Mediocre Team Monday

I was back at Citi Field on Monday night for my 15th game of the season, but my first since it seems like the Mets had really thrown in the towel on the season. The Mets came into the game with a record of 54-68. 54-68 is one of those "benchmark" records for abject medoicrity, because that's the record the Mets had in 2001 before making a late charge that made their season look cosmetically better than it probably deserved to. While I don't see them running off a 28-12 finish, if there's ever a season where the Mets looked like a 54-68 team, this is it.

However, the Mets aren't drawing like a 54-68 team, as in spite of the fact that I was on a basically empty 7 train heading out to the game, there was still a reasonably healthy crowd for a Monday night against an Arizona Diamondbacks team that appeared to have shown up for the night's game while still in their pajamas. So you had all the fixings. An underachieving Mets team that looks like they've been sleeping through the season against a Diamondbacks team that literally looks like they're sleeping. And, unsurprisingly, I watched a 54-68 effort out of a 54-68 team that by the end of the evening sat at 54-69.

While the Mets collected plenty of hits against Taijuan Walker and a passel of relievers, they could manage none at moments where it really would have helped. Meanwhile, Robert Gsellman pitched admirably well and kept his baserunners to a minimum, but still found himself behind a run when J.D. Martinez singled home a run in the 4th inning. The Mets continued to get hits and strand runners until the 7th inning, when they loaded the bases with one out against Archie Bradley and his ferocious Relief Pitcher's beard. Yoenis Cespedes was up and finally picked up that key hit to drive home the tying run, and perhaps could have drove in the lead run were Asdrubal Cabrera a bit faster.

Having required 10 hits to score one run, the Mets then stopped hitting as both bullpens shot zeroes at each other through the 8th and again in the 9th. The game, in spite of being 1-1, was drifting and dragging along, well past 3 hours and to the point where I was running out of steam. My other half multiple times texted to see if I'd left yet. I hadn't, although by time the Mets went down in order against Jimmie Sherfy in the 9th (and, really, if there was a point in the game where you knew the Mets were screwed, it was when they couldn't manage a hit off of Jimmie Sherfy), I headed downstairs where I figured I'd watch for an inning and hope for a quick ending. Or maybe I figured that a quick ending was imminent when the Mets went to Erik Goeddel. Sometimes you have premonitions. Mediocre pitcher + Mediocre team = you get the picture. Goeddel played the part by walking the leadoff hitter, getting an out that advanced the runner, and then allowing a 2-run Home Run to A.J. Pollock, who himself has been perfectly mediocre.

In the 9th inning, I was sort of hoping that the Mets could get Michael Conforto to the plate because I have a fairly solid track record of him hitting Home Runs in games I've been to this season, but he didn't get to bat in the 9th. He did bat in the 10th, against Fernando Rodney, and he did hit a Home Run, but that only made the score 3-2, and there the score stayed and off into the night I went. A fitting end for a 54-68 kind of night.

Turn Back The Clock

The breathless intensity of Tuesday night was replaced tonight by an utter turd of a game, one of those endless slogs that seemed plucked directly from 2013 or 2014 when the Nationals would come in to Citi Field and just bludgeon the Mets. The Nationals didn't bludgeon the Mets on this night quite so much as the Mets just insistently handed them this game. Bartolo Colon slogged his way through 4 2/3rd innings, uncharacteristically walking 5 batters, consistently working from behind in counts and ultimately couldn't put away the Nationals in the 5th and departed behind in the game 3-1.

The Mets bullpen in 2016 has by and large been very good at keeping the Mets in games. This was not one of those games. A succession of relievers, first Hansel Robles, and then Gonzalez Germen, Antonio Bastardo, Scott Atchison, Logan Verrett, Jerry Blevins, Scott Rice, Jim Henderson, Greg Burke and Brandon Lyon proceeded to hand the Nationals baserunners by the bucketload, allowing them to continually tack on runs in painstaking fashion and ultimately allowing them to literally walk away with a 7-1 victory to even up the series.

