Turnabout's Fair Play

I mentioned this to George, and basically everyone who would listen to me after Friday night's Mets bombarding of the San Francisco Giants: Last season, I went to a Mets/Giants game and watched the Mets get No Hit by Chris Heston. I watched the 9th inning of that game stewing in silence as the true horror unfolded.

Last night was the exact opposite of that. Rather than not hitting, the Mets hit, and hit, and hit some more in a 3rd inning that just kept on steamrolling until the Mets had plated 12 runs, something they had never before accomplished in team history.

These games usually begin innocuously, as most games tend to do. It was, of course, Friday, which means I got a Free Shirt and as I was coming off the train before going inside I passed the WOR tent, where they were giving out free shirts for answering trivia questions. I'd planned not to stop, except that I knew the answer to the question that was asked, so essentially, I shouted it out as I passed by and got a second free shirt, which appears to be a leftover from last season. Inside, it was crowded, as you'd expect on a Friday night against a contending team like the Giants and a team with a fan base that travels well like the Giants. I expected to see large swaths of Black and Orange and I certainly did, and the Finnerty's crowd was in full force out in Left Field. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

Steven Matz was on the mound for the Mets, against Jake Peavy for the Giants. The discussion that spurred involved things like George not knowing that Peavy was still in the league, twice confusing him with Brad Penny by assuming he'd pitched for the Marlins and the Dodgers, and neither of us being able to remember which teams he'd actually pitched for outside of the Padres and Red Sox. It was raining at the start of the game, kind of lightly, intermittently, but then somewhere around the 2nd inning, it started raining a little harder. My scorecard was getting wet and I had to pause and put it away as several people ran for cover outright. Someone several rows down from me put up an umbrella and blocked my view of home plate, which was just lovely. It was turning into one of those nights.

In other words, nobody knew what was about to ensue.

The Giants had been dinging Matz around over the first few innings, picking up 5 hits, but nothing of consequence. Peavy didn't allow the Mets much over the first two innings. That, of course changed rather quickly.

Peavy's control hadn't been great to begin with and of course when he walked Curtis Granderson and David Wright to start the 3rd inning, he was asking for trouble. Michael Conforto followed, and generally Conforto with men on base has been a winning proposition for the Mets. So it wasn't surprising that Conforo smashed a double to the left-center field gap to score Granderson with the first run of the game. Yoenis Cespedes followed with a single that scored both Wright and Conforto and got the Mets out 3-0.

At this point, George and I were discussing clichés to describe Peavy's situation. At this point, we felt he needed to minimize the damage and let the game come back to him, but instead he only made things worse by walking Lucas Duda and giving up a long double into the Right Field corner to Neil Walker to score Cespedes. At this point, Bruce Bochy had had enough of this and removed Peavy from the game, I suppose in an effort to stop the madness, but his choice of pitcher, Mike Broadway, only managed to make things worse.

Broadway was greeted by Asdrubal Cabrera drilling another double up the alley in Left Center, the Mets 3rd double of the inning, that plated Duda and Walker to make the score 6-0 and officially close the book on Peavy's forgettable evening. Kevin Plawecki walked. Matz followed and at this point, with 6 runs home, George and I were wondering whether or not he should be bunting, or what the protocol for proper sportsmanship was in this place. Surely, Matz has proven himself capable of swinging the bat, but it seems bunting isn't quite his bailiwick and he struck out on 3 attempts.

That's the first out of the inning, after 9 batters, if you're keeping score.

Here's where the inning began to get completely out of hand. Granderson followed by smoking a Broadway offering deep to Right Field, into the dopey alcove where nobody can hit Home Runs. It looked for a brief moment like it might land in the Pepsi Coca-Cola Porch, but it didn't, and Hunter Pence I guess was distracted by whatever signs were prepared for him because he got a glove on it but didn't hold on, and instead the ball fell, Cabrera scored and Granderson was aboard on what was charitably called a very long single. At this point, any sort of wheels that remained on the Giants had come off, and the Mets were either just going to keep on hitting forever. The inning was by this point well over half an hour long and the Mets had tied my personal best inning with 7 runs. So I just wanted to see how much further they could take this. Wright dunked a single in to load the bases. Conforto did his part by lining a single to right to score Plawecki and make it 8-0, and then Cespedes followed, and basically the thought in everyone's mind at this point was that he was either going to swing like he was trying to hit a grand slam, or that he was actually going to hit a grand slam, and really, that was the only result of that at bat. And, of course, he launched the 1st pitch into the seats in the Left Field corner for said grand slam and capped off the first 12-run inning in Mets History.

