Picnic in the Park

What do you suppose those 11 Mets and 13 Dodgers who were left on base Saturday did to amuse themselves while a baseball game was proceeding to nifty conclusion without them? Given what a beautiful day it appeared to be in Chavez Ravine, my guess is they broke out the wicker baskets and treated themselves to a leisurely picnic, the kind with lots of lounging that could be misconstrued as loitering if you thought they were just hanging out at first, second, and/or third for no discernible reason. Maybe they had some other activities planned only to find their more Type A acquaintances had already booked the field for a relentlessly competitive endeavor. Some people insist on being über-organized, even amid a lazy Saturday.

No judgments, particularly on an occasion referred to with a stifled chuckle as “420,” but those 24 baserunners who apparently decided not to run home despite the constant throat-clearing of a stream of batters trying to get the most fun possible out of their afternoon really should have gotten in on the spirit of the thing. “Um, would you MIND not just stopping at your base?” Had recently departed Whitey Herzog been available to attend, the former Met farm director might have advised the two-dozen LOBsters in no uncertain terms that they were missin’ a great game.

It was a great game, either in spite of or because of so many baserunners not becoming platecrossers. The alternating presence of a murmuring of Mets and a descent of Dodgers along the basepaths actually informed the spirit of the thing Saturday. If you had a rooting interest, you flitted from beseeching one team to unclog its offensive drain already to hoping like hell that the pipes wouldn’t burst while that same team’s pitcher was checking under the sink. From where I watched, and I’m gonna guess where from you watched, you were fine with Dodger baserunners staying put, but you wouldn’t have minded a few more Mets continuing to make tracks.

As it turned out, the Mets’ advantage in runners left on base corresponded to the edge they developed and held in the runs column. LOB: Mets 11 Dodgers 13. R: Mets 6 Dodgers 4. You knew the Dodgers were capable of far more scoring. You remain surprised the Mets score as much as they do. You don’t know what to make of anybody’s run prevention anymore. But there it was, a Mets win for the sixth game in a row, twice now in L.A.

There’s a lot of go figure to our team.

Go figure, Starling Marte’s murmur of impact from 2023 has upgraded to its 2022 roar in 2024 (health can work wonders).

Go figure, Francisco Lindor is alive and showing signs of being well (more choreographed group hugs from the stands are clearly in order when superstars slump).

Go figure, Michael Tonkin is a Met again (his between-stints limbo that included one outing as a Twin qualifies him for Recidivist status; his absence of 15 games is the shortest for any of the 56 in the boomerang subgenre).

Go figure, Edwin Diaz can be a setup man as necessary (and when the eighth inning brings Shohei Ohtani to bat with Freddie Freeman on deck and Mookie Betts already on first, it’s necessary.

Go figure, Reed Garrett can do some closing (try to figure if there’s anything Reed Garrett can’t do these days).

The figuring has been exclusively on the Mets’ side since Doc Gooden’s 16 was unveiled in the Citi Field rafters and has calculated to their benefit almost without pause since Pete Alonso tied up a doubleheader nightcap that seemed destined to go in the loss column with all the other Met games. That was when we were 0-5. It was so long ago that Michael Tonkin was a Met the first time. Alonso homered, the Mets built another run and the current burst of 12-3 was underway. The twelfth of those wins was helped along mightily when Pete made his 0-for-5 day swinging irrelevant with a diving stop and diving tag to keep Max Muncy from upsetting the LOB/RBI balance.

Defense from sources not immediately associated with defense. It’s what happens within the realm of winning baseball.

