A team played shoddy defense.
A team saw its relievers struggle.
A team hit balls right at defenders.
A team rallied, sent a strong hitter up in a big spot … and got nothing out of it.
That’s a familiar 2023 script, and it’s what we got on Sunday night, along with ESPN personalities we hadn’t asked for. (I at first accidentally turned on some alternate ESPN flavor and was subjected to A-Rod and Chris Russo, a situation I’d thought the Geneva Conventions protected me from.)
Except all the bad things from that familiar script happened to the Giants, not the Mets.
There was still some drama of course, more than you might suspect from an 8-4 final score. Jeff Brigham was terrible in relief and Dominic Leone wasn’t much better, turning 5-1 business as usual into a 5-4 sigh-fest. Brooks Raley refused to take a page from his colleagues, pitching ably, but Adam Ottavino surrendered a four-pitch walk and a two-pitch HBP to bring up J.D. Davis with the bases loaded, the tying run on second and Ottavino yet to besmirch home plate’s airspace with by sending a baseball through it.
I didn’t see what Jeremy Hefner did during the mound visit that followed, but it’s entirely possible he unplugged Ottavino and then plugged him back in, because when Ottavino started pitching to J.D. the idea of the strike zone had returned. Ottavino painted sinkers descending in the strike zone and heading for the outside of the plate, then put a four-seamer out there on the edge that Davis missed. In the bottom of the inning Seattle-bound Pete Alonso crashed a two-run homer that happily turned the game back into a mere diversion.
Still, our applause would be best described as muted: The Mets hadn’t secured a series win since May 31 and won two in a row exactly once in the now-gone, unlamented month of June. A night’s good work and some lousiness on the other side of the field isn’t going to make us clear our October calendars. But hey, the first step in doing good things is to stop doing bad things, and for one night at least that proved a good blueprint.
Brigham must have compromising videos of Buck.
AMEN!
Maybe it won’t be another month till we win 2 games in a row.
Let’s Go Mets
What was Buck’s reasoning for pulling Peterson after 4 innings and 61 pitches? It made no sense to try and get 5 innings out of a mostly bad bullpen. Every time I see the guy with uniform number 0 on the mound, I say “Oh no! Nottavino again!”
That said, I must give a shout out to the one man in the lineup who is doing more than what had been expected. Wham! Bam! Thank you, Pham!
Look fast because there’s no way in hell Tommy Pham is a Met on August 1.
We just gained 2 games in 2 days on the WC. I say we’re buyers!
Well on our way to mending the destitute bullpen: we just gott a journeyman right-handed reliever with a negative career WAR!
… and only had to eat $4 million in Flexen Funds for the privilege!