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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 13 May 2024 2:20 pm Dull and dreary turned to bright and shiny in an instant — the very last instant. If you’re gonna make such a switch, latest inevitably proves better than never.
Had Brandon Nimmo not swung and connected for the walkoff two-run homer that transformed a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 victory, dull and dreary was prepared to carry the night Sunday. Dull and dreary has been this Met season’s signature, even if the signature’s i’s have been dotted and t’s have been crossed at brief intervals with improbable swings like Nimmo’s. There were Pete Alonso and Tyrone Taylor pushing the Mets into the win column for the first time all year, against the Tigers. There was Mark Vientos, just visiting from Syracuse for a weekend, taking it to the Cardinals. There was flu-ridden Francisco Lindor exposing the Cubs to whatever had been but was no longer ailing him. For a team that you’d think is always one out from being no-hit, the Mets do manage to craft some dramatic wins.
No Met in 2024, however, has executed a swing quite like the one Brandon took to redirect Sunday night’s slog toward oblivion and lead it to jubilation. No Met charged with coming to bat in a ninth inning seemed so close to physically unable to play status, like one false move and we’d next see him in July, as Brandon. Whatever happened to him Saturday looked like nothing when it happened, which is usually the most dangerous injury a Met can court. In this case, there was an at-bat that left him with intercostal irritation. Intercostal is a cousin of oblique, an anatomical element recognized by Mets fans as “I don’t know what that is, exactly, but goddamn, I don’t want to hear it mentioned in the context of any Met having one.”
So Brandon didn’t start on Sunday, but he swore he was fine, he was available. The only thing Carlos Mendoza let him do was sit on the bench and chat with the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth, which for most of us would loom as a tougher assignment than facing a lineup topped by Ronald Acuña, Jr. To stage a conversation with Karl Ravech & Co, one would have to listen to Karl Ravech. Anybody watching at home would agree that itself tempts exit velocity. ESPN’s doing the game? How fast can I get to the radio?
But Brandon’s a good egg, a good sport, a great fount of soundbites. Ask him anything, he’ll transcend cordiality. Inject a pretape of his mom Patti into the segment — it was Mother’s Day, ESPN wanted us to know — and Brandon will aw-shucks it from here to Cheyenne. On a nationally cablecast ballgame, Brandon Nimmo emerged as America’s favorite son.
Then Brandon removed his microphone and the Mets returned to mute. Luis Severino was providing his usual competent complement of innings, and his teammates were depriving him of meaningful support, as is their custom. The first Brave to score was Jarred Kelenic, who gave the Mets an eyeful of “you could had this” with a solo blast in the second. The next two Atlanta runs were carried by the feet of Zack Short, the very same Zack Short who was a Met approximately ten minutes before, and a Red Sock maybe thirty seconds after that. Short, who scored two runs in ten games as a Met, had just been grabbed by the Braves to fill the role of current L.A. Angel Luis Guillorme, whose tribute video never saw the light of CitiVision. Pretty much every Met you never thought you’d miss dating back to Charlie O’Brien, Bill Pecota and Mike Remlinger becomes a Brave, and all of them take a turn as Travis d’Arnaud.
Bryce Elder didn’t exactly stymie the Mets à la Max Fried Saturday or Charlie Morton Friday. The best strategy is often letting the Mets stymie themselves. Pete Alonso slipped through the offensive miasma to single home a run in the third and a double another in come the sixth. And both Severino, in the fifth, and Reed Garrett, in the seventh, picked off Acuña. Two pickoffs of the first-ever 40-70 man (without giving up a homer to him, either) seemed a perfect way to commemorate a jaw-dropping incident that happened at Shea Stadium exactly 54 years earlier.
On May 12, 1970, Ray Sadecki allowed three stolen bases…all at the same time. It was the second inning versus the Expos. Bob Bailey was on third, John Bateman was on second, Ron Fairly was on first. Then Sadecki went into his full windup — “all I was concentrating on was getting out the batter” — and Bailey slid home, Bateman ran to third and Fairly arrived safe at second. An honest-to-goodness triple steal, perpetrated by three baserunners who, Montreal Gazette columnist Ted Blackman observed, “couldn’t beat Jesse Owens even today”.
I learned of this episode of derring-do (and do twice more) from “John Bateman,” a Twitter/X account run by actor Ken Webster, who’s been animating the late journeyman catcher on social media for more than a decade. I wanted to “like” the post, except a Met pitcher had given up three stolen bases on one pitch and 54 years later, I found that hard to approve. I felt better about appreciating Bateman’s/Webster’s this-date-in nugget once I looked up the box score on Baseball-Reference and discovered the Mets won the game, 8-4.
I felt worse about the game of May 12, 2024, once Short scored the go-ahead run for Atlanta in the eighth inning. We won a game when we gave up a triple steal? Karma had taken its time, but had hunted us down at last. Two pickoffs of Ronald Acuña, Jr., and we were poised to lose.