Because Alonso won the race to first base, Tonkin managed to strand the runners he shared with starter Jose Butto, who for the first time this year wasn’t quite so Buttoful, but neither was Dodger starter Gavin Stone on 420 (heh-heh, apparently). Tonkin was poised to become a winning rather itinerant pitcher once Marte in the top of the sixth saw Zack Short walk, Omar Narváez sacrifice and Brandon Nimmo take yet another one for the team, and temporarily cracked the code on that left-on-base problem. Starling smacked a pitch from Ryan Yarbrough clear over the center field fence. What had been a tense 2-2 war of attrition became a tense 5-2 war of attrition — it never feels easy against the Dodgers — but a three-run lead was a three-run lead. Tightness on the scoreboard and perhaps your insides instantly intensified when Freeman drove home a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth. Lindor personified a blast of Primatene Mist, giving the bullpen the ability to breathe, when he knocked in Marte with an additional run in the top of the eighth.

The bottom of the eighth was a joint production of Jorge Lopez (got one out, then walked Betts) and Diaz, whose presence right then and there represented a touch of Baseball Porn, that SFW sensation when a baseball fan turns something approaching orgasmic because a scenario a baseball fan fantasizes about actually unfolds.

The manager used his best pitcher in the game’s most crucial situation, regardless of assigned roles. Oh, baby!

Carlos Mendoza handled the entire game as if beating the Dodgers in Dodger Stadium was the most crucial task at hand. Everybody came off the bench. Every arm, within the context of contemporary community standards, got loose in the bullpen. Ohtani and Freeman? It didn’t matter that it was the eighth. It was Diaz’s inning.

Edwin’s journey from THANK THE LORD HE’S BACK to He Doesn’t Look Quite Like He Did moved on to He Can Still Dial It Up When He Has To. Diaz walked Ohtani and walked Freeman. The bases were loaded with the three Dodgers you don’t want to beat you. It wasn’t great that they’d been walked, but none of them had hit a damn thing in the eighth. It was either clever poison-picking or prelude to disaster. I’d be worried with any reliever on the mound at a moment of truth like this.

I was less worried with Edwin. Dialing it up when he had to, he struck out Teoscar Hernandez and struck out Muncy. Eighth-inning threat over. Ninth-inning threat to come.

Twenty high-stress pitches meant the Sugar dispenser was sealed shut. Double-digit pitch counts the night before meant nobody planned to wake Brooks Raley or Adam Ottavino. But an impressive body of work stretching back to that seminal nightcap versus the Tigers on April 4 meant Mendoza could put his (and our) faith in Garrett and we wouldn’t squirm too much. Sometimes in the Los Angeles sunshine, you go to war with the closer you’ve got. Two years ago, we had Adonis Medina. On Saturday afternoon, we had Reed Garrett. Versus Garrett, the first two Dodgers struck out looking; the last Dodger struck out swinging. No Dodger had as much as reached base for stranding purposes.

Reed Garrett saved the win for Michael Tonkin, and the Mets had captured their twelfth victory in fifteen games…which of course was exactly the kind of sentence you saw coming when 2024 commenced in fog of gloom.

Granted, not everything is blue skies over the San Gabriel Mountains this weekend. Maybe you noticed Tomás Nido entering the game between blurs of runners left on base, shortly after Brett Baty pinch-hit for Narváez. Nido’s a pleasant enough sight for Met eyes connected to Met memory (if not as pleasant a sight as seeing Baty with his hamstring in fine fettle), but you know if some catcher you weren’t expecting is suddenly on the active roster, another catcher on whom you were counting a lot isn’t. Alas, Francisco Alvarez had been placed on a the IL with a sprained thumb before the game, which doesn’t sound that terrible. Except if you stuck around after the game, you learned what Alvarez has is a torn ligament in his thumb, and, well, Narváez and Nido constitute our catching tandem until further notice.

I like Nido. I like Narváez. I crave further notice.

Still, this is a team playing a team game like a team. Everybody’s seeing action. Everybody’s coming through at some point. The contributions are stuffing the cookie jar. Look at those coins and bills adding up. We’ve got something here so far. Makes you want to find out what else there might be to these Mets. You’re not going to stop crossing your fingers while you’re doing so, of course. You’re a Mets fan. Confidence is not a character trait you’ve yet incorporated for the year already in progress. Yet you can imagine developing it. Maybe.