We could talk about Sean Manaea [1] looking superb in a way that no Met starter looked against the Brewers, pitching aggressively and keeping the Tigers bothered and bewildered for six innings, with the lone blemish a sharp Andy Ibanez [2] single to left with two out in the fifth — though that situation happily healed itself almost instantly, as Brandon Nimmo [3] threw Carson Kelly [4] out at the plate to preserve what was then a 0-0 tie. By the way, you want to be a catcher? Kelly — who plays that position for Detroit — slid hard into Francisco Alvarez [5] at the plate, wrenching Alvarez’s head and neck to the side, got tagged hard in the nuts or uncomfortably thereabouts, and watched as his counterpart held onto the ball.
We could talk about Alvarez, who coolly made the kind of play it feels like catchers don’t make anymore, then showed the most offensive life the Mets displayed all night with a hustle double a few minutes after his close encounter with Kelly, not to mention a growing awareness of the strike zone and the need not to expand it in his other at-bats.
We could talk about Starling Marte [6], who looks better than he’s looked since that dreadful day two Septembers ago when a Mitch Keller [7] fastball hit him in the hand and we didn’t yet know the Mets’ rocket ride had reached its apogee. We could talk about Brett Baty [8], who turned in a couple of crisp plays at third and looked like he had a plan at the plate, making you hope he’s finally ready to get out of his own way.
We could talk about those things, but who’d listen? Because the top of the 10th inning erased them all [9]. With one out and the idiotic Manfred man having moved to third, Michael Tonkin [10] in rapid succession a) hit old friend Mark Canha [11] (this time at least the pitch behind an opponent’s back actually did get away); b) watched Joey Wendle [12] make a dreadful error at second; c) instinctively tried to spear a high bounder from Gio Urshela [13] and so turned an inning-ending double play into all hands being safe; d) almost managed the impossible task of walking Javier Baez [14], forcing himself to shrink the strike zone and giving up a sac fly; and e) surrendered a three-run bomb to Kelly that left the Mets five runs down and the fans jamming in the aisles in their haste to reach a safe distance.
Tonkin will have better days … well, provided he didn’t use them all up last year as a Brave, which is the kind of thing I think about all too often. Wendle can’t really do worse than a Mets debut that would make Mac Scarce [15] or Chan Ho Park [16] blanch, or at least I really hope he can’t.
Hell, I don’t know what will happen to those two: Baseball is cruel and confounding, with this 0-4 start just the latest reminder of that essential truth. What I do know is the Mets’ season is less than a week old and I’m relieved that they’re unlikely to be able to play baseball for the next two nights.
To be clear, I mean play baseball in the sense of “stand at the plate gripping a bat without being in danger of drowning,” not play baseball in the sense of “compete against another baseball team without it ending with an embarrassing and/or infuriating outcome.” So far the 2024 Mets have shown no indication that they can accomplish the latter in any kind of weather.