Better To Have Missed

I actually had tickets for Friday night's game between the Mets and the Marlins. Because I'd moved that morning I didn't go, which was just as well as the Mets were still shaking the gremlins out of their system and lost what I can only assume was an eminently forgettable game, 3-1.

By not attending that game, and of course not attending the other Mets/Marlins game I had tickets for earlier in the season, I in fact have missed seeing the Marlins for 2017. This is just as well; I think everyone by now knows my feelings towards the Marlins, and if you needed another reason to hate this utter blight of a franchise, well, look who their new owner is going to be. I can't wait to root against them even harder.

I didn't even see Friday's game on TV as my cable hadn't been turned on yet. Then, of course, came the late night news of the Curtis Granderson trade, as he'd been shipped out to the Dodgers for another prospect, and of course it was immediately followed by another shitstorm of reactionary Mets fans screaming about the stupid team, and giving away all the players and a bah blah blah. I hate to see Granderson go, in fact my other half hates it even more and I had to spend the rest of the evening again explaining to her about Free Agency and the Mets trying to just get something rather than letting him leave for nothing, and the fact that the Mets were still losing with him anyway, but at some point things are beyond explanation. The gutting of the 2017 roster is basically complete, although there's still about 10 days for them to deal Asdrubal Cabrera.

Saturday, my cable was on and I did see some of the game, where the Mets actually decided to be a team and hit the ball and treat the Marlins like the Marlins. Wilmer Flores homered, Kevin Plawecki, newly returned, homered, and Rafael Montero pitched reasonably well in an 8-1 victory.

Sunday was, well, Sunday and as the Mets were home and it was Sunday, even Jacob deGrom couldn't save them.

This week, Arizona is in town and I'm actually going to be at a couple of games this week now that I'm starting to unbox myself. It feels like months since I've been there, but that's probably a side effect of moving as opposed to the team, even though sitting through a full game must feel like œons right now.

Forgotten Altogether

On the heels of barely seeing much of Wednesday's game, I saw literally none of Thursday's game because of a work commitment, to the point of I've been home for some time now and I haven't even seen a highlight. I'm not sure what the Mets did and who did it, but I do know the most important detail, which is that they beat the Mickey Mouse Marlins 6-3, and as such will leave town having won this series in Loriaville and in fact end up going .500 for this particular road trip, which is nice because I think the media, and probably most Mets fans, would have you believe that they went 1-9.

Again, I don't have much to say about the game because I don't know who did what, other than I would assume Seth Lugo pitched well and the Mets offense stuck it to Jose Urena.

The Mets now come home to play the Phillies for the weekend, but then they go on the road again, followed by the All Star Break, which in essence means this weekend's series marks their only home games for the better part of a month, sort of an odd bit of scheduling. If you didn't forget the game—and I'm certain I will because I just don't know what happened beyond the Mets won—you might forget what they look like since they've been on the road for so long.

Better Matz

I didn't see much of Wednesday night's game, which isn't an unusual occurrence, and what I did see wasn't exactly action-packed. I'd missed the Mets come out and attack curly-haired boyfriend Jeff Locke for 3 early runs, 2 of which came on Asdrubal Cabrera's 2-run Home Run, his first since putting his employer on notice. From there, the game was basically the Steven Matz show. In his 4th start of the season, Matz came out and put the Marlins in their rightful place, shutting them out for 7 innings and generally looking very good in leading the Mets to an 8-0 victory.

It's nice to see Matz come out and look really strong as he did, and among other things he was working his slider back into his repertoire. He hadn't been throwing it much, if at all, to this point because of that whole elbow problem that keeps cropping up, so it's understandable. But if he's feeling good enough that he wants to start throwing that 4th pitch, I have no issue with it. Matz's career, which in fact began two years ago today, is known more for the fact that he's constantly missed time with some sort of ailment, but what we tend to forget is that when he pitches, he's generally very good and when he's pitching and he's healthy, he can be really good. Give him a game against a flagging opponent and it could look like a mismatch (the flipside of course being what happened to him against Washington and LA, which probably was the catalyst to get him throwing the slider again in the 1st place). Now, of course, we have to hold our breath and see how he responds to an outing like this, but I would say if nothing else that this is an encouraging performance. I didn't have to watch the whole thing to be able to say that.

Groan

Well, I mean, what would a Mets road trip be without another player going down with an injury that probably could have been avoided with proper conditioning?

The Mets lost to the Mickey Mouse Marlins in the Loria Mystery Machine on Tuesday, 6-3, which is bad enough, but of course they also lost Robert Gsellman to a hamstring injury in the process. This occurred at the end of the 4th inning, at a point in the game where the Mets had gone ahead on a Curtis Granderson Home Run to lead off the game, fallen behind when Gsellman allowed 3 in the bottom of the 1st, and were in the process of trying to claw back into the game. Gsellman hit a slow roller and busted it to try and beat it out, as that would have allowed the tying run to score. But, of course, he was out, the run didn't score, he came up lame and was out of the game, and that kind of screwed the Mets from there. Instead of trying to get Gsellman through 6 innings, they were in the bullpen in the 4th, working forward, and although they did tie the game later, the bullpen eventually did the Mets in again as Neil Ramirez, Jerry Blevins and company decided to abandon all fundamentals in the last of the 7th inning.

The constant string of avoidable injuries was bad enough (the Mets play in Florida in the Summer enough to know to fucking hydrate before a game), but of course their play in the last of the 7th was something to rival the Brooklyn Cyclones or some similar Low-A ball team. Ramirez was summoned to start the inning, which already was a bad sign since nobody trusts Ramirez in anything even resembling a high-leverage situation. Again, Injured pitcher screwing things up. He walked the first batter and right there I knew that the Marlins were going to score multiple runs. I didn't need to see Lucas Duda ole what was probably a double play ball, or Wilmer Flores run away from a ground ball that he would have probably been hard-pressed to field anyway. The damage was already done.

