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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 1 May 2024 10:53 am That DJ Stewart home run in the sixth inning was a thing of beauty. Soaring on a friendly trajectory. Pulled, but easily fair. For all the times fans overreact to any ball in the air, the crowd occasionally gets one that makes its Pavlovian anticipation worthwhile.
Going, going…no doubt about it, it was gone. Stewart had hit a three-run homer up onto Carbonation Ridge, the Mets led the Cubs, 4-1, and if the relievers who followed Sean Reid-Foley — who’d followed five innings of Sean Manaea — could do their job, the rest of the way would be a breeze. One fine frame from Revelatory Reed Garrett, one perfecto from Adam Ottavino, and only a touch of eyewash splattered on Jorge Lopez confirmed Stewart as the main man of Tuesday night. The Mets won, 4-2. Stewart won another day of confidence from all who care about the Mets and, by extension, care about him.
“This is the big leagues,” was part of the slugger’s postgame summation. “You have to earn your opportunities every single day.” Those weren’t clichés being spouted by an athlete feigning humility. This guy is a Met in good standing because he has made himself one and keeps making himself one.
We care about DJ Stewart mainly because he occasionally hits home runs like the one he bopped off Adbert Alzolay. He hit them in a bulging bunch last August. This April, he spread four throughout the season’s first month. Evidence suggests he has a stroke built for Citi Field. Stewart’s sent nine balls rocketing out of what’s become his home park since arriving as a Met last July.
How much at home can a player with a big, shiny option sitting in his contractual status feel, though? DJ was the cult hero of the second half of a Met season for which there wasn’t much of a cult, roughly allegorical in 2023 to what Benny Agbayani was in 1999, except 1999 had stakes that piled as high as Shea’s Upper Deck, and by the time Stewart poured his version of Hawaiian Punch last year (the dude’s from Florida), it seemed to matter little what the Mets did or didn’t do. No way Stewart couldn’t have impressed his manager and general manager as the season wound down, but if Buck Showalter and Billy Eppler loomed as his champions, DJ could only hope they left nice notes on his behalf for Carlos Mendoza and David Stearns.
In 2024, Stewart might as well have been a blank slate to the new brain trust, and he was treated as such in Spring Training. Who are you and what are you to us? Stewart didn’t light up St. Lucie and barely made the team, reminded on his way north that it might be a short-term arrangement. Had J.D. Martinez been healthy, chances are it would have been reintroduced to Syracuse.
When the Mets opened their 2000 season in Japan, Agbayani had about as much rope available to him as Stewart did 24 years later. The roster was in flux, and what Benny did the year prior to the century’s turn was history. “After being a major contributor to the team the year before,” he wrote with Shayne Fujii in Big League Survivor, “it wasn’t much fun being the forgotten man on the bench.” He could come along to Tokyo, but it didn’t mean he should plan to stay at Shea. Even in those days, minor league options like the one attached to Agbayani gave general managers a rush of adrenaline. Still, as the Mets battled the Cubs approximately a million time zones from New York, Benny whacked a decisive extra-inning pinch-hit grand slam and began to cement his status as someone who looked better in a Mets rather than a Tides uniform. Injuries to a couple of teammates didn’t hurt Agbayani’s cause, either. Players considered on the fringe will take all the breaks they can get. Benny and the Mets stayed together for all of 2000, right through the World Series.
It’s only May, but Stewart is still here, and at least once, he’s been the undisputed star of a game. Roots get put down slowly until, suddenly, you’re part of the team permanently, or as permanently as an option will allow. Hitting has a lot to do with permanence.
Listening to DJ answer reporters’ questions Tuesday night, two of his responses caught my attention. One was that he said he holds himself to a high standard, “higher than a lot of people”. I don’t think he meant the standards he holds himself to are higher than those an Alonso or a Lindor have set for themselves. Rather, he doesn’t perceive many expect much out of a Stewart. Good for him exceeding such expectations.
The other answer encompassed a retracing of his steps since being told he couldn’t be guaranteed as permanent a role as would have liked. After acknowledging that J.D. Martinez makes the team “way better,” he added, “but I think I can do that as well in the situations and times I get opportunities,” and elaborated that it had been “very difficult just not knowing” where he and his loved ones were going to be spending their summer. “That’s the biggest thing, obviously.” If he was “frustrated,” it was from “wanting to know where my family’s going to be”.
Last season, amid his home run tear, DJ identified his daughter as a motivation for keeping him swinging through callups and send-downs: “I have a little girl, and diapers aren’t cheap.” He laughed when he said it, but it was a reminder, just as what he said Tuesday night was, that ballplayers are people, too, especially ballplayers who live their lives on the edge of the transactions column. If DJ Stewart isn’t hitting home runs for the New York Mets, I’m not as invested in his everyday problems and his internal struggles. But here he is, going deep now and then, and sounding like somebody I’m glad to know is getting something out of hanging in there.
A new episode of National League Town is out now.
by Jason Fry on 29 April 2024 11:41 pm I know you don’t want to hear it right now, but that was a great game.
It zipped along taut and tense, it featured a great pitchers’ duel and a brush with history, it turned on a player’s split-second decision, and it ended with a crushing reversal of fortune. If you were in the park — and I was — you got your money’s worth, even if the outcome wasn’t what you desired. It ought to say that on the back of the ticket: DESIRED OUTCOME NOT GUARANTEED.
Luis Severino does not get tossed on the pyre with the other feckless nibblers in the Mets’ rotation. He was aggressive and confident as he stalked history, taking a no-hitter to the 8th with enough gas in the tank to get there. That was drama enough, but the Mets were also clinging to a 1-0 lead, with the one courtesy of a leadoff Brandon Nimmo homer off the Cubs’ Jameson Taillon, who was almost as good as Severino and even more efficient. Losing the no-hitter wouldn’t just thwart Severino’s quest for a place in the history books; it would also threaten to turn the game around.
And that’s what happened, over two excruciating innings. Leading off the eighth, Severino walked Michael Busch on seven pitches, a couple of which didn’t go his way. He lost the no-hitter when Dansby Swanson served a single over the infield, moving Busch to second. Swanson was erased on what became a fielder’s choice, with batter Matt Mervis and Severino getting tangled up at first. First and third, one out, and the game in the balance.
