Luis’s pieces

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Jeff Kallman

If you want to know why Met fans call for manager Luis Rojas’s execution every other day, Tuesday night’s loss to the Cardinals handed the prosecution incontrovertible evidence.

Maybe it’ll be better all around if the Mets end up out of the postseason picture, after all. If the manner in which manager Luis Rojas ran Tuesday’s 7-6 loss to the Cardinals is any indication, the Mets would be lucky to get past a wild card game, never mind to it in the first place.

No, we’re not taking the Mets’ hitters off the hook for going a measly 4-for-14 with runners in scoring position. We’re not taking them off the hook for killing four rallies by hitting into double plays.

We’re not taking them off the hook for one of those double plays coming in the tenth inning, after a walk to Jonathan Villar added to the free cookie on second to start the inning. And we’re not taking Pete Alonso off the hook for hitting into two of those double plays plus striking out with first and second to kill a fifth-inning chance at tying or taking a lead.

But we’d like to know what on earth Rojas was or wasn’t thinking, after he lifted his starting pitcher Marcus Stroman following six innings of two-run ball in which his only troublesome inning was the fourth, when the Cardinals scored those two runs on a deep infield hit and a sacrifice fly.

Since Rojas entered the game knowing he wasn’t going to use either Seth Lugo or Miguel Castro, he brought Aaron Loup in for the seventh. Watching Loup use only seven pitches to get two fly outs and a swinging strikeout, it didn’t cross Rojas’s mind that Loup might have another healthy and even economical inning in him.

No, Rojas went instead to Jeurys Familia, who’d been less than effective in his previous two outings, rather than giving the ball to his usual eighth-inning option Trevor May. May might have been pried for three runs in his previous outing (against the Yankees, in the 9/11 anniversary game), but he’d been sharp and un-scored upon in nine of his prior ten gigs until then.

Familia surrendered a one-out walk (to Paul Goldschmidt) and a two-run homer immediately to follow (by Tyler O’Neil). Not until the Cardinals followed at once with Nolen Arenado singling and Yadier Molina reaching on catcher’s interference did Rojas finally remember May. And May only caught Dylan Carlson looking at strike three before getting Edmundo Sosa to ground out for the side.

Rojas also didn’t read the deep text when inconsistent Edwin Diaz pitched a scoreless ninth with only thirteen pitches needed. Sure, Harrison Bader led off reaching on an error, but the Cardinals handed Diaz and the Mets a present by ordering pinch-hitter Lars (Sometimes You Feel Like a) Nootbaar to sacrifice. After such Cardinal generosity, Diaz needed only two pitches to get rid of Tommy Edman on a ground out and four to get Goldschmidt to foul out for the side.

Then Javier Baez led off the bottom of the ninth against Cardinals reliever Geovanny Gallegos by hitting the first pitch of the turn over the left field fence to tie it up at four. Three Met outs later, Diaz might well have been able to pitch the tenth successfully, leaving Rojas the option of Heath Hembree for the eleventh.

But no. He lifted Diaz and sent Hembree out for the tenth. Hembree struck O’Neil out swinging to lead off. The Mets ordered Arenado to first on the house and got exactly what they bargained for, Molina hitting into a double play to end the inning. It only cost Hembree seven pitches (remember, you don’t have to throw four wide ones for an intentional walk anymore) to do it. There might have been no harm, no foul if Rojas sent Hembree back out for the eleventh, either.

“I can’t ask any more from the guys,” Rojas said post-game, when asked why he didn’t push his pen men just a little bit harder considering the time running out on the Mets’ hair-thin postseason chances.

“Right now, it would be unfair,” he continued. “I can’t put them in a situation where it would compromise anything else, their stuff, their health. You might run a guy out there and he might not be the same pitcher you’re asking the guy to be, as well. There’s just a lot of things that go into it. Ideally, the manager wants to pitch everyone every day, but there’s some other things that come into play when you talk. It’s the player’s feel, the pitching coach’s feel, my feel.”

Where was the feel when the best options Rojas played pitched so economically in their effectiveness that an extra inning from any of them might have made a phenomenal difference?

There came harm and foul when Rojas instead went to Jake Reed, a 28-year-old rookie not long returned from the injured list and not having thrown a major league inning since mid-August. The good news was Reed, too, pitching economically enough—eight pitches total.

But then there’s the bad news: 1) His third pitch was hit for a leadoff single, sending the free cookie on second to third post haste. 2) His sixth pitch was hit for an RBI single to break the four-all tie. 3) His eighth pitch was turned into a two-run single.