So, the Mets undo all the weekend's good will, lose another Pitcher and look like assholes. Another fine day. You wonder why I'm groaning.

Double Disaster

You know when you wake up, look at your phone and see an ESPN alert that reads "New York Mets P Matt Harvey suspended three games without pay for violating team rules" that it's going to be a great day.

In what shook out as yet another ugly chapter in the checkered career of Matt Harvey, the embattled pitcher was suspended on the day he was supposed to take the mound against the Marlins. Of course, in the Mets' typically macabre fashion, it was reported as reasons that were "going to be kept internal," and when you leave things like this up to the imaginations of the press and the public, well, everything kind of went haywire from there. Reports of reasons for this were typically ridiculous and thoughts of the obvious cause—what was that dildo doing in Kevin Plawecki's locker anyway???—were eventually quashed when it was reported that Harvey no-showed Saturday's game.

Sigh. I try to give Harvey the benefit of the doubt but then he does things like this and I wonder why I waste my energy.

At any rate, not only did he screw himself, he screwed his team, since instead of throwing him at the Marlins on Sunday, we were subjected to poor Adam Wilk, who ostensibly was the closest thing to a warm body the Mets had available to pitch a game. And, you know, when the best guy you can throw out on the mound is a guy who maybe 10% of your fan base has heard of...Needless to say, it didn't go well.

Wilk's afternoon could rather simply be summed up as he was screwed the moment Giancarlo Stanton stepped in the batter's box. In the first inning, he hit a Home Run off the facing of the 2nd deck in Left Field. In the 3rd, he hit one even farther. By the 4th, the game was completely out of hand and Wilk was done for the day, and one can assume into the Met annals next to such names as Chan Ho Park and Brett Hinchcliffe. Therest of the team, which was probably suffering from shellshock stemming either from the Harvey news, or Wilk's performance, or both, barely made a peep against Jose Urena and the end result was that they mustered one hit in a thoroughly embarrassing 7-0 loss.

And, you know, it's "now what?" time again. The Mets now sit at 14-16, which considering the state of the team health-wise isn't awful, but if you believe what you read about the Mets, the bloom is off the rose and the team is spiraling out of control towards a 90-loss season and a return to obscurity. I don't know. Right now, all I know is that that's their record and now they're finally going to play some games against teams outside their division and eventually, the truth will come out. About everything.

Small Big Ball

The Mets continued their recent trend of great offense/lousy pitching again on Saturday, as they jumped on Odrisamer Despaigne early and often to the tune of a 5-run 1st inning, then survived another shaky outing from Robert Gsellman and another injury, this time to Asdrubal Cabrera, and eventually turned things back on late against the Marlins bullpen to come away with another win, this one by an 11-3 score, which gives the Mets 6 wins in their last 8 games and 3 series wins in a row.

As usual, it is the little things that add up.

Not that it matters much to the press, who seems more interested in cracking on the Mets than actually reporting on what happens in the games, but the Marlins were the victims of some stupid in this game. Their scheduled starter, Wei Yin Chen, went on the DL on Friday with the mythical "tired arm," for those who think that sort of thing only happens to the Mets one month into the season. The replacement, Despaigne, who famously no-hit the Mets into the 8th inning that one time, was a minor irritant, as the Mets hammered him early and often and led 5-0 after 1 inning. The Marlins played like you'd expect them to, as they kicked the ball around plenty, starting off with Nickleback mishandling a hot shot from Michael Conforto that started the rally. Later, balls continued to clank off gloves and fly balls were bungled as the Mets tacked on more runs late in the game. Once again, they did so without the virtue of a Home Run; most of these runs scored because the Mets were working counts and hitting singles and doubles and just moving the line along. Conforto alone had 2 RBIs without the virtue of a hit as he walked three times, twice with the bases loaded, the latter time coming after a brilliant AB where he fell behind 0-2 and managed to check his swing three times to work out the walk. But the point is, if you just hit singles and doubles and bunch them all together, you'll accomplish the job just as well as if you sat back and waited for Cespedes to hit the 3-run HR.

Gsellman was effective, if not especially good, in his 5 innings. It seems to be more an issue of location and execution rather than stuff, that's preventing him from pitching as solidly as he did down the stretch last year. I can't quite figure it out just yet. With a full complement of pitchers, he might be on thinner ice but as the numbers have dwindled, there's not many other passable options. Certainly not if Montero continues to make an ass of himself whenever he gets an opportunity.

So it becomes the offense that has to shoulder the load, and they've done so as they scored 5 or more runs for the 9th game in a row, which is a far cry from the days when they were hard pressed to score 5 runs in a week. Then again, this could just as easily flip so we should just enjoy it while it lasts.

The Wrong Decision

I had tickets to Friday night's game at Citi Field. It was on my plan. I'd made plans to go with my other half, which would be her first game of the season. But several mitigating circumstances intervened. The first was the horrendous and torrential rain that fell in New York basically all day on Friday. Generally, even when it rains like this, the Mets will keep the game scheduled until the last minute for a variety of reasons, among them the potential for the mythical "window," and the desire to get the gates open and get some people in the stadium to buy food and whatnot—a favorite trick of Ratso Wilpon's.