I was horrified at the idea of facing Yan Gomes, who’s ruined things before for the Mets, and was actually relieved when Craig Counsell sent up Nick Madrigal instead. Severino’s third pitch to Madrigal broke his bat and came off said disassembling lumber at 49 MPH. It went to Joey Wendle, brought in as Mark Vientos‘s defensive replacement at third. To reiterate, 49 MPH exit velo, broken bat. Wendle had Busch dead to rights at home but decided to try and go around the horn for a double play. It didn’t work and the Cubs had tied it.
Even up in the 300 level, a fair distance from the field, there was muttering and sidelong looks and hands thrown skyward. A couple of hours later, here at my desk on recap duty, I just completed another round of muttering and sidelong looks and hands thrown skyward. Wendle is on the roster to play defense; if he’s going to make mental errors doing that … nope, I’ve got nothing. Luis Guillorme may have stopped hitting and apparently did something to wear out his welcome here, but he would have gone home 1,000 times out of 1,000.
Anyway. Wendle made a bad decision and the Cubs had tied it. Nimmo nearly restored order with a long fly to left off Mark Leiter Jr., but came up short. In the ninth, Edwin Diaz reported for duty and was once again not himself, which has to be at least cause for concern. Diaz’s fastball has been down a crucial couple of ticks and his slider has been spotty. Facing Christopher Morel with a runner on, Diaz got screwed on an 0-1 call that was a strike but was called a ball. That turned the at-bat; Morel worked the count to 3-1, got a fastball that sat in the middle of the plate (can’t pin that one on the ump) and hit it to Mars, turning a shocked Citi Field into Wrigley East as thousands of heretofore quiet Cubs fans began making racket like baseball-fan cicadas.
And you know what? As they should have. If you go from “oh God, we’re going to get no-hit” to “we took Edwin Diaz deep and we’re going to win,” you should make as much noise as you possibly can. You should jump around, wear a popcorn bucket on your head and scream WOOO till your vision goes blurry. Because baseball is cruel and games like that don’t come around very often.
Which leads me to an odd postscript: The Cubs have done this before to the Mets. In September 1975 Tom Seaver dueled with Rick Reuschel at a nearly empty Wrigley Field: Both pitchers worked into the ninth without allowing a run, Seaver without allowing a hit. With two outs, Seaver surrendered a single to right on an 0-2 pitch to Joe Wallis; the Mets lost in the 12th on a Skip Lockwood bases-loaded walk.
The Joe Wallis game. I knew about it, but only by that bit of shorthand — one of Seaver’s maddening near-misses in search of the first-ever Mets no-hitter. I didn’t know the rest of the story until I looked it up just now.
I bet that one hurt too.
by Greg Prince on 29 April 2024 11:41 am Intrigue lurked here and there among the Mets and Cardinals for seven innings Sunday afternoon. So, frankly, did boredom. As a baseball fan, you don’t want to dismiss a game with little scoring as boring; as a baseball fan, you are conditioned to appreciate tautness and tension, and there was a little much action between nothing happening to write this one off as action-challenged. Three fabulous catches by St. Louis left fielder Brendan Donovan reminded you of how Whitey Herzog’s Running Redbirds used to break our hearts. Conversely, Donovan couldn’t nab everything, and his teammates didn’t seem as fundamentally sound as Cardinals did in Herzog’s or Tony La Russa’s day (no complaints on that account)
I thought the visitors would bust things open in a flash since Jose Quintana was in trouble early, much like Jose Butto on Friday and Adrian Houser on Saturday, extending a discouraging trend. Quintana needed 26 pitches to get through the first. Given how he labored, it already felt like the Mets were losing. But they weren’t. There’s inevitably something encouraging about looking up at a game that doesn’t seem to be going well, pitched by a starter who’s discovered his groove, and realizing your team isn’t behind.
So intrigue lurked, even if it didn’t utterly capture the imagination. The Cardinals mounted a Whiteyball rally in the fifth: double; productive groundout; sac bunt, with the run scoring and the bunter reaching. Easy enough to figure the walls were about to cave in. Except Quintana’s groove wasn’t all that penetrable. Donovan the fielder didn’t drive Michael Siani the bunter in from second, and Willson Contreras the catcher lined out to end any further threat.
Lance Lynn, yet another unexciting veteran Cardinal starter who just gets the job done year after year, prevented the Mets from reaching the scoreboard in the fifth, just as he had in the first through fourth. But Francisco Lindor led off the sixth with a homer to left, knotting matters at one. Francisco has been inconsistent (or a little too consistent in the wrong direction) thus far this season, but whenever he homers, the Mets win. He’s either a differencemaker or a frontrunner.
Quintana was less a differencemaker than a maintainer of the status quo in the seventh. Seven innings for a Mets starter! The spiritual equivalent of a complete game in the 2020s! That pitch count that looked so high after one was tamed, so much so that you’re not gonna believe this, but Jose took the mound to start the eighth. Siani attempted another bunt. It didn’t work. One out. Donovan tried to conjure more bad juju. No dice on their side. Two out. The lefty pitcher got his lefty batters, doing his job and a tad more. With righty Contreras due up, this is where the modern manager comes in and takes the ball to bring in his percentage pitcher, in this case Adam Ottavino. Carlos Mendoza is too new to not be modern. Any individual promoted to major league manager these days is going to collaborative, collegial and ultimately predictable…or so you’d predict.
Thing is, we haven’t hung out with Mendoza to know him enough to predict anything. Sunday we got to know this much: he’s not always going to manage by the printout or PDF or whatever is transmitted to him by the analytics department. Let’s not automatically infer it’s baseball people versus the data scientists eternally dueling for the soul of the game. Let’s have faith that everybody pulls together to strategize for moments like these. But anybody watching was absolutely certain Mendoza was about to take out a starting pitcher who had retired his previous ten batters and looked capable of getting his eleventh. Quintana conveyed to his manager that he was good to keep going.
Mendoza said OK, it’s yours.
I have to admit I was a little sleepy around this point of the afternoon and wouldn’t have minded drifting off, but this woke me up. A manager leaving in a starter because the starter was rolling and the starter — a mature pitcher not obviously swept up in the moment (it’s not like this was Game Five of the World Series), but someone whose self-assessment you sensed you could trust, if you didn’t already trust your very own eyes — not wanting to leave.
