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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 Jason Fry on 13 September 2023 11:57 pm Who are these Mets, anyway?
Joey Lucchesi was terrific, Mark Vientos homered, Pete Alonso drove in three on a homerless night and — in the most astonishing development of all — Trevor Gott and Drew Smith were allowed to pitch and didn’t fall apart like cheap watches. There was a nifty flying slide home by Jeff McNeil, some dopey D-Backs’ baserunning — really, there wasn’t much to complain about.
Not that it was complaint, exactly, but in our living room we fell into a discussion of players, at bats and the law of averages. After Francisco Lindor finished a second dogged, tough at-bat, I remarked idly that it felt like Lindor looked hopeless in a surprisingly large percentage of the outs he made. That wasn’t meant as a dig, but as a point of puzzling contrast — I was trying to explain my confusion about a player whom I think of as a genuine star in terms of both production and leadership (witness his huddle with Alonso and DJ Stewart to offer a scouting report on one of the Arizona relievers), but also as a guy who can look bizarrely lost at the plate. We talked about confirmation bias and things evening out, both of which were fair points, and I was challenged to name Mets who I remembered as never having the kind of ABs like the ones I was attributing to Lindor. Keith Hernandez came to mind, as did David Wright — or at least Wright as he was before he got hit in the head. In hindsight, I’d put Brandon Nimmo in that category, at least before he started selling out for power a bit more. I don’t know what the answer is there — probably it’s simply that memory plays tricks — but still, I find Lindor a confounding mix of superstar and question mark.
Back to Lucchesi: An old baseball adage is never to trust what you see in garbage time, but he’s looked pretty good in his last two starts, even if those two mark his only big-league outings since May. And, oddly, he’s been no great shakes at Triple-A. That last note is a flashing yellow light I ought to heed, but I like Lucchesi’s non-nonsense demeanor and his simple, rock-and-fire motion. It feels like the Mets could do a lot worse than offering him another short-term deal and seeing what he can do as a rotation regular. Just like they could do worse than seeing what Stewart might accomplish as a fourth outfielder/DH.
I doubt Lucchesi and Stewart are at the core of a championship team. But that’s not the sole measure of success — being useful complementary players would be victory enough. Maybe that’s not the stuff of stirring reveries, but let’s let garbage time have its pleasures.
by Jason Fry on 13 September 2023 7:44 am Like other varieties of stopped clocks, every so often the Mets are just right.
On Tuesday night they hit a barrage of homers, with Ronny Mauricio’s inaugural blast the most impressive; they got good starting pitching; and they survived the inevitable bad bullpenning to take a game away from the Diamondbacks.
Jose Butto provided the good starting pitching, quietly picking up his first big-league win — I say quietly because Butto’s run of competence has kind of snuck up on us while we’ve been busy bemoaning the Family Circus “progression” of David Peterson and Tylor Megill and looking over to see how Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander are doing with their new employers. (Last night the answer was “not good,” as Scherzer left with a triceps injury and Verlander got beat by the A’s.)
Butto fell behind 1-0, but the Mets got even on a bad-hop triple from Brandon Nimmo and the first of Francisco Lindor‘s two RBIs. An inning later, Mauricio untied things with a prodigious blast to the very back of Sodaland, startling some of the numerous hounds in attendance — at least those whose doggy gaze hadn’t already been diverted by Mauricio’s impressive bat flip. After that it was on, with the Mets adding homers from Pete Alonso and Francisco Alvarez. That last homer was particularly welcome, coming after Grant Hartwig and Sam Coonrod sandwiched a competent inning from Phil Bickford by doing what the bullpen does seemingly every night these days. Hartwig and Coonrod were nice stories for about five seconds earlier this season; now when you see either of those young men you consider hiding behind the couch before remembering that a) what the hell, the season’s already lost; and b) at least they’re not Trevor Gott or Drew Smith.
Coonrod’s disastrous eighth let the Diamondbacks draw within two with the tying run lurking on second, but the Mets were playing this night’s game of bullpen roulette with only five bullets chambered: Adam Ottavino coaxed a ground ball from Corbin Carroll that was hit just hard enough and right at someone to become a very welcome inning-ending double play.
The rest of the evening? A couple of quick observations should suffice:
- By the late innings the SNY broadcast had become the baseball equivalent of wackadoodle free jazz, with Gary Cohen goading Keith Hernandez to turn the dials of Keithness way past even 11 and putting Steve Gelbs on the couch about the misery of giving one’s heart to the Jets. And you know what? That’s exactly what SNY broadcasts should be these days. Wackadoodle free jazz all the way to Oct. 1 and start again next year!
- It was nice to see Ron Hodges in the park and on the broadcast. Hodges is a deep cut for Mets fans, a journeyman noted for his longevity and for spanning two very different eras of team history, and it’s been wonderful seeing the Mets reconnect with that history by giving less-celebrated players from their past well-deserved moments in the spotlight. And it was fun hearing Hodges talk about catching Tom Seaver, for all the obvious reasons. But it got less fun when Hodges was asked about the modern game and started yelling at clouds. It’s never a good idea to ask men in their autumn years if the world were made of purer and better stuff in their youthful springs and summers, and the folks who call the shots at SNY ought to know that by now.