The other circumstance was, well, I'm getting older and after what had turned into a particularly strenuous week at work, I was tired. I was tired and I wouldn't have minded at all if they cancelled the game and allowed me to go home and take a nap. But that rainout alert never came, in spite of multiple alerts from the Emergency Alert system and reports of flash floods all over the city. 5:00 passed, and in fact 6:00 approached and my other half begged out, meaning that if I were going to go, I was on my own. Had we thought about it ahead of time, I might have swapped the tickets out altogether. 6:00 passed and I was delayed at work outright, so if I were going to go, I'd be late. But I left and got on my way, feeling very indecisive.

I got as far as the 7 train platform at Grand Central, a point at which I could take one train and go to the game, or get on the other train and go home. I weighed the options. The potential for rain still existed. But I did want to go to a game. But Rafael Montero was starting for the Mets, which generally has been a losing proposition. But what if this was the night he got it together? But I'm tired. But it's Friday. Eventually, I decided to just go home and swap the tickets out for another date. It was already the 2nd inning by time I got home, which probably would have been about the same time I would have arrived at Citi Field.

Immediately, I got in bed and took a nap. By time I woke up, it was somewhere in the 6th inning and I wasn't particularly surprised to hear that Montero was awful and the Mets were losing 7-3. I felt better because I wasn't there to see it, to say nothing of having to suffer the indignity of sitting through a beating at the hands of the Mickey Mouse Marlins.

But then the Mets came back in the 7th, another rally where they just kept hitting singles and doubles, and working counts, and forcing walks. Wilmer Flores was heavily involved, as was Asdrubal Cabrera and Michael Conforto. It was 7-5 when T.J. Rivera, who'd earlier homered, hit a 2-run double to tie the game off of Brad Ziegler, who seemed to not know what had hit him. A pitching change, 2 outs and an intentional walk later, it appeared the game would remain tied, but Kyle Barraclough, after intentionally walking Granderson, couldn't find the plate against Flores and unintentionally walked him to force in the lead run and put the Mets ahead 8-7. A couple of quiet innings from Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia later, the Mets had pulled off a real nut-kicker of a win against the Marlins, coming back from a 6-run deficit to win, 8-7.

Well, shit. I guess I should have gone after all. Even though it clearly had begun raining again by the end of the game and some time later in the evening, probably about when I would have arrived home, it really started pouring. I did feel badly about not going since they won. That, I suppose, isn't surprising. Had the game held and the Mets gone down in flames, I probably would have been thrilled that I wasn't there to subject myself to it. It's rare that this happens (I am reminded of a Daisuke Matsuzaka game a few years ago I skipped and ended up missing a 3 hour, 50 minute game that the Mets lost terribly) but sometimes you make the wrong choice. That's a bad job by me.

Just Get The Hell Out Of Here

I was already apoplectic from too much Marlins after Saturday night's game, and I suppose the fact that the Mets had already played the equivalent of 4 games in Loria's Puke Green Hell Hole already this weekend didn't help. And just imagine if the Mets had lost on Thursday. But if all that wasn't bad enough, this nightmare of a weekend came to a fitting conclusion in the most typical Marlins game ever. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the Mets fell behind the Marlins early, were stifled by a journeyman pitcher, somehow scraped their way back to tie the game in the 9th inning, and then lose the damn thing anyway in the last of the 9th on a 30 foot squibber that nobody can field. Or, in Sunday's case, the most Marlin equivalent, which is that a no-name Rookie hits his 1st Major League Home Run to end the game. Yes, you can mark the name J.T. Riddle in the book of "Stupid Marlin Tricks," since he was the culprit to cap off a perfectly miserable weekend by taking Addison Reed deep in the bottom of the 9th to give the Marlins a 4-2 win and give them 3 of 4 over the Mets for the weekend and 5 of 7 for the season.

Much like the other 3 Mets losses in this series, the end result masked yet another fine outing by a Mets starting pitcher. Rejuvenated Matt Harvey continued his solid start by holding the Marlins to 2 runs over 6 innings, this in spite of allowing 7 hits and 2 walks, which is rather unHarveylike, but also speaks in testament to the fact that he's still getting back to himself, pitching more to contact and also pitching like a pitcher and using all his tools to get himself out of trouble. Lest you forget that he's always had this in him, but the propensity to blow everyone out of the box can sometimes get the better of you. I know that none of these games turned out the way we wanted them to, but take these pitching performances in a vacuum and if nothing else, they're performing the way they're supposed to thus far. These things should even out.

They should even out because the Mets don't have to play the Fucking Marlins all the time. The Mets went from flying high at 7-3 and 5 wins in a row on Friday morning to 7-6 and everything is terrible and it's all because of the Marlins. The Mets have played 7 of their first 13 games against these clowns and that sack of shit Celebrity Manager and gone 2-5, and the 5 losses have been mostly of a totally mystifying variety. I mean, come on. Getting no-hit by Dan Straily? J.T. Riddle? I mean, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, seeing as how the Marlins entire history is pulling crap like this and I let it bother me far more than it should, but come on. Please give me one good reason why I should pay the Marlins one iota of respect. I refuse. Fuck those dudes. The Mets will get them back when it counts.

Oh Dammit

The Mets appear to have been paying Marlin Penance the last two nights after outlasting them in Thursday evening's marathon game. Friday's result was bad enough, but in a vacuum it is of course just one game. Compound that with the results on Saturday night and it feels significantly worse. After Jacob deGrom coolly pistolwhipped the Marlins for seven innings and the Mets bats gave him what should have been a protectable 2-run lead, Fernando Salas shit his pants in the 8th inning, allowing a game-tying Home Run to Hamburgers Yelich and a game-winning Home Run to Mike Stanton and the Mets snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, losing 5-4 to the Marlins.

