Flip The Results

The Mets and Nationals started the 2014 season against each other in a 3-game series at Citi Field. The Nationals came back to win the season opener, swept the series and set the tone for the entire season as the beat the Mets 15 times in 19 games for the season. But the Mets woes against the Nationals stretched longer than that; it seems to me like the Nationals have won 15 of 19 from the Mets every year since 2010. Certainly, the situation on Opening Day seemed ripe for the same results, the Mets were going into Washington, in front of a packed house expecting to see their $200 million dollar pitcher Max Scherzer throw a no hitter, Bryce Harper hit 4 Home Runs and the Nationals win the World Series all at once. But the Mets had their own ideas. While Scherzer flirted with a no hitter and Harper hit a Home Run, the Mets capitalized on some Washington miscues, picked up some timely hits and rode the pitching of Bartolo Colon and company home for a 3-1 victory to kick off the 2015 season.

I still actually haven't seen the game as I write this. The 4:10 start time fell while I was still at work and thus relegated to MLB's Gamecast at my station. Though I did record the game on DVR, various interruptions over the course of the evening precluded me from watching it. Nonetheless, I know how it turned out, even though I was in transit during the final 1 1/2 innings of the affair. It was a brisk game, and I don't think that had anything to do with the new game-speed rules that have been implemented, I think the Mets and Nationals hit the ground running and kept to a pace. Certainly, Colon and Scherzer set the tempo, each allowing first inning runners but little else otherwise. For all the whining people did about Colon being named the Opening Day starter, Colon threw it back at everyone by pitching an outstanding game. Colon's only hiccup, Harper's Home Run leading off the 4th inning, was one of only 3 hits he allowed in his 6 innings of work, and true to his usual form, he walked 1 and struck out 8.

But for as good as Colon was, Scherzer was even better. Though Curtis Granderson led off the game with a Walk, Scherzer then proceeded to set down the next 17 Met batters that came to the plate, only breaking when he walked Granderson again with 2 outs in the 6th inning. Innocuous, yes, but sometimes, that's all a team needs to get themselves going. David Wright followed with a popup that probably should have ended the inning, but with Dan Uggla ready to catch it, Ian Desmond out-Ugglaed Uggla and dropped the ball, putting runners on 2nd and 3rd, still without the benefit of a hit. That, of course, changed when Lucas Duda came up and nailed a 2-run single, the Mets first hit of the season and the first runs on the board, giving the Mets a lead they would not relinquish. One inning later, the Mets plated an insurance run when Travis d'Arnaud blasted a triple over the head of Teenage Center Fielder Michael A. Taylor to score Juan Lagares. Colon turned the ball over to Carlos Torres in the 7th, Jeurys Familia in the 8th, and when Jenrry Mejia failed to answer the bell in the 9th inning (in a scenario that recalls the fate that befell Bobby Parnell last season), newcomer Jerry Blevins and Buddy Carlyle finished things out instead, the latter earning his first career Save at the tender age of 37, keeping the Nationals off the bases and off the scoreboard.

Yes, this is only one game out of 162 and yes, this is only one game out of 18 or 19 that the Mets will play against the Nationals. But if today's game served any kind of notice, it's that the Mets aren't going to lie down against this team. It goes back to what Zack Wheeler said way back at the beginning of Spring Training. Sure, Washington's the team to beat, but we're not going to make it easy for them [sic]. Wheeler got hurt and won't be around, but that doesn't matter. He said we, and not I, and for the Mets to find the success they're looking for, they have to be able to flip that record against the Nationals. It makes a difference. This is a good start in the right direction.

Long And More Long

This Mets-Phillies series has been long in just about every way you could think of. Never mind the fact that last month's rainout was tacked onto the mutual Monday off-day that these two teams shared, knocking out a travel day for the Mets before they go to Chicago, but it created the rarely seen 5-game series, in which each team will probably see just about every nuance their opponent has to offer. This is good and bad, and in the case of the Mets and Phillies probably irrelevant since they play each other 18 times a year anyway.