- The Mets hired David Stearns! This is great, and I can’t wait for … you know what? Nah. I am pleased, and I do have hopes that this will let blueprints be drawn up in relatively short order for the next great era of Mets baseball. But I’m also tired of winning offseasons. If there were flags for that, Citi Field would be so festooned with flapping banners that the stadium would be in danger of taking flight in a high wind. I’d prefer some real ones, the kind given out for in-season accomplishments.
by Greg Prince on 12 September 2023 2:08 pm What had been a bad week regarding saviors of professional sports franchises in New York is now a promising week regarding saviors of professional sports franchises in New York. At the very least, nobody should be sacking and tearing David Stearns’s Achilles tendon in the days ahead.
Never mind Aaron Rodgers and never mind the 2023 Mets, save for the nineteen games from which we pledge to not pull ourselves away unless something important happens (like we suddenly remember to get a life). Your 2024 and then some New York Mets President of Baseball Operations is en route, per multiple reports that we are delighted to help disseminate.
David Stearns is coming! David Stearns is coming!
Old news? Feels like it. It seems Stearns has been talked about as the next/first Mets President of Baseball Operations — or POBO, as in what can a POBO do, except sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band? — since the day Steve Cohen entered the picture. There’ve been so many days and so many introductions of potential front office saviors since then, including current and not-going-anywhere general manager Billy Eppler. But none of them was an upper-case President. None of them was David Stearns.
Stearns we’ve heard is responsible for the continual success of the Milwaukee franchise and grew up loving the Mets. Most of grew up loving the Mets. None of the rest of us built the Brewers into an NL Central perennial contender. We thought the Mets had already solved the perennial contender part when they topped 100 wins last year and loaded up to maintain their status atop the riff-raff of the NL East. Turns out we riffed and raffed our way toward the bottom of the division as quickly as we scaled to its almost heights. How the hell did that happen?
Seriously, how did it? During the rain delay that preceded Monday night’s loss, SNY aired Mets Yearbook: 2022. I caught the last few minutes, the part where everything looks rosy for the 2023 Mets, what with the signing of Justin Verlander and everything else. We know Verlander’s no longer here. Whatever became of everything else?
I’ll stop asking questions until David Stearns — more than a year younger than Aaron Rodgers but sage enough to ply his trade in street clothes — completes his ride to Flushing and begins Presidenting Baseball Operations. Word has it he will be officially appointed following the end of this season that can’t end soon enough. When Mets Yearbook: 2023 debuts, we’ll likely see a segment devoted to the appointment of our POBO and how this augurs well for the future. I sure hope some future rain delay proves it a most prophetic segment.
by Greg Prince on 12 September 2023 10:23 am I watched the victorious Jets quarterback stand before the football press late Monday night and extol the virtues of never getting too high or too low, which I’m pretty sure I’ve heard an athlete or two or two-million mention before, but since the victorious Jets quarterback Monday night was Zach Wilson rather than Aaron Rodgers, perhaps the young man knows from what he speaks. The Jets couldn’t have been any higher coming into their season opener at the Meadowlands; any lower once their designated savior Rodgers went down with an injury almost immediately and gave way to the guy he was imported to replace as starter; any higher after coming together to prevail — on a punt return by an undrafted rookie — over the Bills in overtime; or any lower once they learned Rodgers was likely out for the season (though at least he got a few more regulation snaps in than Edwin Diaz before Diaz received what amounted to the same prognosis).
Back on the side of the river where we usually focus our attention, the Mets in their first-responder caps kept their highs and lows in check. Big home run for Jeff McNeil. Walloped double by Ronny Mauricio that drove in two and had Ronny racing successfully for third on the throw. Very pretty to watch, and a 3-2 fourth-inning lead as a result.
Big game for Tommy Pham, too! Oh wait, he’s on the Diamondbacks now. Can’t get too high about that.
Pretty good start for Jose Quintana — a lotta pitches through five, also a lotta bearing down to allow only a pair of runs — eventually gave way to pretty Gott relieving. Drew Smith got involved, though the key hit he gave up was not a Trevor-Drew style home run, but a bloop double to left that caused trouble for slugger McNeil in the corner, which facilitated the Diamondbacks pushing across the go-ahead run in the ninth. Mauricio and the Mets threatened in the bottom of the inning, getting as far as second and third, with Paul Sewald — also no longer a Met — on the mound. Omar Narváez worked a helluva walk, I tell you what. Alas, Brandon Nimmo flied out to end the game, limiting dramatic comebacks in the Metropolitan Area to one for the evening.
Can’t get too low from losing, 4-3, to the Wild Card-contending Diamondbacks. Wouldn’t have gotten too high from figuring out a way to edge Arizona, either. Just another Monday night in Flushing, where they play only baseball, and, pretty soon, nothing.
by Greg Prince on 11 September 2023 10:51 am During Saturday afternoon’s telecast, Ron Darling recalled a moment of frustration from early in his career when he was so fed up with receiving no-decisions for his pitching efforts that he said he’d rather take a loss than another ND. Older and wiser (and by way of slapping the Mariners’ George Kirby on the wrist for expressing dismay that his manager kept him in Seattle’s game longer than he would have preferred Friday night), Darling in 2023 couldn’t believe the Darling of way-back-when could articulate a thought so half-baked.
