Way Out Through

After about 3 innings on Tuesday night, you'd be hard pressed to think Zack Wheeler was long for this game. It seemed like a slight regression for him from the string of solid starts he'd been on, back to the Wheeler who was struggling with command, working too many deep counts, walking too many guys and basically burning himself out too early in the evening.

By the 7th inning, Wheeler was somehow still in the game, having settled himself down and willed himself through the middle innings allowing just about nothing to the Nationals, finishing his evening after 6.2 innings and 109 pitches allowing just 1 run. The Mets offense took advantage of some timely hitting and timely poor fielding in order to provide Wheeler with enough backing to virtually cruise to a 6-1 victory over the 1st place Nationals in the first game of a series that's probably slightly more crucial than some of us would like to believe. Or slightly less crucial than some of us actually hope it is.

Wheeler got himself in and out of trouble through most of the early innings of the game, allowing his lone run on a 2nd inning Wild Pitch, but somehow he escaped further damage when a line drive by Jose Lobaton fortuitously hit baserunner Asdrubal Cabrera. This was a shot that was probably ticketed for an RBI single or something similarly bad, but with this stroke of luck, Wheeler was able to get out of the inning. In the 3rd inning, he induced Jayson Werth to hit into a Double Play after giving up two singles to lead off the inning. He then allowed nothing until the 6th, when his defense helped him out again. Werth led off with a double and Boring Adam LaRoche followed with a single to left that appeared ticketed for a game-tying single, but for an unlikely Outfield Assist that came from Eric Campbell of all people, who charged the ball and threw out Werth at home with surprising ease. In the 7th, Wheeler finished his night by inducing yet another key Double Play from Steven Souza.

That, then, ended up the story of the night, as the team seemed to rally around each other to get themselves through this victory. When Wheeler struggled, his defense backed him up. Wheeler settled down and his offense got him some runs. Daniel Murphy chipped in with a 2-run ball that was generously scored a hit after Cabrera pretty much yakked on it and Lucas Duda drove home another run in the Mets 7th inning rally, and Wheeler helped his own cause by dunking in an RBI single in the 2nd inning. Everyone seemed to have some key contribution in this game, and it's particularly gratifying that they got their act together on this night after a rather dull weekend.

Sellout

I certainly hope that whoever bought my tickets for Monday afternoon's game enjoyed themselves. From what I was able to glean by periodic ScoreCenter updates, it didn't seem like I would have had a great time.

I mentioned that I'd more or less played myself by even buying tickets for this game, thinking for whatever foolhardy reason that this random Monday game against the Giants would be a Getaway Day night game. I made the same mistake for a Cubs game coming up 2 weeks from Monday, though nobody's taken those seats off my hands just yet. But StubHub came through for me on this game, and so at least I got a little cash instead of flushing the tickets down the toilet. What I missed was a frustrating sort of game where the Mets seemed to be kind of loagy and lethargic, and their heretofore reliable bullpen ended up coughing up a slim lead to an opportunistic Giants team that came into Citi Field with their legion of fans taking up approximately 400 seats in the Outfield per game and left happy 3 out of 4 of these games.

They left happy on Monday because after Daniel Murphy staked the Mets to an early lead with a 2-run Home Run off of Tim Hudson, the Mets pretty much went in the tank. Dillon Gee pitched reasonably well, scattering 5 hits and 2 runs into the 6th inning before tiring, and although he left with a slim lead, the bullpen couldn't bring it home for him on this day. Jeurys Familia, so good of late, wild pitched home the tying run in the 7th, and his partner-in-bullpen-crime Jenrry Mejia figured he'd match Familia's faltering by allowing the go-ahead run on a 2-out double by Pablo Sandoval. The Mets seemed more interested in complaining about the strike zone, Terry Collins ultimately found himself ejected from the affair, and the Mets couldn't get off the mat on this day.

So, the Mets are now done with the Giants, and not a moment too soon, because they really gave the Mets fits all season long. Sweep in San Francisco that was in no particular doubt, and 3 of 4 here in New York adds up to a whole lot of bad baseball from the Mets perspective, no matter how you try to look at it. This doesn't put the Mets off on a key stretch of games on a good note, but they'd better get their act together with 6 of their next 9 games coming against the frontrunning, but not hiding, Washington Nationals. We'll see how this goes for them.

Sweaty Guys

It's inevitable that every once in a while Bartolo Colon has one of his fat, sweaty starts where he looks terrible but unfortunately it happened to be on Sunday afternoon, in front of a packed house that seemed mostly full of the Finnerty's Giants fan crowd as opposed to people cheering him on. Or maybe it just seemed that way because the Giants laid the hammer on the Mets, belting 4 Home Runs, two by target-of-ire Hunter Pence, and on the other side of things, Madison Bumgarner stepped on the Mets throats to the tune of a 2-hit shutout as the Giants walked away with a 9-0 victory that made me want to shut the game off after 5 innings.

Not much to say about this game other than it was one of those days you just want to flush down the proverbial toilet of bad Baseball games and I'm really glad I only watched it on TV instead of witnessing it in person. I attended a couple of Mets/Giants games late last season and while there were plenty of San Franciscans that had invaded Citi Field (if you recall, the Giants played the Mets and then the Yankees in the same week and many fans made the trip and made a vacation of it), and the majority of them are lovely people and 49ers fans, but band too many of them together, like the Finnerty's crowd that seems to buy up entire sections in the outfield, and it can get a little overbearing. I would imagine that The 7 Line Army can grate on opposing teams when they travel en masse, but they're on my side so I can play double standards like that. Today seems like one of those days where the Finnerty's crew might have gotten on my nerves. Friday was probably like that as well. In fact, any time the Mets and Giants play, and they get really loud in the 9th inning, it's bothersome, but such is the peril of a free market for Baseball tickets.