But a long series got even longer when these two teams decided they enjoy each other's company so much, they might as well tack another game's worth of Extra Innings on top of the proceedings. While Thursday night's game featured the absolute best the Mets had to offer from a pitching standpoint, Friday and Saturday's games devolved into these two teams at their most bizarre.

Thursday, of course, featured Zack Wheeler having one of those nights where he got his act together, ripped off an awesome 6.1 innings in which he walked none and struck out 9, and actually got some run support, courtesy of, of all people, Chris Young, among others. The 4 runs he got wasn't exactly a deluge, but it was good enough, and the resurgent tandem of Vic Black and Jenrry Mejia got the game home from there, Mejia with an especially impressive 3-strikeout 9th inning to cap off a 4-1 Met victory that saw them strike out 15 Phillies in total.

And, with that, everything normal about this series was summarily thrown out the window.

Friday night saw a game that featured me drifting in and out of paying attention to things, between nodding off after a long work week and other assorted distractions and things that I had to take care of that took precedence over a Friday night Mets-Phillies tilt. It speaks to, on many levels, the way one's priorities can change as one gets older. For many years, a Mets/Phillies Friday Night game might have taken me out to a local watering hole with some compatriots to watch the affair with some of the finest brew that can be had. Even once I began to imbibe less, I would still rather park myself in front of a TV to watch the game rather than do anything else, interruptions be damned. But with other, more pressing concerns to deal with, all of a sudden, a Friday night Mets/Phillies game is now secondary to whatever else I have to do, even though what I probably want to do is just sit and watch the game. But watch, I did very little of, and by time I was able to tune in, most of the action had already unfolded and the score was 5-5 in the 9th. Gone was Rafael Montero, who got an early lead and then watched it evaporate rather quickly. Gone were those who followed him to the mound, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Josh Edgin, Jeurys Familia, Scott Rice, and now it appeared Carlos Torres was going to be the innings-eater for the duration. But that duration never really came, as neither team appeared to want to budge off that 5-5 score. At some point, I ceded control of the TV to my other half in favor of War Documentaries of a different kind, and it was only later, after I glanced away from MLB's GameCast for a hot second, that the Phillies finally plated the game winner off of Jenrry Mejia in what I can only assume was in general excruciating fashion for a 14-inning game.

I can only assume that the Mets and Phillies had a real hoot of a time playing out 14 innings on Friday night because on Saturday afternoon, they went right out and did it again, following a 5 hour, 23 minute game with a 5 hour, 32 minute game that again went 14 innings. I missed a majority of this game as well, as more matters kept me out of the house and away from a TV for most of the afternoon. I'd assumed I would miss the game in its entirety, but when I got home, things were still going on, plodding along in the 11th inning. Long forgotten was another fine outing from Jacob deGrom, more fine hitting from the ageless-and-starting-to-become-overused Bobby Abreu and Ruben Tejada's long-awaited first Home Run since 2012. More freshly remembered were deGrom becoming unraveled in the 7th and allowing a Ryan Howard Home Run and Domonic Brown tying the game in the 9th off of Jeurys Familia, who certified himself as a true 2014 Met Reliever by become the 8th in that group to successfully blow a Save this season. So, further into the Philadelphia twilight things moved, far enough for the Mets emergency pitcher, Buddy Carlyle, to be summoned into the game. Carlyle, called up in favor of Montero, is one of those names you might remember if you collected Bowman Baseball Cards back in the era, when a series of cards was just a series of cards, before the whole thing blew up into an inscrutable mess of inserts and parallels. As a Major League Pitcher, Carlyle wasn't known for much and it seems he hadn't surfaced in a game in 4 years. But here he was, throwing 3 shutout innings and somehow getting a win in the deal when David Wright finally drove home a 14th inning run and Closer du jour Carlos Torres sealed the deal in a 5-4 Mets win.

So, after 3 games, it feels like the Mets and Phillies have already played a full 5-game series, but believe it or not, there's still two more games to go. Hopefully, they'll finish off one of these things in 9, but Extra Innings has become a bit of an Art Form for the Mets these days, particularly against the Phillies, where 4 of the 7 games they've played thus far this season have required more than the requisite 9 innings to decide a winner. So maybe this is just going to be their thing.