This was destined for bad news from the start as Colon went to a 3-ball count on everyone in the 1st inning, and walked both Jayson Werth and Bryce Harper, not so much by design on either count (in spite of the fact that everyone seems to be walking Harper as though he were Barry Bonds). Somehow, he got himself out of a jam and only in the 3rd inning did Washington score, after Werth and Harper again walked and Daniel Murphy singled off of David Wright's glove.

The Mets tied the game in the 4th when Yoenis Cespedes hit a Home Run, and this is good because Cespedes has been going great of late, but bad because nobody else really is and, again, it continues to underscore the station-to-station nature of this team because they tend to only score by hitting Home Runs. Or at least it just seems that way. Nonetheless, this was the only way the Mets scored on Tuesday, and it was the only way they scored tonight. Just saying.

Then, the game turned into 2013 and everything was horrible from there. Colon was a strike away from getting out of the 5th inning about 6 times, even after walking Werth and Harper again, but he couldn't put away Anthony Rendon and ultimately Rendon singled home 2 runs and threw the whole game down the toilet. From there, happenings included a 40-minute top of the 7th in which Bastardo channeled his inner Steve Trachsel and Fire Hydrant Head doing what he usually does against the Mets and hitting 2-run singles. And more walks to Werth and Harper. In all, the Mets, who as we were reminded by Keith and Gary a multitude of times lead the league in fewest walks allowed, handed the Nationals 11 walks on this night, which is unconscionable for a contending team to do, virtually guarantees a poor outcome, and also leads to a game that lasts 3 hours and 40 minutes (blah blah blah glad I wasn't there). You also end up with cameras catching the Manager and Pitching Coach standing in the dugout looking like they just spent 6 hours eating spicy meatballs.

Sigh. Wipe the slate clean and come back tomorrow is the best cliche to say after a game like this. Hopefully Harvey has his act together. That'd be nice.

Overextended

After a couple of weeks in which the Mets basically laid waste to everyone that deigned to get in their way, the Mets came home and sort of muddled their way through Friday night's game against the Boston Red Sox. This was, of course, another one of those randomly placed Interleague series, and one that had a bit of panache to it, since it was in fact the first time the Red Sox had played a regular season series at Citi Field, and also the first time the Mets and Red Sox had met in Queens altogether since 2001. Though the Red Sox are in last place and boast a record to rival the teams that the Mets had basically steamrolled over the weekend, they came into Citi Field looking somewhere awkwardly in between a team playing out the string and a team looking to get in the way of a contender. They did both rather well. In spite of running through 8 pitchers and handing the Mets 12 walks, they bunched several hits together in key moments and managed to burn the Mets 6-4 in a 10-inning sweat-fest.

This game did have all the makings of a Mets romp, particularly early. I was on hand with my better half for this Free Shirt Friday (and those loyal readers who know my wife's disdain for Free Shirt Friday will no doubt be pleased to know that she deemed this shirt unwearable and asked if I would be selling it on eBay approximately 30 seconds after receiving it), as were a whole host of Red Sox fans who unfortunately turned out to be as annoying as I feared they would be in spite of our particular solidarity. Though I will always hold a soft spot in my heart for the Red Sox for what they did 11 years ago, their run of World Series Championships has turned their fans from a more New England Literary BS version of Mets fans into a bunch of chest-puffers. They've become so popular and their fans seem to travel so well that it seems unsurprising that this weekend is very close to being sold out if it's not already. Easily the largest crowd in a game I'd attended this season since Opening Day was on hand as a well-rested Matt Harvey was on the mound. The skipped start heard round the world turned out to be a non-issue as Harvey cruised his way through 6 innings and although he was less than economical, he was still effective. The offense got him two runs off of Henry Owens, who should not be confused with the Henry Owens of lesser acclaim that surfaced with the Mets in another era. It could have been more. It probably should have been more.