Then Rojas brought in Trevor Williams, his import from the Cubs and normally a starter but well between assignments and able to throw part or all of an inning if necessary. Williams shook off a base hit to get Goldschmidt to dial Area Code 6-4-3 for the side.

Now the questions would include why not have Williams open a clean inning (if you didn’t count the cookie on second) instead of opening it with a rusty rookie? Said Rojas: Well, Reed’s a reliever and Williams is a starter. There’ve been how many skippers burned alive when they went by The Book instead of what their eyes, ears, and actual numbers whispered in their ears?

Going his Book enabled Rojas to pull the lulu of the night—turning to spaghetti bat Albert Almora, Jr. to pinch hit in the bottom of the eleventh, after the Mets pulled back to within a run on an RBI double and a throwing error by Cardinals reliever Kim, and with Williams’s lineup slot due up.

He picked Almora over Luis Guillorme. After opening 0-2, Almora wrestled his way to a full count—and grounded out modestly to end it. Why Almora over Guillorme? “Against a lefty,” Rojas said, “not the right matchup.”

Which part of his Book did Rojas ignore, in deciding the righthanded Almora was his best chance to tie or win despite the fact that Almora’s been hitting like . . . a pitcher, this season? (Slash line: .115/.148/.173.)

Which part of that Book did Rojas ignore in deciding Guillorme the lefthanded bat had no business going to the plate in that spot . . . even with his .344 on-base percentage against portside pitching in 33 plate appearances this season?

(What’s the name of his Book, anyway? For Whom the Bell Tolls?)

Maybe Guillorme would have poked an RBI hit to tie or even win the game. Maybe he would have ended the game the same way Almora did; maybe he might have flied out to end it. But he’d have given Rojas and the Mets the absolute better shot at keeping the game alive or winning it.

The only time Rojas did set his Book to one side Tuesday night was taking Familia over May. As Casey Stengel might have said, there comes a time in every man’s life and he shouldn’t have had that one.

You want to know why frustrated Met fans call for Rojas’s summary execution after just about every other Met loss and sometimes after oddly-managed Met wins? Tuesday night was gilt-edged evidence for the prosecution.

This morning they’re thanking God and His servant Stengel that Tuesday night wasn’t a postseason game. They may even thank both if the Mets finally don’t make the dance at all. How sad is that?

Max the Knife vs. the Lindor Rock

Posted on September 13, 2021 by Jeff Kallman

Max the Knife went from immaculate to 3,000 in the same Sunday afternoon game . . .

Who says baseball isn’t good for a little hair raising anymore? If you weren’t paying attention Sunday, you missed some real hair raising in Los Angeles and New York. As a matter of fact, you could feel sorry for Dodger Stadium’s being upstaged by Citi Field’s.

Even if both hit the history books running.

Max Scherzer took a perfect game into the eighth inning. Along the way he pitched an immaculate inning—the third man ever to do it three times, joining Chris Sale and Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax—and bagged his 3,000th career strikeout. Right there it should have been the biggest story in the game.

Immaculate inning? Three thousand strikeouts? Could that someone be Max the Knife?

Those Big Apple pains in the ass had to horn in on Scherzer’s glory. They had to go from a brothers-in-arms 9/11 twentieth-anniversary hair-raiser to a Sunday night soiree full of chirping, whistling, snarking, bombing, and oh, yes, Francisco Lindor doing what nobody else in the 139-year history of the Subway Series had done before.

It wasn’t enough that Scherzer should have struck San Diego’s Eric Hosmer out swinging on down and in and a full count in the fifth to record the milestone strikeout. It wasn’t enough that Hosmer was sandwiched by Fernando Tatis, Jr. and Tommy Pham in the middle of that immaculate second.

It wasn’t even enough that Hosmer should have been the one to bust Scherzer’s perfect bid with a double deep to right field, a little quiet revenge for having been on the wrong side of Max the Knife’s further burrowing into the history books.

No. Those spoilsport Mets and Yankees had to go out and enable Lindor—the off-season signing splash whose first year as a Met has been a battle at the plate while remaining a study at shortstop (where he’s worth five defensive runs saved about the National League average)—to do the damage that mattered in a 7-6 Met win.

Never in the entire history of New York’s major league teams tangling against each other—we’re talking serious World Series tonnage, plus all those decades when the Dodgers and the Giants turned baseball into total warfare against each other, not to mention the Yankees and the Mets in regular-season interleague play—had any single player hit three home runs in a single contest between them until Sunday night.