OK, it was Quintana’s. And Quintana struck out Contreras to end the eighth, a performance that transcended mere satisfaction that a Met starter went deep. A Met starter was permitted to go deep. A Met manager acted situationally rather than automatically. One fewer third of an inning from a relief corps that, no matter how solid it’s been, pitches far too much felt WAY bigger than 0.1 IP in the box score.
It also felt pivotal, and not just for preventing a nap for this couch-glued observer. The last time the Mets faced the Cardinals in the postseason, there was a catch in left field even Brendan Donovan couldn’t have made. In the minutes after Endy Chavez did make it, the Mets loaded the bases with one out to preserve a 1-1 score. Of course Endy’s grab above the wall to rob Scott Rolen and then double up Jim Edmonds was supremely pivotal in the scheme of what you were sure was going to happen next, especially in the bottom of the inning. The Mets were going to take the lead. And of course two Mets batters (one of them Chavez) left those bases loaded, teaching us the harsh lesson that even the greatest of moments can’t ensure the thing you’d really prefer happen next.
What we wanted in the bottom of the eighth was for the Mets to build on the momentum Quintana and Mendoza had provided them. Sure enough, Lindor walks and steals second, and Pete Alonso walks, and D.J. Stewart moves them over with a double play ground ball that second baseman Nolan Gorman can turn into only an out at first — Redbird keystone predecessor Paul De Jong would have made that play and simultaneously driven in three Cardinal runs. We have two runners in scoring position, only one out, and secret weapon hiding in plain sight Tyrone Taylor up. How can our righteous cause fail?
By Taylor grounding to shortstop Masyn Wynn, who’s playing in and cuts off the grounder and fires it to the plate in plenty of time to throw out Lindor. You were disappointed Francisco didn’t score. You just hoped he didn’t hurt himself sliding into the catcher (he didn’t). After that best chance went by the wayside, Jeff McNeil grounded out, and the immediate momentum from Quintana staying in was over.
Yet its long-term impact lingered. I won’t go so far as to say I didn’t care whether the Mets won, but the little win within the day’s battle, with the manager triumphing over rote management and the pitcher validating his confidence, would be consolation enough for me if we couldn’t get what we were looking for. Had to keep looking for it, though. Ottavino’s warmups from the eighth would be relegated to dry hump status (thanks, Mickey Callaway, for planting that phrase in my head) and Edwin Diaz would come in for the ninth. Diaz didn’t deliver nine sliders for nine strikes and exit to an overwrought light show, but he did put down the Cardinals in order. Matthew Liberatore, who had entered in the eighth to face McNeil, stayed in for the ninth and successfully worked around a one-out single to Mark Vientos.
Liberatore and Vientos. Remember those names.
Extra innings appeared, as did a phantom at second base. It wasn’t De Jong the Metkiller of recent yore, thank goodness, just one of those pesky ghost runners. Four years into this contrivance, and I’m finally unsurprised by their existence. I’ll get back to you around 2030 regarding the DH. Diaz threw twenty pitches in the ninth, so he wasn’t sticking around. Reed Garrett was on, which meant you expected Reed Garrett to be on, as he is, after all, the Reed Garrett, the lone reliever to hop off the Syracuse-to-LaGuardia loop and make himself vital in Flushing. Delightfully, the ghost runner faded into oblivion as the Cardinals could push the specter no further than third.
Revelatory Reed Garrett, you’ve done it again.
Now it was the Mets’ turn to trot somebody who didn’t belong on second to second and take advantage of this inane get-it-over-with rule. Liberatore, who was apparently the Cardinals’ only available reliever, stayed on and showed no reason he shouldn’t have. The Mets made nothing of the manufactured threat. It was off to the eleventh. Ostensibly, I was rooting for the Mets to win soon. In my heart, I wanted this game that was making the most of its intrigue to not end. Usually I lean that way to spite Rob Manfred (like he cares what happens in a baseball game), but Sunday, I just wanted to keep watching.
The top of the eleventh encapsulated the Cardinals we saw all afternoon pretty well. There was Siani on second, out of thin air. There was Donovan, back to haunt us, with single to right to score Siani. There was a relay into the infield that nailed a less-than-alert Donovan, because in addition to the Cardinals not packing an adequate quantity of bullpen arms, they didn’t bring their fundies. There was Contreras walking. There was Nolan Arenado flying into shallow left. There was Contreras getting doubled off first in some odd tribute to Jim Edmonds in Game Seven of 2006. Edmonds at least had the excuse that Endy made an unprecedented, unbelievable, unmatched catch and followed it with a devastating throw. Contreras simply didn’t seem to have any idea how many outs there were. There were one when Arenado swung. Once Contreras was doubled off, there were three.
It was shame Revelatory Reed had been tagged, however lightly. The Cardinals were ahead, 2-1, and I was briefly transported back to another NLCS, 1999’s, Game Five. It was the top of the fifteenth inning, day long turned into night, a permanent Mets-Braves deadlock of 2-2 at last broken when Keith Lockhart tripled home Walt Weiss. Damn, I thought then, the Mets could actually lose. For fourteen-plus innings, I hadn’t considered the possibility. The Mets scoring, something they hadn’t done since the first, was no longer optional. We had to get at least one run. We got two. Had Todd Pratt not tackled Robin Ventura, we would have gotten five, but it’s a better story this way, I keep telling myself.
The stakes weren’t as high in the sunshine of April 2024 as they were amid the rains of October 1999, but another of baseball’s charms is the sport’s ability to timeshift the longtime viewer. Back to the present day, with Liberatore the Cardinals’ forever pitcher and DJ Stewart the ghost runner (ghost chugger?) on second. Making something out of this Manfred-rigged opportunity was imperative. Again, I was asking for just one run. I wanted a tie in the interim, and continuation of this contest into perpetuity.
Taylor grounded out in that helpful way Taylor has of doing things. Stewart moved to third. McNeil lined out. Stewart stayed at third. No more outs can possibly be of use. Am I really going to be reduced to rationalizing a modest moral victory on Quintana’s behalf? I could deal with that for Sunday, but it didn’t feel like authentic punctuation to what was one out from a Cardinal sweep. We were somnambulant Friday, lethargic most of Saturday. Sunday, however, we intrigued. We should at least get an overtime point for our troubles.