By the time the 7th inning rolled around, we all wished it were more, because Logan Verrett, after looking so good against the Phillies on Thursday, came in the game and was immediately greeted by David Ortiz hitting a laser beam of a Home Run into the seats in Left Center. Verrett then got the next two batters and it seemed like an isolated instance, but then he gave up a single to Blake Swihart and was a pitch away from getting the 8 hitter, Jackie Bradley, Jr, but then Bradley hit a ball rather similar to Ortiz that found its way to the seats as well, and just like that, the lead was gone, Harvey's win was gone, and Red Sox fans were whooping it up. 

The Mets, however, battled back in the last of the 7th, thanks mostly to Alexi Ogando and his general inability to find the plate. Ogando's outing was basically the baseball version of a triple-decker sandwich, as he walked a guy, got a guy out, gave up a hit, walked a guy, got a guy out and then walked Travis d'Arnaud to force in a run and tie the game back up. Ogando was then removed for fat-faced former Giant Jean Machi, and of course Machi stopped the Mets cold, and then Tommy Layne worked out of trouble in the 9th, and it was off to Extra Innings, which was about the last thing the Mets needed after what happened on Thursday night.

By this point, the Mets had gone through single innings from Verrett, who wasn't good, and then Tyler Clippard and Jeurys Familia, who were good, and now Terry Collins tried to squeeze a little more magic out of Carlos Torres, but this didn't work. Swihart led off the 10th with a screamer that at first looked like it might be run down by Juan Lagares, except that it kept sailing and it appeared to me to be a Home Run outright, but it caromed off the wall and about halfway back to the infield. Nobody made a signal, and so Swihart just kept on running while Lagares and Tejada then had to chase down the ball, and by time anyone was able to make a play on it, Swihart had basically circled the bases for the Inside-The-Park Home Run that probably wasn't an Inside-The-Park Home Run. But it was and that's how it stands. Torres then proceeded to allow two more runs on top of that, turning a bad situation into a completely untenable one, as not only were the Mets down 6-3 in the 10th inning, but Red Sox fans were now dancing in the aisles and weeping over their good fortune. 

It probably would have been easier if the Mets had just gone down in order against Junichi Tazawa, who has mysteriously become the Red Sox closer for reasons I forget, and after Tazawa gave up a hit to Flores and a Double Play to d'Arnaud, it seemed like we'd get out of here quick. But instead, Tazawa decided to prolong things and walk 4 guys in a row, which served no greater purpose than to fill us all with false hope while Red Sox fans buried their heads in their hands. Still, with the bases loaded and now a run home, all it would take was Yoenis Cespedes to just knock a single and the game would be tied, and a long hit could potentially win the game. Boston, having had enough of Tazawa's Follies, opted to bring in another pitcher, except that the only pitcher they had left was Left handed Yale graduate Craig Breslow, hardly the matchup they wanted but of course the only matchup they could make. Certainly things looked hopeful at this point but Cespedes just missed a pitch and ended up flying out.

This was a rather meek and anticlimactic ending to this game, which seemed to drag on forever and wound up an excessively sweaty 3 hours and 59 minutes, which should tell you that the Red Sox were the once who dictated the pace of the game, and should also tell you that they really can't pitch very well. The Mets had 20 men on base in the game and could only muster 4 runs, which means their situational hitting decided it was June again and didn't do anything helpful. Say what you will about Collins' use of the bullpen but the fact is the bullpen probably shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place. When a team hands you 12 walks, you probably should score more than 4 runs. But then again, after a 9-game, 12-day road trip that finished with a 13-inning slog, maybe the Mets needed a nap more than anything else.

