The Welcome Wagon

The Mets reversed the Subway Series story on Tuesday night, where they gave the Subway Series instead of received it, which is a storyline I like much better than what we saw on Monday night. Alejandro De Aza and Travis d'Arnaud both hit Home Runs in support of Jacob deGrom, who was absolutely brilliant over 7 innings of work, making the Yankees look mostly foolish and keeping them off the scoreboard as they cruised to a 7-1 victory.

This game was mostly shrouded for me by events that conspired to keep me out of the house and away from the TV, so unfortunately I didn't see it, but I had plenty of opportunities to see what was going on via phone, so my heart was warmed by what was happening. This was, of course, in stark contrast to Monday night or it seems many Subway Series' past. But this seems to be what deGrom has been doing to most teams of late. Aside from his one hiccup against Miami, where I can only assume he'd fallen victim to some sort of Jeffrey Loria-induced hallucination, deGrom has rather quietly been the best pitcher on the team over the past couple of months.

The Yankees got a taste of this in full effect last night, as deGrom allowed 4 hits and 1 walk over his 7 innings of work, striking out 8 and sending multiple Yankee hitters into full-scale bitch fits over their inability to hit. One such strikeout saw Fire Hydrant Head fling his bat into the ground like a damn 6th grader. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from there.

The offense also woke up, as for the 3rd consecutive game, the Mets managed to score more than 5 runs in a game, and actually hit the magic number 6 for the 2nd time in 3 days. An utter avalanche as compared to the past week. They ambushed Maa Tanaka for a pair of Home Runs, by De Aza in the 3rd and d'Arnaud in the 5th to run out to a 3-0 lead, and then just ran him off the mound altogether in the 7th inning. I still consider it a minor miracle that Tanaka is pitching altogether, since it seems like he's been teetering on the edge of the Big Boy Surgery ever since he arrived in the Major Leagues, but he's still here and as such has been a bit of a neutered version of himself. I know that he came here and everyone expected him to go 24-0 every season, or perhaps that might just be how Yankee fans behave in general. I don't know. But everyone was contributing. Michael Conforto hit an RBI double, Matt Reynolds drove in a run, and even Yoenis Cespedes picked up a Pinch Hit in his cameo appearance.

Jay Bruce, in his Mets debut, did not get a hit, but that was OK because basically everyone else did. The hot word, as far as what I was able to grok, was that his presence in the lineup, in the cleanup spot, got everyone else to relax a little bit. If this is what Bruce will bring here, well, I'm all for it. More than anything, this team needs to relax. But first, they just need to get through the two games at Chicken Sacrifice Stadium without much incident.