In other words, Lindor accomplished what not even a small truckload of Hall of Famers ever did in Big Apple uniforms against each other. Not Home Run Baker or Babe Ruth. Not Lou Gehrig or Mel Ott. Not Joe DiMaggio or Jackie Robinson. Not Yogi Berra or Johnny Mize. Not Mike Piazza or Derek Jeter. Not even Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

All around the Lindor clock, hey, let’s do the Lindor Rock!

Bottom of the second. Lindor batting lefthanded, squaring off on 1-1 against Clark Schmidt, a Yankee excavated from the farm system to make the start in the first place, and hitting a hanging breaking ball for a three-run homer into the bullpens behind right center field, pulling the Mets from a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead.

“If Francisco Lindor’s first year as a Met could include a signature moment,” called ESPN broadcaster Matt Vasgersian as Lindor came down the third base line and crossed the plate, “we just watched it.” If only his crystal ball had undergone a tuneup.

Bottom of the sixth. One out, Yankee reliever Wandy Peralta throwing his first pitch to Lindor batting righthanded. The changeup arriving down and on the lower outside corner got driven high and into the left center field seats. Fattening a 5-4 Met lead by a run.

“I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I bomb by night . . .”

On the way home down the third base line, Lindor made a gesture simulating a kid sticking two fingers into his mouth to whistle a huge blast—a zap back at the Yankees over suspicions that Saturday night’s Mets starting pitcher, Taijuan Walker, was caught tipping his pitches with the Yankees whistling the tips to their batters during their five-run second.

Maybe the Yankees did it, maybe they didn’t. It’s not as though the Yankees have been immune to suspicions of on-field chicanery in the recent past, even if they’re not yet suspected or affirmed to have been quite as deep-cover as the 2017-18 Astros were shown to be for espionage aforethought.

But Lindor tripped a Yankee trigger when Giancarlo Stanton smashed a game-tying two-out, two-run homer in the top of the seventh. Stanton and Lindor jawed back and forth while Stanton was still running the homer out, though the Yankees and the Mets were both kind enough to let Stanton cross the plate before the benches and bullpens emptied completely for a little, shall we say, conversation over the matter.

“The last couple nights, we’ve just been loud over there,” said Yankee manager Aaron Boone. “Not doing anything.”

“I’m not accusing them,” Lindor said post-game Sunday night. “I’m not saying they’re doing it 100 percent because I don’t know 100 percent, but it definitely felt that way. And I took that personal. I took that personal and I wanted to put runs on the board to help my team win.”

For his part, Stanton postgame thought Lindor was actually ticked off at Peralta for whistling—not to steal signs but to try putting a little more life into what Stanton suggested had been a sluggish Yankee bench during a sluggish Yankee spell. That, Stanton said, is what he was trying to convey to the Mets’ shortstop en route the plate.

“If you’ve got a problem to Wandy, give it to Wandy,” the left fielder said. “Don’t be talking to multiple people, bringing everybody into it. Running around the bases, that was my thought process. Obviously, I didn’t get all that out running around.”

If anyone had a real complaint about Peralta’s whistling, it was probably Yankee right fielder Joey Gallo. “It’s definitely not for pitch-tipping or anything like that,” Gallo insisted, before complaining good naturedly. “It’s been hurting my ear, honestly. It’s unbelievable how loud he can whistle.”

Bottom of the eighth, one out, Lindor back batting lefthanded against another Yankee reliever, Chad Green. This time, he hit a 2-0 meatball practically down the chute even higher over the right field fence than his first flog of the night traveled.

It wasn’t as spiritually delicious as Hall of Famer Piazza’s eighth-inning blast in old Shea Stadium, during the Mets’ first home game after the original 9/11 atrocities’ baseball hiatus, but the Citi Field racket as it traveled out of reach was equal in volume to that twenty-year-old cathartic hysteria.

There’s nothing like a three-thump night to make a high-priced shortstop—who’s spent most of his first such high-priced season struggling at the plate if not with the leather—suddenly feel lovable. “It probably helped them believe in me a little bit more,” Lindor said post-game.

Poor Scherzer. The tenacious righthander hit the history books with a flying fist. So he had to be one-upped by those New York yo-yos. Not even Mookie Betts speaking postgame could neutralise things. “He was destined for it,” the Mookie Monster told reporters. “All the work he puts in, everything he does. It kind of sounds weird, but I expect nothing less from him.”