Sleepy Time

I can't vouch for what the weather was like on Wednesday night in Chicago. If it felt as oppressively humid as it did in New York (where my living room felt like something out of the movie "Smoke"), then the 3 hour, 40 minute mess of a game that the Miserable Cubs and the Lifeless Mets waged probably would have made a little more sense. In yet another rhythmless game that saw the Mets get runners on base repeatedly and fail to drive them in, and in a game where they got yet another Home Run out of Ruben Tejada of all people, the Mets in general decided to stick their thumbs in their asses and let the Cubs rally back and take a lead in the 5th inning. By this time, it seems that the general length of the game had made them tired, so Terry Collins' team strategy for the last 4 innings of the game was apparently for the entire team to take a nap. So, they did, and the result was their second consecutive 1-run loss to one of the worst teams in Baseball. God Bless.

The warning signs for a long game were evident before the first pitch, since the pitching matchup pitted Daisuke Matsuzaka, who's known for slowing down to a crawl if that's the kind of vibe he's feeling, against the Cubs' Edwin Jackson, who once famously threw a 147-pitch No Hitter and can often be likened to watching paint dry on the mound. Jackson threw about 66 pitches in the first two innings while his teammates kicked the ball around and allowed a few Mets to score, which was nice, except that the game was already over an hour old. Starlin Castro, the Cubs Jose Offerman-like Shortstop, made one of his trademark egregious errors and Jackson just as egregiously allowed a 2-run double to Lucas Duda and the Mets were on their way. Tejada homered in the 4th and things seemed fine.

Then Matsuzaka came unglued in the 5th, which became one of those innings where you want to just turn off the TV and run and hide. We've been through it far too many times with far too many pitchers, one of those innings where the opponent gets a bunch of walks, and some scratch hits, and then there's a 2-run single and a few pitching changes, and all of a sudden there's guys like Dana Eveland pitching for the Mets, and there's another pitching change and Jeurys Familia is wild-pitching home the lead run for the Cubs...

...And you know the rest. The Mets never recover. A succession of 6 Cubs Relievers, many of whom you never heard of or never wanted to hear of managed to allow the Mets 2 hits for the rest of the game, giving more credence to my theory that they were just too tired to finish the game after that mess of an inning. There's no other reason I can think of that they couldn't manage to cobble together at least one run in that period of time. So, now they've lost this series and can only hope to salvage the final game tonight, if they feel like waking up. 

In Regulation Time!

The Mets and Phillies concluded their more-than-5 game series on Monday night with a rarity: a real, live 9-inning game!

Where the weekend was punctuated by a flurry of fine pitching combined with a general lack of hitting, be it clutch or otherwise, Monday night saw the Mets ride Bartolo Colon's second consecutive fine performance, a pair of fine defensive plays from Matt den Dekker, and a 6-RBI game from Wilmer Flores to remove any need for extra innings from this particular affair, winning an 11-2 rout of a game going away.

Much like the other games in this series, there was some sort of odd activity that drew me away from actually getting to see most of the game, which was unfortunate, because I got to see the first few innings, got to see Lucas Duda drive home the game's first run, got to see den Dekker take a Home Run away from Ryan Howard and then throw out Reid Brignac at the plate by a Lagares-like margin...and that was about it. The rest of the game was relayed to me by a variety of buzzes on my phone, so I missed the Wilmer Flores experience and other assorted niceties that the Mets managed to pull off in this rare laugher of a game.

While Colon kept the Phillies in check for a majority of the evening, the Mets set out against Fausto Carmona Roberto Hernandez once again, in what feels like the 8th time they've faced him this season. Hernandez, who's sort of been the catch-all guy for the Phillies, is a mere shell of the guy who once won 19 games under his assumed name in Cleveland, and now seems to have dissolved into some weird, hybrid Jose Contreras/Pete Harnisch-like journeyman who continues to get a job based on a level of talent that he's probably not capable of living up to any longer. But, then again, that may be why he resurfaced with the Phillies, a team of aging, leaky veterans that are either in the last vestiges of their prime or never had a prime to begin with. The glory years for this group are done, clearly, and nothing is more indicative of that then the fact that the Mets walked into their stadium and pretty much cleaned their clocks, winning 4 of the 5 games and by all rights could very easily have won the 5th.