In the vein of the less old, less wise Ron Darling, as happy as I am that the Mets beat the Twins on Sunday afternoon, I just as soon this wasn’t a game that was theirs to win. On the other hand, I just as soon it wasn’t a game that was theirs to lose. I’ve felt that way about all 46 games the Mets played against American League teams this season.
If I could, I’d subtract the Mets’ 19 wins from the likes of Oakland and Cleveland and the Mets’ 27 losses from their brethren in Detroit and Baltimore and all the Interleague results in between. This is not for competitive gain, although if you subtract that 19-27 from the Mets’ overall record of 65-77, you’d have 46-50, which implies that with 46 better-placed and better-played games, perhaps These Mets could have…
Nope, this has nothing to do with weaving fantasy Third Wild Card scenarios in which These Mets could have knocked a little harder on the door to the foyer to the entryway to the barrier to the race for the sixth-best record in the National League had the schedule been calibrated differently. The 2023 Mets could have played the 2023 Mets 162 times and not won as many games as they lost. This is about 46 games against American League teams where there used to be no more than 16, maybe 18 in a given year, and before those were splattered onto our calendar, there used to be none.
As a National League entity, the Mets played other National League entities for 162 games. Should they have been as successful as they could have possibly been, they would play one more extended National League series, then, if they prevailed in that setting, they played an American League team. It was called the World Series. Also, anywhere from one Met to five might be selected to dress up in their uniforms in the same clubhouse with a member or few of the Reds and Astros and Pirates and Expos and so forth to form a National League All-Star team, and that ad hoc unit would play a similar outfit from the American League in the middle of July. Throw in Spring Training and the odd in-season exhibition, and that was that. The National League played the National League, and the American League played the American League, meaning the leagues determined their champions wholly internally before dispatching their respective champion to uphold the honor of the league against the other league’s champion.
 For starters, 162 games against your own league. It worked great for nearly a hundred years. It still works great in the mind of a person who knew this as the norm. Norms that weren’t troubling anybody are hard to dislodge in perception. Interleague play was something that would come up in the occasional fantastical article describing how in the future we’d all be parking our hovercrafts at the EnormoDome en route to seats where we’d wave down our robot vendor for hot dog protein pills, but, yeah, right, the National League would play the American League in the regular season someday.
Then came the June night in 1997 when the San Francisco Giants visited the Texas Rangers, followed by the next night, when the New York Mets hosted the Boston Red Sox, and the novelty was on. The following week started with a Mets road trip to the Bronx, not for a one-off Mayor’s Trophy showdown but for three games that actually counted in the standings for each team, same as the Mets-Red Sox series over the weekend at Shea, same as would happen when the Mets took on the Tigers in Detroit, the Blue Jays in Flushing and the Orioles at Camden Yards. It was a little fascinating, a little offputting. Games were games, even if your hovercraft was in the shop.
The norm was disturbed, but ya got to play where Ty Cobb played, and ya got to see Cal Ripken for yourself. The novelty wore off as novelties will. The setup was rejiggered here and there. For the first five years, it was East versus East, confined to particular weeks before playoff chases truly kicked in. Then, once it was determined the market would bear only so many Mets-Devil Rays contests, there was some NL East vs. AL Central or NL East vs. AL West (plus Mets vs. Yankees, always Mets vs. Yankees, lest the golden goose go untapped). A couple of years the pattern unspooled and you’d have the Mets playing the Orioles and Indians, or the A’s and Twins, rhyme and reason taking those weeks off. When Houston fans, for the purposes of flattening out the circuits at fifteen franchises apiece, were alerted that they were no longer rooting for a National League team, it was Interleague O’Clock somewhere everyday.
At last, we arrived in 2023, with almost every distinction between the leagues blurred until you couldn’t make any out. The DH is there and here. The Twins are on the Mets’ schedule in September not as an aberration but because who haven’t we played yet? No biggie, just as it wasn’t out of the ordinary that we recently spent nine days welcoming to Queens the Angels, the Rangers and the Mariners, just as our post-trade deadline agenda was three in KC, three in Baltimore. Next week we’ll see the Marlins for the first time since early April. That’s the gist of the tradeoff. Less intradivisional action. We played the Marlins what seemed about a hundred times a year most years, nineteen times a year in reality. Same for the Nationals, Braves and Phillies. Now we see them thirteen times each. Determining a division champion (an exercise Atlanta admittedly made academic ages ago) has become incidental. Win enough games against the Red Sox and White Sox and perhaps you’ll forget you didn’t get an additional crack at the team directly in front of you.
Twenty Twenty-Three might not make the best case for Met opportunities lost. The Mets’ most nettlesome opponent in 2023 was themselves. They met the enemy, and it was them. Sunday they accounted for themselves all right. They had DJ Stewart, which made the difference. If we did have that hypothetical 2023 Mets vs. 2023 Mets season alluded to above, whichever version had the good sense to promote and retain DJ Stewart would have to be favored. He drove in the only two runs in the Mets’ 2-0 win in Minneapolis. Met starting pitching, in the person of Tylor Megill for five innings, yielded zeroes. They weren’t as pretty as the eight ex-Marlin Pablo Lopez posted (featuring 14 Ks), but keeping an opponent off the board is keeping an opponent off the board. The relievers who followed Megill — Messrs. Bickford, Gott, Raley and Ottavino — maintained scorelessness. Stewart’s two-RBI double in the ninth broke the longstanding 0-0 tie and averted the sweep.
