There was a wonderful moment [1] back in Atlanta, one that’s nearly been forgotten in all the joyful, exhausting tumult of what’s followed.
Steve Gelbs was interviewing Francisco Lindor [2], only Gelbs was drenched in alcohol and having trouble getting past the fact that his eyes were burning.
“You’re suffering!” said an even more drenched Lindor. “You’re not embracing! Let it happen — make it part of you.”
Lindor was mostly teasing Gelbs — mostly, but not completely. He wasn’t wearing goggles either. But his expression was serene.
What he’d told Gelbs, I found myself thinking later, was pretty good advice — and not just for baseball.
Sunday’s game was another barn burner, just the latest Mets game to shove its way into the ranks of the classics. Luis Severino [3] looked sharp from the beginning, mowing down the Phillies, and the Mets grabbed a lead behind home runs from Mark Vientos [4] and Pete Alonso [5], both of whom hit homers that just cleared the fence in right-center: Vientos off a Cristopher Sanchez [6] changeup left in the middle of the plate, Alonso off a high curve from Jose Ruiz.
3-0 Mets heading into the bottom of the sixth, and the Phillies fans were restless, booing their own. For shame, Philadelphia. In a playoff game? After the season they gave you? Seriously, I thought the role played by the fans in the redemption arcs of Alec Bohm [7] and Trea Turner [8] had put this Philadelphia narrative to bed, but there they were giving it a new lease on life.
I wasn’t booing the Phillies, but I also wasn’t sanguine about how things might turn out: Sure, Severino looked better than he had in weeks. But there were 12 outs to get and this is Citizens Bank Park, where any lead feels like the decimal should be moved one place to the left.
Severino got the first two of those 12 outs but then looked like he started overthrowing, maybe because he knew his day was ending. In the course of eight pitches it all came unraveled: single to Turner, Bryce Harper [9] home run that came down somewhere in central Jersey, sweeper annihilated by Nick Castellanos [10]. Just like that it was 3-3,
Punch them back, I urged the Mets, having seen my share of Citizens Bank donnybrooks over the years. And they did: Brandon Nimmo [11] homered off Orion Kerkering [12] to give the Mets back the lead, albeit one now reduced to a skinny run.
My new superstition? When relievers come in with a lead, I matter-of-factly ask, “Where are we going to find [X] outs?” Then I greet the new reliever and solemnly suggest he not fuck it up.
Jose Butto [13], last seen fucking it up in Milwaukee, hit J.T. Realmuto [14] (not ideal) to start the seventh, got a pair of outs, then lost Knockwurst Clemens on an unplayable infield single, with Knockwurst’s disgusting father watching from a luxury box instead of being frog-marched off to the Hague. That brought the Phillies’ lineup clicking back over to its deadly top three, as it seemed to do about every five minutes in this game, and brought in Edwin Diaz [15], who got Kyle Schwarber [16] to swing over a backfoot slider to avert further harm.
The thing that struck me at this juncture? It was that both teams looked exhausted, less standing up on the dugout rail than clinging to it. Games like this one will do that to you — as well as to the hundreds of thousands of fans living and dying with every pitch they can’t affect.
I urged the Mets to score, oh, 10 or 11 more runs, but they eschewed that advice and sent Diaz back out for the eighth. (“Where are we going to find six outs? Don’t fuck it up, Edwin.”)
There’s nothing easier or cheaper than a second guess, so I’ll say right here that I like the way Carlos Mendoza [17] has handled the bullpen over this insane last week. He’s been aggressive and he’s been innovative, not blindly plugging guys into roles they played in July or August. And most importantly, no one has reported for duty looking like they were caught unawares. It made sense for Diaz to face Schwarber instead of Butto, and it made sense for Diaz to stay in to face Turner and Harper.
