Given the ebbs and flows of a entertaining yet maddening season, perhaps we’ve lost track of a simpler formula to make sense of the 2024 Mets: They need to outhit their mistakes.
The rotation is pedestrian, a bunch of No. 4 starters with ceilings as No. 3s. The relief corps is spaghetti at a wall. The defense, while much improved from the early days of the campaign, is just adequate.
That puts it all on a lineup that’s potent but streaky. Francisco Lindor started out the season encased in a block of ice (which makes it hard to swing a bat), but has been an MVP candidate once thawed. Brandon Nimmo‘s season has been a long march of dismay. Pete Alonso has been productive overall but clearly regressed as a hitter. J.D. Martinez has been a great clubhouse mentor but hot and cold in the lineup. Jeff McNeil has combined an inert first half with a so-far sizzling second half. Francisco Alvarez‘s sophomore season has been largely frustrating. When those hitters and their colleagues are clicking in sequence, the Mets can blow teams out of the water; when they’re out of sync they flail and fume while hoping an iffy pitching staff survives another day.
The lineup clicked in sequence Friday night, erupting for six runs in a thoroughly satisfying fourth inning against the Marlins and Roddery Munoz, who’d muzzled the Mets effectively in two previous appearances this year while getting cuffed around by pretty much everybody else in baseball.
McNeil fought his way through a long, tough AB before getting a slider that didn’t slide and whacking it into the seats for a 3-2 Mets lead. Harrison Bader didn’t need his pink Crayola bat in drawing a walk. Lindor bounced a ball over Jake Burger‘s glove that chased Bader home and saw Lindor wind up on third.
Exit Munoz, enter George Soriano, who hit Mark Vientos to bring up Nimmo, whose trademark cheerfulness has been much reduced by a long slump and a recent bout of illness. Soriano’s inaugural offering was another slider that didn’t do what its name suggests; Nimmo crushed it into the Soda Salon and the Mets were up 7-2, a lead they wouldn’t relinquish thanks to seven strong innings from Sean Manaea and a tidy two from Jose Butto.
Your recapper was driving up to Connecticut and listening through MLB Audio, so I have nothing to offer about Players Weekend flourishes beyond Bader’s bat, which was lovingly described by Keith Raad, or about Daniel Murphy joining the SNY booth.
I’ve loved baseball on the radio for decades and rarely if ever see it as a step down from getting to watch on TV, but an MLB deal with Audacy has seriously damaged the digital version of the radio experience. (Additional demerits for Audacy’s deeply stupid name.) I’m not talking about dropouts and pauses, which are largely a product of cell reception and not on Rob Manfred and Co. But MLB Audio is maddening even without that, it’s Audacy’s fault, and that is most definitely on MLB.
The cuts to commercial breaks are mistimed 90% of the time, with the announcers vanishing while reminding you of the game situation. That’s bad; what’s worse is that the ad inventory is pitiful. The same four to five ads run in crushingly heavy rotation, rapidly turning a showcase for a product and/or service into an ordeal that would be highly effective in a CIA black site.
Every year there’s an ad — or three, or four, or nine — that wears out its welcome within a week and comes to elicit pleas for mercy. This year’s offender features Tiki Barber hawking underwear designed to be comfortable for men. That’s how an adult who doesn’t need a drool cup would describe this product; the actual ad is a barrage of not very clever references to balls and boys. I’m sure this would make a 12-year-old boy howl with laughter until he knew every syllable and became bored (a point he’d reach very, very quickly), but my reaction is that I will never, ever, ever use this product. If I were rescued naked from a house fire and someone gave me a pair of Tiki Barber’s supportive briefs, I would hand them back and insist that I’ll do fine with a hastily constructed breechclout of half-burned newspaper.
I’d also like to punch Tiki Barber in the face. That would end badly but be worth it.
Enough about Tiki and his boys and back to the Mets trying to outhit their mistakes. That formula is usually discussed derisively, with the not terribly hidden implication that a front office only did half its job.
Now that it describes the Mets, I’m inclined to be a little more charitable. This was always supposed to be a transitional year, with the Mets pivoting from mercenaries (some of them in uniform elsewhere but still on the payroll) to homegrown talent; a key question coming into the season was whether the Mets took half-measures, hoping to be competitive when they should have opted for a full teardown.
As it’s turned out (at least so far), their own performance, National League parity and the allowances of the wild card era has left them fighting for the bottom wild-card rung. It’s not the same as arriving a little early — last summer’s ballyhooed import prospects have mostly struggled or been hurt — but the outcome is pretty similar, and has left me thinking of this season as a free spin of the roulette wheel.