So we took one out of three from the first-place team in the American League Central, which was theoretically one-third good news for the Cleveland Guardians, though that’s not really a race at this point. The Mets’ hovercraft is parked just above Washington’s, so we’re not quite positioned to scoop up one of those six lottery slots for the absolute worst finishers in baseball (nobody cc’d DJ on the benefits of avoiding any trace of success). Now, at last, we are done with the American League for this year. The final twenty games will be Diamondbacks, Reds, Marlins and Phillies. Lots of Marlins and lots of Phillies down what would be the stretch if we were stretching for anything. It will serve as a reminder of scheduling like it oughta be.
by Greg Prince on 9 September 2023 6:16 pm All games have their highlights, even the Mets’ Saturday afternoon 8-4 loss to the Twins in Minneapolis — if you watched or listened to it, choose YOUR favorite highlight!
• David Peterson delivered the very definition of a quality start!
• Brandon Nimmo, Pete Alonso and DJ Stewart each homered!
• The 2023 season is one game closer to over!
Got your favorite? Great! Enjoy thinking about it for the next 30 to 60 seconds and, if you like, check out the Mets and Twins again on Sunday!
Thanks for stopping by!
by Greg Prince on 9 September 2023 12:54 pm Large portions of Friday night’s telecast from Target Field that I didn’t sleep through — I nodded off for most of the seventh inning, meaning the three runs the Mets’ bullpen gave up that determined the 5-2 loss to Carlos Correa and the Twins could have remained an eternal mystery to me had I not been curious enough to rewind and see whatever became of that tie I remembered from being awake — were devoted to celebrating Kodai Senga’s passing Jerry Koosman for second-highest rookie strikeout total in Mets history, a feat accomplished with the fanning of Minnesota center fielder Willi Castro to end the fourth.
Yeah! He’s No. 2!
I experienced a bit of déjà vu all over again, having been in the ballpark of record the first time a Met rookie pitcher surpassed Koosman’s 1968 total of 178 Ks. The frosh in question was, of course, Dwight Gooden. I say “of course” because Doc’s name topped the graphic SNY posted multiple times before, during and after the game. Dr. K was so synonymous with rookie strikeout milestones that his nickname implied those were what he was destined to set in a franchise and sportwide context. On August 11, 1984, Gooden’s 179th strikeout of the year, registered as he set down the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Lee Mazzilli in the sixth inning, elicited a roar from those of us in attendance at Shea that Saturday night (no offense, itinerant Mazz). According to his manager, Doc was the last to process the hullabaloo.
“He walked in the dugout and said, ‘What’s all the fuss about?’” Davey Johnson told reporters after the game, a 3-1 Met win. “He’s not worried about records. He’s worried about getting the other team out.”
Doc had many more strikeouts ahead of him in 1984. He’d finish with a mind-boggling 276, the major league mark for rookies by a figurative mile; it hasn’t been neared since. Senga, now with 181, will not come close to 276. He has maybe a few starts left. If he’s not handled with kid gloves, 200 is within reach. One infers Kodai preferred to have won without a note of strikeout fanfare on Friday night rather than be no-decisioned in a loss for his team. Pitchers are like that.
Not all pitchers are like Senga, successfully pushing through innings when his best stuff isn’t available to him. “Just because I don’t feel good or I’m not feeling my best doesn’t mean I just fold and give up the game,” the righty said postgame. “I’m given four or five days to prepare for this game, and I think it’s my job to stay out there and make the game winnable. And I take pride in that.”
We regularly watch David Peterson and Tylor Megill not solve situations whose walls are closing in on them. By MLB’s reckoning, they’re relatively experienced pitchers, while Senga is a mere rookie. Yet Kodai brings savvy and gumption to the mound every single start as if he’s been pitching at the highest possible level for more than a decade. Oh, that’s right: Senga’s only in a rookie in the North American sense. He was pitching at the highest possible level for about a decade in Japan. It’s kind of strange that established players who bring their business across the Pacific are classified as veritable neophytes, but Kodai has been new to all of us in 2023. And he’s been bad news for opposing hitters.
His line across six innings Friday night was two runs and four hits. In young Doc’s heyday, an H of 4 would be par for the course in the line score, the R of 2 might be seem a bit high, and we’d be asking what the hell was wrong with either Gooden or Johnson that Dwight’s IP stopped at 6. That was nearly forty years ago. Six effective innings without great command or control — Senga walked four — is today’s moral equivalent of a 1984 complete game.
There are also more strikeouts today in general. Hitters, having been taught to pursue launch angle first and foremost, do like to swing, contact be damned. In his last two starts, Kodai struck out ten Angels in six-and-two-thirds and a dozen Mariners across seven. For his trouble, the starter received a loss and a no-decision, despite allowing two earned runs to L.A. of Anaheim and one to Seattle. In his last win, on August 19, Senga struck out only five Cardinals while giving up just two hits in seven innings. The Mets presumably held a team meeting beforehand and voted to score 13 runs that night, then never more than two for Kodai ever again.