Echoes of Hall of Famer Don Drysdale once saying of his rotation mate and buddy Koufax, “I expect Sandy to pitch a no-hitter every time he takes the mound.”

The bad news in New York was that Met fans have come to expect a discomfiting balance between virtuosity and disaster from reliever Edwin Diaz. And Diaz delivered just what they expected in the ninth Sunday night.

He wasn’t the only bullpen culprit in the hair raising, not after Jeurys Familia threw Gleyber Torres a two-run homer in the sixth, and not after Brad Hand handed Stanton that jaw-inspiring two-run shot in the seventh. But Diaz was the bull most over the edge, almost.

A leadoff strikeout followed by a base hit. A followup walk followed by a swinging strikeout. Then, he had a little help from catcher James McCann, letting a 1-1 pitch to Stanton escape, enabling pinch-runner Tyler Wade and Yankee first baseman Anthony Rizzo to third and second.

Lucky for Diaz and the Mets that Stanton got under the 2-2 fastball and popped it up. To the left side. Where, of all people, Lindor awaited to haul down the game’s final out. Some dared call that one poetic justice.

On a sober anniversary

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Jeff Kallman

Honouring the murdered and the fallen who tried to save them during the original 9/11 atrocity at the World Trade Center, the Mets and the Yankees stood shoulder-to-shoulder before Saturday night’s game. Shown left to right here: Pete Alonso, Gleyber Torres, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo, Jonathan Villar, Giancarlo Stanton, Brandon Nimmo (still on the injured list), and Aaron Judge.

Members of the 2001 Mets, including Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, escorted various groups of first responders onto and around the field Saturday night. The Citi Field audience cheered loud and long, not just for those Mets but for those first responders who survived or whose comrades were lost in the 11 September 2001 atrocity upon the World Trade Center.

Several of today’s Yankees and Mets—wearing assorted New York first-responder hats, this time with the blessing of baseball’s government—lined up intermingled on the baseline and came close enough to tears. The Mets wore the same non-pinstriped home whites the team wore in 2001, complete with “9-11-2001” embroidered on the right sleeve, but this time with a black-shadowed version of their “New York” traveling letters across the chest.

After a moment of silence in honour of those murdered in the WTC attacks, and those who died trying to rescue the attacked, the New York City Cops & Kids Choir sang “The Star Spangled Banner” in a striking balance of chorale, section, and soloist. The cheer at the finish amounted as much to a prayer that a country now fragmented in enough ways might yet un-fragment once again in enough ways, as it did the performance that truly honoured the dead.

The Fox Sports telecast cut to a special anniversary video story, recalling the moment New York can never forget, ten days after baseball ended its self-imposed hiatus following the original atrocities—Piazza blasting what proved a game-winning, two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth, in old Shea Stadium, off Braves reliever Steve Karsay, off the second tier of a television camera stand behind the center field fence.

Then, the Mets’ and Yankees’ 2001 managers, Bobby Valentine and Hall of Famer Joe Torre, threw ceremonial first pitches to the plate, after Valentine puckishly ran back onto the mound to toe the rubber. That was a very far cry from Valentine having led his 2001 Mets in running rescue-and-recovery efforts outside old Shea Stadium itself—and having fear of further danger, as he’s acknowledged often since—after the WTC attacks.

After a commercial break—including a stunning montage of a young lady named Rowen Emerson Jones playing “God Bless America” on her violin, at various New York spots including the Brooklyn Bridge and a 9/11 memorial—it was time at last to set sober reflection and ceremony to one side, play baseball, and grip the Citi Field crowd until the last out of an 8-7 Yankee win.

On baseball terms, the Mets’ home crowd would have loved to have back the awkward should-have-been double play finisher second baseman Javier Baez—hurrying the throw to first—sent airmail past first baseman Pete Alonso that allowed the eighth Yankee run in the top of the eighth in the first place.

This was an interleague game whose sole significance otherwise rested solely in the now-faint postseason hopes of both the Mets in the National League East and the Yankees in the American League East. Had it not been for 9/11’s twentieth anniversary, the bigger baseball news of the night might have been Brewers pitchers Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader collaborating on a major league record ninth no-hitter of the season in their 3-0 win over the Indians—now the first team to be no-hit three times in a season.

The Yankees and the Mets exchanged single-hit halves of the first inning off their starting pitchers, Corey Kluber for the Yankees and Taijuan Walker for the Mets. The baseball fun really began in the top of the second, when the Yankees battered Walker for a pair of two-run homers (catcher Kyle Higashioka, center fielder Brett Gardner), a solo bomb (Aaron Judge, right after Gardner), and a too-early 5-0 lead.

