our intrepid ballclub has now won 4 of 5?
Amazin’
Instead of the death penalty, convicted killers should be forced to listen to John Smoltz 16 hours a day non-stop.
In addition to the Cardinals’ best hitter striking out looking to end the game down 2 with the tying runs on base (a fitting Mets tribute to Wainwright), Goldschmidt was also the runner on 3rd in the 4th inning who could have scored when O’Neill beat the forceout at 2nd base but then was tagged out after overrunning the base to end the inning, except Goldschmidt didn’t because he very slowly jogged home. What’s happened to the Cardinals Way?
Losing yesterday may well have cost Wainwright his best chance at winning 200. Still, I’m glad for him that he’s going to leave the game at least knowing he’s definitely done, unlike say, Daniel Murphy, who obviously retired with some game left in him.
I will say it again. Whoever (or whomever) is floating this line about trading Alonso has rocks in his head, as he is one of the best players in baseball, ON A VETERAN TEAM, built to win NOW.
He is the only one of the Core Four who gets a pass, as he was hit in the hand and came back just too soon.
As for the other Core 3, just pro-rate their stats as of the date of the Robertson trade, as their season ended there, and they each get no benefit of the doubt, whether good or bad.
Alonso got plunked on the left hand yesterday, too, square on the protective shield he’s wearing on it these days. He may wear it for the rest of his career.
Arauz has the defensive 3rd base skills that Baty and Vientos lack.
Gott’s game-ending pitch was perfect.
What was the story with Vogelbach trying to stretch a single into a double? Was Kirby responsible for that cartoon fubar?
Vogelbach’s hit-out looked like a double in the field. If I recall it right, the ball reached the wall in the corner. I haven’t seen a video replay of Vogelbach running the bases. Did he hesitate? Did he run it out like a single and then switched late to turning to 2nd? Is he just that slow, like Wilmer Flores cement shoes slow?
The ball was cut off and he should have never broken for 2nd. Not sure what/if he was thinking.
I just looked up the MLB video clip of the play: https://www.mlb.com/video/drew-verhagen-in-play-out-s-to-daniel-vogelbach.
We both recalled the play wrong. Vogelbach’s hit didn’t go into the corner like I thought. But Walker also didn’t cut it off. The ball hit the wall in right-center field near the corner and bounced back over Walker before he picked it up and threw out Vogelbach at 2nd base. It looks like a double…until Vogelbach’s thrown out by 10 feet.
To play on LeClerc’s phrasing, the MLB video clip doesn’t show Vogelbach trying to stretch a single into a double. It shows a double shrunk into a single and an out. We don’t see Vogelbach running the bases, though, so I don’t know if he made a technical mistake or he’s just that slow.
Hey SNY, enough shots of little kids eating ice cream and cotton candy. It just encourages GKR to perform their nightly goofball routine.
And you gotta feel a little bit for Gary during the open, being ‘sandwiched’ between those two behemoths. Soon there will not be enough room in the booth for the three of them!
Mixed feelings these days watching either a win or loss.
On one hand, I’m happy when the Mets win. And I’m still keeping an eye on the standings with the stubborn hope for an unexpected run to the 3rd wildcard: Given where the Mets were at the trade deadline, a sell-off that strengthens the farm system and a sneak-in play-off berth anyway would be a gift.
On the other hand, the Mets are a lot closer to losing their way to a bottom-6 MLB team than winning their way to a top-6 NL team, with the reward of more likely holding onto a top-6 protected draft pick. So after I’m happy when the Mets win, I’m not happy to see the Mets rising above the MLB bottom 6. After being upset when the Mets lose, I’m mollified that the Mets are closer to a top-6 draft pick.
The mixed feelings also come from noticing that the Mets are the same distance from the 3rd wildcard today that they were on the day they traded Robertson, meaning the Mets could have made a run, while on the other hand, noticing that the Padres, Angels, and Yankees, the teams most like the Mets who instead stood pat or bought at the trade deadline, haven’t made a run.
Before hitting the home run, Alonso had a strike called on him that was a bit outside, and dropped the bat ready to go to first. That made the home run hurt all the more for Wainwright and (I assume) his faithful.
Good for Pete, though.
It makes me a bit angry that we are the same distance away from the 3rd WC as the day Cohen traded Robertson. If they (the traders) didn’t bust up the team and stood pat instead, maybe our Core 4 plus Alvy/Canha/Pham would have played up to their baseball cards and our 4 good starting pitchers and our 2 or 3 decent relievers would have had a very good chance, and then WATCH OUT!
We knew the teams ahead of us just weren’t that good.
The Mets have gone 8-12 since the Robertson trade. Flipping as many as 5 of those losses to wins is a lot to ask. But flipping 2, 3, or even 4 of the losses doesn’t seem unreasonable. (Say, start with 2 from the Royals sweep, then pick from the other losses.) 4 games back at the start of September, let alone mid-August, and a team’s in the race.
Please everyone, please, quiet down on all the chatter above… I’m trying to listen carefully to what Smoltzie is saying… he’s still talking and making some additional micro-observations about Adam Wainwright…
What a relief to know Fox didn’t put him on a strict word count!
I saw Wainwright when he pitched at Citi Field on June 17, surviving Nimmo’s lead-off HR and a 2-run shot by Guillorme (!) in the fifth, going into the seventh and getting the W in a 5-3 Cardinals win. I grudgingly applauded as he left the field because I figured it was the last time he’d be pitching at the mets home park.
What I didn’t know is that was Wainwright’s last win, exactly 2 months ago. It brought his record to 3-1; he’s 3-8 now.
And yes, he had morphed into Respected Adversary, up until 2021 when he made these remarks after beating the Mets:
“I like nostalgia, and I felt like all the Mets fans in that bases loaded situation, wanted to see me throw two curveballs and a changeup and get him out. I felt like that was what the Mets fans wanted to see so I gave the people what they wanted.”
Respected no more.
“Gott in Himmel!”–Indeed-
2023 Mets VS Cards–Bad & Worse.
Perhaps Vogelbach thought he saw a large Katz’s Pastrami Sandwich at 2nd base?
OY!
Let’s Go Mets!