It was a huge deal to watch a 19-year-old rookie strike out more than any Met rookie before him in 1984, especially when you were realizing he was doing it before August was half-over. The next Met rookie to come along and strike out at least as many as Gooden had when he took care of Mazzilli is eleven years older and worlds more experienced. What Senga did in passing Koosman doesn’t really feel of a piece with the story Gooden penned. Still, Kodai Senga surpassed Jerry Koosman’s rookie total of 178 on Friday night. Jerry Koosman, for goodness sake. He passed the Minnesota native in Minnesota, poetic progress that made this Interleague date almost worth the surfeit of American League scheduling we’ve been obliged to endure of late.
If we can factor out that Gooden’s 276 is the record, — thus why was attaining the second-most of anything any kind of angle? — this is Jerry Koosman we’re talking about. I wasn’t watching during the Year of the Pitcher, but 25-year-old Kooz (a little closer to Senga’s 2023 age than Gooden’s 1984 age) was certainly a worthy banner-carrier for the Mets that season. We know what Jerry turned into across a nineteen-year career, with 222 Ws, 2,556 Ks and a universal reputation as give-no-ground competitor for the ages. We know about how 1969 followed 1968, and much of that was about Koosman defining and devouring crunch time for the champion Mets. We know 36 hangs in the same row that will welcome 16 next year.
We also know that, as of this moment, the top five rookie strikeout seasons in Met history belong to Dwight Gooden, Kodai Senga, Jerry Koosman, Tom Seaver and Jon Matlack. If one is to be known by the company one keeps, Kodai’s earned his way into quite a club.
by Greg Prince on 7 September 2023 11:27 am Perhaps the most charming scene in a movie loaded with them is when a nervous Mark “Rat” Ratner first approaches Stacy Hamilton at the counter of Perry’s Pizza in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Armed with Mike Damone’s never-fail “send out this vibe” dating advice, Rat smoothly starts his come-on.
“What do you do with the jackets people leave here?”
Stacy tells him, “We keep ’em.”
“You keep ’em?”
“In case they come back.”
With that, Stacy pulls from beneath the counter a box full of high school students’ jackets and offers Rat the chance to look through it if he wants.
“No, that’s cool,” Rat says in a manner that is anything but. “It would take too long to look through all that. I’ll pick up a new one.”
In reality, Rat hasn’t lost his jacket (Damone is holding it for him off camera), and in reality, the Mets on Wednesday night didn’t lose a game they already had won, because you can’t consider a game in the bag — or box — until it’s officially in the win column. Which this wasn’t.
It felt like it though. The Mets took a lead in the top of the first (Brandon Nimmo doubled, Francisco Lindor singled him in), built upon their lead in the top of the fifth (Lindor doubled, Mark Vientos singled him in) and held that lead going to the bottom of the seventh, thanks to the capable right arm of Jose Butto, a right arm recently judged capable after watching it befuddle the Washington Nationals for six scoreless innings. Following Tuesday night’s triumph in our nation’s capital, the two out of three yoinked from the Seattle Mariners over the weekend, and the way we didn’t keep the suddenly wayward Texas Rangers from stumbling over themselves exactly a week before, you were getting the sense that winning games is now what the New York Mets do almost as a rule. We’d won four of five! Who was gonna stop us?
Well, the New York Mets for one. Even as Butto was mowing down Nats; and even as we could enjoy Lindor having what I’m comfortable referring to as a Lindor game (his 26th stolen base put him 4-4 away from 30-30); and even as a representative delegation of Citi Kids continued to introduce themselves to the present (Alvarez didn’t play, but there was that Vientos ribbie as well as a sleek 5-4-3 DP that was two-thirds Baty and Mauricio); and even as the Mets finally had a team to look down at from their lofty fourth-place perch, there was that nagging feeling one gets from believing your team is ahead by more runs than it is. The first five innings produced those two runs, but they also saw the Mets leave at least one runner on base in every inning, eight in all before the sixth. In the sixth, young Mauricio got as far as third — single, error, bunt — but no further. How, a person asked himself, are the Mets ahead ONLY two-nothing?
The brief sense of pervading presumptuousness that the Mets ahead means the Mets will win, shattered in the seventh. Shattered? Does anything shatter when the fourth-place team is playing the fifth-place team? How about crumbled? Or sagged? That sounds better, given the heat wave. Yeah, let’s just say the Mets wilted. Perhaps Butto did, for after those six essentially spotless innings, Jose gave up two singles around an out, leading Buck Showalter out of the visitors’ dugout at Nationals Park. That was reasonable. He signaled to the bullpen. Also reasonable. He wanted Trevor Gott to pitch.
For what reason, one is not sure.