Harrison Bader singled to center, and Stewart stormed home. My tie was secured. Vientos, who had been inserted in the game as a pinch-hitter for Brett Baty to take advantage of Liberatore being a lefty all those innings before (two, but it seemed like more), was up. Like Garrett, Vientos could have made the team out of Spring Training. Like Garrett, Vientos didn’t. It was only because Starling Marte went on the bereavement list that Mark was recalled this weekend. I’m glad somebody remembered he was available.
Liberatore (3 IP) wasn’t so happy about it. Vientos took the southpaw over the center-right field wall, an excellent place to give a tour to opposing pitchers. “Directly in front of us are a whole bunch of guys Jose Quintana let rest today.” Nobody tackled anybody until bases were safely circled. Mets 4 Cardinals 2 was the final. I no longer had my tie, but I was fine with pivoting to the eleven-inning win.
by Jason Fry on 27 April 2024 11:38 pm Adrian Houser seems like a decent sort. And he pitched cromulently enough for the Brewers last year: eight wins, a 4.12 ERA, a 3.99 FIP that suggested he’d earned his more conventional numbers.
Yet he’s the first 2024 Met I can’t stand.
Houser’s been horrible, which he admitted after the latest debacle on Saturday, calling his pitching “pretty unacceptable.” He also noted that he’s been putting his teammates in a hole at the beginning of the game: Saturday saw Houser allow four runs in the first, which isn’t ever a good idea and particularly isn’t a good idea when the opposing pitcher is Sonny Gray. The Mets actually fought back in this one, trimming a 5-0 St. Louis lead to 6-4 for a time and putting the winning run on base in the ninth, but it never felt like they were in it, and that goes back to Houser letting the air out of the balloon while the crowd was still comparing notes on their first sighting of the new City Connect jerseys. They certainly became well-acquainted with HOUSER 35, getting multiple opportunities to talk fonts and spacing and what-not as 35’s owner turned his back to watch another ball touching grass.
Houser was a little unlucky, truth be told, with some quirky contact against him, plays not quite made and little parachutes falling in. But, to paraphrase Casey Stengel, he’s gonna be unlucky all year if he don’t change. He’s walking way too many guys, his location is horrible, and frankly he looks lost out there.
You may be thinking that’s insufficient reason to say you can’t stand a guy, and I kind of agree. But hold that thought: We’ll get back to what drives me insane about Houser, because it’s not just about him.
The highlight of the day? That was easy: It was Pete Alonso taking a ball the other way off Gray for a two-run homer, the 200th of his career. Alonso now joins Darryl Strawberry, David Wright and Mike Piazza as Mets in the 200-homer club. Unless something goes wrong he’ll catch Piazza at 220; chasing down Wright (242) and Straw (252) will likely depend on whether or not Steve Cohen opens the checkbook and brings him back to the Mets. To the long list of obvious reasons he should do so, add the fact that the first thing Alonso said when asked about the milestone was that he was trying to get his team back into the game.
Another highlight, I suppose, was Francisco Lindor avoiding the platinum sombrero; unfortunately Lindor did so by popping up the first pitch from Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley, who was working without his best slider and so wound up loading the bases in a 7-4 game. That was the final out. Lindor has had a bizarre year so far, looking alternately lost and locked in, but then you could say that about the entire team: They’ve alternately looked unbearable and unbeatable. It’s wearying, to say the least.
Another moment that wasn’t a highlight but should be noted was poor Josh Walker balking in a run, which made me scowl at the TV — something that, to be fair, I’d been doing a lot given Houser was gnawing at one end of my last exposed nerve while John Smoltz was chomping on the other. Wait a minute, hadn’t it been Walker on the mound in that mind-bogglingly hideous game in Kansas City last summer, the one that started with vaguely valuable Mets fleeing to the airport to play for teams with a pulse and ended with Walker balking in the winning run?
Yep, that was him. He should stop doing that.
We also got the City Connects making their on-field debut. My impression seeing them in a game was pretty much the same as it was upon their unveiling: I applaud the thought that went into the detailing, and salute the Mets for not just cranking out some vague alt of what they already had, but someone needed to step back from all the fiddling with minute elements and look at the overall design. If you’re going for purple, actually go for it: Make the NY logo purple, and the NYC, and the names and numbers, and wear purple sleeves. Instead the purple was treated like an afterthought, it doesn’t pop, and the uniform just looks dull and drab.
Anyway, back to Houser and what bugs me. It’s that he’s a nibbler, and I am so tired of nibblers. Back in spring training The Athletic’s Chad Jennings wrote a wonderful article about the Rays and their pitching philosophy, one that helps explain why guy after guy seems to turn the corner once he gets puts on a cap with a TB on it. That philosophy is so refreshingly simple: As Pete Fairbanks explains it to Jennings, “throw strike one and believe in your shit.” When Zack Littell arrived in St. Pete last year after up-and-down tenures with the Twins, Giants and Red Sox, the Rays surprised him by telling him to throw everything down the middle.
Really? asked Littell. Yes, really.
The idea is that everyone’s stuff is good enough to play in the strike zone — and that pitchers who take that to heart come to trust their stuff. Pitching coach Kyle Snyder talks about the cost of ball one: In 2023, the average major-league hitter had a .266 on-base percentage after falling behind 0-1, and a .380 OBP after getting ahead 1-0.
Throw strike one and believe in your shit. In other words, don’t fucking nibble. You’re handing out .380 OBPs when you do that.
Isn’t that appealing? Wouldn’t you rather see that than this depressing parade of 1-0s and 2-1s and 3-2s and catchers trudging out to the mound and the crowd muttering unhappily because it’s happening again?
Houser isn’t throwing strike one, and he pretty clearly doesn’t believe in his shit. And too many other Mets are similar: From way off in Washington State my kid divined that I was losing my mind and texted that Houser could be out of a job once Tylor Megill returns, which could be soon seeing how Megill pitched for the Brooklyn Cyclones on Saturday.
My reaction?