Now, just when you thought you were rid of the Giants and their fans, you're not, because this is one of those weird wraparound series that ends on Monday instead of Sunday. I fell for this little trick when I bought my plan for this season and excitedly got tickets for the Monday game against the Giants, but I was tricked. The time of the game wasn't listed at purchase time, and only later did I find out that it was a 12:10pm game, meaning I'd be working and unable to go. Fortunately, I dumped the tickets on StubHub and someone bought them, so I'm not stuck with seats I can't use. Someone else can go instead and have a good time, and hopefully see the Mets win and quiet down the opposing fans.

New Sensation

In a matchup of Dueling Jakes that took no hitters late into the game last night, it was Jacob deGrom who broke first, allowing the game's first hit to Pablo Sandoval in the top of the 7th inning. But in the end, it was also Jacob deGrom who emerged victorious as his teammates broke through for not just a hit—Daniel Murphy's double in the bottom of the 7th that floated over the head of Michael Morse—but 4 runs off of Jake Peavy in the 7th that proved to be enough to give the Mets the margin of victory in a taut 4-2 affair.

Whether he'd won or lost, the effort would have been another feather in the cap for deGrom, who once again proved that his recent hot streak may not be a fluke, but the norm. Plenty has been said about deGrom not being as heralded or hyped as some of the other names in the Mets system, but he's pitched just as well as anyone, not just on the team but in the league of late. It speaks volumes of the depth of the Mets system, that someone can emerge with the talent level of a deGrom completely under the radar until he hits the Major leagues and starts dropping quality start after quality start on other teams, and teams that are right in the thick of pennant races to boot. Fans have begun to take note as well, as deGrom has emerged as kind of a folk hero, much in the same vein that another unheralded guy who came to the Mets and played really well did a number of years ago, Daniel Murphy. Murphy came up, hit really well out of the gate and all of a sudden was the Mets new pop hero, and this is what deGrom has become in the past month or so.

Last night was, basically, just another normal outing for deGrom. He stood toe to toe with Peavy throughout a majority of the game, not giving an inch to Peavy or a resurgent Giants lineup throughout the early portion of the game. When he bent in the 7th, he only bent but didn't break, and in the bottom of the 7th, his teammates finally strung some hits together and broke out for a 4-run Rally that was started by Murphy and aided by a sac fly from Travis d'Arnaud and a punctuating 2-run double from Wilmer Flores.

With the lead, deGrom ran out of steam in the 8th, but he only allowed the Giants to get two of the four runs back before turning the game over to another pair of unsung heroes for the Mets this season, the 1-2 punch of Jeurys Familia and Jenrry Mejia. Familia's maturation has been particularly nice to see, given how poorly he pitched early in the season, but he seems to have found himself, harnessed the great stuff he always had and learned how to pitch effectively, which was all he really needed to do in order to find success. For Mejia, cast in a role he didn't want, he's nonetheless just shut up, made his pitches and has been as dominant as he was in a starting role at the beginning of the season.

deGrom's getting the hype now, and rightfully so, but the combination of these three pitchers that served to net the Mets a much-needed victory last night is what really makes the future of this team so tantalizing going forward. These are young guys with bright futures and the Mets seem to have a number of these guys just starting to emerge.

Quick Out

If you blinked, you missed Friday night's Mets/Giants game, and if you blinked and missed it, you didn't miss much on the good side. Jon Niese got submarined by some bad fielding—which included his own bad fielding—while the Mets did nothing, quite literally, against reclamation project Ryan Vogelsong. Vogelsong took a no hitter into the 6th before Juan Lagares broke that up, and had a shutout into the 8th until he allowed Lucas Duda's daily Home Run. Those two blemishes seems to bother Vogelsong little, as he ended up completing the game, a 2 hit, 1 run effort accomplished in all of 2 hours and 6 minutes and resulted in a 5-1 Giants victory.

This game was quick, in fact it was so quick that I almost slept through the game in its entirety. I had come home in the middle of the afternoon, put the radio on and immediately taken a nap, and by time I woke up, I'd realized that I had fallen asleep with WFAN on, which is a station that does not carry the Mets any longer, and so when I woke up, at around 7pm, I realized I was listening to some voices I'd rather not be listening to on the broadcast for another team, so I clicked over to WOR and found the right voices—Howie Rose and Josh Lewin—and promptly fell back to sleep. By time I woke up, it was only 7:45, but the game was already in the 4th inning, and so I woke up and went in the other room to watch the game on TV. By this point, Jon Niese had already dug himself a hole, and when, a short time later, he dug a deeper hole in the 7th inning, I kind of lost interest and went to make dinner. So I have some vague memory of Lucas Duda hitting a Home Run, and I was eating dinner when Vogelsong finished off the game, and at that point I figured it just as well to go back to the radio, and listen to whoever the guy is that does the postgame show now. By this point, it was barely 9:30, so I still had a full evening ahead of me to do other things like clean the apartment and straighten things up and forget about this game, because there's not much about it worth remembering.