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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 19 October 2024 12:19 pm Thursday night I came home from Game Four of the National League Championship Series resigned to the 2024 Mets season being imminently over. Friday morning I awoke thinking only that there’d be a baseball game come late afternoon and that the Mets would be playing in it, and between the regular season and the postseason, the Mets had won ballgames 95 times this year, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe they might win another. I didn’t stress about it. I didn’t worry over the odds of coming back from down three-one. I didn’t shrink at the specter of Ohtani and Betts and Muncy (oh my). I just knew the Mets would be playin’ some ball, and that the Mets have some pretty good ballplayers, and, well…play ball!
So the Mets did. They played the hell out of ball in Game Five, hitting balls particularly hard and in a timely fashion, while their pitchers stopped throwing quite so many balls. It all added up to a glorious chorus of “Stayin’ Alive,” which you could hear in the echoes of “My Girl,” which was actually performed live by the Temptations pregame. “My Girl” was for Francisco Lindor, who doesn’t come to bat without the song’s first verse echoing through Citi Field. “Stayin’ Alive” was the mission.
Mission accomplished. For Game Five, that is. The temptation is to look beyond the Mets’ 12-6 throttling of the Dodgers — is it possible for a score to simultaneously not indicate how close and not close a game was? — and think about what it will take to win the next two contests and therefore the pennant. Tamp down that temptation. The next mission is Game Six and Game Six solely. Peer too far ahead and you’re standing on shaky ground.
But we ain’t too proud to beg for a whole lot more of what kept us alive in Game Five.
Pete Alonso, in his third final-ever game as a Met at Citi Field, changed the tenor of this NLCS in one mighty swing, golfing a Jack Flaherty pitch to the western edge of the 7 Line Army seats, where the night before, I can personally attest, it grew chilly and hopeless. Francisco digs the Temps. Pete raises the temperature. Two Mets had been on when Alonso attacked, meaning the Met lead was 3-0. The message to Dave Roberts, regarding his starting pitcher who stymied us in Game One, was (and I’m borrowing this Karl Ehrhardt-worthy line from author Michael Elias) Flaherty will get you nowhere.
Go back, Jack, and do it again, the Mets lineup had to be thinking. The second inning saw a leadoff double from Francisco Alvarez wasted, except for the notion that Alvy was suddenly off the schneid, but the third crumbled Dodger pitching in Sensurround. Flaherty walked his first two batters, proving that it’s not only Mets pitchers who do that. Starling Marte, very much living up to his first name’s first syllable, doubled both runners home, and it was off to the Met races. With two outs, there was an Alvy single, a Lindor triple, a Brandon Nimmo base hit, and an 8-1 Met lead lighting up the Citi scoreboard. Yeah, the Dodgers had snuck a run up there off recurring lifesaver David Peterson in the second, but who was worried about the Dodgers when the Mets were ahead, 8-1?
Everybody, obviously. Have you seen these Dodgers? I saw them with my own eyes in Game Four and I considered looking away. Geez, they’re dangerous. For two nights, they were Murderer’s Row taking batting practice in-game, and the Mets might as well have been the 1927 Pirates calling it a day, per legend, before a single pitch was thrown in competition. Except we know the 2024 Mets are not a give-up crew. Maybe they wouldn’t be a champion crew, but they weren’t going to go down without a fight.
Nor would the Dodgers. They indeed got to Peterson enough to rattle Carlos Mendoza’s nerves sufficiently to call on Reed Garrett to protect what was now an 8-2 lead in the fourth. But then Jesse Winker added an RBI triple to the one Lindor hit the inning before (because triples are just that easily come by), and good ol’ Mets fan favorite Jesse got driven in by the blessedly active Jeff McNeil. Winker and McNeil replaced J.D. Martinez and Jose Iglesias in Mendoza’s lineup once Mendy remembered Jeff and Jesse are his guys, too. Gotta love an adaptable skipper.
Garrett now had an eight-run lead to safeguard, until it was a five-run lead, courtesy of Andy Pages’s second home run of the game. Pages was L.A.’s nine-hitter. If their last batter can swat two home runs, I’d hate to see who they have batting first.
Oh right, Ohtani. Mendoza knew that and brought in Ryne Stanek to strike out Shohei to end the fifth. Excellent plan.
Stanek, more or less the Mets’ primary setup man, stayed into the sixth, which started nervously with a Mookie Betts homer, but then settled down via three quick outs and not a single base on balls. Peterson had walked four and Garrett one, but the bullpen was now out of the carousel business. It made a world of difference. From a throat-clearing advantage of 10-6, McNeil contributed his second sac fly of the day to provide an extra firm cushion, and, in the eighth, Marte’s fourth hit brought home the Mets’ twelfth run. By then, Edwin Diaz was in the midst of succeeding Stanek’s two-and-a-third of scoreless ball with two superbly effective frames of his own, and, yes, the Mets were alive. Certainly not dead yet.
Big change from the night before when I felt compelled to wake my wife around one in the morning and debrief her on the somber scene at Citi. Yes, it was fun for many reasons, and I was delighted to get the call from Jason to join him in the center field orange grove — and thanks to not-my-first-rodeo layering, I didn’t even shiver very much — but yeesh. The joint was half-empty when it was over, and who could blame the Mets fans who didn’t want to push midnight just to take in every last inch of a 10-2 debacle that had pushed us to the brink of elimination? At least their departure made the diehard trudge to the subway a breeze.
Anyway, that, along with every trip to the edge of every 2024 abyss, feels distant in the wake of Game Five, a Game Five that now precedes a very necessary Game Six. The way the Mets do the things they do might eventually end us. But they also keep us going.
by Jason Fry on 18 October 2024 10:11 am With the Mets batting because they had to in the eighth inning of Thursday night’s game, I got out of my seat at Citi Field and took a walk.