Judge led the Yankee attack with two home runs Saturday night.

The Mets got right back into the game in the bottom of the inning. Second baseman Javier Baez, one of the notorious Thumb Bunch, waited out a leadoff four-pitch walk and stole second while left fielder Jeff McNeil struck out swinging. Then a second Thumb Buncher, Kevin Pillar, drove Baez home with a liner just inside the left field line, before catcher James McCann—who’s seen as one of the Mets’ more dubious free agency signings ordinarily—hit a drive that eluding a leaping Judge at the right field wall into an RBI triple. Walker himself followed with a line single to right sending McCann home effortlessly.

From there, Walker overcame his own wounding flaw, trouble commanding his fastball, and retired each the next thirteen Yankees he faced. Along the way, Baez turned on a Kluber service with two out in the bottom of the third and ripped it on a fast high line into the lower left field seats to pull the Mets back to within a run.

Kluber endured through four innings before Yankee manager Aaron Boone opened his bullpen and brought Lucas Luetge in to work the bottom of the fifth. The good news for the Yankees: Luetge shook off a one-out base hit by Mets right fielder Michael Conforto, shot through unoccupied shortstop territory on the defensive shift, to get rid of Alonso on a fly to the back of right field and Baez on a bullet liner Yankee third baseman Gio Urshela speared in a somewhat spinning crouch for the side.

The bad news for the Yankees was Luetge opening the Mets’ half of the sixth by walking McNeil on four straight pitches. Exit Luetge, enter Chad Green in a double switch sending Tyler Wade to play third base. Unfortunately, enter three baseballs thrown onto the field in right by unknown Citi Field idiots, followed by another couple of jackasses running onto the field but taken down swiftly enough by stadium security.

The unruly delay knocked Pillar out of his batting rhythm and into a swinging strikeout. But it didn’t stop McCann from turning on a 1-1 service and driving it into the left field seats, yanking the Mets into a 6-4 lead and inspiring one fan adjacent to the broadcast booth to holler, “Rock ’em! Sock ’em!” Those who remembered Piazza’s 2001 blast hoped against hope that another Met catcher’s bomb would prove the winner on the actual 9/11 anniversary, instead of in the first Mets home game back after baseball’s self-imposed September 2001 break.

The Mets had one more run in them in the bottom of the seventh, when with two outs and Clay Holmes on the mound for the Yankees, Baez chopped one off the plate up toward third, with Wade having a tough throw to make and Baez beating it by a hair as a few television replays plus the umpires’ review showed. McNeil singled him to third, Pillar singled him home with a liner to left, and it looked as though the Mets had an insurance run.

Seth Lugo had relieved Walker and thrown a spotless top of the sixth, and now Trevor May took over for the seventh. Oops. Gardner opened with a base hit through the hole at second, and Judge hit a parabolic punt sailing above the top of the stadium roof but landing halfway up the left field seats to tie the game at six. Yankee left fielder Giancarlo Stanton chased May with a long single, and Aaron Loup took the mound for the Mets.

It looked like Loup would have a simple gig when he got rid of Yankee first baseman Anthony Rizzo in a hurry on a fly out that nudged Conforto back almost to the track in right. Shortstop Gleyber Torres smashed one hard enough on the ground to short that his Mets counterpart Francisco Lindor couldn’t handle properly and got ruled a base hit.

Luke Voit pinch hit for Holmes. He grounded one to short on a very weird hop, but this time Lindor snapped it up at once and threw to second to get Torres. Baez in his rush to end the inning threw flatfoot off his right leg, mid-pivot, and the ball sailed over and past Alonso, enabling Stanton’s pinch runner Andrew Velasquez to score the eighth Yankee run.

The blameless Loup promptly struck Higashioka swinging on four pitches, but the Mets couldn’t cash in the two-out baserunner they got when Lindor wrung Yankee reliever Albert Abreu for a full-count walk. After another delay from another idiot running on the field—Hall of Fame pitcher/Fox Sports analyst John Smoltz wondered aloud, and appropriately, why people pick even evenings of sober commemoration for their “look at me!” moments—Conforto wrung Abreu for another walk.

Up to the plate came Alonso, the Met everyone in the ballpark wanted in this situation. He gave it his best shot, too. On 1-1 he hit one high and deep to center field, but he’d connected just on the underside of the ball, enough to give the Yankees a momentary jolt but not enough to keep Gardner from catching it on the edge of the track.