This is, as always one of those "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" instances for Terry Collins. The haters will of course scream that it was catastrophically stupid to remove deGrom from the game after 97 pitches, in which he'd allowed the Marlins a pair of solo Home Runs sprinkled in between 13 strikeouts. Maybe that's true, but if Collins left him in and deGrom got beaten, then he's an idiot for sticking with his pitcher an inning too long.

The answer? Dammit, I don't know. There is no right answer. You go by feel and Collins felt like deGrom was done. I trust him enough at this point to know the temperature of his players. Frankie Bag-o-donuts in Hicksville is going from his gut, and his gut's been telling him "BACKMAN, BABAY!!!" for the last 4 years, and so Collins is a moron and needs to go. Tonight, Collins was wrong and so it's a field day for Frankie and his ilk. For me, it's just the irritation of seeing Dee Gordon pogo-sticking around the infield—typical Marlin behavior. I don't particularly care enough about a right or wrong move when it's essentially a judgement call. What I do know is that this is the Marlins, and invariably they're going to pull some dumb shit out of their ass against the Mets multiple times in a season. This happens to be one of those times. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise and they'll get their Marlinness out of their system early, so that the Mets can handle them the way they should be handled later in the season. Again, I don't know. But right now the only thing that's managed to get in the Mets way so far this season is the Marlins and I've had enough of this.

Marlins Get You Again

I guess the Mets were owed this one after the way they spent 8 innings cheating painful Marlin death on Thursday night. In spite of entering another war of bullpen attrition with the Marlins that seemed headed down a parallel track on Friday night, the Mets faltered before things got out of control as J.T. Realmuto doubled home the winning run in the last of the 9th to give the Marlins a 3-2 win.

It being a Friday and I being a year older, I was somewhat out of it for the early part of the game and as such I missed Noah Syndergaard's 6 innings of work, in which from what I can gather he had some bad luck leading to a 1st inning unearned run, an irritating rally, and then an irritating recurring injury as he either had another blister problem or a fingernail problem that caused him to leave the game altogether. As injury problems go, I suppose this is fairly benign stuff but that it keeps happening is more annoying than anything else. On the other hand, that's one inning fewer that he'll be able to throw as we get later in the season. It'll fix itself at some point, I would guess.

The Mets similarly didn't do a ton against Edinson Volquez outside of a Lucas Duda Home Run in the 5th inning. So things sat at 2-2 as things moved to the late innings. But, as the case can be on the day after some absurdly long games, the Mets had a bullpen issue. Unavailable were Addison Reed, Hansel Robles and Josh Smoker. Gone altogether was T.J. Rivera in favor of Sean Gilmartin, only around as an emergency arm. And left were the remainder of a mostly gassed group. To their credit, Rafael Montero and Jerry Blevins kept things in control in the 7th, and Josh Edgin did so again in the 8th. But Edgin, who is still on the fringes of trustworthydom, was chanced for a 2nd inning and although he nearly managed to negotiate it, he was black-flagged at the last step when Realmuto's double fell in the gap and scored Miguel Rojas with the winning run and it was Marlin Pizza Party Time.

I know, I know. The Mets for the prior 5 games felt kind of invincible. But games like this are unfortunately inevitable over the course of the season, and especially against the Marlins, a team who, as we've gone over many times, is built generally for the sole purpose of pissing us off. So of course they did it again.

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.

Sunday Hammers

I missed Saturday's game. That's nothing out of the ordinary since I missed most Saturday games last season, but at least unlike last season, I wasn't stuck on Long Island doing something I'd rather not have been doing. I was just out and didn't see the game, and based on how things turned out it's just as well. The Marlins once again did Stupid Marlin Things and the Mets couldn't recover.

So, in this early going, the Mets went into Sunday playing about as crucial a game as one could have for its 6th game of the season, trying to not get swept by the worms that are the Mickey Mouse Marlins and having to do so on The Biggest Game In The Galaxy, Sunday Night on ESPN. However, the Mets went out on The Biggest Game In The Galaxy with The Biggest Pitcher In The Galaxy and as such were able to ride 7 innings from Noah Syndergaard en route to a 5-2 victory to avert the sweep.

ESPN, as I've made note of in the past, has a tendency to latch on to one particular storyline during these games and run it into the ground. Usually, when the Mets are involved, this is at the Mets' expense. But when the opponent is the Marlins, who as a franchise are a punchline, there's not much they could do, and for as much as they tried to shove Giancarlo Stanton in our faces, he was little match for Syndergaard. In fact, most of the Marlins were little match, except for a 3rd inning hiccup that involved Billy Marlins, who further proved my theory that he's the most Marlin Marlin ever, and an untimely Yoenis Cespedes error. But after Dee Gordon doubled home two runs to make the score 3-2, Syndergaard knuckled down and, abetted by Rene Rivera, put the Marlins in their proper place. Gordon attempted to steal 3rd, and was thrown out. J.P. Regalbuto followed with an infield single and when he tried to get cute and steal 2nd, he got thrown out as well. From there, Syndergaard laid down the mjölnir and put the Marlins to sleep. There was something resembling a threat in the 5th inning, but little beyond that.

On the other side, the Mets ran out to a 3-0 lead in the 1st against Edinson Volquez, kicked off by an Asdrubal Cabrera bunt single. Later, Jay Bruce and Michael Conforto both hit Home Runs off of Volquez, the former in support of a continued hot start and the latter the kind of bomb we know he's capable of if he'd only just be allowed to start consistently. But that, then, is another discussion for another day.