The pitching staff isn’t going to get magically transformed; if anything, innings woes are going to put it in further danger. So the Mets better continue to outhit the inevitable mistakes.
One of the Marlins drives hit off the top of the wall and bounced right back on the fly to Winker, who threw it in, just like the “Ball on the Wall” play in 1973 that bounced right back to Cleon Jones.
And like the Harrelson-like tag play at the plate the day before against Oakland:
That was the first thing that came to mind.
How could it not?
And that dope Gary Cohen did not even mention it.
I’m all for Daniel Murphy joining the SNY broadcast booth.
Anyone else have a sense of doom when Manaea walked the first batter?
Agree on Murphy. First heard him during spring training games.
I really don’t care for Daniel Murphy in the booth – he’s incredibly boring and does not have a good broadcasting voice.
I love listening to the Mets on the radio; as I drive around in the summertime daylight running errands or heading to a cookout or sometimes on a late commute home from work, it’s a reminder of my childhood, when in my neck of the woods the Mets were only on TV once a week but the radio was free and available for every game.
Unfortunately, here in the capital city of NYS, there is no over-the-air radio broadcast of the Mets, and in that sense MLB radio has been a godsend, and well worth the
30-ish dollars or so for the annual subscription. But I also have been noticing a decline in quality
of the streamcast in just the ways you mentioned.
You’ve skewered the Tiki Barber ad fully, so I will add only that from the perspective of this female fan, it makes me wonder if MLB does not understand its audience has a large contingent of women and girls. But as a lifelong fan of sports of all sorts, I know that we have to adapt in some ways to the prevailing culture in athletics, which seems to be getting more of a “boys club” vibe daily.
Thank goodness for this blog and others that can discuss sports in more nuanced terms than Tiki Barber, and without the numbing repetition you discuss. I also know that repetition is a hallmark of good advertising, but that ad makes me long for the Rheingold beer jingle, which if I live to be 100 I will probably be able to still sing on cue.
To me, the mistimed jump cuts to commercials on MLB radio are a far worse issue than the Tiki-a-thon. This is basic journalism for which I pay. I get in and out of my car to pump gas and run errands, etc., and when I resume driving it’s sometimes impossible to know the game score, inning or what’s actually happening on the field. Howie, Keith and Pat are good announcers and almost never end an inning without recounting at least the hits, runs and errors, the score and the inning so I can get my bearings as a fan. It’s infuriating when that is cut off on a routine basis, and doubly so when I have to listen to Tiki and his balls, gridiron or otherwise, sometimes two or three times in a row before I can so much as learn the score of the game I’m tuned into. Audacy needs to fix that ASAP and then I’ll gladly mute Tiki in between innings.
hey ljc,
fellow capital district resident. yes incredible that no one has opted to broadcast the mets for years, save one year (before covid) when the mets were on the local oldies station. even while the out of state red saux were broadcast daily.
wcbs now broadcasts every game, and w/o cutting off the wrap-up to commercial break.
last year nearly every wcbs broadcast was blacked out .
Murphy was the de-facto Captain during those years he was here, not David Wright.
As for his broadcasting, I’ll take boredom over shtick and high-pitched cackling any day.
I guess other Mets fans are more forgiving than I. I won’t forget that Murphy, our best hitter, abandoned the team for a divisional rival, then came back and absolutely dismembered the Mets every time they played the Nats. No, I will not forgive that. He should go and broadcast for the Washington Nationals.
I’m really enjoying Murph. He offers incredible insight into how to play the game. One great one yesterday – “Fix your eyeline to the top of the zone. Anything above that is a ball.” So simple, but really smart. Another one about fielding – he talks about infielders bringing the ball back and “de-weighting” the ball, which makes it much easier to throw, rather than tapping it to the glove, like lots of players do. As a gentleman of a certain age who plays senior baseball, I’m learning a lot!
Let’s not re-write history. The Mets let Murphy go. They didn’t think the power would last and they didn’t like his glove. People in the organization used the term, “Net negative” to describe him.
If someone needs forgiveness for him going to Washington it’s the Mets. Personally I wanted us to trade Duda and move him to first.
I’m not sure the Mets even made him an offer. If they did it was low.
I like the hostility pumped by this bitter Jason
What I don’t care for is Daniel Murphy
That’s because he’s an anti-gay bigot
I’m sorry, but that is unacceptable in this day and age, and too bad if woke-titude gets your underoos in a bind
Actually, I subtract/retract/detract my sorrifitude
As a teacher of young people, just about the only thing I can say positive about the liberal-run American school system is the fact that gay kids are woke-government-mandated to be treated with rights and dignity, as all kids should be
So, if Spaniel Murphy wants to have bigotry on the brain, whatever, just keep it TF to yourself