So at this point, everyone was bouncing off the walls with joy, George and I are both dumbstruck by what we've just witnessed and, of course, there's still a whole rest of a game to be played with the score 12-0. And there was still only one out in the inning. But as these things tend to do, Cespedes' grand slam killed the momentum and the next two batters grounded out. That didn't take anything away from the 13 batters that came to the plate before that and the crowd responded with a standing ovation.

But as I said, there was still 6 innings left to play, and by this point, after an inning that took close to 45 minutes and an unheard of 67 pitches, 30 from Peavy and 37 from Broadway, the clock was nearing 9pm...and the game started at 7:10. Also, Matz had to sit around through that long inning. But for the most part, both teams played like they wanted to get out of there quick. Matz didn't help himself by coming out a bit wild in the middle innings, probably because it's not especially easy to

pitch with a big lead like that, and he kept walking guys and giving up hits, but again, the Giants didn't cash in, Matz finished out his 6 innings, and Jerry Blevins, Logan Verrett and Antonio Bastardo each pitched sloppy innings to finish out the night. I could expound on how messy the Mets were on the pitching side of things, but that really isn't the story of this game.

The 3rd inning of this game is of course what everyone will remember, because never mind that the Mets have never done it, but you just don't see 12-run innings very often altogether. It takes a rare combination of contact and momentum steamrolling out of control, combined with a pitcher who has the poor fortune of just having to suck it all up, which is the case of Mike Broadway, who aside from being subjected to a litany of Broadway Musical jokes had to just do his best to navigate his way through a completely hopeless situation. I'll remember it because after Matz came to the plate, I turned to George and said "The Mets have officially broken the scorecard," as you'll see here. It's not often I have to run an inning across two columns and then shove each subsequent inning down the list, but that's what happened here.

The Giants and I are now even, I believe. This sort of a game seems proper retribution for what they made me witness last season. I suppose watching Matz throw a No Hitter might have been nice, but History is History and all the better that I was there to witness it.

Riding The Wave

In Late August of 2007, the Mets kicked off a crucial 10-game road trip in Philadelphia, against a hard-charging, up and coming Phillies team that was out for blood. The Phillies exploited every Met weakness, got every key hit and got every break over those 4 games, swept the series and rode that wave to a Division Title. Since then, well, we know what's happened.

Now 8 years later, the shoe is somewhat on the other foot. Those up-and-coming Phillies are now a shell of the team they once were, with yet another piece of their glory years, Chase Utley, jettisoned to the Dodgers, who may as well call themselves West Phillies since they've picked up half the Phils' infield. Meanwhile, the Mets are the hard-charging, up-and-coming team that's out for blood. Since the calendar flipped to August, the switch has come on for the Mets and after 4 months of not really being able to get out of their own way, now, they're just steamrolling the lesser opponents that get in their way. The Phillies are one of those now-lesser opponents, and while the Mets had done a good job of handling them to this point, on Monday they took handling a lesser opponent to a whole other level.

It makes sense that the Mets would go into Colorado, face a team that can't pitch at altitude and score 33 runs in 3 games. But the Mets outdid themselves on Monday, setting a pair of club records with 15 Extra Base hits and a mind-boggling 8 Home Runs in a 16-7 thrashing of the Phillies. Needless to say, the game was at Steroid Field, where the jet stream was obviously blowing in the Mets' favor. This happens sometimes, though it feels like a lifetime ago that the Mets hit 7 Home Runs in a game at this same locale. The Mets also scored 16 on that night, but in that season, there was no buildup to this kind of game. There was no struggle, no trade and no resurgence, and also no sense of urgency, because that game was in the middle of April. Monday's was in the thick of a Pennant Race that continues to tilt ever so gradually in the Mets favor.

