A Different Ending

By all rights, the Mets generally lose last night's game in Miami. They've played games like this in Miami previously and that's always the end result. It usually happens in some sort of annoying fashion. Generally it involves the Mets falling behind, scraping and clawing their way back to tie the game, and the Marlins ultimately winning either in the 9th or some later extra inning by getting an infield hit, a walk, an error, and then the winning run scores on a check swing that goes 40 feet, or a Wild Pitch or something typically Marlin, and then they run all over the field slapping each other with baloney and acting like they won the World Series in April.

But something funny happened last night—the Mets didn't lose. They didn't fall victim to Stupid Marlin Tricks, they didn't run out of pitchers and they didn't have the Marlins Pizza Party thrown in their faces. Instead, after twice coming back from multi-run deficits, forcing an already long game into extra innings and running out of Pitchers, the Mets actually won, 9-8, thanks to Travis d'Arnaud's 16th inning Home Run.

Most of the action in this game was long forgotten by time the game ended, which is usually the case when you have ridiculously extended games like this. Robert Gsellman in the 1st inning had some command issues and for the second time in as many outings came away getting cuffed around pretty good. He gave up a Grand Slam to Marcell Ozuna in the 1st to put the Mets in an immediate hole. But, these Mets don't seem to take especially kindly to being pushed around. Almost immediately they struck back and tied the game against Wei Yin Chen, who in spite of some decent years in Baltimore seems to be the Tom Koehler for a new era; the Marlins pitcher whom the Mets face about a dozen times a year and generally rake around. d'Arnaud tripled home 3 runs and then scored the tying run on a Curtis Granderson sac fly in the 2nd inning and almost immediately it became clear that this had all the makings of a real barnburner.

In the 3rd, the Mets started throwing haymakers at Chen. Yoenis Cespedes hit a Home Run that appeared to go over the Magic Machine in Loria's Puke-Green Hell Hole, and Wilmer Flores followed with a Home Run of his own, albeit not nearly as majestic. That spelled the end of the road for Chen, but not so much for the Mets as Cespedes sent a Jose Urena offering into orbit in the 5th. So this 4-0 deficit had turned into a 7-4 lead and everything seemed to be just peachy.

Then, of course, Gsellman ran out of steam in the 5th and everything crashed back to earth in a string of singles and walks and sacrifice flies—you know, the typical Marlins rally—and Gsellman gave way to Josh Edgin who allowed every inherited runner to score by giving up a double to Nickleback and later a single to Billy Marlins and only by the grace of Cespedes were the Mets able to negotiate the final out of the inning as he threw Nickleback out at the plate (he runs like he's carrying a double rack of PBR on his back, dont'cha know).

The Mets, then, needed to negotiate the remainder of this game and keep the Marlins on lockdown. Rafael Montero had a hairy 6th and started an even hairier 7th before Jerry Blevins bailed him out, getting a pair of key outs, among them a strikeout of Ichiro Suzuki. In the 8th, d'Arnaud singled with 2 outs, bringing up Michael Conforto in a Pinch Hitting spot. This has hardly been an ideal role for Conforto, who probably should be playing infinitely more than he has been, but to his credit all he's done over the first two weeks has been shut up and hit the ball, and that's exactly what he did here, drilling a long double in the gap in Right Center to score d'Arnaud, tie the game, and set the stage for the remainder of the night's proceedings.

Usually, in games like this, teams tend to mount spirited rallies early, and then run out of steam. The Marlins had two men on in the last of the 8th vs Fernando Salas, but he reared back, struck out Mike Stanton and got out of the inning. He remained in the 9th and had no issue. The Mets had a similar rally go nowhere in the 10th against Dustin McGowan. Addison Reed came in for the 10th inning and stepped on the Marlins' throats.

By time we hit the 12th inning, the wheels were beginning to rattle off the reality portion of this game. Generally, when it goes beyond 12 innings, you enter "all bets are off" territory, and you have to start thinking about survival tactics. In this case, the Mets had already blown through their front line of relievers, and now were down to Josh Smoker and Hansel Robles, and we already went over Robles last night because he'd pitched three days in a row and had to be avoided at all costs. So it was Smoker to the whip and to his credit, Smoker put forth probably the finest outing of his career to date. He hadn't looked especially good in his early outings this season, but with his ass on the line he rose to the occasion and in three sterling innings allowed a meaningless hit, a meaningless walk, and nothing else, bridging the 12th, 13th and 14th innings. He had to, because the Mets were doing just as much bupkis against Junichi Tazawa and Nick Wittgren.