Replacing one feckless nibbler with another? I can’t wait.
by Greg Prince on 27 April 2024 11:21 am For Saturday, it will be City Connects getting our attention. On Friday, it was what we might quaintly refer to as a national telecast. Or should we say a globally available stream? Whatever it is called, it was Cardinals at Mets on Apple TV+, which meant the visuals (even if you took advantage of the syncing to local radio option, a godsend when it works) would strive to be evenhanded. In baseball as in political coverage, bothsidesism rarely satisfies.
To illustrate to the audience just tuning in before first pitch that the Mets and Cardinals have played one another before, Apple showed highlights from the 2000 NLCS, which from our perspective was a splendid set of games, given that four of them and the pennant were won by the Mets. Show clips like those, and Apple can rise from my TV all night plus.
But then they go and spoil it all by showing something stupid like highlights from the 2006 NLCS. See, there’ve been very fine moments on both sides. That’s a connection I could have gone without seeing, but Apple wasn’t interested in reaching only me and my fellow Mets fans. Cardinals fans were watching as well. To be fair, they probably enjoyed only half of the intro, too.
The nine innings that followed didn’t constitute a very good game…unless you were one of those Cardinals fans, in which case I imagine it came off as a lovely way to pass a few hours, what with St. Louis plating four runs and New York just two. Go figure, there are people, very fine and otherwise, who like that sort of thing.
On our side of Friday night’s divide, we could cheer the injury-delayed presence of J.D. Martinez, wearing his full name on his back and delivering an ample supply of base hits, going 2-for-4 in his Met debut. I’m sorry Zack Short had to be designated for assignment to clear roster space, as Short grew up a Mets fan and has been, to date, Carlos Mendoza’s most-used pinch-runner. Those are two qualities that will endear me to most any Met, even one who’d registered only one base hit in nine at-bats and wasn’t getting much playing time. Still, you’ll make the Short-for-Martinez trade any day on any network. And, who knows, maybe Zack Short won’t be as attractive to DFA bargain-hunters as Michael Tonkin is on a daily basis.
DH J.D. providing protection for Pete Alonso is the foundational reason for the man’s coming to the Mets. Now all we need is Alonso to hit like somebody who rates such an accomplished offensive lineman. Pete wasn’t the only Met not coming through in clutch situations on Friday night, but leaving four runners on base — the same quantity stranded by Francisco Lindor, who Alonso was theoretically protecting — tends to draw your focus.
If you wanted someone to connect reliably in this game, you had to turn to the last place you would have thought to have looked on your own, and I don’t mean Apple TV+: the nine-hole in the order. That used to mean the pitcher’s spot (now who’s being quaint?) Nine is the channel where you’ll find our catchers hitting and/or missing while we navigate the Francisco Alvarezless void that faces us these next eight weeks or so. Alvarez may very well be our Big Yellow Taxi of 2024, reminding us that we don’t know what we got ’til it’s gone. When Francisco crouches, the possibilities seem electric. When Francisco bats, you believe there’s a chance for something outstanding to happen. When you stare at Omar Narváez or Tomás Nido, you think this might be a good time to go to the fridge and refill your beverage.
Nido made this Mets fan rethink such out accompli fatalism Friday night, first with an opposite-field ground-rule double to lead off the third, then with an opposite-field home run in the fifth. Nido has developed power? Who knew? Whether he was what Jose Butto needed behind the plate during the youngster’s up-and-down five-and-two-thirds or will be what the rest of the rotation requires when he gets his opportunities to re-establish his big league bona fides will reveal itself by necessity. A catcher has to catch, has to hit, has to do a lot.
After Jerry Grote died, I found a quote from Yogi Berra, spoken in plain English, from a moment in September 1973 when it was becoming rapidly clear the lousy Mets of summer had taken the last ferry out of Avalon, and the contending Mets of autumn were getting down to business. The subject was the critical contributions those Mets were receiving all at once from the likes of aces Seaver and Koosman, erstwhile All-Stars McGraw and Harrelson, redheads Garrett and Staub.
“Don’t forget Jerry Grote,” Berra said. “He’s done some kind of job for us and nobody notices it.”
Red Foley in the Daily News picked up on the theme from there: “Grote just makes the plays. The big ones and the small ones. Especially the small ones, the plays that don’t make the box score. The ones that don’t incite headlines. How many notice when he carefully nurses a tiring pitcher through a problem inning? They watch him throw out a runner trying to steal, but how many realize his mere presence serves as a steady deterrent to such would-be thieves? Who sees or appreciates the pitching patterns he concocts to defense opposing hitters with ability to bust a ballgame wide open?”
Front offices devote many bytes of analytics to such skills today. In 1973, you merely plugged in Jerry Grote.
Foley explicitly cited “intangibles,” which might draw a scoff in the 21st century, yet there were a few numbers to back up the assertions of those who saw the catcher as the key to the Mets’ renaissance. Writing shortly after the Mets completed their sprint from worst to first, Steve Jacobson of Newsday noted that “when Grote returned from his broken arm on July 11 — after an absence of two months — the team earned run average was 3.60. In the two months since, it was cut to 3.29. In the first 83 games, Met pitchers threw five shutouts. In the 75 since Grote’s return, they’ve pitched 10 shutouts. In September, with the Mets facing extinction almost every game, Grote hit .288.” Jacobson went so far as to call Grote “the main reason” the Mets were about to face the Reds in the playoffs.
Invoking the difference a depended-upon starting catcher made after returning from a prolonged absence speaks more to what the Mets figure to miss with Alvarez out than it does confidence in what his replacements might bring to this ballclub — a ballclub that, in the fashion of those City Connects, have yet to forge a tangible identity. You can watch hype videos all you want, but those babies are not going to be Mets uniforms until the Mets wear them on the field. After 62 seasons and nearly a sixth of a 63rd spent exclusively (save for a handful of one-offs) wearing METS across their chests at home, seeing NYC instead is gonna look unusual, to say the least. The 2024 Mets themselves have looked dreadful and terrific for convincing intervals thus far. We’re still sussing out who they can be, wherever they’re broadcasting or streaming. One of the things we counted on to help define them was Francisco Alvarez continuing to grow into a role he seemed born ready to inhabit. Now we will learn to count differently.
