Glance and Peek

I've gone from one job to another, one Theater to another and one Production to another in the span of one weekend, and thus after having two nights of respite where I actually got to watch games on TV instead of being at the game or being at work, or being at a show, I was back out again, watching things unfold from the confines of an office on a computer screen where the action is fully digitized as opposed to performed by actual men in uniforms.

Wherever I seem to be, however, the Mets continue to win games, last night pulling in their 7th in a row, a 5-4 win over Jeffrey Loria and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoats to run their record to 9-3 on the season.

I was mostly filled in on things thanks to MLB's gamecast and some texts from a friend fortunate enough to be on his couch in front of his TV, where he pointed out some of the finer nuances of the game you don't get from a phalanx of computerized data (although MLB's Gamecast does now tell you not only the speed of the pitch, but exactly how far the pitch was hit and the speed of the batted ball in addition to other, inscrutable things you wouldn't know about like pFx), such as how Jacob deGrom was dominating the Marlins, basically outclassing them over his 7 shutout innings of work.

Other discussions involved that of Travis d'Arnaud's Home Run, his second of the homestand, a laser shot off of Mat Latos (you know, the big-time pitcher they got who was going to turn the team's fortunes around...with his 10.24 ERA and 0-3 record), and how Wilmer Flores was or was not going to be the answer for the Mets at Shortstop. My contention, which I've made many times over, is that Flores can hit, but he needs to get into a rhythm. He was overmatched when he arrived in 2013, and again when he was up early in 2014, but by time he got around to playing on an everyday basis late in the season, he did respond and play well. Somewhere around that point, Flores connected for his second Home Run of the series, a 2-run shot that staked deGrom and the Mets to a 5-0 lead (worth noting that the Great Pitcher Mert Lagos was, by this point, out of the game, done after 5 laborious innings).

I then was otherwise engaged and missed the bullpen, or more appropriately, Sean Gilmartin and Carlos Torres, slog through a couple of innings and make the game much closer than it needed to be, sort of an eerie harbinger of when the Mets bullpen was miserable and would routinely let teams sneak back into games they had no business sneaking back into. I don't know enough of Gilmartin to pass judgement, other than that he's a Rule V Rookie and usually these kind of guys aren't exactly ready for prime time. Torres has no particular reproach other than he has days like that, and most of the damage was done by Dee Gordon, who punctuated a 5-hit night (where 2 of the 5 were replay-aided) with a 2-run single that chased Torres from the game. Still, Alex Torres came in the game to put out the fire and close out the game. Fortunately, I missed this part, otherwise I probably would have been tearing what remains of my hair out in disgust as the 9th inning unfolded. But, instead, I only came back to see that the game was over and the Mets had won 5-4, as opposed to 5-0 as it was when I left. But that's OK, I guess. A 5-0 game that you end up winning 5-4 is still a win no matter how ugly it might have looked at times.

Believe it or not, the Mets are going for a 4-game sweep of the Mickey Mouse Marlins tomorrow with the Hammer, Matt Harvey, on the mound. True, the Marlins have done a number on Harvey in the past, but in a year where everything feels a little different, what's one more thing?