The Right Roles

A problem the Mets had earlier in the season, and in fact a problem that's reared its ugly head several times over the course of the past several years has been a lack of reserve depth, particularly on the offensive side of things. The Mets have managed to field lineups that are decent, but tenuous and when someone inevitably goes down, a suitable replacement is nowhere to be found. So, what ends up happening is that guys like Alex Cora, or Jason Pridie, or Omar Quintanilla, or Andrew Brown end up playing way, way more often than players of their caliber should be playing. Not surprisingly, the team suffers for it.

When the Mets are performing at an optimal level, as they appear to be over the past 5 games now, it's these reserve guys that are playing about as often as they should be playing that come up with necessary hits. Such was the case of Eric Campbell in the 8th inning last night. Campbell has been one of my leading flogs this season (slightly above Jon Niese, but way behind the leader in the clubhouse, Daniel Murphy) because he's not good enough to be an every day player, nor will he ever be, and even when he's pushed into action on a semi-regular basis, he's exposed. But with these new faces on the roster, Campbell's face time has decreased and so what you end up with is he has less chances to look bad, and it exponentially increases the chance that he might do something useful with the playing time he does find. In the 8th inning on Tuesday night, with the game tied 1-1, Campbell came up to pinch hit for Niese with 2 on and 2 out, after Flores had popped up a bunt attempt and Tejada had struck out. And all he did was stick his bat out and knock a little floater over the shortstop's head, just enough to score Lucas Duda with the lead run and open the floodgates for Juan Lagares and Curtis Granderson to drive home 3 more runs afterward as the Mets came away with their 5th win in a row.

Campbell's case is the most obvious example, but for the moment the entire team is functioning at an optimal level. Were this 3 or 4 weeks ago, Campbell would probably have started in left and gone 0-for-4, Niese would have taken the tough-luck loss in spite of allowing 1 run in 7 innings and the Mets would have spent the night smacking themselves in the head with their bats wondering how they lost a 1-0 game to a team that looks like they're already on the 5th Green. Instead, the Mets waited out David Phelps, eventually tied the game in the 6th thanks to a clutch hit from Ruben Tejada and an equally clutch slide from Wilmer Flores (whose fan club has traveled all the way to South Florida), and eventually pull away late.

Niese was the beneficiary tonight and outside of the one start against the Dodgers when he probably shouldn't have pitched, he's rather quietly been just as good as the other starters on the team, which I have to consider appreciable. Niese was one of the guys on the hot seat at the beginning of the season and for about 2 months he looked like he was pitching with one foot out the door. I've talked many times about how he continues to trade high on a good year he had 3 seasons ago but he's started to recapture that form, probably because there's now too much competition around him and he feels pushed. On the one hand, that's not always the sort of thing you want to do to motivate a player, but then again, some players just need to be kicked in the ass a little bit. I guess you could say that about most of the team but some examples are more stark than others.

Fighting Back

Through 6 innings last night, the Mets appeared headed for certain doom. They'd managed to plate a run against Joe Ross in the 4th inning, but nothing further than that. Though Jacob deGrom pitched about as well as you can expect a pitcher to do with zero margin for error, but finding himself one out away from escaping a 5th inning jam, deGrom finally bent and Wilson Ramos reached him for a 2-run Home Run that put Washington ahead. This wasn't any particular mistake by deGrom; he'd allowed Washington to get Yunel Escobar to 3rd base with 1 out, but rebounded to notch a huge strikeout of Ian Desmond in the sort of situation where Desmond would normally have killed the Mets. But Ramos, who like Desmond is basically a Greg Dobbs clone, reached out and flicked a slider over the fence.

deGrom was, needless to say, Harvey-level pissed off and screaming expletives on the mound, something I'm sure every Mets fan was doing along with him, but he regained his composure, finished the 5th and iced the Nationals in the 6th.