It's also worth mentioning that in the midst of this offensive barrage, the Mets overcame a 7-2 deficit in the process.

The story of this game after 3 innings was more that Jacob deGrom just didn't have anything. He gave up a pair of 3-run Home Runs to Ryan Howard's carcass and Domonic Brown and generally looked out of sorts. In what was easily his worst start of the season, deGrom was gone before he could get out of the 3rd inning. On the road, against an opponent they should be handling, and they end up getting thrashed.

But oh, they were just getting warmed up.

By this point, the Mets had already hit two Home Runs, the first off the bat of David Wright, who returned to the lineup and promptly smoked a pitch into the Upper Deck in his first AB. Juan Lagares also hit one in the top of the 3rd inning. In the 4th, Wright singled, and then Wilmer Flores and Travis d'Arnaud belted back-to-back Home Runs; d'Arnaud's being hit so far out to Center Field that it disrupted the line at the Cheesesteak factory. This got the Mets to 7-5. In the 5th, Flores attacked again, hitting his 2nd Home Run of the game, a 3-run moonshot tucked just inside the Left Field foul pole that put the Mets ahead. Two batters later, Michael Cuddyer joined the party with another Home Run. One inning later, Daniel Murphy chimed in with the record-tying 7th Home Run, a ball hit so well that Murphy did his own unique style of hot dogging.

After that, the Mets resorted to more conventional ways of scoring runs. d'Arnaud drove home the Mets 12th and 13th runs with a double, and Juan Lagares singled home a run in the 7th. It took until the 9th for the Mets to reach the seats again, although you kind of had a sense it was coming, with Adam Loewen, the Pitcher-turned-Outfielder-turned-Pitcher on the mound just trying to throw strikes and end this Philly nightmare. But Yoenis Cespedes seemed bound and determined to get in on the action. After all, if the Mets were going to set a club record for Home Runs, wouldn't something be a bit afoul if Cespedes was kept off the board? But he wasn't. His drive clanged off the front of the 2nd deck in Left Field and the Mets had their record setting Home Run.

A lot was made after the game about the Mets turning it on like this coincidentally falling on the night David Wright returned to the lineup. While it's nice to have Wright back, at least from a leadership standpoint, I don't see how Wright got everyone so juiced up that they started hitting Home Runs all over the place. They've been doing this for the past few weeks already, while Wright was beating up on A-ball pitching. Wright's presence makes an already good lineup a little deeper, but clearly the addition of Cespedes, combined with the midseason resurgence of players like Flores and the return of d'Arnaud that have really given the Mets lineup some teeth. People are now starting to notice just how good Flores in particular has played since the no-trade and that maybe there's more to him than just a sentimental cult hero who cried on the field. It's the lesser guys stepping up and playing better that's making the difference. Earlier in the season, Flores was shoved into a power hitting/run producing role that he really wasn't mentally equipped for and the performance showed. Given the opportunity to be more of a wheel-turner and he has absolutely shined.

The other unsung hero of this game, who'll get no ink at all is Sean Gilmartin, who came into a completely untenable situation after deGrom left, and all he did was pitch 3.1 shutout innings, keeping the Phillies off the board while his team came back. And he even chipped in with a single and scored on Murphy's Home Run.

Washington, of course, was off tonight and so the Mets now lead by 5 1/2 games, their largest 1st place lead of the season and the first time they've been this far ahead since the Clinton Administration, or at least it feels that way.

Curtain Call

Baseball is a funny game, isn't it.

For 50 seasons and 8,019 regular season games, the Mets never had a pitcher who threw a No-Hit game, fact that seemed to take on a life of its own. It was part of the Mets culture. I'm sure many of us thought it might never happen. But it has. Baseball  is a game of averages, and by the law of averages, everything has to happen at some point. Just like until 2004, no team had ever come back from 0-3 down to win a Playoff series, and we saw the Red Sox do that. Someone, someday, would take the mound for the Mets, the stars would align, and someone would throw that elusive No Hitter.

And last night, June 1, 2012, that day finally came, that pitcher finally took the mound, and that No Hitter was had.