The immediate reason was straightforward, but there were other reasons, too. My feet were cold. My legs were stiff. I was upset. And I knew that for various reasons it was unlikely that I’d see Citi Field again in 2024.
I wound up circumnavigating the lower level, going from my seat with the 7 Line low down in 141 past the postseason Fox pavilion and over the Shea Bridge, along the first-base line around to the top of the rotunda, up the third-base line, then through the plaza of eateries and back to my seat. Five innings earlier that would have been a foolhardy mission guaranteed to chew up multiple innings. But now it was easy: Most of the crowd had departed, leaving behind Dodger visitors and Met diehards. It reminded me of a meaningless game in May, one that hadn’t drawn too many people in the first place because it was a little cold and had seen the attendance diminish from that low base because things weren’t going the Mets’ way.
If that sounds like a terrible comparison to wind up making in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, well, you’re right in some ways and not in others.
The Mets had fallen behind as early as one can on a leadoff line-drive home run from Shohei Ohtani, but tied the game in their half of the first when Mark Vientos cracked a homer of his own off Yoshinobu Yamamoto. But the Dodgers got two more in the third and kept battering away at Jose Quintana and the Mets pen; by the time I took my walk they were up 10-2 and Danny Young was on the mound, left to absorb whatever further harm L.A. had to administer.
As fans our natural inclination is to see losses as failures. The sports-talk radio version is to filibuster about desire and will; the sophisticate’s version is to spotlight various guys on our side who didn’t get it done for various reasons to be explored via analysis. The former is straightforwardly stupid; the latter looks smart but is often misguided.
Out in center field in the 7 Line’s orange domain, there was muttering that Quintana was being squeezed. I couldn’t tell from ~450 feet away, where I was sitting between my father-in-law and Greg (our first game together since last June), but between innings I peered at previous Dodger ABs on Gameday and found no obvious signs of injustice.
What was happening was more telling: Quintana succeeds by not throwing strikes, with his pitches darting or drifting out of the confines of the zone with hitters enticed to follow, leading to swings and misses and weak contact. That worked against the Brewers and Phillies but not against the Dodgers: They refused to expand the zone, either taking free bases or forcing Quintana to relocate those pitches to where they could be squared up.
Calling that a failure of Quintana’s is a stretch; it’s far fairer to give credit to the Dodgers. Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman all had big nights, while Max Muncy set a postseason record by reaching base in 12 straight plate appearances before Young finally (and mercifully) retired him in the eighth. Watching the Dodgers’ relentless lineup reminded me of watching the Mets during their joyous summer run: AB after AB driving up pitch counts and squeezing out an enemy pitcher’s margin for error until the breakthrough felt inevitable.
A few Mets heard it from the crowd, most notably J.D. Martinez, but that was mostly frustration needing an outlet. The team looks tired, and understandably so — I’m exhausted and all I’ve done is watch them. And the nagging injuries look like they’re piling up: Brandon Nimmo literally limped through the evening and delivered one of the Mets’ two runs by beating out the tail end of a double play on basically one foot, which is the kind of thing that will get lost amid bigger storylines but shouldn’t.
But again, turn that around: The Dodgers squeaked past the Padres nagged by worries about their starting pitching, which is in tatters after the kind of season that called for a MASH unit. They’re on the brink of the World Series because of that relentless lineup but also because they’ve had three suspect pitchers — Jack Flaherty, Walker Buehler and now Yamamoto — come up big.
The TLDR of the above, offered by Greg in an aside that was gloomy but clear-eyed: Maybe they’re just better.
All of this was competing for space in my brain when I took my walk. I stopped for a moment in the plaza beyond the home run apple, looking up at the frieze above Shake Shack and remembering it in its old place atop the scoreboard at Shea. (Its reclamation was one of the few things we agreed the Mets had got right while Citi Field was in the growing pains of its first few seasons.)
Those Mets had been on my mind all night, partly because Robin Ventura and Edgardo Alfonzo had returned for the first pitch and John Franco had led a pregame hollering of LET’S GO METS. But looking up at the old frieze with its remembrance pin over the outline of the World Trade Center, I realized I wasn’t disparaging the 2024 Mets by comparison. I found I wasn’t angry at them, or dismayed at seeing their season shoved to the brink. All of a sudden it really did feel like a May game, one that hadn’t unfolded the way you wanted but still meant a night at the ballpark, which always feels like getting away with something.
I know myself well enough to grasp that some of my acceptance is me trying to outfox the baseball gods: During my walk a fan yelled “Mets in seven!” to no one in particular and I smiled and thought, “Well, why not?” And some of it is stubborn faith in how often this edition of the Mets has delivered a surprise; on the subway I nodded at Francisco Lindor‘s postgame declaration that “if you have no belief, you shouldn’t be here.”
I won’t be there Friday afternoon — not with the 7 Line, and not on my couch. I’ll be on an airplane heading for Seattle, investigating seatback channel options and hoping I don’t have to spring for in-flight Wi-Fi. But if I have to, I will — and you better believe I’ll be wearing my Mookie shirt under my 7 Line jersey, with Derpy Flag in my lap and talismanic utterances on my lips.
In other words, I’ll be there in the way we always are, in the way that matters. There’s clear-eyed assessment of one’s chances and there’s belief. I’ve got room for both.
by Greg Prince on 17 October 2024 11:20 am Sometimes when I go grocery shopping, I’ll grab an item that I’m pretty sure we’re out of, only to come home, start putting things away and discover, oh, we didn’t need another of these.