For the Mets, it's now on to the first Road trip of the season and the hope that a little consistency will follow now that they're in the swing of playing on a regular basis.

Processes

It's easy to be disappointed in the way Zack Wheeler's return to the Major Leagues kind of fizzled out in a stream of bloops and blasts. But, then again, after having to go through the Big Boy Surgery, and then having to go through multiple setbacks while trying to come back from the damn thing, and ending up missing two entire seasons, I don't think it quite fair to view one game in a vacuum. Sure. You want him to come back, throw 5 shutout innings, tip his cap and everything will be great but it doesn't always work that way. Wheeler hasn't always worked that way. This comeback is a process, and this has to be viewed as just a step in that process. Simply making it back to the Major Leagues and pitching in a game is the accomplishment. The 4 innings, 6 hits, 5 runs and 4 strikeouts are just a starting point.

Back before Wheeler got hurt, which seems like a lifetime ago considering it was the tail end of The Dark Ages Of The Mets, you saw a lot of the inconsistencies that Wheeler displayed this evening. His fastball was great, but he struggled at times with the location and consistency of his secondary pitches, he'd get too fine, and then batters would wait and sit on his fastball. And, well, this is pretty much the story of his comeback game. He was clearly amped up in the 1st inning and shot through the Marlins with ease, throwing mostly fastballs. But in the 2nd, he started working in breaking pitches and things weren't working quite as well, and he gave up a walk, and a bloop hit, and then Billy Marlins cranked a 2-run triple and things fell apart from there. In the 3rd, it was more of the same. A dunk hit preceded a long Home Run by Hamburgers Yelich, and Wheeler's night was officially a nightmare. Don't even get me started on it happening against the Marlins, who seem just as irritating as ever, especially if Keith Hernandez keeps fawning over their wonderful Outfielders. Ultimately, the game dissolved into one of those miserable April Night Games where it's freezing, the Mets are getting killed, and everybody just leaves after the 6th inning.

I know this because I've been to games like that. And don't think I wasn't tempted to go out there tonight to see Wheeler's return. But, perhaps wisdom and old age has begun to win out, as I knew early in the day that it was going to be cold and lousy out, and the last thing I wanted to do was to sit out at Citi Field and freeze my ass off, when it's Friday and I'm tired and cranky. In fact, that's what happened. I watched three innings of this game, got fed up, started having one of my Marlin-induced bouts of blind rage, then started to fall asleep, and ultimately shut the game off and took a nap. In the past, I feel like I would have rooked myself into going to more games in this Opening Week homestand, but perhaps I've finally wised up.

Impossible Is Possible

It's the general stance of the Mets fan to kind of keep their asshole extra tight during the final few days of a Pennant Chase. There's not much anyone can do to help this; it's just the side effect of too many seasons where they've been in close contention only to have something get screwed up and everything fall apart at the end. But the way this 2016 race has played out, with the Mets storming back from the fringes the way they have has been something else. I'm not sure that I've seen the Mets do what they've done this year before—the only thing remotely close I'd guess would have to be 1973—6 years before I was born—but dammit, the Mets keep cobbling together these victories. Their 5-2 win over the Marlins finished off their 6th series win in September, their 16th win of the month, and combined with the Cardinals losing, and the Giants losing, put them 1 1/2 games ahead of San Francisco and 2 1/2 games ahead of St. Louis...with only 3 games remaining.

I really hate to say this, but for the first time, I'm starting to think that the Mets might actually pull this off.

How they've managed to do this, I'm not sure. But it seems to be exemplified by guys like Seth Lugo, who aren't given much in the way of attention and who might have a real rude regression to the mean at some point, but they continue to play over their heads and surprise the hell out of everyone. Lugo gave up an early Home Run to Martin Prado, which for the Mets is about on par with giving up a Home Run to, say, Greg Dobbs, but nothing after that as he navigated his way through 5.1 innings and received plenty of backup, first on a second inning 2-run Home Run from James Loney, who seems to be Mr. Marlins Park, that tied the game, and later another 2-run Home Run from Jay Bruce, who all of a sudden has come back to life, and probably at just the right time.

The remainder of the game was bullpen and more bullpen, as Hansel Robles, Fernando Salas and Addison Reed bridged things up to Jeurys Familia, who closed out the 9th inning for his 50th Save of the season.

So, the Mets are now finished with the Marlins for the season, and after a really difficult and emotional 3 games in Miami the Mets could use the day off they've got on Thursday. St. Louis and San Francisco are both playing, but no matter what happens on either front, the Mets will go into the weekend still leading the chase, and if things break right, they could conceivably have this thing wrapped up by Friday night and actually get to relax for a couple of days over the weekend. But—again. I'm getting ahead of myself. But after all the crap that's gone on this season and everything the Mets have had to overcome, it's quite a story the way things have played out, isn't it?

Recentering

After the raw and brutal emotion that took place Monday night, Tuesday night's game appeared much more businesslike by comparison. By businesslike, of course, it meant the Mets went back to the business at hand of trying to hang on to their slim lead in the Wildcard race. They amazingly remain on top of this 3-team jumble and maintained a 1/2 game lead over the Giants and 1 1/2 games over the Cardinals as they overwhelmed the Marlins late and coasted to a 12-1 victory.

At this point, I still don't feel comfortable looking too far forward--and right now anything past Wednesday night might be too far forward—but if this was Noah Syndergaard's final start of the regular season, he certainly finished with a bang, as his 6 innings of work were punctuated by no walks and 8 strikeouts to go along with a run on 5 hits. Assuming he's not needed on Sunday, he wraps up his first full season with a 14-9 record, a 2.60 ERA, 218 strikeouts, and more often than not a dazzling performance, which is what he delivered on Tuesday night.