4 years ago, I'd anointed Johan Santana as worth every penny the Mets would be paying him over the course of his contract. He's done nothing, ever, to make me doubt that, even when he missed all of 2011 with a shoulder injury that put the remainder of his career in jeopardy. Nonetheless, Santana never complained, he never got down on himself or his teammates when they couldn't back him up, he persevered and came back from his injury looking just as good as before he left, and now, he's been rewarded by being the man on the mound the night the stars aligned and a Mets pitcher finally threw a No Hitter.

I wasn't at last night's game, although I wish I was. Frugality deterred me from picking an innocuous blue-colored Friday Night game on the schedule (instead, I'm stuck with tickets for Monday Afternoon which I probably should just sell), and, in fact, I missed the first 6 innings of the game altogether while out to dinner. By time I returned, I was pleased with what I was seeing. I hadn't yet gotten the word that Santana was pitching a gem, but a 5-0 lead against the Cardinals is always a good thing.

So the 6th ends, and I see that the Cardinals have no hits. I notify a friend, although after 6 innings, I'm still not properly conditioned to take this seriously. I once saw Rick Reed take a Perfect Game into the 7th inning...twice. One time, he lost the game completely. I once saw Mark Clark take a No Hitter into the 8th inning. I saw R.A. Dickey hold the Phils into the 7th inning last September. It's too early to get too nervous. But Santana continued to mow the Cardinals down. Yadier Molina made a strong bid to break things up—certainly would have been fitting for him to screw us over again—but Mike Baxter saved the day at the cost of his shoulder. Those are the kind of plays you need. At that point, you could start to feel the stars aligning. I hadn't yet heard about Beltran's foul ball in the 5th, but sometimes, you just get those breaks.

By the 8th, I started getting nervous. Something just felt different this time. Maybe it was simply just the presence of Santana himself, and all he'd been through the last couple of seasons just to get to this point. He wasn't supposed to be doing THIS, was he? He wasn't supposed to be blowing through his pitch count with reckless abandon. And yet, he couldn't come out. After a 2-out walk, Terry Collins came running to the mound. There was no way he could take Santana out. Santana would have thrown him back into the dugout if he'd tried. Beltran was next, and now, I was flinching every time a Cardinal made contact. But the contact was never solid enough to scoot past the infield, or to whiz over the head of an outfielder. Beltran's swing produced a meek floater that was caught by Daniel Murphy. And all of a sudden, Santana was now in Tom Seaver territory.

I'd like to say that the 9th inning was just a mere formality. I suppose one might say that if they didn't have a pulse. I'd seen 9th innings of No Hitters before, and I wondered what it would be like if it ever happened to the Mets. Well, now I know. It's about 5-7 minutes of torturous hell. I was afraid to move or do much of anything other than stare blankly at the TV. Watching Santana deliver pitch after pitch, and hoping this wouldn't be the one that would find its way through, and wreck our shot at History once again. But it wasn't going to happen on June 1, 2012. First Holliday and then Allen Craig flew out. David Freese was the last man standing. David Freese has never done anything particularly bad to the Mets, but he certainly made a name for himself last October. And so, on a night where demons from the past were well abound, with Adam Wainwright starting—and losing— for the Cardinals, where Yadier Molina was robbed by a Mets leftfielder, David Freese completed the circle, waving at one final, signature changeup from Johan Santana, and, in the words of Gary Cohen, "IT HAS HAPPENED!!!"

 

It was somewhat surreal. I really couldn't believe I'd actually seen a Mets pitcher throw a No Hitter. But, there it was. We have to believe it, because we all saw it. We have to believe it, because, Johan Santana himself told his teammates to "BELIEVE IT!" after the game. Whatever Santana does the rest of his time here doesn't matter. I think I said that before. He's already cemented himself as one of the Best the Mets have ever had. He's accomplished something we never thought we'd see. And for the guy in the Promenade who always screams "THE STREAK CONTINUES!" every time the opponent gets their first hit of the game, well, this one's for you, because I never have to hear you say that again! 

The Streak Does Not Continue

It happened. We all just saw it.

Johan Santana just threw the first No-Hitter in Mets History.