It was the ninth inning against the Phillies, 10 days ago, and ESPN’s little win probability thing (a sop to gamblers, but that’s another post) was making me insane.
It said the Phillies had an 8% chance of coming back to beat the Mets, which was obviously wrong. Obviously and deliberately and nefariously wrong. I didn’t know the Phillies’ win probability — how would you even calculate that? — but I knew mischance and misfortune, and it seemed far more likely that the Phillies’ win probability was around 80%, with the only question the nature of the disaster waiting in ambush.
Instead the Mets won. I was no longer paying close attention but I assume the win probability thing ticked to 100% before being ushered out of view.
After the Mets claimed Game 1 of their Monday special against the Braves, punching their postseason ticket in what may well have been the best regular-season game in club history (now there’s an offseason post/series to look forward to), I took advantage of Game 2’s vacation from anxieties to pore over the game thread on Battery Power, the SB Nation blog that’s the Braves equivalent of our beloved Amazin’ Avenue. I wanted a real-time record of Braves fans being imperious before being brought low, and to see their assumption of doom for the Mets get forcibly and delightfully corrected.
But that wasn’t what I found. Instead, to my surprise, I found a hairball of angst, one that snarled up long before Tyrone Taylor Shawon’ed Spencer Schwellenbach out of the game: Matt Olson couldn’t hit, Marcell Ozuna would never hit again, Travis d’Arnaud only ever grounds out, Brian Snitker always leaves his starters in too long, Joe Jimenez is reliably terrible, and on and on and on.
Press a Met fan into service as a TV meteorologist and she’ll stand in front of the map with a dozen variations on black clouds and lightning bolts and maybe one wanly yellow little sun, which she’ll bashfully keep behind her back. That’s our reputation as a fanbase, and it’s one we haven’t exactly run from — if anything, we’ve run toward it when things have gone wrong or look like they might go wrong or we assume they’ll go wrong because things have gone wrong before.
But it turns out every team’s fanbase does this. (Twitter is now 1/3 conspiracy loons, 1/3 Bitcoin grifters and 1/3 Yankee fans calling for the head of Aaron Boone.) We all think our lineup is made up of ticking time bombs, our franchise is run by dimwits and/or saboteurs, and our win probability is actually around a tenth of whatever the gamblers are being told.
I was scowling at that win probability thing again Tuesday night, as the Mets came back to Milwaukee to take on the Brewers at the what the fuck is this shit time of 5:30 pm.
The Brewers who’d rather idly taken two out of three from a weirdly tight post-rainouts Mets team not very long ago.
The Brewers of Brice Turang and Jackson Chourio and Garrett Mitchell and other guys whose features I’m not familiar with because I’ve mostly only registered them as blurs stealing second and then zipping home.
The Brewers of Rhys Hoskins, because of course.
The Mets fell behind 2-0 against those Brewers in the bottom of the first, as some plays you’d like to see made weren’t and Luis Severino reported for duty missing his location and a reliable putaway pitch. It was 2-0, and clearly our win probability was 0.00000000%.
Except the Mets leapt off the mat in the top of the second: Mark Vientos singled (he had terrific ABs all night), Pete Alonso walked and up came Jesse Winker, who’d been mired in a deep slump and waylaid by back issues of his own. Winker saw eight pitches from Freddy Peralta, whistling the eighth into the right-field corner to tie the game and take himself to third with a triple, and if you had JESSE WINKER TWO-RUN TRIPLE on your bingo card, well, my cap is tipped. He came home on a sac fly from Starling Marte, another Met who quietly put together a night of solid ABs, and just like that the Mets led 3-2.
But once again, Severino didn’t look right. He worked through traffic in the second and third, then gave back the lead in the fourth, with the inevitable Turang front and center at the Brewer raceway. (Remember when Milwaukee lineups were made up of one scrawny infielder and eight dudes who looked like Daniel Vogelbach, including the actual Daniel Vogelbach for a time? I liked that better.) The Mets were down a run (win probability 0.0000000%) and Milwaukee’s Pat Mitchell decided that was enough from Peralta, dipping into his formidable bullpen and summoning Joel Payamps.
It didn’t work. Payamps got Marte when Chourio made a leaping grab at the fence, allowed a double to Taylor on a ball Chourio misplayed, retired Francisco Alvarez for the second out, but then lost Francisco Lindor on a walk. Up came Jose Iglesias, who smacked a ball left of first that Hoskins made a good play on, only to find Payamps a little tardy getting to first. Iglesias dove in head-first, one of the few times that play makes sense, just beating Payamps while the always-alert Taylor motored around third to tie the game.
In came Aaron Ashby, who allowed an infield single to Brandon Nimmo and then boom: a two-run single for Vientos, followed by another one from J.D. Martinez, pinch-hitting for Winker.