Two more hits surrounded another out, and there went the lead. Tied at two in the eighth, the Mets threatened once more, as Omar Narváez singled with one out. When catching, Omar looks like a bona fide catcher behind all that gear — whereas some catchers look like hitters biding their time until they get to hit again — yet standing at the plate, Narváez has one of those lumpy frames that makes me think he is asked by ballpark security wherever he goes to flash his ID, because without a uniform on, he could very well be mistaken in street clothes for an overly ambitious fan. “Sorry, buddy, this is the players’ entrance.” (As if I wouldn’t be told the same thing.) But, per Brad Pitt dressing down Oakland’s scouting department, we’re not selling jeans here. I really dig the way Narváez goes about his at-bats. The numbers (.198/.279/.260) don’t back it up, but he seems to put balls in play or at least foul them off in a meaningful way. I’m almost always convinced he’s about to get a base hit, never mind that he doesn’t do so as much as 20% of the time. That’s some faint praise, but I’m willing to dispense it on behalf of a veteran catcher just trying to do his job.
Yet apparently Omar Narváez isn’t on base enough to have finely honed his baserunning instincts, because when Ronny Mauricio lined out hard to second, Omar was about twenty feet off first and the easiest of pickin’s for doubling-off purposes. So much for veteran savvy. So much for that eighth-inning threat.
Trevor Gott was no longer pitching in the bottom of the eighth, so the Nationals didn’t score the go-ahead run. In the ninth, the Mets limited their wasted opportunity to a Rafael Ortega leadoff walk that was erased when Nimmo grounded into a double play. The bottom of the ninth beckoned, and because it was tied, Buck beckoned Bickord… Phil Bickford. Perhaps from warming up alongside Adam Ottavino and then being called on, Bickford took Showalter’s selection as less a vote of confidence than a saveless sigh. If a lead was to be preserved, Otto would be signaled in. The implicit message to Phil: just don’t blow it here, OK pal?
Phil just blew it here. He hasn’t blown so many that we have to borrow some Gott-brand vitriol and direct it toward Bickford. I mean, two months ago, how high was your Phil Bickford Awareness Quotient? I kind of knew he’d been a Dodger, but before we traded for him, I was as likely to think “Phil Bickford” was SNY’s State Farm Agent of the Day. Either way, Phil walked Carter Kieboom on as few pitches as possible without simply waving him toward first; hit Jake Alu on an oh-two pitch, with the first strike having been the gift of clock violation; allowed a seamless sac bunt from Ildemaro Vargas (when did bunting become in vogue again?); and, inevitably, gave up the winning infield-in hit to Jacob Young. This projects as last time this season I plan to list a plethora of Washington Nationals in one paragraph.
The Nats won, 3-2, after the Mets didn’t have it won, 2-0. The Mets saw their lead for not finishing last reduced to a game-and-a-half, though they do maintain the tiebreaker, having taken the season series from their de facto archrivals, 7-6. Should we and they finish with the same record, I want the same consideration the defending NL East champion Braves got for finishing with the same record as the Mets but edging us in the season series, 10-9.
This matters how? Not at all (unless we and Washington both dip enough over the final three weeks to get in on that sweet Bottom Six draft lottery action). But it’s September 2023, a whole lot different from September 2022. One searches for scraps of stakes where there are none in evidence. Still, I’m a lot more ease this September than I was last September, and this is a welcome aspect to the denouement of this otherwise discouraging campaign. A game of this nature gets away a year ago, oh the agita. No disturbing of acids this September. The Mets played a game they came close to winning and didn’t win it. I’m willing to pick it apart some for recapitulation purposes, as I just have, but I come away with no regrets to place amid a pile of Pendletons, a jamboree of Jordans and a surfeit of Suzukis for eternity. Last September, the pre-Atlanta losses warned us of imminent danger, and even the wins somehow felt suspect. We all suspected something was off, despite the win total soaring through the 90s and topping 100.
At this moment, in this September, we’re 64-75. The vibe is very relaxing. Blow a game? Cool. Just pick up a new one, if it’s not too much trouble.
Pick up a new episode of National League Town right here.
by Jason Fry on 5 September 2023 11:17 pm Francisco Alvarez connecting for a long home run. Ronny Mauricio driving in a run and making some nifty plays afield. Mark Vientos tripling. Brett Baty driving in runs and ending the game with a highlight-reel play.
There was a lot to like from the anticipated future of the Mets on Tuesday night: They beat the Nats by six, with the margin that slim only because of some unfortunate bullpenning, and the yout’ of America went 5 for 13 with 6 RBIs in advancing the cause. They had help from more veteran Mets, too: Brandon Nimmo went deep twice, Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso hit big flies, and Jose Quintana didn’t break much of a sweat after a first-inning bump.
Alvarez was the story to be most pleased about: The rookie catcher never let his dreadful slump at the plate carry over to his work as a backstop, with that aspect of his game remaining impressively precocious and marked by a laser-beam focus on detail. Still, the slump really was dreadful, with Alvarez looking completely lost in all the ways that can snowball on a rookie: too aggressive when he had to be selective, too selective when he should have been attacking, seemingly always looking for the opposite of what the pitcher decided to throw, and hitting in lousy luck even when contact was made. Over the last couple of weeks you saw a slow but steady sea change, though: more patience, better contact, and finally the payoff against poor Patrick Corbin. Maybe Alvarez needed his workload cut back, maybe he just needed some time to make the necessary adjustment against pitchers who’d adjusted to him, or maybe it was some of both. Whatever the case, it was a welcome sight.