Unless another catcher we’re not thinking about is promoted or acquired, the nine-hole and its associated responsibilities means the N&N Boys and hope for the best. We got a little of that from Tomás on Friday night. We’ll gladly take a little more. Maybe he’ll keep hitting so much that he’ll bat eighth one of these days.
by Greg Prince on 25 April 2024 11:23 am If you’re a dispassionate observer of New York Mets baseball, you’d take Francisco Lindor’s 4-for-4 day with a pair of homers and a quartet of RBIs on Wednesday and interpret that as a long overdue breakout that augurs well for an established star getting back to his career norm and likely having a characteristically terrific season now that he appears thoroughly untracked.
If you’re a Mets fan who’s been around a while, you instinctively think, “Bobby Bonilla had a game like this in 1992 and it didn’t help in the long run.” Jason Bay doing something similar to fleeting ends in 2010 rings a bell as well. You know one player’s big game has nothing to do with what any other players ever did, and that Lindor in 2024 comes with a Met track record that should reassure a person, but somehow you come back to a Mets-case scenario like Bonilla or Bay or whatever went wrong whenever it went wrong. Why am I not convinced this means Lindor has broken out of it for good?
Probably because when you’re a Mets fan who’s been around a while, you’re more Velcro than Teflon. Everything sticks, especially episodes that animate your darker fears. Win a getaway game, 8-2, in San Francisco, you’d think the Four Horsemen of the Metspocalypse — Skepticism, Pessimism, Cynicism, Fatalism — would be detained in their attempt to stow away on the happy flight east. Yet there they were flitting through your consciousness Wednesday evening, a presence at least as striking in the mind’s eye as any of Lindor’s designer gloves.
Then again, we put Faith ahead of Fear in our name here, so let’s say it was a .500 trip to California, which is never an easy accomplishment, especially when the itinerary includes Los Angeles. Two more West Coast trips await, both in August. No Dodgers will be involved, yet breaking even will probably sound pretty good when those roll around.
Faith!
 Lindor’s offensive onslaught, Tyrone Taylor backing him up with three ribbies in addition to Francisco’s four and Reed Garrett notching another relief win were the biggest stories to emerge on Wednesday, unless you were Faith and Fear in Flushing. For FAFIF, the mere act of watching and chronicling meant a milestone: 3,000 consecutive regular-season games blogged, starting with Opening Day 2005 and continuing through the most recent. If you keep doing something every day that the opportunity presents itself, you’ll rack up some impressive-sounding milestones. Roberto Clemente’s 3,000th hit came against the Mets. Pedro Martinez’s 3,000 strikeouts came for the Mets. Faith and Fear’s 3,000th straight game recapped simply had to take place around the Mets.
 Naturally, I’m glad it was a win. The Mets have won more often in our history than not: 1,513 victories versus 1,487 defeats. It only seems like they lose all the time. If this feeling persists, consult your horsemen.
Prior to Wednesday’s first pitch (not delivered by Blake Snell as scheduled, which was bad injury news for the Giants, but certainly didn’t hurt our cause in the short term), I came across the tweeted roster for the Long Island Ducks. I went to one Ducks game in 2011 and have followed them on social media ever since. I saw they have a pitcher named Liam Pulsipher. Could it be…? Of course it is. That’s the son of Bill Pulsipher!
“Son of Bill Pulsipher!” deserves an exclamation point on multiple levels. Son of a Met? Son of a Met! Top pitching prospect Jack Leiter just made his major league debut for Texas, which was also fun to notice. Met progeny will always get your attention. Al Leiter becoming a big league dad doesn’t seem that surprising. Leiter was a veteran when we came to know him as ours in 1998. He’d been around practically forever. Hell, he was pitching for the Yankees when WFAN was 1050 on your AM dial. Bill Pulsipher, on the other hand, first grabbed our attention when he came up through the Met minors thirty minutes ago.
Correction: thirty years ago! That’s another exclamation point, but not the last. The FAFIF origin story coalesces around the day of Papa Pulse’s own MLB debut, June 17, 1995, an event witnessed at Shea Stadium by those would create this blog ten years later and keep it going for 3,000 consecutive regular-season games, plus 18 in the postseason. Had somebody told Jason and me that our future encompassed the Mets in the playoffs, that alone might have floored us in 1995. Bill’s career didn’t wind up being one of those where you’d figure most who attended his debut would point to it as a big deal, but it was a big deal in its time. Also, look at the long-term impact it had. Liam Pulsipher is pitching professionally and Faith and Fear blogs without pause (even when its mobile edition is on the fritz).
 We celebrate this FAFIF3K milestone by reacting to the most recent Mets game and planning to do the same after the next. May that one be a win, too, and may we learn to accept it without wondering what could possibly go wrong. I doubt we will, though. We’re Mets fans who’ve been around a while.
by Jason Fry on 24 April 2024 7:31 am Well, at least this time Mets pitchers didn’t walk anybody.
Luis Severino wasn’t giving out free passes Tuesday night in San Francisco, and for four innings he wasn’t let any Giant earn his way onto the bases either. But the well ran dry in the fifth as lousy sequencing and buzzards’ luck combined to turn a scoreless tie into a 3-0 Giants lead. That was more than enough for the Giants, as Logan Webb had all his pitches working. That Bull Durham line about ungodly breaking stuff in the Show? It could have been written for Webb, who dismantled the Mets with sinkers, changeups and the occasional sweeper: fifteen outs via ground balls. Webb is infuriating to watch as an enemy fan and no doubt as an enemy hitter: You want to moan “Don’t swing at that!” as guy after guy looks disconsolate after swinging at that. Easy advice from the comfort of the couch; at the plate, to borrow from another movie classic, would that it were so simple.
The recently rollicking Mets have now lost three in a row and sunk back to a lone game above .500, and I’m trying not to glower at the game logs from April 2023 and scream at anyone who’ll listen that it’s happening all over again. We’ll know soon enough if it is or not, if shoddy defense and nibbling at the elusive corners of the plate will prove fatal, or if this dip is just part of the normal ebb and flow of the season, maddening in the moment but not particularly consequential in review.
