A couple of things I’ve finally figured out about pitchers in recent years of fandom:
- Their game logs are portraits of ebb and flow, and you assume the worst (or the best) at your peril. Jose Quintana looked like a prime candidate for “I’ll drive that guy to the airport myself” earlier this summer; his last four starts have been superb. Sean Manaea was kind of trundling along until he reworked his repertoire and became a mainstay. The list goes on.
- Pretty much every pitcher (and position player, for that matter) is hurt worse than you think pretty much all the time. Bob Ojeda‘s NYT article on pain remains the touchstone, an article every baseball fan should read and re-read that’s particularly bracing for its honesty given the usual soft omerta of baseball clubhouse talk. (You’ll never forget the distinction between “fine” and “OK.”) Yes, sometimes guys are hiding injuries they should admit to and so hurting the team, but such cases are the exception to a cruel rule: particularly by September, most everybody is dealing with maladies that would send you or me to urgent care but are just life for baseball players.
- The vast majority of pitchers aren’t Greg Maddux or Tom Seaver and miss their locations all the time. This is a feature, not a bug — having a baseball go exactly where you want it 58-odd feet from where you release it is really hard. Fortunately for pitchers, hitting a baseball is also really hard. Pitchers miss their locations all the time; other things that happen all the time are hitters guessing wrong and not swinging at hittable pitches, or not quite barreling them, or making solid contact but watching fielders do what fielders do.
Anyway, those three points were floating around in my nervous brain during and then after the Mets lost a 2-1 heartbreaker to the Phillies to drop the rubber game and the third of 16 games in their stand-or-fall end-of-season gantlet. (For those keeping score at home, which is all of us, we’re now at the 18.75% mark, the Padres and D-Backs won, and the Braves lost.)
I’m sure I’ve wanted to drive David Peterson to the airport myself a time or two; there have been long stretches of his Mets career where I’ve lumped him in with Tylor Megill and basically shrugged that he has good stuff but may not ever figure it out. He’s also been hurt quite a bit; during 2023 his health devolved from “fine” to “OK” to “you have a torn labrum in your hip and we need to fix it.” Peterson is now healthy (or at least back to “fine”) and on Sunday he was the best I’ve ever seen him, using all his pitches aggressively and steaming through an intimidating Phillies lineup.
Alas, Cristopher Sanchez was also pitching beautifully, yanking Mets hitters back and forth with his changeup and his fastball so that they were always fighting the last war. (Poor Mark Vientos‘ post-strikeout expression evolved from outraged to stoic to doomed and accepting.) Add a stiff wind pushing balls away from right field and you had a scoreless duel; watching a 0-0 game I sometimes wonder if the pitchers are on or if it’s more that the bats are lethargic, but this one was the real thing.
It was a wonderful baseball game, taut and crisp and carrying a riveted crowd along for the ride as the tension got cranked steadily higher; I just hoped that wouldn’t turn into an asterisk, the thing you grudgingly admit once you run out of steam lamenting a heartbreaking loss.
The Mets finally broke through in the eighth against Sanchez, as Tyrone Taylor lifted a ball to left field, sufficiently removed from the wind’s sphere of influence to land in the seats. The lead lasted approximately eight seconds, though: Peterson started the bottom of the eighth by surrendering consecutive doubles to the wonderfully named Weston Wilson and the pedestrianly named Buddy Kennedy, and just like that we were tied. As had happened in Saturday’s heartbreaker, the Mets were tied and looking at losing the lead with a runner on third and one out. Peterson completed his work by getting Kyle Schwarber to ground out; then Phil Maton did what Reed Garrett couldn’t on Saturday and got the Mets out of the eighth with the tie intact.
It was still tied in the bottom of the ninth with Edwin Diaz pitching, wearing 21 and no name in honor of Roberto Clemente. Francisco Lindor had done the same in what became a cameo, as he wisely removed himself after an inning of work showed his back wasn’t up to the task; yes, you can now officially worry.