Veteran Mets relief pickup Brad Hand rid himself of Wade (ground out to second), Yankee second baseman D.J. LeMahieu (identical ground out to second), and Gardner (foul tip swinging strikeout) in the top of the ninth. But Mets pinch-hitter J.D. Davis’s one-out ground-rule double wasn’t enough in the bottom. He took third when strike three escaped Higashioka but the Yankee catcher recovered the ball soon enough to keep Pillar from taking first by just a step.

Then McCann gave one a ride out to right. It wasn’t enough of a ride. Judge snapped the ball into his glove to end the game, snapping a low for the Yankees in which they’d entered Saturday night having lost seven straight and—how cruel the irony—nine of eleven.

In baseball terms, the win put the Yankees into a tie with the Blue Jays for the second AL wild card, the Blue Jays having taken a doubleheader from the hapless Orioles. The loss kept the Mets five behind the Braves in the NL East and four behind the Reds and the Padres—both defeated earlier Saturday—for the second NL wild card.

In spiritual terms, the full Citi Field house, the pre-game ceremonies, and the shoulder-to-shoulder interweaving of Mets and Yankees on the baseline during those ceremonies reminded people of the better sides of New York City. The sides that show recovery and perseverance with little more than just basic effort of the heart. Even commemorating the anniversary of an atrocity that—who could have predicted—killed fewer people than were reported to have died Friday alone from COVID-19-related illness.

Maybe sports don’t really heal, but maybe something like a baseball game relieves the sting of certain atrocities, pestilences, and sorrows for just a little while.

But to the idiots throwing balls on the field, running onto the field, and even booing the 7 Line Army—that particular group of orange-shirted, die-hard Met fans—for refusing to partake of the still-idiotic Wave in the seventh inning (if the 1980s call demanding it back, let them have it back, unapologetically), three words: Go to hell.

Entering 9/11’s anniversary losing . . . 9/11

Posted on September 11, 2021 by Jeff Kallman

Sanchez’s bail-and-reach tag attempt on Jonathan Villar only started the Mets’ scoring Friday night.

Even if you hate everything Yankee because it’s everything Yankee, this is the kind of cruel symbolism to which the Empire Emeritus didn’t deserve to awaken on the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities. Even the Yankees didn’t deserve to awaken on 9/11 having lost . . . 9/11, if you look at it one way.

If all you know of Friday night’s game against the crosstown Mets in Citi Field is the line score, it looks on the surface as though the Mets pasted the Yankees 10-3, even with three errors charged to the visitors.

But if you saw the game itself, you know the Mets did benefit from more than a little inadvertent Yankee generosity.

“Just a poor performance, period,” said Aaron Boone, the Yankee manager for whose head Yankee fans have called since, oh, the first Yankee loss of the season. That’s the painful reality of wearing the fabled Yankee pinstripes.

Of all the cliches around the Yankees and their fans, the truest is that they don’t like to lose. Of all the sub-cliches to that, the truest is, alas, “To err is human; to forgive must not become Yankee policy.” If one loss draws calls for heads to roll, nine losses in eleven games probably calls for public executions.

“It’s a bit of a broken record,” Boone said, speaking of the game itself even though he could have been speaking about Yankee fans and their expectations and demands. “We got to keep grinding at it. We got to keep working at it and we will, and trust that it will turn, but it’s obviously going to take everyone and, obviously, that starts with me and making sure we’re ready to roll.”

The Yankees seemed to get a roll going early Friday night, with Brett Gardner scoring on Aaron Judge’s ground out up the middle to second in the top of the first and Joey Gallo—the trade deadline import from Texas, who walks a ton, hits home runs a ton when he hits them, and does little else otherwise—hitting Mets starter Tylor Megill’s first one-out service into the right center field seats in the second.

In between, in the bottom of the first, the Mets offered up a leadoff single (Jonathan Villar), a one-out single up the pipe (Michael Conforto), and a two-out RBI single (Javier Baez, one of the Thumb Bunch) off Yankee starter Jordan Montgomery. The trouble on that hit was Gallo throwing home almost perfectly from left field but Yankee catcher Gary Sanchez bailing on the throw that had Villar a dead duck twenty feet from the plate.

It took a replay review to confirm it: plate umpire Ted Barrett’s initial out call was overturned. Inexplicably, Sanchez stood, bailed backward just enough, and reached up on the play, letting Villar get his foot on the plate before Sanchez got the tag on his helmet.