So too is being ahead of the Nats again in the standings, whatever one might think about draft order and continuing the Steve Cohen restocking of the farm. On the one hand it seemed karmically appropriate for the Mets’ gold-plated season to land with such a thud that they were actually a last-place team; on the other, that seemed like taking the bit a tad too far. Yes, the Mets were a pile of money thrown into a dumpster and set on fire, but the point was made without the Mets actually being worse than the Nationals. Now they aren’t, and even with my October calendar free, that makes me a little happier.
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On a sad note, however the Mets finish their season they’ll do it without Carlos Carrasco. Cookie’s season and Mets career came to an end when he smashed his pinkie with a 50-pound dumbbell in the weight room over the long weekend. Carrasco had a confounding time in orange and blue: He arrived as a surprisingly robust addition to the deal for Lindor, one of those “wait and they also got…” players; saw his inaugural season ruined by injury and ill luck; had a quietly excellent second go-round in which he proved to be every bit the well-liked, steady veteran Cleveland fans mourned losing; and then dove straight off a cliff.
I suspect five years from now Carrasco will be remembered with a shrug when he’s remembered at all, which will be simultaneously a shame and no particular injustice. Just one more reminder, as if the entire season hasn’t been enough, that baseball can be unpredictable and cruel.
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You have to read Tim Britton’s piece in The Athletic, which finds him walking Tom Seaver‘s vineyard in Calistoga, Calif., in the company of the Franchise’s daughter, Anne. It’s a deeply felt, sharply observed elegy for Seaver and a tribute to how he brought his perfectionism and drive to an entirely new pursuit after his playing days. Read it and then, if you haven’t already, subscribe to the Athletic.
We were lucky in having our first years as Met bloggers coincide with the initial wave of ambitious baseball blogs, the high-water mark of online media, and the still vibrant autumn of traditional beat writing. Much of that trifecta is gone now, but at its best the Athletic’s smart, deep and rich Mets coverage reminds me of those days. That’s worth celebrating and supporting.
by Greg Prince on 4 September 2023 1:42 pm What distinguishes every Mets “game go” that involves me and my friend Mark Simon?
As was the case on Sunday afternoon, when Mark and I went to Citi Field to ostensibly watch the Mets play the Mariners, each of us brings several, perhaps many Mets-based trivia questions to ask one another.
What’s the purpose of these trivia questions?
Less to stump one another than to pose a fairly impossible query that is then broken down through a series of somewhat reasonable hints meant to make answering possible, lest the initial impossibility factor break the spirit of he to whom the question is posed.
Can you give me an example of one of those questions?
“Who was the last Met batter Doc Medich ever struck out?”
Why would anybody ask that?
Because this year’s theme was Doc, Doc and Darryl, in honor of Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry having their numbers retired…and Doc Medich conceptually being along for the ride.
Yeah, but how the hell would anybody remember who the last Met Doc Medich struck out was?
The point of the question is not to elicit the correct answer off the bat — though if it’s gotten immediately, more power to the answerer — but to peel the clue onion down to its last layer until the answer is obvious. Like if you say, “he was traded for a 1969 Met,” you might think the answer was Jesse Orosco, because Jesse Orosco was traded for Jerry Koosman.
Is the answer Jesse Orosco?
Um, no.
Does the answer ever become obvious?
Not really. But spirits stop just shy of reaching their breaking point.
So what’s the answer?
The answer is to live a rewarding life of Mets fandom that makes you interested in asking or answering who was the last Met Doc Medich ever struck out.
No, I mean, who was the last Met Doc Medich ever struck out?
Pepe Mangual. He was acquired for 1969 Met Wayne Garrett.
Why would anybody want to know that?
Because of the companion question.
Why was there was a companion question?
Companion questions are the lifeblood of this ritual.
What was the companion question?
“Who pinch-hit for Doc Medich in Doc Medich’s only start as a Met?”
Who was it?
Here’s a clue: his name came up about 30 seconds ago.
Um, Wayne Garrett?
No! Pepe Mangual! The same player who was Doc Medich’s final Met strikeout victim was also the player who pinch-hit for Doc Medich in his only Met start!
What did Pepe Mangual do when he pinch-hit for Doc Medich?
Pepe Mangual struck out.
And you and Mark asked each other these types of questions at the game Sunday?
Only for about the first five innings. We also compared notes on dietary restrictions.
You guys must’ve gotten a kick out being on hand for Pete Alonso’s 40th home run, huh?
We noticed it, even if kind of got in the way of our trivia and foods we avoid.
What about Pete’s 41st homer and hundredth RBI?
We were out of questions by then, so we ate that up with a spoon. Yessir, Pete had the bulk of our attention, though maybe not the scoreboard operators’, because they didn’t seem to ballyhoo No. 100 in the ribbie department with any kind of informational graphic. I don’t care what you think about “counting stats”. A hundred runs batted in is a hundred runs batted in, and that should have been spotlighted. Met trivia buffs we may fancy ourselves, but without confirming it on our phones as Alonso rounded the bases, neither Mark nor I was 100% certain the most amazing power hitter we’ve ever had wasn’t up to “only” 99 RBIs.
How about that Pete Alonso?