However, on the other side of the equation, while the Mets won 4 of 5, it took them 14 innings and 11 innings to get two of those 4, and another 14 innings to take the loss. So, who's really coming out ahead here?

Let's Play Six!

Because, you know, the only thing better than two ridiculously extended Extra Inning games is three ridiculously extended Extra Inning games. That's what the Mets and Phillies have decided we need here. Baseball and More Baseball and even when you think you've had enough, a little more baseball, and they still have one more game to go in a 5-game series that feels like it's lasted about two months.

Sunday, the Mets and Phillies played what was for them a nice quick game, playing only 11 innings instead of their requisite 14, with the Mets coming out on top 4-3 behind a 2-run Home Run from Lucas Duda and another spate of solid pitching by Jon Niese and his bullpen cohorts. It's somewhat heartening to see that the bullpen, after close to two months of generally being horrible, has sort of started to gel, and guys like Vic Black and Josh Edgin have performed reasonably well and Jenrry Mejia has found himself as a Closer. Of course, they're doing the job against the Phillies, who currently sit in last place in the tightly-knit NL East and have their own problems, but success is success is success and the hope is that maybe some solid performances against a team with a losing record might help them gain some confidence when the teams with better records come around the pike.

Sunday's game was another mostly forgotten affair for me, general life kept me out of the house for a majority of the afternoon and by time I got home, I eschewed the last vestiges of the game in favor of a nap. I suppose I could have put the game on, but it would have been more than likely that I would have put the game on and then fallen asleep watching it, it was just that kind of a day. Only some time later did I wake up to a text from a friend alerting me to the news of Duda's 11th inning lightning, and I figured I may as well see if the game was still going on, and as it turned out it was. I was just in time to see Marlon Byrd go deep off of Mejia to make a 2-run game a 1-run game, although in my general haze I actually didn't realize that Duda had hit a 2-run Home Run instead of a Solo Home Run, and for a brief moment, I was dismayed to see that Byrd had tied the game...Yeah, that kind of an afternoon. But the Mets still had the lead, and Mejia got through the remainder of the inning unscathed and the Mets picked themselves up a nice victory.

So, after all this, one more to go for the Mets in Philadelphia before they go off to Chicago and other points West. Hopefully on getaway day they can keep things to a normal length. That remains to be seen.

Long And More Long

This Mets-Phillies series has been long in just about every way you could think of. Never mind the fact that last month's rainout was tacked onto the mutual Monday off-day that these two teams shared, knocking out a travel day for the Mets before they go to Chicago, but it created the rarely seen 5-game series, in which each team will probably see just about every nuance their opponent has to offer. This is good and bad, and in the case of the Mets and Phillies probably irrelevant since they play each other 18 times a year anyway.

But a long series got even longer when these two teams decided they enjoy each other's company so much, they might as well tack another game's worth of Extra Innings on top of the proceedings. While Thursday night's game featured the absolute best the Mets had to offer from a pitching standpoint, Friday and Saturday's games devolved into these two teams at their most bizarre.

Thursday, of course, featured Zack Wheeler having one of those nights where he got his act together, ripped off an awesome 6.1 innings in which he walked none and struck out 9, and actually got some run support, courtesy of, of all people, Chris Young, among others. The 4 runs he got wasn't exactly a deluge, but it was good enough, and the resurgent tandem of Vic Black and Jenrry Mejia got the game home from there, Mejia with an especially impressive 3-strikeout 9th inning to cap off a 4-1 Met victory that saw them strike out 15 Phillies in total.

And, with that, everything normal about this series was summarily thrown out the window.