By the 15th, it had become spaghetti-at-the-wall time. Jacob deGrom took an at bat hitting for Smoker, which meant that on-fumes Hansel Robles was coming in the game. Full-strength Robles is already a dicey proposition, so you know what this meant. However, to his credit, Robles didn't cave after giving up a leadoff single that probably shouldn't have been a single but for the official scorer acting like a Marlin. And that sent the game to the 16th inning, where d'Arnaud connected off tonight's starter Adam Conley's second pitch and put it out in the seats, giving the Mets the lead. For d'Arnaud, who's really one of those "crossroads" guys this season, this hot start he's gotten off to has been major. Both to solidify his place on the team but moreso to simply remind everyone that he can do it. But of course he's now got to keep it up.

Meanwhile, Robles now had to protect a lead against the meat of the Marlins lineup, and so of course he walked Hamburgers Yelich to start the last of the 16th, to bring up Stanton and cause every Mets fan that was still awake at 12:45am to cover their eyes. And Stanton connected, but only managed to line out to right. Nickleback followed, and after a back-and-forth battle, Robles finally struck him out on what has to be one of the ugliest-looking changeups I've ever seen, just a dying quail of a pitch that wasn't particularly close to being a strike, but was waved at anyway. Ozuna followed and almost anticlimactically swung at the first pitch and flied out, ending this game and giving the Mets their 5th win in a row.

Phew. These kind of games are very mettle-testing both for fans and players and really, I'm glad I was home watching this one on TV and listening to Keith get progressively crankier as the game went on. Keith clearly isn't made for extra innings like this, but that's OK. At least the Mets won and at least I wasn't in the ballpark for it. By the 14th, I was thinking "one more inning, then I'll go to bed," but of course I kept on watching until things finished. And, well, if there was ever a game to do that, I suppose this was it.

In The Soup

I'd been feeling as though I was missing out on all the fun over the past week since I didn't go to any of the games in the Cubs series or the Marlins series. But I did go to Citi Field last night for the opener of a 4-game series against Washington, and the Mets were kind enough to cram about a week's worth of excitement into one sweaty, intense, 3 hour and 39 minute affair.

It was disgusting out at Citi Field. I've been to games on excessively hot, humid nights and they're often tough to sit through, which I'm sure is of no surprise. Usually, it's accompanied by a rather tepid matchup, or a tepid game, or a sparse crowd that's been mostly kept away because really, who wants to sit out in that kind of weather? Not that I've ever actually done this, but if I were to take a bath in a pot of steaming hot pea soup, it felt something like that. There was some threat of rain and in fact when I got off the 7 train, it was raining at Citi Field, but not especially hard and not at any kind of degree that would have caused a rain delay. So at least there was that. There were plenty of people, too, since the Mets and Nationals is now a marquee matchup and nobody seemed to want to miss this one. So, already, it was a different kind of hot night.

The game ended up getting pretty heated too, as you might have noticed. For as much as it often seemed like the Nationals were going to impose their will on the Mets, the Mets kept firing back, finding answers and eventually taking control themselves as they came back from three separate deficits to take the series opener in a 9-7 affair that immediately ranks as one of the better games I've been to in quite some time.

This one had a little bit of everything. It started innocuously enough, with Bartolo Colon, who's always entertaining by himself, surrendering a leadoff triple to Ben Revere, which wasn't quite the start anyone wanted to see. Two batters later, Revere scored on a Daniel Murphy hit. The Mets tied the game in the 3rd when James Loney singled with 2 outs against Lucas Giolito to score Yoenis Cespedes.

That ended the normal part of the proceedings. Things went haywire from there.

The middle innings of the game were where things got kind of frustrating. In the top of the 4th, Bryce Harper led off by hitting a rocket of a Home Run to Center Field, and being the jackass he is, Harper shushed the crowd as he crossed home plate. That wasn't so surprising. I started getting annoyed when Clint Robinson and Anthony Rendon both hit what were essentially pop flies that, in that disgusting humid air, just kept carrying out to Left Field until they nestled themselves just barely over the fence for a pair of what appeared to be backbreaking Home Runs. This left the Mets down 4-1, the sparse assortment of Washington Fans (they exist?) blowing their kazoos and me in a real bad mood.