The Mets can surely relate. They went out and mindlessly tossed another NLCS Game One in their cart on Wednesday night at Citi Field when what they really needed to grab was a fresh NLCS Game Three. Instead, they rolled down the aisle with a hope-depleting 8-0 loss that was far too much like the series-opening 9-0 defeat from Sunday at Dodger Stadium.
What are we supposed to do with two of practically the same thing?
Check the shopping list a little more closely tonight, fellas. Seriously, we truly don’t need another game that begins to get away a couple of innings in; stirs here and there like something good might happen; fizzles; and then altogether drifts out of reach. As in Game One, slippery defense, unclutch hitting and relief pitching that doesn’t keep things close constituted a recipe for futility. The wrinkle differentiating Game Three from Game One, besides autumn’s chill back East and a diving Tyrone Taylor evoking Tommie Agee at the warning track, is we had a known 2024 quantity on the mound in Luis Severino, as opposed to Kodai Senga pitching for the third time all year. Severino wasn’t absolutely dreadful à la Kodai, except in the field (apparently Francisco Lindor’s Gold Glove nomination was accidentally forwarded to him). Between Sevy’s and his batterymate Francisco Alvarez’s combining for three misplays, two Dodgers scored in the second and an eight-ball instantly appeared in front of the Mets.
Also, neither the pitcher nor catcher did a damn thing at the plate. Sevy’s excuse is the DH exists. Alvy’s? He found his way to Citi Field, but is otherwise lost. Can’t even blame the wind for his lack of hitting. A couple of Met fly balls that might have flown farther seemed to have gotten caught in gusts, preventing the Mets from competing early, but those are the sorts of things a fan points to when his team had nothing else going for it on offense. And the Mets had nothing going for it on offense.
Walker Buehler, still in something of a post-Tommy John phase, navigated four scoreless innings and then turned matters over to that Dodger bullpen we’d heard so much about. We’d hear more about them if we could hear over the sound three Dodgers sluggers made with their bats off Met relievers. Kiké Hernandez — POW (if just barely over the left field fence). Shohei Ohtani — BAM (with runners in scoring position, natch). Max Muncy — ouch (there wasn’t much noise left to be made by then).
The only good thing about a series that has produced a 9-0 loss and an 8-0 loss is there was a Met victory in between. The lopsided shutouts feel like microsweeps, but they’re each just one game. Just two games out of three thus far, with as many as four to go. Math class doesn’t need to be in session to tell you how many of those the Mets need to win.
The correct answer is one tonight. Without that, the cart might as well roll into the parking lot as empty as it was when our trip to the postseason supermarket began.
by Greg Prince on 16 October 2024 1:12 pm The first pitch that will carry the most weight in Game Three of the National League Championship Series will be thrown by Luis Severino. Our emotions will ride on that pitch and however many more Luis throws, each guaranteed our overwhelming support — despite Luis’s fondness for the black jerseys that will infiltrate our heretofore purely orange and blue postseason at Sevy’s behest (“I like black,” the starter shrugged.) But should FS1 deign to treat home viewers to the full gamut of pregame ceremonies, the first pitches certain to hit with their own kind of emotional power will be delivered by players who haven’t worn a jersey of any Met shade in competition for quite a while.
Minutes before Severino adjusts his cap to confirm he’s on the same PitchCom wavelength as Francisco Alvarez, Darryl Strawberry will set and fire to Dwight Gooden. Thursday night, in advance of Game Four, it will be Robin Ventura doing the honors, with Edgardo Alfonzo on the receiving end. And before Game Five Friday, Matt Harvey will look in at the target set by Yoenis Cespedes. You live long enough, even Matt Harvey and Yoenis Cespedes are old guys you bring back for special occasions.
Also, you live long enough, and you can’t help but notice that you begin to run out of older guys.
Is it really a Mets postseason extravaganza without the 1969 Mets and the 1973 Mets represented at Citi Field except on the flags they earned? It is, apparently. Time inevitably nibbles away at the front end of what you consider ages ago. The 1986 guys Straw and Doc, they’re the ones from way back now. Robin and Fonzie have matured into fellas from a past that doesn’t carry a patina of present anymore; the turn of the century, when they thrilled us most, is suddenly about a quarter-century gone. Harvey and Yo? They played in the majors as recently as 2021 and 2020, respectively, which is barely a blink. Yet they’re representing 2015, a fabulous Met year that occurred nearly a decade ago.
Perhaps a Met or two from an October more than fifty years ago will make the Citi scene if there’s more autumnal scenery to adorn beyond the NLCS. 1969 Mets and 1973 Mets were always first-pitch staples when later Met clubs attempted to live up to their accomplishments. Perhaps a family member of some player or manager since departed and still missed will be announced to the crowd and accept in Dad’s absence the warm embrace of a chilly 44,000. I don’t doubt outreach has been made. I also don’t doubt it’s not as easy as it used to be to get a 1969 Met or a 1973 Met to the mound or for those gentlemen to toss a ball to their liking. Too many we cheered for, not only when they were winning pennants but when we were trying to win more, simply aren’t around in as great numbers as they once were. For those who are, maybe the trip to Flushing is not one easily traversed.
Fifty-five years ago today, the 1969 Mets became world champions. No living 1969 Met is younger than 76. As we’ve been reminded repeatedly in 2024, too many 1969 Mets are no longer with us. That’s just the way it goes across 55 years. The distance from 1969 to 2024 is the same as the distance from 1969 in the other direction to 1914. I couldn’t tell you how many world champion Boston Braves from that year (“Miracle Braves,” no less) were showing up at ballparks and delivering ceremonial first pitches in 1969. On the other hand, what happened on October 16, 1969, is forever young. The Mets were in their eighth season. Winning at Shea Stadium was a wholly new phenomenon. You can’t look at photos or film clips or video footage from then and not feel as if something eternal had just been born. In my case, it was lifetime fandom for this franchise. That, I’ve learned anew of late, is also forever young.