Or so I was absolutely sure.
Edwin Diaz pitched the top of the ninth with the Mets behind. Perhaps because it was an ESPN game and their director isn’t as invested in spotlighting Edwin the way SNY’s John DeMarsico is, but the pouring on of Sugar in a non-save situation seemed like a non-event. Sugar’s outings have become almost exclusively non-events since his health — knock wood — became a non-issue. The Mets lack save situations. I wouldn’t reverse Kelenic-for-Diaz, even if it retroactively meant we never had to involve ourselves with Robinson Cano, but it struck me how ordinary an appearance by one of baseball’s most electrifying closers had become. Ordinary for his team had become dull and dreary. Why should Diaz be immune?
Yet let it be noted that Edwin Diaz retired the Braves in order and kept their lead to one run, setting the stage for Jeff McNeil to start the bottom of the ninth by initiating the drag bunt story hour. Well, it was a story for a second, but it shouldn’t be forgotten. The former National League champion of batting (speaking of Mets giving off fewer sparks since 2022) did what he had to do to get himself on base. He put the ball on the bat, and his bat put the ball somewhere no Brave could get it.
McNeil was batting eighth, which meant a catcher was scheduled to follow him. With Francisco Alvarez on the IL, catchers bat ninth for the Mets in 2024 like pitchers batted ninth for the Mets in 1970. Tomás Nido was up. Omar Narváez began the night in the nine-hole. Mendoza, sensing it was one of those nights, got desperate and creative every chance he got. More desperate than creative. He used Nido to pinch-hit for Narváez in the seventh in a righty-lefty exchange. Omar had made two outs already. Tomás made one in his stead.
Now, in the ninth, Mendoza relayed instructions to Nido to bunt. Not the kind of bunt McNeil manufactured, just something that would move Jeff along. It worked. Squirrel scurried to second. Nido was out. Of course he was. He’s too considerate to make Narváez feel any worse.
The most creative thing Mendoza might have done all night was constructing the very top of his lineup. Was that DJ Stewart in left? It was. Nimmo, after all, was sitting in deference to that intercostal business. Was that DJ Stewart batting leadoff? It had been, and it wasn’t a bad idea, DJ being synonymous with OBP as he is. As recently as the seventh inning, right after Nido pinch-hit and struck out, Stewart walked.
Desperate for runs, the manager asked intercostal recoveree Brandon Nimmo if he was up for pinch-running. Nimmo didn’t want to sit in the first place, so he said, one assumes, “darn’ tootin’ I am!” Brandon got as far as third base without hurting himself. Then he took over for Stewart in left and caught two balls without hurting himself. Had there been genuine concern that sending Nimmo to the plate would irritate the intercostal any further, it didn’t matter. Desperate for offense or at least the “traffic” he’s always referencing on the basepaths (where it tends to stall), Mendoza had already substituted in every non-pitcher at his disposal, which is to say Nido, Tyrone Taylor and Joey Wendle. Desperation doesn’t leave a lot of options.
So Brandon Nimmo batted with one out and a runner on second. He didn’t hurt himself. He helped the Met cause as much as any erstwhile pinch-runner ever has at the end of a game…which is to say as much as Esix Snead.
Esix Snead! If you remember Esix Snead at all, you remember Esix Snead for exactly one thing: a three-run walkoff extra-inning home run versus the Expos on September 21, 2002, ending a game that Snead entered in the eighth as a pinch-runner. Snead stuck around to play the outfield until he could take the swing that would win the game in the eleventh.
How rarely does a Met pinch-runner become a Met home run-hitter in the same game? Probably not as rarely as a successful triple steal occurs, but it’s pretty unusual. Another trip to Baseball-Reference reveals no Met had ever gone from PR to HR until Wally Backman did it in 1982. Wally’s was ITP, or inside-the-park. Three years later, Howard Johnson’s pinch-running appearance at Wrigley begot a tenth-inning home run that stood up as the game-winner. In the summer of 1986, when almost nothing went wrong, Mookie Wilson homered one inning after running for Kevin Mitchell at Olympic Stadium (built after Montreal won the rights to host the 1976 Olympiad, which was announced on the very same day the Expos pulled their triple steal), part of a seven-run uprising that guaranteed a Met win. Others on the pinch-runner home run list nobody had bothered to look up until a few minutes after Brandon Nimmo batted Sunday: Brian McRae, Eric Valent, Jason Pridie, Tommy Pham (just last year, against the Braves). But Snead’s was the only homer by a heretofore pinch-runner that served to win a game on the spot.
The spot is now shared by Brandon Nimmo. He swung. He stayed in one piece. The ball didn’t stay in the park. Once the pitch he whacked from Alan Minter, lefty triumphing over lefty, landed in the Atlanta bullpen, Brandon’s intercostal became fair game for his celebrating teammates and the electricity appeared back on at Citi Field. The light show the A/V squad usually reserves for Diaz’s entrances accented Nimmo’s trip around the bases. “What a win for the New York Mets!” Howie Rose exclaimed, and who could argue? Whether it definitively disrupts the dull and dreary nature of the season is the next game’s guess. Sunday night, it was as “what a win!” as a win could be.