Friday night saw a game that featured me drifting in and out of paying attention to things, between nodding off after a long work week and other assorted distractions and things that I had to take care of that took precedence over a Friday night Mets-Phillies tilt. It speaks to, on many levels, the way one's priorities can change as one gets older. For many years, a Mets/Phillies Friday Night game might have taken me out to a local watering hole with some compatriots to watch the affair with some of the finest brew that can be had. Even once I began to imbibe less, I would still rather park myself in front of a TV to watch the game rather than do anything else, interruptions be damned. But with other, more pressing concerns to deal with, all of a sudden, a Friday night Mets/Phillies game is now secondary to whatever else I have to do, even though what I probably want to do is just sit and watch the game. But watch, I did very little of, and by time I was able to tune in, most of the action had already unfolded and the score was 5-5 in the 9th. Gone was Rafael Montero, who got an early lead and then watched it evaporate rather quickly. Gone were those who followed him to the mound, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Josh Edgin, Jeurys Familia, Scott Rice, and now it appeared Carlos Torres was going to be the innings-eater for the duration. But that duration never really came, as neither team appeared to want to budge off that 5-5 score. At some point, I ceded control of the TV to my other half in favor of War Documentaries of a different kind, and it was only later, after I glanced away from MLB's GameCast for a hot second, that the Phillies finally plated the game winner off of Jenrry Mejia in what I can only assume was in general excruciating fashion for a 14-inning game.

I can only assume that the Mets and Phillies had a real hoot of a time playing out 14 innings on Friday night because on Saturday afternoon, they went right out and did it again, following a 5 hour, 23 minute game with a 5 hour, 32 minute game that again went 14 innings. I missed a majority of this game as well, as more matters kept me out of the house and away from a TV for most of the afternoon. I'd assumed I would miss the game in its entirety, but when I got home, things were still going on, plodding along in the 11th inning. Long forgotten was another fine outing from Jacob deGrom, more fine hitting from the ageless-and-starting-to-become-overused Bobby Abreu and Ruben Tejada's long-awaited first Home Run since 2012. More freshly remembered were deGrom becoming unraveled in the 7th and allowing a Ryan Howard Home Run and Domonic Brown tying the game in the 9th off of Jeurys Familia, who certified himself as a true 2014 Met Reliever by become the 8th in that group to successfully blow a Save this season. So, further into the Philadelphia twilight things moved, far enough for the Mets emergency pitcher, Buddy Carlyle, to be summoned into the game. Carlyle, called up in favor of Montero, is one of those names you might remember if you collected Bowman Baseball Cards back in the era, when a series of cards was just a series of cards, before the whole thing blew up into an inscrutable mess of inserts and parallels. As a Major League Pitcher, Carlyle wasn't known for much and it seems he hadn't surfaced in a game in 4 years. But here he was, throwing 3 shutout innings and somehow getting a win in the deal when David Wright finally drove home a 14th inning run and Closer du jour Carlos Torres sealed the deal in a 5-4 Mets win.

So, after 3 games, it feels like the Mets and Phillies have already played a full 5-game series, but believe it or not, there's still two more games to go. Hopefully, they'll finish off one of these things in 9, but Extra Innings has become a bit of an Art Form for the Mets these days, particularly against the Phillies, where 4 of the 7 games they've played thus far this season have required more than the requisite 9 innings to decide a winner. So maybe this is just going to be their thing. 

Fall Stall

Hard to believe, but on May 27th, I was already attending my 9th game of the season at Citi Field. This season, like many of the few directly before it, has been kind of a rhythmless season as far as the games I've attended are concerned. I've sat through multiple extra inning games, games that went too long, some nice wins, some boring losses. There's been no real consistent theme among the games except that the Mets were involved and, win or lose, it's just the Mets.

Tuesday night at Citi Field seemed to exemplify that. The Mets won, 4-2, over the Pirates, which was nice. The price, however, was that it took the Mets 3 hours and 43 minutes on a thick night in Queens to accomplish said 4-2 victory. This is kind of ridiculous, 3 hours and 43 minutes. I've been to Extra Inning games that didn't last quite that long. When you only score 6 runs total and the two teams combine for 12 hits, something really messed up must have been going on for the game to last 3 hours and 43 minutes.