It helps, of course, that he was backed by a pair of Home Runs, one by Yoenis Cespedes that clanged off the Loria Mystery Machine in Center Field, and another by Jay Bruce, his second in the last few days as he's continued his final week resurgence. They struck early against Tom Koehler, whom they were facing for the 14th time this season, and then again late, as they mashed home 8 runs in the 8th and 9th innings to blow open a close game against the deep back end of Miami's September Bullpen. Curtis Granderson was involved, Lucas Duda drove home 3 runs, and even Juan Lagares chipped in by swinging a bat and hitting a sacrifice fly to ice things up.

The 12 runs were great, and showed a continuation of the offensive explosion the Mets have been on over the last several games (Monday night being the aberration, although Monday night was an aberration of everything). However, 12 runs was the magic number for the night, as the Giants scored 12 runs and won, and the Cardinals scored 12 runs and won, and so for another day everyone's just in the same place. On the other hand, they're in the same place and now there's one less day on the calendar.

An Escape

Baseball, as simple as it often is in a generally absurd world, possesses wonderful powers of healing and verisimilitude, as though at times it plays out the way life ought to be, but mostly the way life is. The point I'm trying to make is that when we need it to help us forget what ails us and get us centered again, it does that. When we need it to be the first step in a healing process, that's what it is. We as Mets fans know this from way back in 2001, at a time when the world was in mourning, I know it on a personal level from last year, and of course the Marlins players and fans experienced it last night.

I've made plenty of bones about my feelings on the Marlins as a franchise, but for one night it takes a back seat. For one night, even I would have rather seen Jose Fernandez strike out Yoenis Cespedes in a key moment and rip his jersey off in exuberance. I'd then grouse about it afterward in yet another tongue-in-cheek rant. Instead, I watched his teammates, his fans, and even the Mets have to play out this game on the verge of tears the entire night, mourning the man and the talent and joy he brought to the game on a daily basis. I would have rather the Mets had the opportunity to go out and beat him, so I could crow about how the Mets went out and beat their best. I'd rather have to write about so many other things than this.

But that's how the world works. A really unique and talented ballplayer is gone far too soon. And even in the midst of a Pennant Race, if the Mets had to be the foil, that's just the way it had to be. Baseball was Jose Fernandez's muse, his Art. But for the Marlins, it now has to be their escape from the sadness and the beginning of their healing process. We move forward from here and slowly try to get back to normal. 

Bye

I talked on Sunday about how the Mets seem to have a thing, historically, when it comes to sweeping a team. It doesn't matter how dead their opponent is—and the Mickey Mouse Marlins seemed about as dead as you can get on Thursday night—they can't seem to finish the deal. And so, although they were in prime position to give the Marlins the thorough stomping they so richly deserve, simply based on the fact that they continue to exist, the Marlins instead came back, won 6-4, and left town like the greasy, sniveling little weasels they are, snickering as though they'd done something Marlinlike like shoved a banana in the tailpipe of one of Cespedes' cars.

More disconcerting for the Mets was the performance of Jacob deGrom, who once again struggled, in spite of 3 days' extra rest. deGrom looked mostly tired and out of sorts, and kind of fizzled out in the 5th inning, by which point he'd thrown too many pitches, allowed too many hits, put the Mets in a hole and then threw everyone off a ledge by walking off the mound and waving to speak to Ray Ramirez as he went to the clubhouse.

The prevailing thought everyone had at that point was that he was probably headed for another Big Boy Surgery, because I'm not sure why anyone in his right mind would willingly want to talk to Cortisone Shot Ramirez about anything medically related. The fact that deGrom, who spoke to the media through clenched teeth after the game, said he was fine really has no bearing on anything.

So, yeah. This was a double turd night for the Mets. deGrom is prognosis unknown at this point, the Mets lost a key game to the Fucking Marlins because Hamburgers Yelich hit puberty and the Mets didn't do much against Jose Urena (who's probably another Leo Nunez candidate), and Celebrity Manager sat in the dugout preening over his good fortune. Fortunately, this is it for the Marlins at Citi Field for 2016, so we no longer need to be subjected to their bullshit. However, the Mets have to have the last laugh here; on Monday, the Marlins were 1 game up on the Mets, now they're a game back and as Pittsburgh's crow flies, the 4-teams-for-one-spot race is beginning to gather more steam. But if nothing else, the Mets, in spite of everything that's gone wrong, are still relevant in this picture.

Another Hero, Another Injury

The Mets put the Mickey Mouse Marlins in their place for the 3rd straight night on Wednesday, as they once again put together a late rally. Kelly Johnson's 3-run double with 2 outs in the bottom of the 8th inning was the key hit the Mets had been screaming for all night, as it broke a 2-2 tie and sent the Mets on to a 5-2 win. This, coupled with a Cardinals loss and a Pirates loss, now has the Mets 1 1/2 games out of the second Wildcard spot, and two games ahead of the Marlins, who have predictably turned back into doormats now that the heat's been turned up. On the other side, the Mets have responded well to this situation, for one, because they went through it last season and, for two, because no matter how many players are injured, or not playing well, or how shorthanded they appear, they still have it in them to find a way to win games. So, for as much as the people who dismissed the Mets as an afterthought at the outset of 2015 have come back and started laughing and pointing and yelling "FLUKE!" and "OUTLIER!" at the 2016 Mets, well, laugh now. If the Mets are still right there as a contending team with every Opening Day starter having missed some significant time on the DL, well, imagine where they'd be if everyone was healthy.