When Esix Snead launched his home run in 2002, he did so in The Esix Snead Game. There was only one. It’s harder to label this most recent win The Brandon Nimmo Game because Brandon Nimmo’s put his imprint on a lot of games, and been in tons more. Intercostal willing, Nimmo will crack the franchise’s all-time Top 20 games played chart in a couple of weeks. His contract suggests he’ll rise high in those rankings, nearing Ed Kranepool territory. Nimmo’s only ever been a Met and, with any luck, will never be anything but a Met.
There’s something about a lifetime one-team player. At worst, you become what they called in The Shawshank Redemption an institutional man. When the institution’s the Mets, that can skew the player’s perspective. I noticed a difference between how Nimmo and J.D. Martinez responded to reporters’ questions following the Mets not quite getting no-hit on Saturday. Martinez, whose home run ensured the Mets would avoid that delightful slice of history, didn’t seem terribly impressed that his longball pulled the Mets from the edge of infamy. Nimmo, however, appeared at least a little grateful that his ballclub did not wind up roadkill as the Braves rushed to dogpile their several pitchers who would have thrown all those zeroes. Nimmo, who’s seen plentiful amounts of fire and rain since 2016, knows from watching the Braves hop around at the Mets’ expense. Likewise, on Sunday night, I heard Brandon acknowledge that it was of significance that the Mets didn’t get swept by the Braves. I thought about Kranepool, who’d been a Met since the first ghastly year of 1962, being a lot happier about the Mets finally reaching .500 in May of 1969 than Tom Seaver, who famously dismissed the idea that breaking even for one day should have been anybody’s goal here. Comparisons to lovable losers weren’t Tom’s bag. But Ed knew something about the institution. So does Brandon.
Not getting no-hit. Not getting swept. Not getting hurt. Not dull and dreary at every last instant. What a win for the New York Mets.
by Jason Fry on 12 May 2024 5:05 am There’s honestly not a lot of insight to be had comparing a mediocre baseball team with a very good one. Very good teams make plays and get hits when it matters; mediocre ones sometimes do and sometimes don’t. Christian Scott, forced to cosplay as a chimney sweep for his first-ever Citi Field start, was pretty good: He showed an electric fastball, was aggressive in tackling the Braves’ lineup, and most importantly he threw strikes. Honestly, he made one bad pitch all afternoon, a fastball to Orlando Arcia that got too much plate and so became a souvenir.
But Max Fried was better, using his devastating curveball to set up all his other pitches. The Mets ground out some good ABs, leaving Fried out of pitches and forced to depart after seven despite not having allowed a hit. And with less exemplary glovework from Atlanta, the Mets might have been right in the game: Michael Harris II made two spectacular plays in center to deny extra-base hits to Pete Alonso and J.D. Martinez, Austin Riley snagged a low liner at third, and the Braves made all the routine plays.
After Fried’s departure, Joe Jimenez staggered through the eighth without an effective slider but survived, and with two outs in the ninth only Martinez stood between Raisel Iglesias and completing a combined no-hitter. After a near-miss in Friday night’s ninth, Martinez didn’t miss this time, slamming a homer over Ronald Acuna Jr.‘s head to spare the Mets the humiliation of a hitless day. Brett Baty came to the plate as the tying run and hit a ball solidly, but Harris was there in center, as he generally is, and the ballgame was over.
The Mets weren’t no-hit, which is good, but humiliation was still the order of the day. The Mets somehow took two of three in Atlanta last month, but these first two games at Citi Field (with the Phillies’ juggernaut in waiting, oh joy) have followed the usual formula for Mets-Braves tilts. These games feel like a living-room dispute between brothers on a rainy weekend afternoon, with Mom responding to cries of alarm to find the older brother has stiff-armed the younger with a hand on the forehead, leaving the junior partner in the dispute to flail impotently at his tormenter, unable to land a blow and dissolving into tears of rage. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but the Braves are playing .750 ball against the Mets in recent seasons, and the sample size is no longer small.
The Mets are trying to have it both ways this year, developing the young players they hope will be the future of the franchise while positioning themselves on the periphery of the wild-card race and hoping to get lucky. The jury’s out on the former but the latter looks increasingly unlikely; more and more I wish the Mets would quit kidding themselves and go all-in on the future. Instead they’re caught in between, and that’s a recipe for more sour afternoons spent facing futility and a chance of humiliation.
by Greg Prince on 11 May 2024 6:12 am Good call Friday night wearing the reimagined (apparently during a bout of gloom) black jerseys in which the Mets wordmark, the player name and the numbers on the front and back sink forlornly into the fabric as if they followed Carole King’s example of staying in bed all morning just to pass the time. The rain was an apt touch as well.