But, examine the game, and you can't really come up with one definitive reason as to why this game took so damn long. Walks might be a likely culprit, and there were certainly plenty, with the Mets drawing 8 and the Pirates 6, but that shouldn't slow a game down that much. The walks, combined with both starting pitchers Edinson Volquez and Jon Niese deciding they wanted to be a little more like John Maine and slowing down to a snail's pace combined with the complete and total inability to put away a hitter was this game's undoing. Volquez wasn't long for this game from the outset, as the Mets got runners on against him repeatedly, but, typical for the Mets, only managed to plate two runs in 5 innings. The Mets worked Volquez repeatedly, culminating in a 5th inning at bat by Lucas Duda where I'm pretty sure Duda fouled off no less than 12 2-strike pitches before drawing a walk.

Jon Niese, on the other side, started out wonderfully, neatly tying the Pirates up in knots through 5 innings. Then came the 6th. Oy vey, then came the 6th. Niese started out by walking the leadoff hitter Josh Harrison and he pretty much unraveled from there. A game where it seemed certain he could go much deeper into the game quickly evaporated into a string of deep counts and walks until his neat and tidy 60 pitches was nearing 100 pitches and Starling Marte was singling home the tying runs. Suddenly, the lead was gone, Niese was gone in favor of the return of Vic Black and the clock was about to strike 10pm. Much too late for the 6th inning. Black, who probably should have been here all along, came in the game and started throwing darts all over the place. And by all over the place I mean all over the place. He walked his first batter to set the stage for Ike Davis to pinch hit, the situation rife for Davis to recreate his early-season heroics. But instead, Black turned the tables on Ike, striking him out on a curveball to instead recreate many other less-memorable Ike Davis moments.

Still, the game did not speed up, even though the starters had left the game. A succession of relievers for the Pirates kept allowing Mets to reach base and, fortuitously for the Mets, a couple of them scored, allowing them to regain the lead. Ruben Tejada reached base and moved up on a pair of Jeanmar Gomez wild pitches, and then scored on a broken bat flair single from Juan Lagares. Daniel Murphy followed with a double into the corner that scored Lagares.

This, fortunately, was enough for Black and Jenrry Mejia to finish out the game, although there were plenty of moments where that appeared kind of dicey. In the 7th, Black got the first two batters out before walking Jose Tabata, which was great considering the defending NL MVP Andrew McCutchen was on deck. McCutchen got a hit to set the stage for our dear friend Gaby Sanchez, but much like he did to Davis, Black snuck a curveball by Sanchez for strike 3 to end the threat. Jenrry Mejia followed Black to the mound for the ever popular 6-out Save opportunity, and did a great job of summoning up great Mets closers of the past by immediately letting the tying runs on base and then somehow managing to get out of it. In the 8th, Mejia allowed 2 on and the Pirates sent up Pedro Alvarez to pinch hit. Alvarez hit a shot, but directly at Tejada, who turned an easy DP. In the 9th, with the clock now creeping closer to 11pm—and my bedtime—Mejia again prolonged things, allowing 2 more Pirates on (one on an error, granted, but a baserunner is a baserunner) to set up Sanchez once again. Every Mets fan had this horrible fear of Sanchez getting around on one and hitting it somewhere far, or even worse, far enough to simply tie the game and extend it even further into the night. And Sanchez almost hit it into a disastrous corner of the infield—too far away for Tejada to attempt a throw to 1st, yet not far enough away to do too much damage—so Tejada did the heady thing, as he is, in fact, sometimes capable of doing, and threw to 3rd, in time to get Travis Snider for the final out.

Usually, when the Mets win, I like to stand around and revel for a moment or two after the game. Not after this game, though. The game ended at around 10:54pm. I'd likely be on a moving 7 Express train by 11:10. If I were lucky, I'd be home before midnight. Turns out, I did luck out and get home before midnight. Barely, but before. I'll likely pay for this tomorrow, though.