Bartolo Colon took the mound for the Mets, and Colon, if you can believe it, has been the lone constant in the Mets rotation this year. Probably because he's just impervious to anything. Though three early Mets errors kind of submarined him and led to a Marlins run in the 2nd, and later he allowed a Home Run to Hamburgers Yelich in the 6th, the Marlins did little of consequence otherwise. The Marlins were supposedly starting ex-Yankee Prospect David Phelps (derp derp derp) but he mysteriously vanished before the game started and instead a fellow named Jake Esch was on the mound for Miami in what I could only assume was his Major League debut. This has a tendency to not go well for the Mets. Though Esch didn't pitch a shutout and hit a Home Run, the Mets didn't light him up either. Wilmer Flores hit a 2nd inning Home Run, and the Mets had plenty of opportunities to do other things, but multiple rallies were squandered and Esch left in the 5th inning with the game tied.

Things then continued as they were in a fashion similar to what we saw on Monday night, until twitchy, irritating A.J. Ramos came in for the 8th inning and much like they did on Monday, the Mets attacked. Cespedes led off with a single and Granderson walked, and the Mets were in business. And rather quickly they seemed out of business after Flores flied out and Jay Bruce popped out. But Travis d'Arnaud worked out a walk, in a rather crucial at bat, to set the stage for Johnson, who's found himself in the lineup a bit more with this recent rash of injuries. And, of course, we know what happened from there, as Johnson worked a deep count and finally got a pitch he could handle and nailed it down into the Right Field corner to clear the bases and set the stage for Jeurys Familia to save his 44th game of the season and finally knock Armando Benitez from the record books.

Of course, the postgame reveling was kind of dampened by the rather macabre report from Terry Collins that Neil Walker was going to have back surgery that will finish his season. This isn't good by any stretch, but at this point, what difference does another injury make? There have been so many and the Mets keep managing to cobble something together, so just figure something else out. If it just means that Johnson and Flores play more often, well, that's hardly a major dropoff. 

This series right now could not have gone any better for the Mets. The Marlins have looked like their usual sorry-ass selves, a team that's been jabbing and dipping like a bunch of ninnies, just asking their opponent to throw that haymaker at them and so far, the Mets have delivered it, and man, if they can finish off the sweep tonight, that would be really, really great.

More To Be Said

So, after playing a bit of a waiting game before beating the Mickey Mouse Marlins on Monday night, the Mets again spotted them a lead on Tuesday, as Seth Lugo allowed a Home Run to Hamburgers Yelich in the top of the 1st inning, only to come back quickly, and often, as they caught, passed and eventually overwhelmed the Marlins to win for the second straight night. With this rousing 7-4 victory, the Mets passed the Marlins outright in the Wildcard race, and with that restored proper order to the world.

Tom Koehler, who's one of those Kyle Kendrick-types, in that he's been pitching for the same NL East team for several years, and as such has pitched against the Mets about 107 times and for as many times as the Mets and said pitcher face each other, there's no particular pattern to anything. So sometimes, Koehler throws a shutout, and other times, Koehler gets bombed. This time, Koehler got bombed, good and proper, just like a true Marlin should be. Spotted a lead, he handed it back immediately as Jose Reyes singled and Asdrubal Cabrera followed with a 2-run Home Run to tie the game, and after Jay Bruce reached on a rare double, Wilmer Flores drove him in to put the Mets ahead. Later, Curtis Granderson pinch-hit for Lugo in the 6th and hit another Home Run off Koehler. And for good measure, Granderson was kind enough to hit a second Home Run in the 7th, this time off Dustin McGowan to extend the Mets lead.

Lugo was the beneficiary of this, as he once again did a fine job over his 6 innings of work. After allowing the Yelich Home Run, Lugo clamped down and allowed the Marlins no further. Hansel Robles added two scoreless innings in his best outing in about a month, and Jeurys Familia picked up his 43rd Save, and should rather shortly assume his rightful place as the Mets single-season save leader once he picks up #44 and finally removes Armando Benitez from the Mets record books.

I'd like to tell you more interesting things about this game, but I didn't see it so I can only rehash fact. But if you want interesting things, I can tell you some tidbits as they relate to Monday's game.

• Monday night's game was my first Extra Inning game of the season. I mentioned that yesterday in juxtaposition with 2013. But I only attended two extra inning games in 2013. I've actually never been to more than 3 extra inning games in a season, with 2006, 2008 and 2014 holding the record. 
• Monday's victory was my 10th Walkoff Mets win since Citi Field opened back in 2009, as well as my first of the 2016 season. Of those 10, this was the first to end on a Home Run.
• Yoenis Cespedes' Walkoff Home Run was the first Walkoff Home Run I'd witnessed since Carlos Beltran hit one on June 11, 2008, back at Shea Stadium. 

Mic Drop

Ultimately, it is the end result of a game that matters the most, and less so the journey that a game takes to get to that end point. That's not always quite so apparent. On Monday night at Citi Field, however, it was, as an odd and incongruous 10 innings and 3 and a half hours of Baseball turned to elation as Yoenis Cespedes cranked a walkoff Home Run to give the Mets a crucial 2-1 victory in the opener of this 4-game series against the Mickey Mouse Marlins.

Getting to that point was, well, I'll call it interesting, and maybe that's being kind. It didn't seem to be an evening that would shape up in the Mets favor altogether, seeing as how they were throwing Rafael Montero out on the mound which is sort of tantamount to throwing your spaghetti at the wall to see if it's ready. The Marlins were throwing Jose Fernandez, who usually not only stifles the Mets but throws over-the-top celebrations in the process. To say nothing of the fact that the Mets lineup didn't include Neil Walker, Asdrubal Cabrera or Jay Bruce, and Cespedes was probably playing on one leg again.

