Nine View of Cubs-Mets

Pete was actually out, and no, Miguel Amaya wasn’t blocking the plate, or at least not sufficiently to arouse the ire of officialdom. And even if he had been blocking the plate, the Buster Posey rule is stupid. Good decision to send Pete — unfortunately Nick Madrigal made a perfect relay throw, and so he was out by an eyelash of a whisper. It happens.

Boy, that was really exciting watching the Mets and Cubs stand around while umpires put hands over their earpieces and waited for other people to look at TV. They’ll be replaying that thrilling finish for years.

On the other hand (or is it the other other hand by now), it was pretty funny that the umpire’s mic stayed hot as Carlos Mendoza lost his mind. I kept waiting for the Terry Collins moment, and while it wasn’t quite Terry showing up in Tom Hallion’s audio with flames shooting out of his ears and 10- and 12-letter profanities filling the air, I cackled when Mendoza’s “that’s bullshit!” went out to all of Citi Field and SNY, because it was inevitable.

The Mets are winless when dressed as chimney sweeps. If this keeps up I’ll start thinking ballplayers should be a little more superstitious.

Jose Butto continues to be superb. I love not only the results but also how emphatic he is on the mound, and it’s difficult to take myself back to my first sight of him, hanging on for dear life against the Phillies, saucer-eyed in an audition he wasn’t ready for. We forget sometimes that young players are still developing and it’s a process that takes time. Butto’s on the other side of that now and it’s really fun to watch what he’s becoming.

Shota Imanaga, dang. A 0.78 ERA over your first six starts will play. Plus I learned he sang “Go Cubs Go!” at his introductory press conference, which is downright adorable.

Brett Baty hasn’t hit much since he tweaked his hamstring, but I’m not concerned: The defense has remained sound (and aggressive, which has clearly helped with the results) and Baty continues to put together solid at-bats, even if he’s not seeing the payoff as often as he (and we) would like.

Ian Happ ought to play the Lotto. There was the Joey Wendle drive that popped out of his mitt in left only to obediently pop back in before he hit the fence (oh what might have been) and about 20 minutes later he plopped a ball just inside the third-base line for what an amused Keith Hernandez called the worst hit he’d ever seen. Hernandez said it with an affection borne of a decade and a half of learning that the line drives get caught and the dunkers fall in, because (wait for it) it’s an unfair game.

When I was a kid, the Cubs were the team I hated — the Braves were an oddball outfit that employed Chief Noc-a-Homa and played in the National League West and so only vaguely mattered. It still strikes me as faintly strange that the Cubs are irregular visitors to my consciousness and I’m supposed to work myself up into a froth about the Braves. (The Phillies are a different story — they were always around but they were never good when we were and so never really in our way.) I’ve mostly accepted that the Cubs’ exit from relevance is the way of the world, but these last three games have kicked up the embers of my mostly dormant snarling about the Cubs as a menace that must be eradicated. Replay-induced standing around aside, all of these games been great: Severino’s triumph to tragedy on Monday, DJ Stewart‘s no-doubt shot on Tuesday, and now a nail-biter that ended with a play at the plate and a magnifying glass required to sort it out. If the Mets and Cubs keep playing thrillers like these, maybe I’ll find myself spitting mad about Ron Santo and Leo Durocher and Ron Cey and Keith Moreland and Rick Sutcliffe all over again.