Reaching October, succeeding in October, the possibility of once again winning it all in October transcends the wear and tear of chronology. It’s 1969 forever. It’s 1986 forever. It could be 2024 forever.
It’s definitely time for another first pitch.
The latest episode of National League Town adores Mark Vientos and feels pretty good about his teammates. You can listen in here.
by Jason Fry on 15 October 2024 10:54 am Eight pitches.
They were the first sign that Monday afternoon’s Game 2 might go better than Sunday’s steamrolling. Happily, they weren’t the last.
Leading off against Ryan Brasier, the first man in a parade of Dodger relievers, Francisco Lindor worked a 2-1 count, then fouled off four sliders and fastballs. Brasier, possibly a little frustrated to see the debut hitter chomping away at his small allotment of pitches, opted for a cutter and didn’t throw a good one — Lindor walloped it into the right-field bullpen, which I’ll always think of as Daniel Murphy Land, the place where a ball thrown by Clayton Kershaw once returned to earth with Murph’s first name literally burned into it by the contact with his bat.
Mets 1, Dodgers 0, and the sigh of relief was audible all over Mets Land.
That sigh got a little deeper and easier once Sean Manaea reported for duty and looked sharp, erasing Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, then retiring Freddie Freeman on a first-pitch fly ball after a walk to Teoscar Hernandez.
Before we return to our usual battle with Mets-fan anxieties, consider this series from the Dodgers POV: In April they lost the first two games against us at home before administering a 10-0 corrective; they then curb-stomped the Mets at Citi Field at the end of May, with the finale featuring Jorge Lopez writing his own pink slip with a glove tossed into the stands.
They must be thinking, “Who are these guys?”
All that came before OMG, before Grimace, before the Zesty Mets, before all the other delightful oddities of a cherished summer. To shift from narrative to W-L statistics, it was before the Mets rose from the dead to the top of the MLB ranks the rest of the way. And it was before Manaea saw Chris Sale at work on the mound and thought, “maybe I should try that.”
When Manaea was on, which he was for most of his Monday tenure, he had a terrifying lineup looking frankly befuddled, with Ohtani unbalanced by his cross-fire mix and Betts unable to square anything up. It was odd — odd with a side of delightful if you’re a Mets fan — to see the best hitter on the planet and a fellow perennial MVP candidate groping for answers.
With Emily stuck on a Zoom call for work (she was far more horrified than you are, so cut her some slack), I watched all this from the unfamiliar confines of our downstairs bedroom, but with every cherished talisman either on my body or close to it. 7 Line jersey with the Mookie shirt beneath? So clad. When a Met was in scoring position I called upon the powers of Derpy Flag, a somewhat wan little felt Mets pennant handed to me by Mr. Met himself. And of course I had my usual exhortations aimed at players on the other side of the continent: look for your pitch, don’t help him, eight guys behind you, hit it to anybody, and of course plenty of hang with ’em and c’mon babe and you got this.
All that worked very nicely in the top of the second, with Landon Knack (whom I knew only from a not particularly distinguished tenure on my fantasy-baseball roster) replacing Brasier. After a first-pitch single from Starling Marte, Jesse Winker wrung out a walk. Jose Iglesias popped up, but Tyrone Taylor smacked a double down the left-field line for a 2-0 Mets lead. An overeager Francisco Alvarez popped up his first pitch, leaving a precious gimme run on the table, and Dave Roberts ordered Knack to put Lindor on first and face Mark Vientos.
Vientos then put together one of the best ABs of his burgeoning young career, hunting fastballs while fouling off sliders in the zone and ignoring ones below it. Knack’s ninth pitch was not only a fastball but a middle-middle bullseye, and Vientos whacked it over the fence for a grand slam and a 6-0 Met lead.
(I’ll pause here for a bit of wisdom from Ryne Stanek in the Athletic, offering a pitcher’s perspective on long ABs: “You only have so many tricks. It makes the at-bat substantially harder when you’ve exposed everything you’ve got.”)
Six-zip in the second and then slowing pull away is an excellent recipe for scoreboard success and calm fans, but would that it were so simple.
The Mets kept putting together good ABs — Pete Alonso had a 10-pitch one before being called out on what might or might not have been a strike, and even Alvarez looked more disciplined in his last go-round — but they couldn’t get the big hit against the next two acts taking the stage at Relieverpalooza: former Met Anthony Banda (“Banda MACHO!” I hollered, as I did when he was pitching for us with considerably less success) and Brent Honeywell Jr., whose career is a study in perseverance. (He’s also the cousin of former Met Mike Marshall — the dogma-defying pitching guru, not the former Met first baseman and hulking ex-Dodger. Though genealogy suggests Honeywell is likely a more distant cousin of that Mike Marshall too — not to mention, quite possibly, you and me and Greg and Charlemagne.)
While the Mets slumbered in key spots, the Dodgers started to do what a lineup like theirs will do. (I had moved upstairs post-Zoom call and will accept that I changed the luck and should be castigated, since I Ought to Know Better.) Max Muncy hit a solo shot off Manaea in the fifth and Betts and Teoscar Hernandez opened the sixth with walks. At which point the Mets defense sprung an ill-timed leak: Iglesias started a double play before he had properly secured a Freeman grounder, one that came with an added degree of difficulty after kicking off the back of the mound. Instead of two outs Iglesias had none, the bases were loaded with nobody out, and oh boy.
