It is one of my most deeply ingrained [1] articles of faith that if a Met hits a grand slam, especially if a Met hits a grand slam that puts the Mets in front — especially if a Met hits a grand slam that puts the Mets ahead in the late innings of game that stands to symbolize the unstoppable momentum they have generated and are sure to continue to generate…if that happens, obviously the Mets will win.
Obviously, this does not always happen.
J.D. Martinez [2] delivered the grand slam that catapulted the Mets from behind to ahead in the seventh inning at Angel Stadium Saturday night. They were down, 2-0, despite quality starting from David Peterson [3]. They had run into a buzzsaw of ex-Met defense, with Kevin Pillar [4] reminding us why he remains [5] baseball’s Roy Kent (he’s here, he’s there, he was every fucking where in center), but here was Martinez turning it all around off another ex-Met, Hunter Strickland [6], a member of 2020’s Silent Generation [7], taking that particular journeyman to Disneyland, or at least its parking lot.
We’re up, 4-2, in the middle of seven. Get up and stretch, then settle in for the two-run lead that will stand up as long as our newest bullpen acquisition, mellifluous Huascar Brazoban [8], stays tonal and tends properly to setup business. He indeed strikes out his first two batters, carries the count to two-and-two on the third, and…
Too many ellipses in this story. Reader’s Digest version: Michael Stefanic singles; Nolan Schaneul walks on a full count, and Zach Neto homers.
Sadly, our honeymoon with Huascar has just been cancelled, a common occurrence every time we trade for somebody else’s unwanted reliever, because whether his last name is Maton or Stanek or Brazoban, they all blow up at least once within their first three Met appearances, and we can never look at them with wholly trusting eyes again. Of more immediate concern, math (or “maths,” as they said on Ted Lasso) informs us that the 4-2 lead has become a 5-4 deficit. A team teeming with momentum shakes off that setback in the eighth and/or ninth, grabs the lead back, nails the game down, stays in Wild Card position, and inches up on its division rivals in the process.
Momentum, however, had oozed out of the Mets [9]. Nothing was done with Mark Vientos [10]’s leadoff double in the eighth, and nothing else good happened from there. Elsewhere, the catchable Phillies lost. The Braves lost. The Diamondbacks lost. But the Padres won, and now we are fourth in a race that bestows medals on only three. We got help, but not all the help in the world. We can watch just so much of the scoreboard in search of others’ L’s. Just one game, lots of games to go. Still, Roy Kent always had the right four-letter word [11] for such a development.
J.D.’s big blow was a jolt of late-night caffeine for an offense that, like some of us attempting to follow the Mets from three time zones east, needed nudging. The first through sixth, whether due to Pillar’s defensive wizardry or the frustrating effectiveness of Angel starter Jose Soriano, could have been sponsored by a mattress company. L.A. of A closer Ben Joyce in the eighth and ninth might as well have been pouring Sleepytime herbal tea to Met batters. Whichever side of the country the Mets are on, they need to remain alert to the possibility of plating multiple runs in multiple innings.
Always happy to help bring the obvious to light.
Nineteen times a Met has hit a grand slam in what became a Met loss. Logically, of course that can happen. Four runs are four runs and therefore can be superceded by five or more if they are not augmented by additional Met runs. It’s the same graspable form of calculation that allowed me to understand at a young age that Steve Carlton could strike out nineteen Mets in 1969 yet go down to defeat because Ron Swoboda bashed two homers while Carlton’s Cardinal teammates scored only thrice on their record-setting lefty’s behalf. Emotionally, though? No way! A grand slam is such a huge deal it has its own name! GRAND SLAM! One swing! Four runs! Exclamation points everywhere! Including on the Roy Kentian epithets that presumably flew across Metsopotamia in sync with Neto’s three-run bomb over Southern California.
Sigh…