The Mets started their game late, fell behind fairly early and feinted toward catching up late, only to fall to their ostensible archrivals from Atlanta. Competitively, the Braves play in a different league, but the last time we vied for anything of substance, we vied with them. So humor us.
Jose Quintana had one bad inning, the third, but one bad inning is all it takes when it consists of giving up three home runs in a span of four batters, with a walk thrown in between dingers two and three. That’ll bury a team that can’t do anything against Charlie Morton. Morton went seven, sullied only by a solo blast off the stylish bat of Francisco Lindor in the seventh. At that point, it was 4-1. A rally-like series of plate appearances, highlighted by a ball struck by J.D. Martinez that for half-a-second appeared to be going out but sailed foul instead, made the final 4-2. Spiritually, it was mostly a shutout.
Quintana did correct himself in the fourth and fifth, and there was representative bullpen work from unusual suspects — Recidivist reliever Yohan Ramirez, doing his best Michael Tonkin impression, and recast starter Adrian Houser. There was Pete Alonso maintaining his newfound ability to make contact and reach base as a result. There was Brett Baty diving and tumbling over a rolled-up tarp to catch a foul pop, shaken in the process and pinch-hit for shortly after, but reportedly unharmed by the encounter with some padding by the third base railing.
Mostly there was dampness, defeat and those dreadful black jerseys, suitable for mourning. The Mets, in conjunction with Nike, Fanatics and Grim Rob Manfred, removed the white outline that made the alternate tops comparatively cheerful in both their original incarnation and their reboot a few years ago. This version resembles those knockoffs at your local Bob’s Stores you’d buy in the late ’90s because they said Mets and it was close enough. Soon the Mets will be wearing the unlicensed Bugs Bunny in sunglasses t-shirts that spring up for sale on Opening Day in the parking lot, except they’ll be licensed and expensive.
Today, current avatar of hope Christian Scott will make his Citi Field debut. On the first occasion he was a major leaguer in his home park, he suited up in black. On the mound, he will wear dark gray and “NYC” across his chest. If he hangs in there, maybe someday he’ll get to dress like a Met.
by Jason Fry on 8 May 2024 12:39 am Baseball makes no sense.
Just ask the Mets, who went into the second inning at Busch Stadium Tuesday night down 3-0 to the Cardinals, as Jose Butto couldn’t command his fastball and St. Louis was whacking his pitches all over the ballpark. It sure looked like Monday night’s relatively streamlined, professional win was the exception to the recent rule and the Mets were once again mired in the frustrations that dominated the Tampa Bay series.
So of course the Mets went ham in the top of the fifth. Jeff McNeil led off with a little soft single that Nolan Arenado couldn’t convert into an out despite that being pretty much what Arenado does. Tomas Nido singled and Brandon Nimmo unloaded, tomahawking a Miles Mikolas slider into the stands to tie the game. And the Mets weren’t done: Starling Marte doubled, Francisco Lindor singled, and Pete Alonso sent a double the opposite way for a two-run lead. Yes, the same Alonso who spent three days at the Trop looking like a boy who’d lost his puppy and so was benched for his sanity once the Mets arrived in Missouri. A J.D. Martinez single brought in one more run and the Mets somehow led 6-3. It was one of those exhalation innings that teams and tortured fanbases both need every now and then – an explosion that erases a long track record of frustration and leaves everything thinking, “Oh, so this is what it’s like to actually breathe – I’ve missed this.”
The Mets made defensive changes in the bottom of the fifth, primarily getting poor DJ Stewart out of left before some horrific pratfall put him on the IL. That was wise but also a reminder that there was a lot of ballgame to go, and ample time for things to go wrong.
Said things went wrong when Sean Reid-Foley got in trouble in the seventh and Jose Lopez arrived with two on, one out and the tying run on first. Lopez immediately yielded a single to Ivan Herrera, who’d come in when Martinez’s backswing broke Willson Contreras’ forearm on a gruesome case of catcher’s interference. Bases loaded, Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt coming to the plate, and once again nobody with Mets rooting interests could get enough air.
But remember our thesis: Baseball makes no sense. Lopez left a sinker up in the zone to Arenado, who fouled it back and then popped out. He then left a slider up in the zone to Goldschmidt, who fouled it back and then struck out. I was simultaneously relieved and pretty sure I didn’t want to know how many alternate universes featured Arenado and/or Goldschmidt not missing those pitches.
In the ninth, Alonso took MLB newcomer Chris Roycroft deep: reassurance for the suddenly doubt-stricken Polar Bear, insurance for the Mets. SNY had a good time showing Roycroft’s family in the stands: They were gleeful when Roycroft struck out Francisco Lindor, then turned philosophical when the Alonso AB had a different conclusion. That endeared them to me, despite the ample Cardinal red and baby blue on display: Every pitcher winds up turning around in dismay after the occasional pitch that didn’t do what it should have, and while that was Roycroft’s first such pitch in the big leagues, it won’t be his last. His cheering section were also baseball lifers, and they knew this perfectly well.