At the moment, though, I’m dwelling on something else I already knew: that these middle of the night games on the other side of the country aren’t conducive to alert viewing, happy recapping or amiable anything else. Come home, boys, home to 7:10 and blue and orange with pinstripes (and the occasional charcoal oddity) and one hopes better outcomes.
by Greg Prince on 23 April 2024 12:01 pm Pete Alonso homered. Michael Conforto homered. Just like swell not so old times. Except they didn’t come close to tearing each other’s shirts off. Things change and move on. The Big Man can still bust the Citi and other ballparks in half, but he cycles through new handshake partners all the time. Does anybody in San Francisco refer to Conforto as Scooter?
Conforto and Alonso dingered to a draw Monday night on the Coast, each going deep once with the bases empty. Alas, Conforto’s Giants beat Alonso’s Mets, 5-2, on Monday night. It was 4-0 before each of our home run heartthrobs of 2019, when they combined for the two-man franchise record of 86 longballs, made the most of their whooping sticks. At 5-1 in the ninth, the Mets replicated a rally, willingly benefiting from walks and other Giant missteps and deriving a run for their troubles. It was midnight in Manhattan, no time to get cute. I was more asleep than not. Somebody get a hit or let me close my eyes altogether. A third out was made. I shrugged the Mets good night.
Most of what I remember one sunrise and then some later is Jose Quintana missing the strike zone and me missing not so much Michael Conforto but how excited he and Pete could get from one another’s accomplishments. The two of them homered in the same game for the first time on April 6, 2019. They did it again on April 7, then April 9, then April 21, realizing early in their shared tenure that they had quite a bit in common. They homered in what you’d call tandem in eight different games that year, the Polar Bear and the Silky Elk — some nicknames stick, some don’t — joining in a joyous rampage at the expense of opposing pitchers. When a game got won in particularly dramatic fashion, a shirt got pulled. Other Mets participated in the partial public disrobings, too, but it’s Conforto I most remember going bareback and Alonso I most remember removing fabric.
At some point Monday night, while my eyes remained as open as they could, I saw Conforto reach first base on a single. I hoped the telecast would stay on him long enough so we could see how he and Alonso interacted. But they cut away.
 Yeah, it’s been a while.
by Jason Fry on 21 April 2024 10:15 pm
Baseball: So Betts, Ohtani and Freeman reached base 12 times in Saturday’s Mets-Dodgers game.
Me: OMG, did we lose by like two touchdowns? What poor position player threw the last two innings?
Baseball: Oh, the Mets won, 6-4.
Me: Huh?
Baseball: [shrugs]
— Jason Fry (@jasoncfry.bsky.social) Apr 20, 2024 at 11:46 PM
Like I said, that was Saturday.
On Sunday, the terrifying trio only reached base six times, but the Mets’ Houdini act stopped working. It was 2-0 LA after the third on an Ohtani homer, 10-0 LA after the fifth on everything but the kitchen sink, and if you paid much attention to what happened after that, well, my cap is tipped. Adrian Houser looked off from the get-go and got pounded, after which Grant Hartwig poured lighter fluid on the fire; meanwhile, the Mets did basically nothing against oversized action figure Tyler Glasnow (seriously, what human being not wearing a cape and tights looks like this guy?) and when the Mets did do something the doers of somethings got thrown out by Will Smith.
Oh, Tomas Nido caught Smith stealing, the first time any Met catcher has caught anyone stealing in 2024. Really, that was the highlight.
A decided non-highlight: Brooks Raley, who was superb last year and hadn’t missed a beat this year, has joined Francisco Alvarez on the IL. That’s not ideal.
As the “because we have to” portion of the game rolled along, Ron Darling said something I’d heard before but still found comforting: that fans find being on the wrong end of blowouts tough but players just shrug such games off, and it’s losses that turn on a mistake or two that cause clubhouse consternation.
Still, because I’m a Mets fan, I couldn’t stop myself from looking nervously at 2023’s game log. The Mets struggled to find their footing at the beginning of the year but then played pretty well, including on what looked like a daunting early West Coast trip. They even took two out of three from the Dodgers. Then they went to San Francisco, where they won the first two and dropped the last two for a split. Those last two games looked like an annoying stumble at the time, but they were actually the start of the descent. The Mets bumped along for six weeks or so, with all of us knowing they looked fundamentally flawed but trying to convince ourselves a team assembled with that much talent (and that many dollars) would figure it out. The Mets never did; they fell under .500 in early June and … yeah, we know the rest.
This is a different year, with a fairly different cast of characters. Teams get blown out now and again, and a juggernaut like the Dodgers is capable of making anyone look silly. The wise thing would be not to dwell on it. So let’s try that and see where it gets us.
by Greg Prince on 21 April 2024 12:27 pm What do you suppose those 11 Mets and 13 Dodgers who were left on base Saturday did to amuse themselves while a baseball game was proceeding to nifty conclusion without them? Given what a beautiful day it appeared to be in Chavez Ravine, my guess is they broke out the wicker baskets and treated themselves to a leisurely picnic, the kind with lots of lounging that could be misconstrued as loitering if you thought they were just hanging out at first, second, and/or third for no discernible reason. Maybe they had some other activities planned only to find their more Type A acquaintances had already booked the field for a relentlessly competitive endeavor. Some people insist on being über-organized, even amid a lazy Saturday.
No judgments, particularly on an occasion referred to with a stifled chuckle as “420,” but those 24 baserunners who apparently decided not to run home despite the constant throat-clearing of a stream of batters trying to get the most fun possible out of their afternoon really should have gotten in on the spirit of the thing. “Um, would you MIND not just stopping at your base?” Had recently departed Whitey Herzog been available to attend, the former Met farm director might have advised the two-dozen LOBsters in no uncertain terms that they were missin’ a great game.
It was a great game, either in spite of or because of so many baserunners not becoming platecrossers. The alternating presence of a murmuring of Mets and a descent of Dodgers along the basepaths actually informed the spirit of the thing Saturday. If you had a rooting interest, you flitted from beseeching one team to unclog its offensive drain already to hoping like hell that the pipes wouldn’t burst while that same team’s pitcher was checking under the sink. From where I watched, and I’m gonna guess where from you watched, you were fine with Dodger baserunners staying put, but you wouldn’t have minded a few more Mets continuing to make tracks.