Exit Manaea, enter the affectless Phil Maton. Maton coaxed an infield pop-up from Will Smith and then got another grounder, this one from Tommy Edman in the hole between first and second — a difficult play to begin with, made harder by Freeman screening Alonso. The ball went under Alonso’s glove and it was 6-3.
Maton walked Muncy and had to face Kiké Hernandez, who’s infamous for being death to baseballs in the playoffs. Maton got a hard grounder to Vientos, who bobbled it for about the 8,000th heart stoppage of the inning before regaining his grip and starting a double play, which the Dodgers challenged for reasons best known to them.
With the Mets still unable to tack on, Stanek took over for Maton in the seventh but looked like he ran out of gas in the eighth, yielding a two-out single to Edman and walking Muncy. Which meant it was time, yet again, for us all to be strapped into the Edwin Diaz Rollercoaster, and with Kiké Hernandez at the plate as the tying run, no less. The same Kiké Hernandez who’d hit into that big double play.
Oh boy.
Diaz’s fourth pitch was a slider that sat middle … and which Kiké got under for a harmless fly ball.
The Mets finally scratched for a badly needed run in the ninth off Edgardo Henriquez, who looks like he’ll be wipeout reliever but is still finding his way a bit. And so it would be Diaz against Andy Pages to lead off the ninth, followed by Ohtani and his attendant Furies.
Diaz’s first three pitches to Pages were distressingly high; the third was hit just hard enough to float over the infield for a leadoff single. Diaz then walked Ohtani, with his pitches elevated and looking a little flabby.
Oh boy yet again, but unlike against the Phillies, Betts wasn’t the tying run. (Thank you and bless you, Starling Marte.) And Diaz found his fastball and punched Betts out. Then he threw all fastballs to Teoscar Hernandez, erasing him on six pitches. That brought up Freeman, who looks more formidable playing on one leg than most guys look on two. Diaz worked the count to 2-2 on fastballs, then uncorked a beauty of a back-foot slider, which Freeman swung over to put the game in our column.
Can 6-0 feel like not enough? Yes. Can 7-3 feel too close? Also yes. Did the Mets win the game and even up the series? Three times yes. Three times yes, a big exhale, and back we come to New York and whatever awaits. Gather your talismans, find your center … and buckle up.
by Greg Prince on 14 October 2024 9:48 am You have to laugh it off. “Ha.” There ya go.
Seriously, though — the Mets just endured their worst-ever postseason loss in terms of run differential, and it wasn’t even close. Dodgers 9 Mets 0. The Mets had never lost in the spotlight portion of October by more than six. Few teams get beat by a lot in October. Teams that get to October tend to be skilled at keeping games close.
We know that the true worst postseason losses are the heartbreakers, the choke jobs and the eliminators. This was none of those. This, the now fifth October 13 loss in Met postseason history against no October 13 wins (but who’s superstitious?), was just an old-fashioned blowout, old-fashioned like 2017 when the Mets visited Dodger Stadium for regularly scheduled ass-kickings and none of us who could keep our eyes open blinked when the Mets would lose, 12-0, behind Robert Gsellman, or 8-2 behind Tyler Pill. The 2017 Mets weren’t supposed to be the historical precedent filtering into my head during the first game of the 2024 National League Championship Series, but there they were. Goodness knows the 2024 Mets didn’t show up.
Everything about Game One was off, starting with practically every pitch Kodai Senga threw and didn’t get over in his inning-and-a-third of woebegone work. Whatever Senga found as he ramped up his on-the-fly rehab program in Philadelphia vanished once the Mets went west. His many bullpen buddies varied in their degrees of effectiveness, but, boy, did a lot of them get used. Maybe the Mets didn’t pick the right day to subtract an additional arm from their relief corps.
There was virtually no Met hitting. Jack Flaherty saw to that. There was lousy Met baserunning on those rare occasions when Mets made cameos on the basepaths. Jesse Winker saw to that. The Mets defense also managed to create holes for the Dodgers to burst through, and like the Rams and Chargers on any given Sunday, they repeatedly crossed the plane of the goal line. For ill measure, Brandon Nimmo — the only Met extant from the aforementioned Gsellman and Pill outings — let it be known he’s dealing with a touch of plantar fasciitis, in case you wondered why he was limping. You’re forgiven for not noticing if you didn’t, as the Mets were collectively in limp mode.
Overall, it was as dismal an opener to a vital series as could be imagined, except it wasn’t a heartbreaker or a choke job and certainly not an eliminator. It was the opener. One of seven games, the first of seven games. In the second, Sean Manaea will start. It’s an afternoon game in L.A. Manaea has been dependable for months, awesome under the sun. Remember that flirtation with perfection versus the Orioles in August? Sean shone brighter than anything in the sky amid that sunny matinee. Remember that makeup game in St. Louis? It was also a Monday in daylight, also a beauty. That was the day it occurred to me that Manaea could be a postseason ace for this team. Here’s his chance. Here’s our chance. We still have a big one.
We had a big one on Sunday night and it blew up in our faces, but that’s over. Consider it laughed off.
by Greg Prince on 13 October 2024 3:10 pm The hours before first pitch of a series that determines who goes to the World Series, regardless of time zones or network dictates, drag longer than any other hours on any clock anywhere.
The Mets are going in Game One with a pitcher making his third major league start of 2024. His manager acknowledges three innings is his limit. And we all treat this as normal. Hopefully every Kodai Senga inning will be worth its weight in ghosts.
Fresh from loosening up in the Arizona Fall League — a circuit usually referenced only by fans of teams who don’t have anything else going on in a given autumn — Jeff McNeil has been added to the NLCS roster. I’m pretty sure I worried about what his absence would mean to the Mets’ depth when he went on the IL in early September. I’m also pretty sure that, as was the case with Senga, I’d all but forgotten about him in the going-forward scheme of this team while he was gone. Here’s to injured players working their way back to viability in the shadows of a postseason sprint and then contributing to the remaining legs of its marathon.