Anyway, it was 7-4, but the question was how the Mets were going to secure three highly necessary remaining outs with no properly rested, reliable relievers. (Oh wait, there was Adrian Houser, ha ha ha.) Carlos Mendoza opted for Adam Ottavino, whose recent workload was more than 50 pitches, and it was buckle-up time.
Ottavino retired Brendan Donovan, but Lars Nootbar homered, Herrera singled and Arenado walked on four pitches.
The bad news about Ottavino was he was a) obviously gassed and b) therefore stuck with a disobedient sweeper. The good news about Ottavino is that he may or may not get beaten but I’ve never seen him panic: He goes about his business with an Eeyore-like affect and a certain existential heaviness that comes from knowing the universe has already decided the outcome and he’s just along for the ride.
Fortunately for Ottavino and for us, Goldschmidt was the next hitter and he’s lost in the same nightmare that has been plaguing Alonso, a deep slump that leaves a hitter feeling like he might as well be playing blindfolded. Ottavino threw two sinkers more or less down the middle, almost erased Goldschmidt on a third that sat just wide, gave him something to think about with a changeup, and then threw a fastball that Goldschmidt couldn’t have hit with an oar. He tried anyway and missed.
That left Alec Burleson, who hung in there as Ottavino sent everything but a bunch of balled-up hot dog wrappers and the kitchen sink his way, hoping some offering – any offering – would yield an out and let Ottavino go collapse in a dark room until Friday. The fifth pitch was a sinker up and away at the top of the zone; Burleson’s bat ticked it backwards, it found Nido’s mitt and went no farther, and the Mets had won.
Won using the usual blueprint, of course: Starter gets clobbered, team that can’t hit ambushes opponent, slugger lost in the weeds staggers out of them blinking and amazed, reliever goes unpunished for throwing two hangers, exhausted reliever finds just enough in himself to push the car into the service station.
What do you mean that’s not the usual blueprint? Hey, take it up with the powers that be — I already told you baseball makes no sense.
by Greg Prince on 7 May 2024 9:40 am After a weekend when the Mets sought out and discovered multiple ways to lose in St. Petersburg, it was a pleasant change of pace to watch them figure out how to win one in St. Louis.
They sat Pete Alonso. Given the Polar Bear’s roughly 2-for-a-thousand slump, they kind of had to.
They inserted DJ Stewart in Alonso’s stead, and though Stewart is not a first baseman, he played first base without incident and knocked in the night’s first run, in the first inning.
They stuck Jeff McNeil in left field, one of the positions he used to fill with a flourish, and he made a trademark Flying Squirrel catch.
They had Tomás Nido collecting two hits, bunting a runner over once and not getting stolen on.
They generated two runs in the fifth as one imagines the Gashouse Gang might have in the same town ninety years ago, minus dust or fuss: a single; a single; taking advantage of an outfield error on the second single to grab another ninety feet apiece; a run-scoring groundout to the right side that drove the lead runner home and moved up the trail runner as well; a sacrifice fly to bring home the second of two runs and build a 3-0 lead.
They relied on Sean Manaea for six innings. The first five yielded zeroes. The sixth ended tied on three runs scored, but gosh it was nice to see only one walk. No wonder it was the kind of start labeled quality.
They took back the edge as soon as Brandon Nimmo came up in the seventh. Nimmo has mostly walked and gotten hit when not batting in tough luck in 2024. The clubhouse’s elder statesMet is still capable of getting hold of one and nobody getting hold of it. When he did on Monday, the ball he whacked didn’t stick around and the visitors were up, 4-3.
They slipped Alonso back in for defense as the evening progressed (with Stewart moving to left, McNeil to second and Joey Wendle to towel off early), which was a heady maneuver, both because Pete has played lots of first base and he shouldn’t sit and stew over his hitting for too long.
They deployed a bullpen that’s earned plaudits and was ready to deliver results. Jake Diekman gave up an isolated double, Adam Ottavino just one single, and Edwin Diaz nothing at all.
The closer had a save. The starter had a win. The team was victorious. It’s been known to happen. It just did.
by Jason Fry on 6 May 2024 8:35 am I don’t know if therapy rays are actually a thing (they probably are), but I’ve been to Tropicana Field, which has the affect of the world’s largest basement rec room and smells vaguely like pool cleaner, and the most interesting part of the stadium is the oft-shown pool where cownose rays swim around in a circle. You can reach in and pet the rays, and while I doubt it’s a fulfilling experience for them — this classic Onion bit comes to mind — I found it mildly diverting.
