The Mets’ ebullient recent narrative showed a couple of cracks Friday night against the Reds.
Francisco Lindor [1] continued his hitting streak and made a nifty play at shortstop, but he didn’t walk off the Reds or solve the Middle East conflict in an idle moment between innings, somewhere between surprising and shocking given how he’s been playing. In the bottom of the ninth, with Tyrone Taylor [2] on first and one out, Lindor popped out on the first pitch he saw against Alexis Diaz [3] (appearing opposite his brother for the first time in a big-league game), and it somehow felt mildly sitcommy, like seeing the protagonist slip and fall off a gantry two strides before disarming the armed nuclear device at the heart of the villain’s secret lair.
Similarly, Sean Manaea [4] was good but not quite his dominating self of late, missing just a tad on the edges and corners. Manaea only made two truly regrettable pitches all night, but the first became a two-run homer for Elly De La Cruz [5] and the second became a two-run homer for TJ Friedl [6]. Both tied the game; the latter pushed Manaea to a slightly earlier than expected exit in the seventh.
But these are pinch-yourself times for the Mets — they haven’t been behind on the scoreboard since Game 1 against the White Sox a week ago, and that deficit lasted a couple of eye blinks. So after Manaea wasn’t quite indomitable, Reed Garrett [7] stepped in to retire four batters, Edwin Diaz [8] struck out the side in the ninth and Jose Butto [9] shrugged off the Manfred Man to work a 1-2-3 10th.
Mark Vientos [10] started the scoring in the first with a sizzling two-run homer off opener Fernando Cruz [11]; the Mets regained the lead following De La Cruz’s homer thanks to an odd sequence in the sixth. With two outs, Pete Alonso [12] hit a drive down the right-field line that spent a considerable amount of time in Jake Fraley [13]‘s glove, only to come free after Fraley tumbled to the ground. Looked odd but that’s the rule; Jose Iglesias [14] followed Alonso with a sharp single to left, with Alonso beating a not particularly good throw from Spencer Steer [15], and then Iglesias came home on a single by J.D. Martinez [16]. Destiny stuff, until Friedl barged into the story with a twist of his own and made all that supplementary material.
One thing that is fairly predictable in post-modern baseball, however: The team that fails to convert its Manfred Man in the top of the 10th is up against it in the bottom of the 10th. With Brandon Nimmo [17] handed second via let’s-get-this-over-with rulebook largesse, Vientos’ job was to advance him to third so that Alonso could hit a walkoff homer or a drive over the no-deeper-than-they-can-throw outfielders or a clean single or a ground ball with eyes or pretty much anything. Not a guarantee, not with the Polar Bear’s heartbeat accelerating to unwise tempos in RBI situations, but time-honored.
Vientos, of course, entered the season looking like he’d been nudged out of the prospect column and into the suspect one, sent to Syracuse after Brett Baty [18] was given third base and Martinez arrived to designate-hit hit designatedly DH. Instead it’s Baty whose scouting report has turned into the stuff of sighs and shrugs: Given another chance, Vientos has mashed at the plate and looked surprisingly adequate bordering on actually just fine in the field.
The 10th-inning AB was a tidy little made-for-video showcase of his growth: Vientos went to work against old friend Justin Wilson [19], looking cool and controlled in fighting off alternating cutters and four-seamers. Wilson’s eighth pitch was better than most of the ones that had preceded it, on the inside corner and designed to yield a swing and a miss or be pulled to the left side, ahead of Nimmo’s station.
And the latter did, in fact, happen — except Vientos pulled Wilson’s pitch 401 feet into the seats for a walkoff win [20] capped by a joyous home-plate scrum, baths of Grimace-colored Gatorade, and curious Mets fans Googling tattooed Hebrew [21]. (“Be anxious for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”)
Request [22] heard and answered — and in discussing his turnaround, Vientos did indeed thank his celestial skipper. Asked about magic, our drenched protagonist replied, “I don’t know if I believe in magic, but we have the energy and the right mindset going into this month because we’re hungry. September is the right time to get hot.”
No lie detected, as the kids possibly still say. Magic is an excellent tactic to deploy, should it be available to you; failing that, energy and the right mindset make for a pretty good Plan B.