But, of course, the real question was if the Mets could somehow get that run back and keep Washington from pulling away like they usually do. They got a little rally going in the 7th, when Flores singled and Kirk Nieuwenhuis poked a cue shot towards Clint Robinson at 1st that snaked past him for a 2-base Error that probably should have been a double. This gave the Mets 2nd and 3rd and none out, and of course the prevailing thought here wasn't the approaching strategy, it was how were the Mets going to screw this one up. Washington pulled their infield in, I suppose because even they assumed a weak ground ball was in order. Plawecki followed by popping out, and with deGrom's spot due up, Terry Collins went to Eric Campbell and his .087 batting average, because when you need a big hit, I mean, who else would you turn to? So naturally Campbell fired a 2-run single to Right Field to give the Mets the lead, because in this season that's been totally ass-backwards, it would have to be Campbell coming up big in a spot like that, wouldn't it?

This breathed new life into the Mets, even if it meant removing deGrom from the game after a mere 82 pitches, but this Bullpen Tryptich of Jenrry Mejia, Bobby Parnell and Jeurys Familia (which has taken over the Familia/Mejia Report of last season) was up to the challenge of holding the lead, and holding the lead...but something funny happened in the 9th, which was that the Mets tacked on more runs. A novel idea, no doubt, because it made Familia's job easier (and in fact removed the Save opportunity altogether). Tanner Roark, one of those Awesome Nationals Pitchers that's so good he can't even crack the rotation, came in for the 9th and the Mets basically singled him to death, getting runners on and then getting scoring hits from Granderson, Tejada and Murphy and rather than sitting around waiting for the roof to cave in, the Mets wound up walking away with a nice little 7-2 victory, getting them even in this series and putting them just one win away from a .500 road trip that seemed a long ways away a few days ago.

So, after the horrible sinking feeling that was permeating every Mets fan last night, now there's a less-horrible feeling today because if they can get a win this afternoon—€and certainly you have to like their chances with Noah Syndergaard on the mound—€they'd be all of one game out. Amazingly.

Flailing Away

There are many ways to lose at Baseball. The Mets, lately, seem to be adept at finding them. Tuesday night, they basically bored themselves to death in a 4-hour stinker. Wednesday, I was on hand to watch them get a multitude of singles, often in the same inning, yet only manage to net 3 runs for their 13-hit effort and wind up losing again to the Dodgers, 4-3.

On a night that I was tired from a long day at work, the Mets also looked tired when there were men on base. Only once did they go down in order for the night, but against Hyun-Jin Ryu and his large and loud bevy of supporters, they managed nary a key hit. Ryu struck out 9 Mets in his 6 innings of work, enough to offset the 9 hits he scattered. 8 of said 9 hits were singles. The 9th was Eric Campbell's first Major League Home Run, which brought the Mets to within a run in the 6th inning, and yet that one run sort of felt like too wide a gulf for the Mets to cross. Not that they didn't try. Wilmer Flores followed Campbell's Homer with one of his three hits, but Ryu followed by striking out Anthony Recker to squash the threat.

Flores was one of three Mets to pick up three hits on the night. Juan Lagares was another, he tried to kick start rallies in the 7th and 9th innings, first by bunting for a hit (then getting erased on a Daniel Murphy Fielder's Choice), then by tripling and scoring on a Murphy groundout. David Wright also had 3 hits, one of them a 7th inning double that barely ticked off of Puig's glove. Had it rolled farther away from him, perhaps it would have allowed Murphy to score the tying run, but alas it did not, and Puig, who boasts an arm not to be trifled with, retrieved the ball before too much damage was done (not surprisingly, Chris Young followed with an inning-ending groundout). Wright was at the plate in the 9th as well, but struck out to end the game.

The victim of all this on the pitching side of the ledger was Jacob deGrom, who in his second Major League start pitched admirably well despite getting tagged for three truly monstrous Home Runs from Adrian Gonzalez, Yasiel Puig and Hanley Ramirez. Outside of those three bad pitches, deGrom looked fine from where I was sitting; just as good as he had against the Yankees and perhaps proving himself worthy of a continued spot in the rotation. He also chipped in with his second hit in as many games, if such a thing is worthy of consolation.

There is, I suppose, a limit to how worked up you can get over games like this. It's frustrating to see them get hit after hit after hit and then have someone kill the rally by striking out or hitting into a Double Play, but that's what happens on a team that's scuffling. But what can you do. It's the Mets. It's just the Mets.