My friend and I agreed the Mets need to extend Alonso long-term this winter for every obvious reason — yet if they somehow discern they can’t, like if Pete wants to play “closer to home” à la Jerry Koosman wishing to pitch in Minnesota following 1978, or he’s yearning to test his value in free agency — that the only package they should accept in trade is something that brings them a young pitcher on the level of Noah Syndergaard circa 2016 and a contemporary all-around young star like Austin Riley. And nobody’s going to give you that.
”How about that Pete Alonso?” was more of a rhetorical question, but can you honestly imagine the Mets trading Pete Alonso or letting Pete Alonso go?
I can imagine anything, I suppose, especially when Pete is waiting two weeks between his 39th and 40th homers, but then he waits only four innings between his 40th and 41st homers, and no, of course not. But once you’ve lived through every prominent Met not named David Wright or Ed Kranepool not playing his entire career as a Met, the imagination runs wild, or at least takes a Sunday stroll.
How was the rest of the game?
I’d say Mark and I swapped some pretty good questions.
No, I mean being at the Mets’ 6-3 win over the Mariners?
Oh, that was awesome. We took a series from a contender, though it’s hard to call it being a spoiler when by all rights we should have no business having anything to do with the American League West race. There were more Mariners fans on hand than you might expect, but, thankfully, not too many people in general.
What do you mean “thankfully”?
I like going to Sunday afternoon games, but I don’t dig huge Sunday crowds. When Mark and I sought a game for what he calls our annual game go, I suggested this one with the idea that the Mariners carry a relatively low local profile; there was no giveaway scheduled; it was a holiday weekend that might scatter people’s interests away from Citi Field; and the Mets at this point of the season are, you know, the Mets. We lucked out in terms of manageable demand and really lucked out with seats that were just shaded enough from a convincing September sun. It was pretty hot, though not as steamy as the last time Jerry Koosman pitched at Shea, which he did long after that trade to Minnesota, because Jerry Koosman apparently decided retiring as a Twin wasn’t the be-all and end-all of his post-Met career.
You rarely have a kind word for Interleague play, so why did you want to see the Mariners?
That was actually the biggest reason I wanted to go. The Mariners were the only AL team I’d never seen at Citi Field since it opened. The ballpark opened in 2009 and Seattle hadn’t alit in our presence until 2022, a series we were defeated that I didn’t attend. Saw them twice at Shea, seen them on the road in a couple of places, but not at Citi. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a gaping void in my current edition of The Log, but it was a void. Now it is no longer. One “Seattle (A)” has been dutifully scrawled under “OPPONENT” within the pages of my steno pad of record.
Despite the everybody-plays-everybody ethic of our times, you still denote Interleague opponents with a parenthetical A?
Quaint, I know. But I innately don’t expect to see the Mets play anybody who doesn’t share the National League standings with them.
Anything else you didn’t expect to see yesterday?
Well, I somehow didn’t expect to see Ronny Mauricio, because I assumed Buck would want to rest a rookie who had just lit up the first two major league games he’d played, but it was a nice surprise to see him not benched. I didn’t necessarily expect to see Dominic Leone pitching for his third team at Citi Field this year, and, honestly, we were so deep into our trivia that I didn’t notice Leone come in or realize that was him giving up Jeff McNeil’s laser beam of a home run to right. I also wasn’t expecting to see Mr. Met on the EnormoVision screen at the center of a prerecorded celebratory hora. Nice touch for Jewish Heritage Day.
Isn’t “prerecorded” the same thing as “recorded”?
A phrase is a phrase. Ask me a real question.
Did you see a lot of US Open fans?
Judging by garb, a few decided to make what I’ll assume was a day-night doubleheader out of baseball and tennis, and I appreciate that kind of bi-sport curiosity on behalf of tourists or even Mets fans with split focus. On the 7 on the way in, I heard somebody ask “where do we get off?” and without looking up, I realized they were tennis people. Once I did look up, there was no doubt about it. They’re all so much, I don’t know, cleaner than we are.
Did you offer them directions?
I figured they’d figure it out for themselves. I always have to tamp down the temptation to answer, “eff you is where you get off.”
What do you have against the US Open?
Not much. I just sort of resent the idea that the Mets-Willets Point stop all of a sudden for two weeks every year becomes about something other than the Mets. The same way I resent Mariners fans coming to root against the Mets. I now have proof that such a phenomenon exists. Mariners fans coming to root against the Mets, I mean. I already knew that I’m capable of boiling over with petty resentments.
So you’ve finally ceased reflexively referring to that subway stop as Shea?
No, not really. I still do a two-step in my head, the way I continue to think the Stop & Shop in my neighborhood continues to be a Waldbaum’s.
There haven’t been any Waldbaum’s for quite a while, right?
There also hasn’t been a Shea Stadium stop, per se, or a Shea Stadium for 15 years. But you know how it is. You get used to thinking of something or looking at something a certain way, like when all those Mets wore 36 after Jerry Koosman, yet to you 36 was always going to be Jerry Koosman.
All right, that’s the third time you’ve slipped Jerry Koosman into the conversation — is there something you want to ask me?
If you insist. In his 17 starts following his early departure from the legendary Fourth of July game in Atlanta in 1985, Doc Gooden allowed only 20 runs the rest of the year, and only one of those was driven in by a pitcher. Who was it?
Um, can you give me a clue?
It wasn’t Pepe Mangual.
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