As it turned out, the Mets’ advantage in runners left on base corresponded to the edge they developed and held in the runs column. LOB: Mets 11 Dodgers 13. R: Mets 6 Dodgers 4. You knew the Dodgers were capable of far more scoring. You remain surprised the Mets score as much as they do. You don’t know what to make of anybody’s run prevention anymore. But there it was, a Mets win for the sixth game in a row, twice now in L.A.
There’s a lot of go figure to our team.
Go figure, Starling Marte’s murmur of impact from 2023 has upgraded to its 2022 roar in 2024 (health can work wonders).
Go figure, Francisco Lindor is alive and showing signs of being well (more choreographed group hugs from the stands are clearly in order when superstars slump).
Go figure, Michael Tonkin is a Met again (his between-stints limbo that included one outing as a Twin qualifies him for Recidivist status; his absence of 15 games is the shortest for any of the 56 in the boomerang subgenre).
Go figure, Edwin Diaz can be a setup man as necessary (and when the eighth inning brings Shohei Ohtani to bat with Freddie Freeman on deck and Mookie Betts already on first, it’s necessary.
Go figure, Reed Garrett can do some closing (try to figure if there’s anything Reed Garrett can’t do these days).
The figuring has been exclusively on the Mets’ side since Doc Gooden’s 16 was unveiled in the Citi Field rafters and has calculated to their benefit almost without pause since Pete Alonso tied up a doubleheader nightcap that seemed destined to go in the loss column with all the other Met games. That was when we were 0-5. It was so long ago that Michael Tonkin was a Met the first time. Alonso homered, the Mets built another run and the current burst of 12-3 was underway. The twelfth of those wins was helped along mightily when Pete made his 0-for-5 day swinging irrelevant with a diving stop and diving tag to keep Max Muncy from upsetting the LOB/RBI balance.
Defense from sources not immediately associated with defense. It’s what happens within the realm of winning baseball.
Because Alonso won the race to first base, Tonkin managed to strand the runners he shared with starter Jose Butto, who for the first time this year wasn’t quite so Buttoful, but neither was Dodger starter Gavin Stone on 420 (heh-heh, apparently). Tonkin was poised to become a winning rather itinerant pitcher once Marte in the top of the sixth saw Zack Short walk, Omar Narváez sacrifice and Brandon Nimmo take yet another one for the team, and temporarily cracked the code on that left-on-base problem. Starling smacked a pitch from Ryan Yarbrough clear over the center field fence. What had been a tense 2-2 war of attrition became a tense 5-2 war of attrition — it never feels easy against the Dodgers — but a three-run lead was a three-run lead. Tightness on the scoreboard and perhaps your insides instantly intensified when Freeman drove home a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth. Lindor personified a blast of Primatene Mist, giving the bullpen the ability to breathe, when he knocked in Marte with an additional run in the top of the eighth.
The bottom of the eighth was a joint production of Jorge Lopez (got one out, then walked Betts) and Diaz, whose presence right then and there represented a touch of Baseball Porn, that SFW sensation when a baseball fan turns something approaching orgasmic because a scenario a baseball fan fantasizes about actually unfolds.
The manager used his best pitcher in the game’s most crucial situation, regardless of assigned roles. Oh, baby!
Carlos Mendoza handled the entire game as if beating the Dodgers in Dodger Stadium was the most crucial task at hand. Everybody came off the bench. Every arm, within the context of contemporary community standards, got loose in the bullpen. Ohtani and Freeman? It didn’t matter that it was the eighth. It was Diaz’s inning.
Edwin’s journey from THANK THE LORD HE’S BACK to He Doesn’t Look Quite Like He Did moved on to He Can Still Dial It Up When He Has To. Diaz walked Ohtani and walked Freeman. The bases were loaded with the three Dodgers you don’t want to beat you. It wasn’t great that they’d been walked, but none of them had hit a damn thing in the eighth. It was either clever poison-picking or prelude to disaster. I’d be worried with any reliever on the mound at a moment of truth like this.
I was less worried with Edwin. Dialing it up when he had to, he struck out Teoscar Hernandez and struck out Muncy. Eighth-inning threat over. Ninth-inning threat to come.
Twenty high-stress pitches meant the Sugar dispenser was sealed shut. Double-digit pitch counts the night before meant nobody planned to wake Brooks Raley or Adam Ottavino. But an impressive body of work stretching back to that seminal nightcap versus the Tigers on April 4 meant Mendoza could put his (and our) faith in Garrett and we wouldn’t squirm too much. Sometimes in the Los Angeles sunshine, you go to war with the closer you’ve got. Two years ago, we had Adonis Medina. On Saturday afternoon, we had Reed Garrett. Versus Garrett, the first two Dodgers struck out looking; the last Dodger struck out swinging. No Dodger had as much as reached base for stranding purposes.
Reed Garrett saved the win for Michael Tonkin, and the Mets had captured their twelfth victory in fifteen games…which of course was exactly the kind of sentence you saw coming when 2024 commenced in fog of gloom.
Granted, not everything is blue skies over the San Gabriel Mountains this weekend. Maybe you noticed Tomás Nido entering the game between blurs of runners left on base, shortly after Brett Baty pinch-hit for Narváez. Nido’s a pleasant enough sight for Met eyes connected to Met memory (if not as pleasant a sight as seeing Baty with his hamstring in fine fettle), but you know if some catcher you weren’t expecting is suddenly on the active roster, another catcher on whom you were counting a lot isn’t. Alas, Francisco Alvarez had been placed on a the IL with a sprained thumb before the game, which doesn’t sound that terrible. Except if you stuck around after the game, you learned what Alvarez has is a torn ligament in his thumb, and, well, Narváez and Nido constitute our catching tandem until further notice.
I like Nido. I like Narváez. I crave further notice.
Still, this is a team playing a team game like a team. Everybody’s seeing action. Everybody’s coming through at some point. The contributions are stuffing the cookie jar. Look at those coins and bills adding up. We’ve got something here so far. Makes you want to find out what else there might be to these Mets. You’re not going to stop crossing your fingers while you’re doing so, of course. You’re a Mets fan. Confidence is not a character trait you’ve yet incorporated for the year already in progress. Yet you can imagine developing it. Maybe.
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