But the Mets seemed bound and determined to not let the Nationals kick them around again. They came back in the last of the 4th and attacked Giolito, as first Travis d'Arnaud hit a Home Run, and then two batters later, Jose Reyes delighted everyone by doing the same, launching one into the Coca Cola Porch Corner to make it a 1-run game. By this point Giolito, who I know is a really good prospect and in time will justify his hype, was really struggling. The Mets had already done a good job of making him work, pushing his pitch count to 60 after 3 innings. Curtis Granderson followed Reyes' Home Run with a double, moved to 3rd when Giolito balked, and then scored when Cespedes smoked a double of his own down into the corner, and just like that, we were tied once again, and Giolito's night was through.

But Washington came right back in the 5th, because they're annoying like that. After all the work the Mets had to do to tie the game twice, Washington kept getting people on base against Colon. Oliver Perez, who relieved Giolito, singled to lead off the inning, which was totally galling because Oliver Perez doing anything is galling. Perez moved up on a Revere single and a Jayson Werth ground out, and when Daniel Murphy hit into a Double Play—proving that he can, in fact, make an out against the Mets—he was stranded there. Except he wasn't, because after a Dusty Baker challenge, Murphy was ruled safe (and he was safe) at 1st and Perez scored. Colon, by this point, had already unraveled into fat and sweaty Colon and that overturned call basically sealed his fate for the evening. Harper singled, Wilson Ramos singled to score Murphy, who was basically skipping around the field like the spastic child he is, and that was it for Colon. Jerry Blevins followed and of course walked the one guy he was in there to get, but Hansel Robles managed to get Rendon to fly out, which was good because I was having this horrible feeling that the way the ball was flying, he was about to park one and incinerate the entire game.

Instead, the Mets did the parking, which was nice. In the last of the 5th, the Mets finally made Oliver Perez look like the schmuck he is. Asdrubal Cabrera led off with a single and Brandon Nimmo followed with one of his own. d'Arnaud struck out, but that brought up Wilmer Flores. Flores hadn't started the game, but through the machinations of things ended up at 1st Base on a double switch, which was good, because Flores had been hitting everything in sight recently. I again had the feeling like something big was going to happen, and this time it did, because Flores went after the first pitch and clanged it off the 2nd deck in Left Field. And I mean this ball was smoked. I looked at Werth and he was doing one of those courtesy runs, where everyone knows the ball is gone but he's making a half-hearted attempt to go after it. So after all that, the Mets now led 7-6, fans were bouncing off the walls like it was the Playoffs, Flores got himself a curtain call, and Oliver Perez was once again Oliver Perez.

Now with the lead, the Mets now had to hang on, which was easier said than done given the way the game was unfolding. Robles held Washington down in the 6th, in spite of giving up a double to Perez, because what the fuck. Perez hit but didn't pitch in the 6th, instead Matt Belisle came in and gave up a Home Run to Cabrera, the Mets 4th of the night (which may or may not be a personal record; I haven't had a chance to go through the scorecards of the now 391 games I've attended to check) to put the Mets up 8-6. Antonio Bastardo came in for the 7th and made his own bed, first by giving up a Home Run to Murphy because, again, what the fuck, and then later fielding an easy comebacker from Robinson and firing the ball not especially close to 1st Base. Addison Reed then bailed out Bastardo by striking out Rendon and preventing Washington from making things even more ridiculous.

In the last of the 7th, the Mets got their final run thanks to a 2-out rally against Sammy Solis that saw Reyes walk, attempt to steal 2nd, decide against it and then get picked off trying to go back to 1st. It might have been helpful if he'd stayed put, since Granderson singled, Cespedes walked and Neil Walker got the RBI hit that would have plated 2 but instead only scored one.

Reed worked a clean 8th—only the second time in the game either team went down in order—and turned it over to Jeurys Familia in the 9th. In keeping with the general vibe of the game, Familia was wild, just all over the place, and walked Werth to start the inning. He then went 2-0 on Murphy and everyone was sitting on their hands because this wasn't going well. Those visions were coming back, of Murphy hitting one into the bullpen and peeing his pants in joy. d'Arnaud went to the mound after that second ball and I can only assume said to Familia "I don't give a shit what you throw, just get it over the plate and make sure he hits it on the ground." Fortunately, this worked, and Murphy did what we're used to him doing: slapping a ground ball to the Shortstop. Cabrera got the out at 2nd, but Murphy was clearly safe at 1st, until he wasn't, because the Umpires invoked the Chase Utley rule on Utley's partner-in-douchebagginess Werth. Instead, both were out, and Werth was left grousing and groaning, and ultimately started kicking his helmet around the field like the petulant child he is while Baker demanded a futile replay. Harper followed and did no further shushing as he struck out to end the game.