Unfortunately, there are at least two other factors at work right now. One is that the bullpen has been sorely worked, particularly Diaz. The other is that regardless of workload, Diaz’s entire season has been a nightly psychodrama: You never know if the fastball is going to be high 90s or mid 90s, if the slider is going to be low and sharp or high and flabby, and you never know how much conviction Diaz is going to bring to his pitches.
Diaz vs. Schwarber has historically been a good matchup for Diaz, but as he navigated it I’d winced at too many sliders sitting above the knees. There were more of them as Diaz went to work in the eighth, fanning Turner but then walking Harper (also historically a good matchup for Diaz) on four pitches. Castellanos singled on a high fastball, and against Bryson Stott [18] (and his oddly soothing sing-a-long walkup music) all of Diaz’s pitches were up in that flashing red danger zone; his sixth pitch was a slider that sat middle and didn’t slide, and Stott spanked it down the right-field line for a triple and a one-run Phillies lead. A batter later, with Tylor Megill [19] now pitching, Vientos tried to throw home before he secured the ball and Philadelphia was up by two.
Not good, but these Mets have shown me over and over again of late that nothing is impossible and improbable is just another way of saying “hasn’t happened yet.” Harrison Bader [20] flied out to start the inning against Matt Strahm [21] and up came Lindor.
Baseball is a game of failure (perhaps you’ve heard), with a hitter contending against not only the best pitchers in the world but also ample opportunities for misfortune through no fault of his own. But Lindor’s play since returning from back issues has been simply remarkable, silencing the critics who, for whatever reason, have spent his entire Mets tenure eager to find anything to pounce on. Baseball doesn’t make anything a certainty or even more likely than not, but right now if something needs to be done Lindor will do everything in his power to maximize the chances that it gets done.
He singled off Strahm and up came Vientos. Vientos is in an interesting place right now: He’s made tremendous strides as a player during a transformative season. But he’s still a young player, there’s a difference between sleepy summer matinees and October cauldrons, and it’s asking a lot of the baseball gods to expect a young player who’s already delivered to deliver again.
Strahm, meanwhile, is one of those guys who makes his money by throwing gas high and wrinkles low (and why not, it’s the way you’d pitch God Himself if you were handed that unenviable assignment), and at 1-2 he had Vientos set up for the slider below the strike zone. Vientos ignored two of them and Strahm went back to the fastball. The one he threw was at the top of the zone, if not somewhere around Vientos’s chin, and verging to the outside. Vientos somehow didn’t just hit it out but pulled it out to left-center — ah, bat speed and being strong as an ox — and the ballgame was tied once again.
OMG, you might say.
It would be nice to put a bow on this recap right here, but duty compels me to march on, into the vale of shadow: Megill got the first two outs in the bottom of the ninth but then walked Turner and Harper. He got the first two strikes against Castellanos, yanked a slider into the dirt and then hung one. Castellanos spanked it into left, where I presume someone eventually picked it up after Nimmo headed briskly for the visitors’ dugout.
If the Mets had been allowed to keep going, I wouldn’t have been shocked to see them score one run — or two, or however many would have been needed. But nope, the rules dictated that was it — the Phillies had won, 7-6 [22], sending Castellanos to a joyful Howaboutthat? with his son in the front row (c’mon it was sweet) and sending the series to Citi Field tied at one.
Here’s one of my favorite baseball parlor games: Down a run or two late, would you rather your team come back only to lose via some even more cruel twist of the screw, or just see them come up short now?
On Sunday the Mets opted for “even more cruel,” but I don’t regret that extra turn of the screw at all. They lost, but they went down spitting and hissing, scratching and clawing, on the short end of a riveting game that delivered everything except the conclusion we wanted.
We’re all along for what’s become a crazy ride. So far it’s brought unbelievable helium wheees at apexes along the track, as well as stomach-imperiling lurches after unsafe drops. But we’re strapped in and we’re not going anywhere until we’re told that’s it, that’s the end, everybody off. Until that moment comes, opt for embracing, not suffering. Make it part of you.