Diaz struck out Bryce Harper and went to work on Nick Castellanos, with Francisco Alvarez looking particularly demonstrative behind the plate, emphasizing where he wanted Diaz to locate his pitches. I noticed that; I also noticed that Diaz kept putting the high fastball, the waste pitch meant to change a hitter’s eyeline, at the top of the strike zone instead of above it where Alvarez seemed to want it.
Castellanos managed to serve one of those not-high-enough fastballs to right for a one-out single; Diaz struck out Alec Bohm but paid no attention to the lead-footed Castellanos, who alertly swiped second as J.T. Realmuto came to the plate. Diaz threw two high-90s fastballs to Realmuto to get ahead 0-2 and Alvarez indicated he wanted the next one up and out of the strike zone — the pitch Diaz hadn’t been locating as desired all inning.
He didn’t locate this one either — the ball was where Realmuto could handle it, he smacked it to right-center, and the Mets had lost.
Wonderful baseball game; too bad about that asterisk.
Two bullpen losses in a row. At its best ours has been mediocre. Losing 2 of 3 to Philly isn’t a disaster but winning a blowout and losing two winnable games – you’d like to think we could split those two at least – isn’t great either. Fingers crossed with Lindor.
There’s nothing to worry about with Lindor. If he doesn’t come back 100%, then the Mets don’t make the postseason. And I still maintain Iglesias isn’t an everyday player.
No McNeil and Lindor means Iglesias and Acuna need to be. So no more Cadillacing into second base on hits into the gap; it hurts your back.
Eddy Alvarez bringing out some of his newfound, late-career pop from AAA would be helpful, too.
Lindor absent plus bullpen failure = loss of two winnable games.
“Wonderful baseball game; too bad about that asterisk.”
The 2 losses reminded me of losing to the Royals in 2015 with the Mets’ leads and the Royals constantly coming back by taking advantage of everything to carve out late runs, like Hosmer essentially stealing home for the game-tying run, like “lead-footed” Castellanos stealing 2B to take scoring position for the game-winner.
The Phillies deserve to win the division this year. Give and take: Remember, the Mets caught back up to the Braves in large part because the Phillies won their Braves series 3-1 in much the same way they won this series 2-1. The 4 games against the Phillies behind the Nationals are going to be a steep, crumbling, avalanching mountain. And we don’t know if the Mets will have to make that climb without their guide. That they’re must-win games goes without saying. The rest of the way, they all are.
“the Padres and D-Backs won”
1 run, extra inning wins for both. The wildcard race is being decided on fine lines. The Mets need to win these close games. Along with everything else, the Padres and Diamondbacks wins added to the “heartbreak” because an advantage the Mets have in their back pocket is one of them will lose at least 2 games in their season-ending series while the Mets have the tie-breaker on both. But that advantage goes away if they pull too far ahead of the Mets.
What strong contenders the Mets are competing against for a wildcard, and what a great achievement winning just the 3rd wildcard will be.
Lindor’s MRI came back clean. Day-to-day, he says 2-5 days.
Although he said he’s been dealing with it for a few weeks, so I wonder if that coincided with his cold-ish streak. We’ll see, but good that it doesn’t appear serious.
Good for the long term if it means avoiding a repeat of Wright’s end of career. But if Lindor’s speed up and brake on 2B exacerbated something that he’s been dealing with for a few weeks, whatever assurance from the MRI, that still worries me that the back strain is a progression of a chronic condition. He is in his 30s.
What’s not good for the short term is that 2-5 days is a big chunk of the 13 games and 14 days (including today) left in a very tight race. Given that Lindor’s been dealing with a back issue for weeks that he just made significantly worse, I assume he’ll still be reduced and fragile after 2-5 days.
Maybe he didn’t slide because he was afraid he would hurt his back, which it appears he has been dealing with recently.