Not mildly diverting? Sunday’s Mets-Rays matinee at the Trop — or, for that matter, the entire series. Or for that matter, the Mets going to the Trop at all — I believe Gary Cohen said the Mets are winless in St. Petersburg since the reign of Elizabeth I. Sunday’s game brought to mind Wes Westrum and his go-to postgame comment: “Oh my God, wasn’t that awful?” You could see the disaster brewing early on, and when it arrived it still managed to be horrible, and now I never want to think about it again.
The Mets jumped out to an instant 2-0 lead on a Francisco Lindor homer — Lindor, at least, looks like he’s shaken off his woes at bat — but Luis Severino, like Jose Quintana before him, followed up a terrific game with a clunker, walking the ballpark. The teams went back and forth, exchanging leads or perhaps indicating they didn’t deserve them — the Rays are lucky they faced the Mets in one of their valleys, as the home team played both lethargically and dopily this weekend. Mets pitchers seemed studiously uninterested in looking runners back to their bases or even admitting they existed, letting basestealers run wild — at one point Lindor spoke for us all when he smashed his glove into the ground repeatedly in teeth-grinding annoyance. Pete Alonso looks absolutely lost at the plate, which because baseball is cruel of course meant he kept getting handed bases-loaded situations where he looked helpless. Even Brett Baty suffered, coming off his best defensive game with one where you could see him thinking again in the field, something Baty should never be doing.
But perhaps we should save the biggest concern for Edwin Diaz. Diaz arrived for the ninth to protect a 5-4 lead and started off his day by throwing sliders: He threw 13 in a row, in fact. Which was sufficient to retire Richie Palacios and Isaac Paredes, but the Lucky 13th slider was a 3-2 pitch to Randy Arozarena that got too much plate, and which Arozarena clobbered into the stands. (After the game, Arozarena said he was looking for another slider. Gee, you think?) Diaz’s post-layoff fastball velocity is down, but the slider has also lacked that extra little bit of bite it needs, and it’s officially a problem.
Farce followed tragedy, as it does. The Mets got a 10th inning reprieve from the baseball governor when a crew-chief review revealed Brandon Nimmo had crossed first base as Yandy Diaz was letting a ball that looked like it was in his glove bounce on the ground, turning the third out of the inning into a momentary Mets lead. But we all knew it was not to last, not with the pitchers opting for nonviolent resistance in combatting enemy basestealing. With runners on first and third and nobody out Jonny DeLuca lofted a ball to center, where Harrison Bader decided it was best not to prolong everyone’s misery and so dove for a ball when he should have stayed on his feet. He missed it by at least the length of a cownose ray and the pain was over, or at least it was for another day.
by Greg Prince on 5 May 2024 1:31 am A dozen or so decades ago, the toast of New York National League baseball was a teetotaler projecting such a wholesome image, he was occasionally referred to in the press as the Christian Gentleman, though more readily as Matty or perhaps Big Six. Mostly, he was recognized as the indisputable ace of the Giants. His Hall of Fame plaque identifies him as Christy Mathewson, “greatest of all the great pitchers in the 20th century’s first quarter”. If your current New York National League franchise is winding down the first quarter of the next century by promoting a pitcher who puts a person in mind of Christy Mathewson, even a tiny little bit, it could be doing something right.
 Too soon? Granted, the link at this moment is no more than name deep. John McGraw deployed the Christian Gentleman? Carlos Mendoza had at his disposal Saturday night Christian Scott. They both pitch for NY in the NL, both use their right arm, and to suggest any further similarities, a lot of staying power will be required by the current model. Christy Mathewson won 373 games. Christian Scott has one no-decision.
Still, this young gentleman Christian…I couldn’t help but notice the glove he wore during his first major league start had “Psalm 118:14” imprinted upon it. For those scoring at home, “The Lord is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation,” or words to that effect, is the text of said Psalm, per what I will assume are informed sources I looked up online. The only so-called Bible I ever read with any regularity was the Bible of Baseball, a.k.a. the Sporting News, and by then, it covered other sports.
You have a brand new pitcher, one you’ve heard so much good about in a fairly short span, one you weren’t expecting to descend from the heavens/ascend from the minors so soon, you get curious about the kid. Unusual first name for a Met. Unusual inscription on his glove. Poise I can’t say I’ve seen in ages. The kid didn’t just appear to handle his assignment professionally. He looked like he was having fun out there, especially the way he made the strike zone his plaything. I know I was having fun watching him.
The first few batters Scott faced in St. Petersburg indicated a different story might unfold. Three consecutive hits, one run in, a Rays threat clear enough that it could be discerned on the back of their otherwise illegible jerseys. You didn’t need a scorecard to recognize Randy Arozarena coming up with runners on first and third and nobody out. The Mets’ early 1-0 advantage had already been thrown back into the water, and now their phenom was in danger of being filleted.