“He got in between Gary’s legs,” Montgomery said postgame. “It was unfortunate.” Alas, it’s par for the course for the hapless Sanchez this season. Only Baltimore’s Pedro Severino has been as bad behind the dish as Sanchez—each is worth -8 defensive runs saved, the worst mark in the American League.

Still, Gallo’s go-ahead bomb in the second gave the Yankees every right to think they’d hold the Mets off yet. They just didn’t bargain upon their own further misbehaviour starting in the bottom of the third.

Villar opened again with a base hit. Montgomery walked Thumb Buncher Francisco Lindor to set up first and second, then wild pitched that pair of Mets to third and second before walking Pete Alonso to send Villar home with the tying run. Then Baez whacked a feeble grounder up toward third. Uh, oh. Yankee third baseman Gio Urshela picked the ball slickly enough as he hit the ground sliding, but he threw it past Sanchez enabling Lindor to score.

Then Jeff McNeil, spotting the Yankee infield playing a little too deep, dropped a bunt past the mound on the second base side, catching every Yankee around the infield by surprise enough that Conforto came home unopposed. Kevin Pillar of the Thumb Bunch sent Gallo back to the track to haul down his sacrifice fly making the proceedings 5-2, Mets, and counting.

One busted double-steal bid later, McNeil taking second but Baez thrown out at third, Mets catcher James McCann, not exactly one of their more threatening hitters, sent a line double bouncing into the left field corner to score McNeil with the fifth Met run of the frame. Lucky for Montgomery that his next batter was a guaranteed out—even after opening Magill with two balls before striking him out swinging on three straight to follow.

And if the Yankees weren’t able to find bullpen relief for Montgomery just yet, the Mets thought nothing of making his night miserable even further in the fourth. With one out, Lindor going the other way kind of snuck a home run past the right field foul pole. Then the Yankees went to the pen, but an infield hit and a fly out later off Joely Rodriguez, Baez bounced an RBI double off the right center field fence. Making it 8-2, Mets.

The Yankees were mostly futile against Megill (ten strikeouts in seven innings) and the Mets’ defense from the second forward. But they weren’t finished being generous to the crosstown rivals. With the bases full of Mets in the seventh—after a one-out single (Baez) and back-to-back plunks (on McNeil and Pillar)—Yankee reliever Michael King fed McCann a ball that had inning-ending double play stamped on it.

Uh, oh, again. Yankee second baseman D.J. LeMahieu picked it and shoveled it perfectly to shortstop Gleyber Torres on the run. But Torres threw on about two stories above first baseman Anthony Rizzo’s glove, and home came the two plunk victims unmolested. By the time Rizzo whacked his own leadoff bomb in the top of the ninth, likewise sneaking it inside the foul pole, there were few real thoughts of any Yankee comeback.

Mets reliever Yennsy Diaz made sure those few thoughts disappeared swiftly enough from there with two swift air outs, before Sanchez tried to battle him from an 0-2 count: two balls, a foul, ball three, and then the game-ending fly out to deep right.

“It gives me all the confidence in the world,” Megill said post-game, “just to throw the ball over the plate in a way and attack hitters more confidently knowing I have, I guess, room for mistakes pitching. The offense killed it today. It’s awesome, they’ve been playing really well.” The Empire Emeritus went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and stranded four on the night, including Gardner after a two-out single in the third when the Yankees still had that 2-1 lead.

The Mets needed only Diaz and Heath Hembree before him out of the pen Friday night. They’ll need all pen hands on deck the rest of the weekend. Especially if the Yankees are only too conscious of losing 9/11 entering the twentieth anniversary of those atrocities.

Thumbs up!

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Jeff Kallman

Kevin Pillar, one of the Mets’ Thumb Bunch, after slicing ninth-inning grand salami at the Nats’ expense Sunday afternoon.

That was last weekend: A few Mets decided to give what-for to Citi Field’s boo birds of August unhappiness. They flipped the script. If they were going to get booed for coming up short no matter the effort, by God they were going to give the fans thumbs down when they came up hit, pitch, play roses.

The racket was such a ruckus—or, should that be the ruckus was such a racket—that nobody paid much attention to the August-challenged Mess winning two straight from the retooling-on-the-fly Nationals. They were too busy reading beleaguered team president Sandy Alderson’s fan-their-behinds retort to care.