To make room for McNeil, Adam Ottavino was elbowed off the active roster. Despite muttering to myself, “may that be the last pitch Adam Ottavino throws as a New York Met,” at the end of one of his particularly non-stellar outings a few weeks ago, let the record show that Otto set down the Braves in order in the seventh inning of the opener of the September 30 doubleheader in Atlanta; you know which game that was. He was in line to be the winning pitcher once the Mets put six on the board in the eighth, a statistical nicety that vanished once the Braves regrabbed the lead (a turn of events that itself became the stuff of trivia once Linsanity reigned in the ninth). Ottavino, 39 next month, was a rock of this bullpen for two seasons before tumbling downhill this year. Carlos Mendoza didn’t invite him throw a pitch in either the NLWCS or NLDS, so his potential utility for the next helping of playoff alphabet soup seemed vague at best. Good outing or bad, the guy has emitted excellent-teammate vibes every step of the way. The Mets seem to inspire those in one another, and they don’t come out of thin air. Veteran leadership sometimes appears in the form of a sweeper/sinker specialist working his way through difficulties as much as it does an obvious MVP type. Whatever happens next, appreciate ya, Adam.
Whatever happens next? Are we any closer to Game One? Presumably yes, but my clock has barely moved since three seconds ago when I last checked it.
by Greg Prince on 12 October 2024 1:52 pm We knew it would be the warm California sun glowing amid local start times of 5:15 PM Sunday and 1:08 PM Monday. We just didn’t know in which part of the Golden State Ol’ Sol would be splashing down on the Mets. Now we do. It’s glamorous L.A., it’s gleaming Dodger Stadium, it’s the hallowed Dodgers.
In the spirit of brushing aside the Braves, where we couldn’t possibly beat them; taking care of the Brewers, who started the season by shoving us into an 0-3 hole; and flipping off the Phillies, for whose fans flipping off is the national bird, I say to the Dodgers, “Bring it.”
Or I’d say it, but it’s already been broughten.
They have the most famous and accomplished baseball player in the world, one who would, if his health allowed him, pitch while he isn’t hitting and running like nobody has ever hit and run (you save a lot of energy not fielding). They have the other most versatile superstar of modern times, a high-caliber outfielder who became a representative infielder and then went back to the field from which he came as needed, his offense never to be sneezed at. They have a slugging first baseman who has haunted Met pitching since Met pitching meant Pat Misch, Dillon Gee and a journeyman righty named Jeremy Hefner. They have all kinds of irritants infesting their lineup, a bullpen hyped as unhittable, and an ace we tried real hard to sign before he passed on us to go to them.
They won 98 games, the most in baseball. They’re the one-seed, five notches higher than us. They have home field advantage. They’ve been in the playoffs a dozen consecutive years, annually arriving in comfort, never having to cross their fingers and toes that they’ll survive through the last day of the schedule and then hold their collective breath regarding the day after the last day.
Bring it on. Bring on the starpower one witnesses while staring down at the lights of L.A. Bring on the New Balance commercials that would make me despise “Hollywood Swinging” if it hadn’t established itself as such a great song in my head in 1974. Bring on Joe Davis, voice of the Dodgers doubling as the voice of Fox. Bring on as many clips as producers care to show of Mike Scioscia going deep and Jorge Lopez losing control.
I would have been glad if it had been the Padres emerging from the other NLDS and taking the West Coast version of the Unity Cup/Sewing Machine/Pen. Not any more or less glad than I am that it turned out to be the Dodgers. To me, it didn’t matter and doesn’t matter. I’m here for the Mets. The Mets are here for this. Maybe the Mets owed the Padres a little payback for October 2022. Maybe the Mets owe the Dodgers a quick thanks for May 2024. They were the opponent when Lopez lost his mind and glove in rapid succession. The Mets spent a month bottoming out. Losing all three games of a series to Los Angeles when L.A. visited Queens in May marked the spot from which the Mets had to begin bouncing back. I know the debacle that left us 22-33 removed my from thinking the notion that we were still living in the aftermath of the remains of 2022, just waiting for one more injury to heal or one more slump to lessen. The slate needed wiping clean, and getting swept by the Dodgers when we did was the wet rag that did it.
Best record in either league after the game when Lopez’s glove landed in the Citi Field stands? The six-seed Mets, at 67-40. Also, we took two out of three at Dodger Stadium from them in April, outlasted them in the 2015 NLDS, swept them in the 2006 version, and mended millions of hearts broken in Brooklyn and beyond when we came along in 1962 to supplant their borough-abandoning asses. (If we’re gonna go for history, let’s go all out.)
Just so there’s no confusion, first pitch Sunday is 8:15 PM New York time. Monday it’s 4:08 PM New York time. That’s right — our time.
by Greg Prince on 11 October 2024 4:36 pm There are off days in the postseason, but there’s never a day off from thinking about the Mets when the Mets are in the postseason. The Mets and we needed the briefest of respites after clinching the National League Division Series — which I swear I knew was as good as won once it became clear Francisco Lindor would bat with the bases loaded in the sixth inning — on Wednesday night. This respite we’re in the midst of, however, needs to end soon, partly from concern than the Mets’ finely honed edge could slightly dull, mostly because any day without the Mets playing scintillating postseason baseball lies somewhere between boring and bizarre. We live in these series and these games now. We can’t be asked for more than a travel day’s worth of Mets idleness.