Eight pitches later, it was Arozarena who was gutted, striking out on a full-count four-seamer. A slider and double play grounder followed immediately thereafter. Onward Christian Scott! The neophyte succeeding as might a veteran spurred me to recall what Leo McGarry advised Jed Bartlet in the Book of Sorkin 2:1 (the first episode of the second season of The West Wing, that is):
“Act as if ye have faith and faith shall be given to you. Put it another way, fake it ’til you make it. You did good tonight.”
Escaping the first inning with limited damage was a great night’s work for your average 24-year-old whose previous experience in MLB was bupkis. But Scott, doing right by Zack Wheeler’s heretofore hard-to-fill 45, kept doing good. Inning after inning, the Rays didn’t touch Scott, much to the delight of his personal cheering section and vocal pockets of visiting New Yorkers at Tropicana Field. Unfortunately, Met batters treated Scott’s opposite number Zack Littell with disturbing reverence (or maybe the Rays’ starter was inspired by his own family in attendance). A pitching duel ensued, the kind in which Met hurlers seem to engage with regularity, either because we have great pitching and other teams have great pitching, or, you know, we spend too many nights not hitting. A team that scored seven in victory on Thursday and eight in defeat on Friday is certainly capable of generating offense. Let’s say Littell and Scott were equal to their respective tasks Saturday and leave getting hung up on our rampant scorelessness for another day.
Let’s also say Scott being a kid who comes to the majors and goes six-and-two-thirds giving up just that first-inning run and leaving only one baserunner behind for Reed Garrett to brush aside provides an incredible boost, even on an evening when the final score didn’t work out. Adam Ottavino competed like crazy in the eighth (with Adam Amin and Adam Wainwright on FOX offering narration worthy of October), but despite a genuinely Ordoñezesque 6-2 putout on Francisco Lindor’s part exemplifying strength and defense if not salvation, Otto couldn’t quite squirm out of his imperfect control. The Rays plated two runs on consecutive bases-loaded walks, the second of them issued by Sean Reid-Foley. The Mets were behind, 3-1, heading to the ninth, and against the Rays’ pen — or a Bic pen — that loomed as an insurmountable margin.
But between you and me, for one night, so what? The Mets’ top pitching prospect, who burst both into our collective consciousness and then onto the active roster faster than I can remember any top Met pitching prospect doing (don’t we usually have to devote a few months to wondering what’s taking so long to bring up the next savior?) pitched like he belonged at this level, pitched like you wanted to immediately calculate when his next start will be. Not too many pitchers look that good straight out of the box. Too many pitchers don’t look this good after years on the job. Such a performance should be a prime cause for faith among we who are practicing Metsopotamians. Seaver. Gooden. deGrom. We built this city on strikes and outs.
There’s no time like the present to embrace a future that rushes to meet you with such enthusiasm. This may very well be the time of Christian Scott. Who knew it would arrive so soon?
by Jason Fry on 3 May 2024 10:57 pm Jose Quintana reported for work without any of the essentials, got bombed, and the Mets fought back gallantly but it wasn’t enough, the end.
That would suffice for a bite-sized recap, I suppose — this felt like one of the 50 or 60 or however many it is games that you’re guaranteed to lose, with the only asterisk being that the Mets scored a bunch of runs.
The rest? I had trouble coming to any firm conclusions, not that any baseball fan with any sense should draw even mushy conclusions from a single game.
Quintana was bad; the last time we saw in him on a mound he was good as he’s ever been as a Met. So we’ll let that one slide as the kind of nightmare that afflicts every pitcher now and again. He’s no Adrian Houser, who at least for the moment has been demoted to member of the bullpen. Hopefully the Mets can get Houser straightened out to the point that we’re tempted to speak well of him; even as we’re praising Jose Butto and starry-eyed over Christian Scott despite his never having thrown a big-league pitch (or because of that fact), the Mets are going to need Houser to get anywhere this year. Just like they’ll need Tylor Megill, and David Peterson, and probably Joey Lucchesi and a bunch of others.
Brett Baty keeps growing. The prospect turned suspect turned something else hit a pair of home runs, the first of which vanished from view to land on a catwalk or vanish into a wormhole or who knows what, and made a couple of sparkling defensive plays, continuing to look sure-handed and aggressive in the field. Even if the Mets wind up without October plans, the Mets may look back on 2024 as a successful season if it’s a pivot point for Baty and his running buddy Francisco Alvarez, one that turns them into dependable big-league regulars. Which raises the question of why the Mets didn’t go for the trifecta and give Mark Vientos a full season to prove himself, but that’s an argument for another recap.
Starling Marte is such a curious player. The Mets’ mini-renaissance fizzled out when Marte broke his hand in late 2022, robbing them of not just a valuable bat but also a certain measure of intensity, and it’s been immensely reassuring to see him looking mostly like his old self again. That said, Marte is confounding in the moment. He can look so hopeless that you catch yourself wondering if he’s trying (he is, they all are, stop that), like he did in the final plate appearance against Tampa Bay, and then he’ll look locked in and deadly the next time up. Francisco Lindor is the same way, though even when slumping Lindor is clearly the captain of the infield and you can see his intensity in that regard, while Marte’s easy to miss out there in right field. It’s a curious case of perception, and baggage we bring with us, and I don’t have more to say about it at the moment except that I keep thinking about it.
