Good Times

The times in which you really feel confident that someone's going to come through for the Mets to guide them to a win in a close game have been few and far between over the team's somewhat checkered history, and let's face it, in recent years, that feeling has been non-existent. But this has been a different story with the 2015 Mets. For whatever reason, you not only feel confident that someone's going to come through, you sort of have the feeling that EVERYONE will come through. Tuesday night, Curtis Granderson and Kevin Plawecki led the charge. Last night, it was Dillon Gee coming through with a solid 7-inning effort, assisted by Juan Lagares, who came up with a clutch defensive play (or, for him, a routine play), and then Wilmer Flores, who'd driven home the Mets first run early in the game, smacked a game-tying Home Run in the last of the 7th, setting the stage for an 8th inning winning rally where everything that could have gone right, did.

You need a lot of things to go right in order to win 10 games in a row, and in plating the winning run in their 10th straight win, everything just fell perfectly.

Curtis Granderson, given a rare night off in favor of John Mayberry Jr (who for whatever reason found himself hitting leadoff in Terry Collins' Valentineified lineup—although the way things have been going lately, Collins could have hit Jacob deGrom leadoff and I'd buy it) and did what you're supposed to do as a leadoff hitter in the late innings of a tied game: work the count and draw a walk. Lagares, fresh off his latest acrobatic gem in the Outfield (a twisting, over the shoulder grab of a Jace Peterson drive that got caught in a Citi Field wind gust—a fine play that Lagares usually gloves 113 out of 100 times) followed by executing a perfect hit-and-run. With Granderson in motion, Lagares basically stuck his bat out and hit a nubber of a ground ball towards the right side of the infield. But with Granderson on the move, the Braves had vacated that side of the field and not only had Lagares picked up a rather fortuitous hit, he also sent Granderson steaming all the way to 3rd. Lucas Duda followed by doing what has become the new Lucas Duda in this situation. Whereas two years ago, Duda might have either popped up to the 1st baseman or struck out, now, the new Lucas Duda inside outs a pitch in front of the left fielder to bring home Granderson with the lead run. The lead is then handed over to Jeurys Familia, who nailed down his 7th Save in as many chances to give the Mets the 3-2 victory.

Is this really how it is now? I like it when things fall into place like that for the Mets game after game.