Three Times Yes

Eight pitches.

They were the first sign that Monday afternoon’s Game 2 might go better than Sunday’s steamrolling. Happily, they weren’t the last.

Leading off against Ryan Brasier, the first man in a parade of Dodger relievers, Francisco Lindor worked a 2-1 count, then fouled off four sliders and fastballs. Brasier, possibly a little frustrated to see the debut hitter chomping away at his small allotment of pitches, opted for a cutter and didn’t throw a good one — Lindor walloped it into the right-field bullpen, which I’ll always think of as Daniel Murphy Land, the place where a ball thrown by Clayton Kershaw once returned to earth with Murph’s first name literally burned into it by the contact with his bat.

Mets 1, Dodgers 0, and the sigh of relief was audible all over Mets Land.

That sigh got a little deeper and easier once Sean Manaea reported for duty and looked sharp, erasing Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, then retiring Freddie Freeman on a first-pitch fly ball after a walk to Teoscar Hernandez.

Before we return to our usual battle with Mets-fan anxieties, consider this series from the Dodgers POV: In April they lost the first two games against us at home before administering a 10-0 corrective; they then curb-stomped the Mets at Citi Field at the end of May, with the finale featuring Jorge Lopez writing his own pink slip with a glove tossed into the stands.

They must be thinking, “Who are these guys?”

All that came before OMG, before Grimace, before the Zesty Mets, before all the other delightful oddities of a cherished summer. To shift from narrative to W-L statistics, it was before the Mets rose from the dead to the top of the MLB ranks the rest of the way. And it was before Manaea saw Chris Sale at work on the mound and thought, “maybe I should try that.”

When Manaea was on, which he was for most of his Monday tenure, he had a terrifying lineup looking frankly befuddled, with Ohtani unbalanced by his cross-fire mix and Betts unable to square anything up. It was odd — odd with a side of delightful if you’re a Mets fan — to see the best hitter on the planet and a fellow perennial MVP candidate groping for answers.

With Emily stuck on a Zoom call for work (she was far more horrified than you are, so cut her some slack), I watched all this from the unfamiliar confines of our downstairs bedroom, but with every cherished talisman either on my body or close to it. 7 Line jersey with the Mookie shirt beneath? So clad. When a Met was in scoring position I called upon the powers of Derpy Flag, a somewhat wan little felt Mets pennant handed to me by Mr. Met himself. And of course I had my usual exhortations aimed at player on the other side of the continent: look for your pitch, don’t help him, eight guys behind you, hit it to anybody, and of course plenty of hang with ’em and c’mon babe and you got this.

All that worked very nicely in the top of the second, with Landon Knack (whom I knew only from a not particularly distinguished tenure on my fantasy-baseball roster) replacing Brasier. After a first-pitch single from Starling Marte, Jesse Winker wrung out a walk. Jose Iglesias popped up, but Tyrone Taylor smacked a double down the left-field line for a 2-0 Mets lead. An overeager Francisco Alvarez popped up his first pitch, leaving a precious gimme run on the table, and Dave Roberts ordered Knack to put Lindor on first and face Mark Vientos.

Vientos then put together one of the best ABs of his burgeoning young career, hunting fastballs while fouling off sliders in the zone and ignoring ones below it. Knack’s ninth pitch was not only a fastball but a middle-middle bullseye, and Vientos whacked it over the fence for a grand slam and a 6-0 Met lead.

(I’ll pause here for a bit of wisdom from Ryne Stanek in the Athletic, offering a pitcher’s perspective on long ABs: “You only have so many tricks. It makes the at-bat substantially harder when you’ve exposed everything you’ve got.”)

Six-zip in the second and then slowing pull away is an excellent recipe for scoreboard success and calm fans, but would that it were so simple.

The Mets kept putting together good ABs — Pete Alonso had a 10-pitch one before being called out on what might or might not have been a strike, and even Alvarez looked more disciplined in his last go-round — but they couldn’t get the big hit against the next two acts taking the stage at Relieverpalooza: former Met Anthony Banda (“Banda MACHO!” I hollered, as I did when he was pitching for us with considerably less success) and Brent Honeywell Jr., whose career is a study in perseverance. (He’s also the cousin of former Met Mike Marshall — the dogma-defying pitching guru, not the former Met first baseman and hulking ex-Dodger. Though genealogy suggests Honeywell is likely a more distant cousin of that Mike Marshall too — not to mention, quite possibly, you and me and Greg and Charlemagne.)

While the Mets slumbered in key spots, the Dodgers started to do what a lineup like theirs will do. (I had moved upstairs post-Zoom call and will accept that I changed the luck and should be castigated, since I Ought to Know Better.) Max Muncy hit a solo shot off Manaea in the fifth and Betts and Teoscar Hernandez opened the sixth with walks. At which point the Mets defense sprung an ill-timed leak: Iglesias started a double play before he had properly secured a Freeman grounder, one that came with an added degree of difficulty after kicking off the back of the mound. Instead of two outs Iglesias had none, the bases were loaded with nobody out, and oh boy.

Exit Manaea, enter the affectless Phil Maton. Maton coaxed an infield pop-up from Will Smith and then got another grounder, this one from Tommy Edman in the hole between first and second — a difficult play to begin with, made harder by Freeman screening Alonso. The ball went under Alonso’s glove and it was 6-3.

Maton walked Muncy and had to face Kiké Hernandez, who’s infamous for being death to baseballs in the playoffs. Maton got a hard grounder to Vientos, who bobbled it for about the 8,000th heart stoppage of the inning before regaining his grip and starting a double play, which the Dodgers challenged for reasons best known to them.

With the Mets still unable to tack on, Stanek took over for Maton in the seventh but looked like he ran out of gas in the eighth, yielding a two-out single to Edman and walking Muncy. Which meant it was time, yet again, for us all to be strapped into the Edwin Diaz Rollercoaster, and with Kiké Hernandez at the plate as the tying run, no less. The same Kiké Hernandez who’d hit into that big double play.

Oh boy.

Diaz’s fourth pitch was a slider that sat middle … and which Kiké got under for a harmless fly ball.

The Mets finally scratched for a badly needed run in the ninth off Edgardo Henriquez, who looks like he’ll be wipeout reliever but is still finding his way a bit. And so it would be Diaz against Andy Pages to lead off the ninth, followed by Ohtani and his attendant Furies.

Diaz’s first three pitches to Pages were distressingly high; the third was hit just hard enough to float over the infield for a leadoff single. Diaz then walked Ohtani, with his pitches elevated and looking a little flabby.

Oh boy yet again, but unlike against the Phillies, Betts wasn’t the tying run. (Thank you and bless you, Starling Marte.) And Diaz found his fastball and punched Betts out. Then he threw all fastballs to Teoscar Hernandez, erasing him on six pitches. That brought up Freeman, who looks more formidable playing on one leg than most guys look on two. Diaz worked the count to 2-2 on fastballs, then uncorked a beauty of a back-foot slider, which Freeman swung over to put the game in our column.

Can 6-0 feel like not enough? Yes. Can 7-3 feel too close? Also yes. Did the Mets win the game and even up the series? Three times yes. Three times yes, a big exhale, and back we come to New York and whatever awaits. Gather your talismans, find your center … and buckle up.