Mets pitching on Wednesday was not a strong suit, an observation easily borne out by the 8-3 pounding [1] the Minnesota Twins pasted on the staff as an up-and-down homestand concluded with a harsh thud, hardly providing an auspicious prelude to the pending Road Trip From Hell. Luis Severino (3 IP, 6 H, 2 BB, 6 ER) was the epitome of Did Not Have It. Tylor Megill (2 IP, 3 H, 1 BB, 1 ER) inspired thoughts of Do Not Want It. And Tyler Zuber [2], one of David Stearns’s several sensible rather than splashy trade-deadline acquirees, was immediately optioned to Syracuse, serving to delay a roster revision that’s been more than 62 years in the making.
On the very first lineup card Casey Stengel ever handed an umpire in what Warren Spahn might have cited [3] as his post-genius phase — prior to the Mets-Cardinals game of April 11, 1962 — Don Zimmer [4] was listed as batting seventh. But when you saw he was being joined by fellers named Ashburn, Bell, Craig, Hodges, Landrith, Mantilla, Neal, and Thomas on this Original Amazin’ journey, you knew who was coming in ninth among nine once everybody was aligned from A to Z.
Ol’ Case proceeded to make five substitutions in the club’s inaugural contest, pinch-hitting Ed Bouchee and Jim Marshall and pitching Bob Moorhead, Herb Moford and Clem Labine. After just one game (and loss), there’d already been fourteen Mets. Zimmer, thus, ranked fourteenth and therefore last in his distinct category. Just like the Mets in the 1962 National League standings.
[5]Ze champion.
Thirty-one Mets played before April 30, consigning Zimmer to 31st place. An early-May trade sent the man to Cincinnati — “the Mets lost a record 120 games in 192 although, thankfully, they can only blame about 10 of ’em on me,” he calculated in his autobiography — but his stranglehold on the bottom rung of the Met alphabet remained undisturbed. Challengers to his shall we say crown intermittently appeared, then fell away, inadequate to the task of supplanting the quintessential baseball lifer [6] from his life as the very last Met the folks in HR might cc. Pat Zachry…Todd Zeile…the single inning two years ago of Rob Zastryzny, who seemed so promising at first glance, until closer examination confirmed, nope, not it. Nobody could successfully negotiate our first third baseman’s southern flank. It was clear: if you come at the Zim, you best sequence your consonant-vowel combination correctly.
As an advocate applauding the alphabetical ascent of Aardsma above Aase in 2013, I’ve waited patiently for a Met to undercut Zimmer. I harbor no post-mortality [7] grudge toward Don, despite his latter-day incarnation as Joe Torre’s pinstriped consigliere. It’s more about a yen for the slightest of change once in an enormous while. How could our storied franchise, on the scene for more than six decades now, have its final roll call entry go unaltered literally forever? Word on Tuesday that we’d gotten a reliever named Zuber thrilled me more than any dozen Paul Blackburn [8] trades could have. Zuber, a righty with fifty-some major league innings under his belt since 2020, was going to upend the all-time list at last. What kind of repertoire does he have? What is his walks and hits to innings pitched ratio? Does he shave with Gillette Foamy?
[9]Ze Challenger.
I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted Tyler Zuber to get into a game as a Met and change that last line of history/trivia. The top line updated as the seasons progressed. Craig Anderson in 1962. George Altman in 1964. Sandy Alomar in 1967. Tommie Agee in 1968. Don Aase in 1989. David Aardsma, who not only usurped Aase’s position in ’13, but maintains the audacity to peer down at Hank Aaron on the very first People page of Retrosheet. (Aaron’s got 755 home runs and a brand new postage stamp [10], yet he’s compelled to look up at one of our myriad 2010s here-and-goners.) Our A’s have advanced across the ages, but Don Zimmer has sat stubbornly on the bottom line of Mets attendance sheets from eternity’s first day to its most recent. With Huascar Brazoban [11]’s ninth-inning entry Wednesday, we can count 1,248 Mets in toto. Zim, bless his heart, is No. 1,248 out of 1,248 in alphabetical order, no different from when he was ninth of nine, thirty-first of thirty-one, and so on.
[12]Warning: Alphabetical order may not be indicative of anything else.
Yet eternity is now on the verge of tantalizing revision, not unlike our relief corps. Phil Maton [13], Ryne Stanek [14] and Brazoban (our first Huascar) have all arrived. Provisional Ghost Met Matt Gage lurks in the ether. Sean Reid-Foley is commencing a rehab assignment. Reed Garrett and Dedniel Nuñez shouldn’t be confined to the IL for long. The Mets will be sorting through a plethora of bullpen options in the days and weeks ahead. But for goodness sake, in the name of giving a person fighting off zzz’s on the East Coast motivation to stay fully awake when the Mets are playing deep into the West Coast night, let’s get Tyler Zuber up from Triple-A; let’s get him on a mound; and let’s get him inside a box score ASAP. In Anaheim. In Azusa. In Cucamonga, if necessary [15].
Aardsma-Zuber 2024. I don’t know if it’s a winning ticket, but it certainly looms as a change of pace.