This is the end of this weekend: Including that previous Saturday and Sunday, the Thumb Bunch have won seven of eight, kicked themselves back into enough of the thick of the National League East they’d lost gruesomely enough during most of August, and out-scored the opposition 41-26 while they were at it.

Who cares if it came against the Nats and the equally also-ran Marlins? The Mets looked so badly like a team that couldn’t get next to a win if they paid by the run that the worst editions of the St. Louis Browns would have looked like pennant contenders against them.

Now, they’ve finished this weekend-to-weekend raiding with a 13-6 Sunday dismantling of the Nats that included a jaw-dropping six-run top of the ninth. In which the three major members of the Thumb Bunch were very much the major players. “If there’s a higher power looking over the Mets,” said broadcaster Gary Cohen, “He or She has an infinite sense of humor.”

He or She must have, since the Mets got close enough to letting the game escape in the first place. A four-run top of the first turned into a 4-3 squeaker in the bottom of the inning. A 6-3 lead after four and a half turned into a six-all tie in the bottom of the fifth. Mets catcher Patrick Mazeika’s sacrifice fly sending Javy Baez home with the bases loaded in the eighth broke the tie.

These are still the Mess, aren’t they? They’re still virtuosi at wasting leads and putting the crash carts on triple red alert, no?

They were until Francisco Lindor faced Nats reliever Austin Voth to open the top of the ninth. Lindor saw only one pitch, a spicy meatball right down the middle, and drove it over the center field fence. A two-run lead’s better than one, right? Even with Juan Soto looming as the third man due up in the bottom of the ninth, right?

Pete Alonso wasn’t taking chances. He followed Lindor’s launch with a double to the back of left field. Michael Conforto singled Alonso home and took second on a throw in. Baez finished a 4-for-4 afternoon by singling Conforto to third. Jeff McNeil wrung himself a four-pitch walk to load the pillows. Up stepped Kevin Pillar, to hold his lumber on two out of the strike zone before fouling away a pair off the middle.

Then Voth threw Pillar a low fastball. And Pillar drove it high and into the seats above the Mets bullpen. It may yet stand as the biggest slice of grand salami with mustard on their season to date. All this on an afternoon when Lindor went 1-for-2 with a pair of walks and two runs scored, Baez scored three times in addition to his four-fer, and Pillar went 2-for-4.

Some teams crumple under the lash of controversy, whether the controversy is real, alleged, ginned up, or imagined. Others discover it’s better than a diet of pitches over the middle of the plate for a royal feast.

The 1972-74 Athletics throve on internal friction; the 1977-78 Yankees didn’t earn the nickname the Bronx Zoo because they were tame and allergic to nuclear-level back-page 72-point headlines. The 1986 Mets made St. Louis’s mythological Gas House Gang resemble an Amish picnic. This year’s Astros seem to be using the noisily lingering hostilities over Astrogate as feud for thought—and thump.

This year’s Mets won’t inspire what those A’s inspired Jim Bouton to remember (in “I Managed Good But, Boy, Did They Play Bad!”)—“[T]hey didn’t have many rules. Oh, maybe they weren’t allowed to punch each other in public. No punching a teammate, I suppose, in a nightclub. Fighting only allowed in the clubhouse. No screaming at each other when the wives are around. And don’t embarrass the manager to more than two wire services during any homestand.” (Today, of course, we’d say “to more than two Web reporters.”)

This year’s Mets may or many not have any player ready to say of them what third base virtuoso Graig Nettles said of his time (sentence?) in the Bronx Zoo: “Some kids want to join the circus when they grow up. Others want to be big league baseball players. I feel lucky. When I came to the Yankees, I got to do both.”

Unless I’m very wrong, and I hope I am, there isn’t a Met in the bunch now who’ll look back two decades later and remember this team the way ’86 Mets pitcher Bob Ojeda would remember that team, who broke an entire airplane celebrating their National League Championship Series triumph: “We were a bunch of vile [fornicators].”

These Mets may not be quite what Nettles’ Yankees became, but there were times this year when you thought the Mets couldn’t decide whether they were re-making E.R. . . . or Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

They play one more against the Nats on Labour Day, then take a trip for three more against the Marlins. Then, they come home to face the Yankees, the Cardinals, and the Phillies. Before you remind them that those three aggregations aren’t exactly pushovers—even if the Yankees have just lost five of eight—ponder the point that momentum comes from unlikely places.

Even from places in which turning thumbs down after splendid plays to retaliate against the boo birds becomes the molehill turned by the hysterical into the Himalayas.

Throneberry Fields Forever

. . . a calm review of baseball

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