The Rays’ City Connect uniforms have the same problem ours do — the designers appear not to have viewed them from a distance. The top of the ray on the hat is the Sunshine Skyway bridge, which I know very well as it was framed by my bedroom window when I was a teenager, yet that fun little detail is invisible unless the camera’s so zoomed in that all you’re looking at is the hat. The uniform has splashes of neon color, yet the numbers are dark voids. Seriously, why didn’t anyone stop the proceedings and say, “Hmm, maybe we should see how this design reads from the upper deck?”
There’s one difference, though: The Rays have won in their new alts, while the Mets have yet to. Grrr.
by Greg Prince on 2 May 2024 5:39 pm Francisco Lindor didn’t start Thursday afternoon’s game, much as he didn’t finish Wednesday night’s. He was said to be suffering from flulike symptoms. As someone who’s been enduring some of those myself, I can relate. I don’t have a Joey Wendle standing by to fill in for me, however. Wendle was an All-Star as recently as 2021, Lindor not since 2019. Without knowing anything else about their respective skill sets, you’d have to say shortstop was in good hands despite Francisco’s absence.
We know anything else. We know Wendle is…not an optimal infielder for nine innings this week, maybe not for any innings. Wendle had a rough defensive series, including on Thursday when he didn’t get what appeared to be a fairly routine forceout accomplished. It wasn’t as egregious as the double play attempt he made when a throw home was in order the other night, but it didn’t help. Wendle’s also had a rough offensive year. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for much else. The Mets must have seen something in Wendle in the offseason, something that still sparkled from that golden summer of 2021 when Joey was an apple of some American League decisionmaker’s eye.
Carlos Mendoza saw him and looked for a way to get Lindor in the game as soon as possible, congestion, coughing and runny nose notwithstanding. The usual starter replaced the caddy in the sixth inning, and not a sneeze too soon. The Mets had two runners on and trailed by three. If Lindor could stand, he could pinch-hit. He did and he doubled. The Mets, dressed as Mets for a change, were back in a game that seemed out of their grasp early — a nice way of saying Adrian Houser started — yet never got away. The Mets were down, 4-0 in the fifth when Brandon Nimmo and Starling Marte each singled in runs. The Cubs, who I’m as sick of as I am sick in general (how are four-game series considered short in the postseason when they are so endless in the regular season?), snuck one more onto the scoreboard. Enough with their catlike third baseman and their center fielder who touches bases with his batting helmet and their catchers who are immune to plate-blocking regulations. Enough with the pitcher who thinks New York is the place where Spider-Man lives.
Then along came Lindor, readied by the trainers and intestinal fortitude and whatever it took. Or maybe it was such a nice day he insisted on coming out to play. Whatever. Francisco, despite not having been chosen as an All-Star in this decade the way Joey’s been, was the upgrade needed in the sixth…and the eleventh.
In between, there was Nimmo tying the game by driving in Lindor rather than letting him come down with a chill from being left on base; there were familiar Met relievers — Jake Diekman, Reed Garrett, Edwin Diaz (2 IP!) — holding the fort; there was an unfamiliar Met reliever — Danny Young — doing his best; and there were a pair of 9-2 putouts, Marte to Omar Narváez, one that extinguished a rally in the tenth, the other that kept another, in the eleventh, from raging out of control. The Cubs had already taken a 6-5 lead, but if we’ve learned anything from how extras operate in the Rob Manfred Dystopia, it’s that one run is often the new no runs after nine.
Mendoza wanted this game enough to use Diaz for two frames for the first time since his return to health, to use Lindor when maybe Lindor could have used a day in bed, to use a pinch-runner, even. The Mets hadn’t pinch-run since the seventh game of the season, when Zack Short, now with the Red Sox, was our go-to pair of feet. Tyrone Taylor running for J.D. Martinez as the ghost in the tenth didn’t lead anywhere, but it certainly indicated an awareness that losing three out of four loomed as unacceptable…just as calling up top pitching prospect Christian Scott for Saturday to stretch out the rotation, give Luis Severino an extra day, and maybe find a path away from Houser’s every-fifth-day carousel of runners says something positive about priorities.
It all sounds great when it all works out. In the bottom of the eleventh, Brett Baty was abra-ca-dabra’d to second; Harrison Bader was HBP’d; and Lindor, flulike symptoms and all, did some slashing down the left field line. Here came the tying run, here came the winning run, here came the ice water pouring onto the sick guy. We’ll assume that was a gesture of celebratory affection rather than wishing Francisco into the CVS.
by Jason Fry on 1 May 2024 11:59 pm 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.
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