When the Mets do play their next postseason game, Game One of the 2024 National League Championship Series at a Southern California site still to be determined, on Sunday night October 13, it will be the hundredth postseason game in franchise history. We were stuck on 92 until we landed in Milwaukee on October 1, roughly ten years ago. Correction, it was only ten days ago, which can also be mathematically expressed as seven games and a lifetime ago.
The Mets are 57-42 in postseason competition heading into Game 100, with five of the wins and two of the losses coming this month. For those who put stock in omens, you are advised to look away from this factoid: the Mets have played four postseason games on October 13 (1973, 1999, 2006, 2015). They’ve lost all four. It is one of only two postseason dates — October 19 is the other — on which the Mets have played more than once and never won. If you’d like a better omen regarding lucky October 13, let’s remember a) the Mets are simply due for a win on that date; b) the contemporary Mets have been pretty good about demolishing imposing specters (see everybody we’ve beaten and where we’ve beaten them these past two weeks); and c) this is 2024, not any other Met year.
I love that Keith Hernandez was invited to throw a first pitch to John Franco before NLDS Game Three. I love that Daniel Murphy threw a first pitch to Bartolo Colon before Game Four. I’ll love whoever is lined up to do the honors when the NLCS alights in Flushing Wednesday, Thursday and, if necessary, Friday. I love invoking and evoking all previous Met postseason entrants, because they represent years that were mostly if not fully great, the best of our lives. And yet, the connection I usually feel to Met postseasons past while a Met postseason is in progress is fairly limited this time around. I’m not overcome by the “this is just like…” impulse because this postseason; this season; and this team, with every passing inning, feel absolutely singular to this moment. My head is almost always immersed in Met history. Right now it’s in swimming in the Met present. I like it here.
My head has been buzzing since the latest celebration. The contact high through the television is powerful. But now that my head is clearing a bit, I have a request for whoever makes such decisions — we’ve gotta come up with a handy phrase for what winning the National League Division Series means. The League Championship Series still nets a league champion a pennant, just like coming in first did in the days of Russ Hodges hollering on behalf of Bobby Thomson. The World Series gets you the world championship, an easily understood and coveted prize. The Mets are 5-0 in LDSes, each of them absolutely worthy of the ruckus the Mets raised in their wake. My head might still be buzzing from the home run Todd Pratt hit 25 years before Lindor’s grand slam. On all those occasions — 10/9/1999; 10/8/2000; 10/7/2006; 10/15/2015; 10/9/2024 — somebody should have been able to say, “The Mets have won the” something or other that isn’t as cumbersome or generic as National League Division Series. Maybe the LDS winner should be handed a Unity Cup, to symbolize the solution to division. Maybe Singer Corporation should sponsor the presentation of a sewing machine, because now the winner has a chance to stitch together its own flag in the next round. How about a pen, to signify you’re roughly halfway to a pennant? It’s too bad George Washington didn’t give this matter more thought, or he might have dreamed up a word for it.
An audio celebration of where the Mets are these days is going on at National League Town. Listen in here.
by Jason Fry on 10 October 2024 1:49 am Here’s an unforgivable fan sin: “I don’t want them to clinch tonight because I have tickets for tomorrow and want to see it myself.”
I’ve heard that a time or two, and it’s all I can do to limit myself to pointed disagreement instead of reacting in a way that would get me taken away in a cop car. Because no. No with a side of “Are you fucking insane?”
This is a roundabout way of saying that Emily and I had sprung for tickets to Wednesday’s game, and I would have been immensely happy if it hadn’t been played because the Mets had already beaten the Phillies, drenched each other in alcohol and started making plans to head for California.
But it was going to be played, so we donned our orange 7 Line gear (with the Mookie shirt I’ve decided is lucky beneath mine) and got on the subway at the uncharacteristic hour demanded by a 5:08 pm start. Mets fans started appearing in ones and twos as the 2 headed north through lower Manhattan, and at Times Square we descended to the 7 platform and soon found ourselves tick-tick-ticking above Queens on a subway car jammed with Mets fans and non-baseball-affiliated Queensfolk who looked even more affronted than usual by this surge of orange and blue rooters.
Our 7 train was decorated with Grimaces. (Grimaci?) I decided that was a good omen.
A look at the lines outside the rotuna sent us around to the bullpen gate (which I highly, highly recommend if you’re going to Citi Field this postseason), and from there it was a brisk walk across the Shea Bridge to the 7 Line’s domain, with the Home Run Apple’s housing hulking to our right.
Weirdly, I’d never been to a game with the 7 Line, though I’ve had tickets for a few. Emily has gone multiple times, sometimes with our kid and/or her dad, but my outings have all fallen victim to illness or scotched plans or some other mischance. Honestly, this was the perfect time for my debut: I was nervous as a cat, and given my anxiety there was no better place to be than surrounded by other anxious, all-in Mets fans. I could look right and see a guy hoisting a YA GOTTA BELIEVE sign, look left and see a woman pumping a Francisco Lindor fathead in the air, and look down toward the field and see an OMG sign, one big enough to need handles to get it from place to place. And unlike my typical Citi Field experience, 99% of our neighbors were laser-focused on the game, radiating bravado or dismay or bouncing madly between them.
Oh, and the guy in the aisle when we arrived? It was Cow-Bell Man, who’s been part of my Mets fan experience since Shea. I fist-bumped him extra-happily, convinced that was a good omen too.
None of this camaraderie settled my nerves — the world can’t make an OMG sign that big — but being surrounded by others’ jangled nerves made the fractured state of my own easier to bear. We were in this together, ticketed for jubilation or despair, and there was a comfort in it.
