In Which Your Recapper Admits He's Only Human

Mets 3, A’s 1, game called after four and a half innings because your recapper was weary and collapsed into his bed.

Wait, they don’t do things that way? Apologies — I figured maybe they did, what with everything else that was strange about watching the Mets and the A’s play in a ballpark that looks perfectly charming but definitely minor-league and plays perfectly charming provided you like baseballs rattling around like you’re in a Pachinko parlor. Plus hadn’t the Yankees and Giants just decided that an eight-run San Francisco lead got the point across and there was no reason to keep playing in a miserable pelting rain? (A friend in San Francisco asked me why they aren’t picking up where they left off today; I had to confess to not being entirely clear on how that works.)

Before my shocking dereliction of duty, I had a few miscellaneous thoughts:

Sutter Health Park‘s berm (called, inevitably, Home Run Hill) looks like a lovely place from which to take in a baseball game — something about seeing all those oaks out there in shots of the outfield made me sigh with happiness. I’ve never been to Sacramento aside from its airport, but strolling over the gold-painted Tower Bridge looks like it would be an excellent way to arrive at or depart from a game, a la the not dissimilarly colored Roberto Clemente Bridge in Pittsburgh. There’s even a vineyard in the park, and who wouldn’t approve of that?

That said, the park pretty clearly needs some work, as well as facing some issues best solved by having the A’s move on — to Las Vegas, should they continue with their current risible plan, or back to Oakland after John Fisher has a close encounter with three spirits and is moved to transform himself into a tolerable human being. (Or is run out of town by a howling mob hunting billionaire nepo babies — I’m more about the what than the how on this point.)

SNY was struggling with sound, lighting and everything else, and balls were not only traveling far but also pursuing odd geometrical journeys. (Luis Torrens’ second-inning double was particularly baffling.) And keep in mind that it isn’t even hot yet — add a bit more distance to line drives courtesy of heavier summer air and look out. Gary Cohen and Ron Darling had put in the work of surveying current and former players about the park, and found a good contrast in comments from former A’s Paul Blackburn and Dallas Braden. Blackburn said Sutter Health was actually known as a respite for pitchers tired of getting whacked around in the notoriously hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League; Braden pointed out that Blackburn’s experience came facing minor-league hitters.

Speaking of pitchers, has anyone spared a thought for poor Griffin Canning? In three starts he’s faced the Astros, Blue Jays and A’s — all American League teams, two of them from a division whose hitters are familiar with his tenure as an Angels prospect turned suspect turned former Angel. Don’t you bet he would have preferred unveiling Griffin Canning 2.0 against various Marlins, Nationals and other clubs made up of guys with less of a handle on him? Canning’s reinvention has gone pretty well so far, all told, but that little wrinkle strikes me as cruel.

No Port St. Lucie prediction seems more promising than Darling dreaming on how many runs Pete Alonso might drive in hitting behind Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto. Pete’s at 18 already, which is a 224-RBI pace. (Don’t check my math, that’s mean.) I don’t think Hack Wilson‘s heirs are muttering nervously quite yet, but watching that number climb looks like it will be a fun summer pursuit. And — yes, I heard your objections a moment ago — the credit belongs primarily to the Polar Bear himself and not his collaborators in runs delivered. You always doubt early-season narratives that a guy has changed, unlocked something, and so forth — most of these February and March roads to Damascus wind up leading to all too familiar places. But Alonso had another night in which he calmly refused to get himself out, watching bait pitches impassively and waiting for something in the strike zone that he could obliterate. Alonso made one out all night, and that was a sacrifice fly.

(Also: If this keeps up that man is going to get paid. Which will be stressful for us as Mets fans, but stressful in a different way than last offseason. It would be far better to debate spending Steve Cohen’s money for him based on hopes about what Pete Alonso might do rather than worries about what he might not do.)

Poor Mark Vientos. He no longer looks like he’s holding the bat upside down, but he’s also hitting in buzzard’s luck — Lawrence Butler‘s third-inning catch was particularly cruel, ending a quality AB with Butler pickpocketing another ball that wound up at the margins of playable territory, another head-scratching ball-in-play outcome. Maybe Sutter Health is actually a tesseract?

As for whatever Edwin Diaz was doing at the end there, well, I was asleep. Apparently that was the right choice.