I wouldn't call either pitcher's effort on this night particularly good. Montero spent most of his evening getting two outs, then walking guys, and then getting the third out, and Fernandez more or less did the same, if only in a different order. Montero walked 6 in all over his 5 innings of work, and only by sheer will did he make it out of there unscathed. Certainly, the Marlins had opportunities. But in the 4th, he got Fernandez to ground out to end the inning, and in the 5th, he got Marcell Ozuna to swing at a sucker pitch and ground into a Double Play, the exact thing he needed at that moment.

Fernandez was a bit sharper, although not by much. He'd skidded through the 2nd inning, in spite of Celebrity Manager trying to cajole the Umpires into challenging a call without using his challenge, for no other reason that I can figure out other than he's just a total sack of shit. Meanwhile, he was leaving his pitcher out there to throw warmup tosses for 5 minutes. In the 4th, he started walking guys too, but the Mets couldn't come up with a hit of consequence either.

Montero departed after 5 and Fernandez after 6, and for a while both bullpens seemed to pick up where the starters left off. Sean Gilmartin worked around a 2-out hit in the 6th. Jerry Blevins gave up a walk in the 7th. Kyle Barroclough worked a clean inning. In the 8th, Addison Reed came in and appeared to follow suit, getting two outs before allowing a hustled double to Ichiro Suzuki, who seems to be the Anti-Marlin, the only redeeming quality of an irredeemable object. Xavier Scruggs followed, and he hit a line drive to left that looked to me to be an easy out, but I don't know whether Cespedes didn't have a good read, or it knuckled, or it wasn't quite as I saw it, but it sailed past Cespedes for a double, scoring Ichiro with the game's first run and sending me into a total snit because once again I was watching the Marlins do stupid Marlin things. It figured that after all of this, they would win on this crap.

But they didn't. Irritating fidget A.J. Ramos came in for the 8th and immediately gave up a double to Jose Reyes. The Marlins then started doing more Stupid Marlin Things, and pulled their corner infielders in to play for a bunt, while Ramos ran a reverse-wheel to try and pick Reyes off and nearly threw the ball into Center Field. Alejandro De Aza did not bunt, but instead flew out to Left, and perhaps if anyone other than Jose Reyes were on 2nd this would have accomplished nothing, but instead Reyes took off and made it to 3rd easily. Cespedes followed, and this was the sort of spot you wanted him up in. But Cespedes didn't need to do anything, as Ramos chucked a pitch to the backstop. It took a fortuitous carom to J.P. Regalbuto, who wheeled and threw back to Ramos at the plate, but his throw was lousy and Reyes probably would have beaten it anyway. In fact, all it accomplished was giving Ramos the opportunity to drop a knee on Reyes' neck and nearly decapitate him in the ensuing collision. While for a brief second it looked rather scary, Reyes eventually popped up and walked off, probably because who the hell wants to deal with Cortisone Shot Ramirez and his bunch of bullshit. To say nothing of the fact that, had Reyes departed, the Mets had no other option to play Shortstop. Walker was out, Cabrera somehow girded up his loins enough to pinch hit in the 7th, they made the asinine choice to option T.J. Rivera when Montero was activated and so they were stuck with a roster of 14 Pitchers, Rene Rivera and Bruce on the bench. Or at least it seemed that way. They'd already used Jacob deGrom to pinch hit and George and I were waiting for Birthday Boy Noah Syndergaard to take an AB.

Irregardless, Reyes stayed in the game and the game remained tied. Jeurys Familia allowed the Marlins nothing in the top of the 9th, and Mike Dunn got the first two men out in the last of the 9th, before Rene Rivera was announced as a pinch hitter. And, of course, here came Mattingly out of the dugout to make the total Dick move of taking out Dunn and bringing in Nick Wittgren, for no other reason than to force Collins to use Jay Bruce, the last guy on his bench. That was, perhaps, the most Marlin thing ever. It would have served him right if Bruce parked one in the seats, but his line drive was right in the glove of Scruggs, and it was off to Extra Innings.

I had, through 15 games this season, managed to avoid Extra Innings, in stark contrast to 2013, where it seemed like every game I went to went into extras. Josh Smoker came in for the Mets and struck out a pair of Marlins, punctuating his inning with a fist pump and celebration, perhaps just to stick it in the Marlins' ears a bit. Or maybe the kid was just feeling fired up. Wittgren retired the first two in the last of the 10th, and I figured this game wasn't going to end here, because he wouldn't throw Cespedes anything remotely close to the plate. Certainly, he couldn't be that dumb, could he? So I started thinking about 11th innings, and how late I could stick it out as it was a school night. But on the 1-1 pitch, Wittgren I guess was feeling his Wheaties a little bit and left a fastball a little to close to the outer half. You know, just the spot where Cespedes likes it.

And, of course, you know the rest. All the machinations and weird, paceless Baseball that had gone down to that point was just backstory to the real show, which was the missile Cespedes fired into the Left Field seats, you know, one of those shots that was gone as soon as he hit it. Following his requisite bat flip and 40-second Home Run trot, Cespedes was then doused with all sorts of odd liquid, some chewing gum, and eventually he was crowned by Reyes. Generally, I don't stick around for the postgame interview, but on this night I did. Probably because after jumping around and yelling, I needed to collect my bearings before heading downstairs. Or because I just needed to cap it all off by hearing whatever Cespedes had to say. Then again, if you asked me what he said, I probably couldn't tell you. Whatever it was, the Mets had won, they pulled even with the Marlins and now just take it from there.