Just like that the Mets led 8-4, and the ballgame was over. No really, it pretty much was. Severino found a little tweak that corraled his fastball — or perhaps he started pitching like he had a four-run lead and eight guys behind him — and so set down Brewer after Brewer before passing the baton to Jose Butto, who in turn handed it to Ryne Stanek.
No Brewer reached base against the three of them, and no Met tallied a hit against Nick Mears or Aaron Civale. Four and a half innings ticked by in a stately procession of round trips between dugouts, with the lone baserunner accounted for by a walk to Alonso. An October playoff game became one of those sleepy late June affairs in which you pick up a magazine and it winds up as a tent over your face during a baseball nap.
Which, given the emotional toll of the last week and change, wasn’t unwelcome. Eventually Stanek struck out Turang, Alvarez didn’t allow a dropped third strike, it turns out there’s no heretofore-overlooked rule that allows Turang to circle the bases five times while Met catchers fail to throw him out, and so that was that.
Win probability 100%. Be not afraid.
with the cameras panning around the crowd, i saw a lot of us in them. that palpable sense of dread – that we know so well – was about a mets team that ao often seems unstoppable. it was weird and i had sympathy. the brewers have often been my post-season surrogate when the mets weren’t there.
now all i can think about is the mets dispatching them mercilessly tonite and looking toward the phils with an extra day’s rest.
another great, if less stressful game!
LGM
Met fans often remind me of the old Jewish joke: What’s the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? A pessimist says, “Things can’t possibly get any worse.” The optimist says, “Oh yes they can!”
Fortunately, all the Met fan pessimists and optimists were proven wrong again last night.
By the way, I will once again marvel at the fact that the Mets ‘24 Opening Day roster included infielders Bret Baty, Zach Short, and Joey Wendle, but not Jose Iglesias or Mark Vientos. Just wow.
If ever a joke was right for this season (both Metswise and otherwise) it’s that one! At some point last night I needed to walk our dog before it got completely dark, and I looked out the window and decided that after the fourth inning, we’d go for that walk. Good decision in terms of the fading light, but I missed the 5-run inning. I actually didn’t mind all that much because Severino was dealing and the Mets had a four-run lead.
I’m steeped in that Jewish pessimism, too, but the New Year is on us and that’s a time of renewal. The Mets have renewed themselves this year , and have reminded me that yes, it can always get worse , but it also can always get better. If you don’t believe me, think about Francisco Lindor and his home run that will live forever.
Was taking a historical survey of our 8 post-seasons in which we did not win the World Series, and whether we’d ever lost a clinching game (that was an elimination game for the other team). And the answer I believe is only once—1973 and the George Stone game (or the George Stone non-game). Let it remain the only time.
Game 4 against the Reds in 73 and Game 4 against the Dodgers in 2015. The Mets won the deciding game 5 in both cases.
Ugh – anything that might make me examine my fan mentality results in extreme discomfort. Though with the Brewers recent record in playoff games they have to be suffering through a severe case of “here we go again” syndrome.
Strangeness was seeing the Brewers defense, quite frankly, screw the 5th inning away. Last thing I expected when Chourio made that first grab was that he’d muff another fly ball into a double or they’d be late with a play to first, basically giving us two extra outs.
So often (pessimistic me says) we let teams give us extra outs without penalty. Not last night.
Interesting pulling Peralta after 68 pitches and an 8-pitch inning. I guess when you have the kind of relievers the Brewers have you make that call.
Now as long as Manaea pitches like second-half-of-2024 Manaea, not previous-playoff-Manaea.
I finally downloaded Sirius XM to my SmartTV yesterday. It is MUCH more stressful to listen than to watch, at least when you aren’t also driving. It’s also not very satisfying so once MLBtv loaded the replay I watched it last night even though I knew how things would turn out.
I’m reading a timely book I’ve had on the pile for a few months, “Bushville Wins” by John Klima. It’s about the Braves’ years in Milwaukee (so there’s the Braves), but it’s also about the psyche of their Milwaukee fan base, so there’s that too.
There’s a telling quote from Warren Spahn. In 1956, they led the NL for most of the year but faded in September and lost to the Dodgers by one game. “We’ve been here for three years and this was the first time I ever heard a boo”.
8% chance of winning?
Same chance I gave the Mets on Monday when Diaz came out for the 9th.
The Mendy narrative is calm, cool, and collected, but we only won that game by the flipped coin landing on ‘WIN!’
Meanwhile, the two teams that Craig Counsell spurned are in the post-season. And Craig’s glistening new shiny team? Enjoying the OFF-season.
More confirmation: I happened to be in Houston last week, and I scoffed at the Astros fans next to me when they said, “we can’t stand Altuve, he always screws up”