Whew. That was about as exhausting to recap as it was to watch. Usually, when a game runs as late as this one did, ending close to 10:50, I'm eager to just get the hell out of the stadium and get home as quickly as possible. Not on this night. This was the kind of game that really gets you fired up, and for as long as it ran, it seemed like very few people left early. Never mind the soupy conditions, or the fact that at times it appeared like the Mets were going to end up in the soup themselves. This is one of those games where the Mets just refused to let their opponent keep the control. The Mets haven't had a string of games like this in a couple of months. But I think right now, they have That Look again.

"He Did WHAT!?"

What happened yesterday at Citi Field is truly a testament to just how random Baseball can be sometimes.

Kirk Nieuwenhuis has, at best, been a marginal player for the Mets. He arrived a game into the 2012 season and had some beginner's luck, and a really hot first few weeks kind of endeared him to the fans for a bit longer than it should have. Once the book on him got around the league, Nieuwenhuis regressed, ended up back in the minors by June, and by July was out for the season with a foot injury. Since then, Nieuwenhuis hasn't improved. He had a brief, shining moment in 2013 when he caused the downfall of Western Civilization, but otherwise, he's basically been one of those 4-A guys that the Mets keep calling up whenever they needed a warm body. By early this season, with no particular sign that he would ever prove to be more than this—and with his batting average below .100—the Mets finally cut bait, waiving him and eventually trading him clear across the country to the Anaheim Angels for cash considerations. The Mets couldn't even get a player for him.

Except that Nieuwenhuis proved himself to be equally inept in Anaheim, so once it became apparent that a change of scenery was not the answer, Anaheim cut bait on him as well. Not surprisingly, the Mets scooped him back up, because Nieuwenhuis clearly just seems to be one of those players that would only have a Major League job with the Mets (I've said the same of other players, like Mike Baxter, except that Baxter caught on with the Cubs). I figured after this, Nieuwenhuis was just going to be organizational depth, but a few weeks ago, here he was again; because the revolving Mets bench of Muno, Ceciliani, Mayberry, Monell, Curly, Larry and Shemp weren't hacking it, well, why not give Ol' Kirk another crack. He couldn't be much worse, could he?

Coming in to Sunday afternoon's game, Nieuwenhuis had all of 7 hits for the season. Somehow, 5 of them were doubles, but still. Even for a bench player, that's comically bad when you're at the All Star Break.

So, then, you'll agree that the Beauty of Baseball is that you never find the Moment, the Moment always seems to find you. I talked about this last year during the Postseason, but perhaps nothing defines this more than what happened on Sunday, when Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who was deemed worthless by the Mets, and even moreso by the Angels to the point where they ostensibly paid the Mets to take him back, hit 3 Home Runs against the Arizona Diamondbacks. It happened. I wasn't present to see it, but I certainly watched it on TV.

Not only did Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit 3 Home Runs in a game, he put his name in the Mets Record Books by becoming the first Met to hit 3 Home Runs in a Home Game.

Think about this for a second. The list of Mets who have hit 3 Home Runs in a game includes, for the most part, guys you would expect it from. Carlos Beltran. Gary Carter. Dave Kingman. Darryl Strawberry. Ike Davis. Edgardo Alfonzo. Not surprising names. Even Jose Reyes isn't surprising, because he always thought he was a Home Run hitter. I don't know much about Jim Hickman but he probably seems as likely a candidate as any. Claudell Washington certainly had some pop, too. Now, not only is Kirk Nieuwenhuis on this list, but he was the first to do it in a Mets Home Game! Everyone else did it on the road. The Mets' tradition of pitcher's parks really prevented this from ever happening, except now it's happened, and it happened to someone who's probably on the short list of "Guys least likely to hit 3 Home Runs in a game."

But that's Baseball. Sometimes, things happen that don't make logical sense. I guess in a season where, to this point, not much that the Mets have done has made logical sense, it's a fitting way to finish things out before we disperse for the All Star Break.