As for the game, though … it was a long way away, and watched through the mildly cracked prism of a friendly Met-fan soccer riot. Balls and strikes? No real idea. Anything down the right-field line was a mystery, solved only by watching whether the batter ended up standing on a base, returned to the plate, or trudged back to the dugout. (Alec Bohm‘s foul ball that should have been a double was particularly confounding.) You knew what had happened primarily because 40,000-other fans reacted one way or another.
Which made the Mets’ Sisyphean struggles to score even one lousy run feel even more out of kilter. They’d load the bases against Ranger Suarez, or put two runners on, or do something worthy of praise, and then batters we could kind of see would hack at balls we couldn’t see and a strike would go up and I’d turn to look at the big video board and it would always say the same fucking thing: CURVEBALL.
(Analysis exclusively by inference: Suarez had a really good curveball.)
Suarez Houdini’ed his way out of threat after threat before departing in the fifth, with our section believing, moaning and griping, and then putting aside our pique and believing again, lather rinse repeat. (CURVEBALL.) Fortunately, Jose Quintana was doing some Houdini work of his own: The Phillies pushed a run across in the fourth when Mark Vientos bobbled a throw home (which probably wouldn’t have gotten Bryce Harper anyway), a carbon copy of his misplay in Philadelphia. But Quintana kept Nick Castellanos pinned at third to limit the damage. Then, in the top of the sixth, Quintana allowed a leadoff double to Harper before departing, but Reed Garrett sandwiched two strikeouts around a walk and David Peterson got the final out.
One-nothing, but it was only the sixth. Things hadn’t gone our way yet, but surely a lousy skinny run wasn’t going to be enough to send the series back to Philadelphia.
Still, enough doubt had crept in that when the Mets started the sixth with a single, HBP and a walk off Jeff Hoffman, we were less ready to exult than we were braced for impact. With the bases loaded and nobody out, Francisco Alvarez tapped a ball to Trea Turner at short, Turner came home for the force, and it was like the same stale air was farting and whistling out of the same sad slackening balloon: not this, not again.
Hoffman departed in favor of Carlos Estevez, who’d face Lindor. Their confrontation unfolded far away. All fastballs, I could see that much. Lindor ignored the first one, swung over the second one, and jerked back from the third one.
The fourth one, though, was belted, struck on a line to our left. Brandon Marsh turned and ran after it, not the lope of an outfielder who has time but the gallop of one who fears he doesn’t. I could tell the ball wasn’t going to be caught but could judge nothing else. Then I lost track of the ball and our section becoming a cauldron of screaming and leaping told me the rest: It was a grand slam, and the Mets’ one-run deficit had turned into a three-run lead.
 There we are, just to the left of Francisco’s head. (Thanks to my pal Tom Weber!) (By the way, before we got home two different friends had sent along screenshots of me and Emily losing our minds in the crowd. I’m only starting to realize how cool it is that I have years in which I’ll be able to look up during a classic Mets clip and say, “there we are right there — oh my was that something to see.”)
The Mets led, but it was time for my new parlor games. The first was to beseech the Mets for nine or 10 more runs, which they stubbornly refused to supply despite being handed more opportunities. The second was to ask where we were going to get X more outs and request that the reliever of the moment not fuck it up.
So. Where were we going to get nine outs? Peterson didn’t fuck up and so reduced the tally to six. The Mets refused to convert first and second and nobody out into so much as a tack-on run, let alone the desired nine or 10. But Peterson again didn’t fuck up and the outs to be sought shrank to three.
If you’d polled our section before the top of the ninth, at least 90% of us would have opted to send Peterson back out having thrown just 23 pitches. But one of this season’s most eventful storylines — which you can sense has twists and turns left — has been Carlos Mendoza and his faith in Edwin Diaz. However we felt about it out by the Home Run Apple, the stadium lights dimmed, “Narco” started up, and on came Diaz.
On came Diaz, and it was obvious even from 450 feet away that he was a mess. A five-pitch walk to J.T. Realmuto started the muttering; a five-pitch walk to Bryson Stott inspired full-on mutiny. Two on, nobody out and at best Diaz was going to have to face three hitters representing the tying run. And at worst? My mind shrank from that one like I’d almost put my hand on a cherry-red burner atop the stove.
Jeremy Hefner came out and then it was time for Diaz to deal with Knapsack Clemens. I’ll tell you this: If Kneecap had hit a game-tying home run off Diaz you wouldn’t be reading this recap, because I would have torn off my gear, walked out of Citi Field and become a monk. Baseball can’t be that cruel, I tried to tell myself, knowing perfectly that in fact it is that cruel all the time.
Diaz, still not looking anywhere near sharp, fell behind Clemens 2-1, then struck him out on a pair of fastballs. I’d say whew, but it felt like the thumb screws getting twisted a little tighter. Up came Marsh, who got under a four-seamer and hit a can of corn to Harrison Bader. But there was still one out to get, and Diaz was going to have to wring it out of Kyle Schwarber, who on the one hand had literally never done anything against Diaz but on the other hand was Kyle Schwarber.
Remember, we were far away. What happened was a distant pantomime, mostly of things not happening. Strike, ball, drive to right that was long but clearly foul, and then … a little flurry of motion at home plate, a jet-engine roar from the crowd, and pandemonium.
The Mets had won, clinching something for the first time at Citi Field. In section 141 we had our own little V-J Day: Don’t know you but here’s a high-five and a hug for good measure. The weather report: jubilant, with scattered beer showers. And then back onto the 7 (no express, because I guess the MTA wasn’t given a playoff schedule) and into Donovan’s at Woodside to be greeted like conquering heroes in the bar and then home at last, equal parts exhausted and exhilarated.
Exhausted and exhilarated, and wanting more. But there will be time for that. For now, here we are. And what an amazing place it is.
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