Perseverance

The Mets of course began the day with the news that Jacob deGrom was lost for the season, one day after it was announced that he would be starting on Sunday. This isn't good, but as I've said, I'd rather have the Mets go to the whip with healthy arms that might lack pizzazz as opposed to trying to force someone who's hurt to come back and risk him pitching ineffectively or, worse, injuring himself further. So if nothing else, and if you can believe it I'm taking the silver lining route here, we have a real, legitimate answer to what's been ailing deGrom, and also no false set of expectations that he'll at some point be back. It's a drag, but then again, just about everything that's happened this season injury-wise has been a drag.

And yet the Mets as a team continue to process this information and go out and win games anyway, and they do so in all sorts of strange ways. They already won a game this week when a guy hit his first Major League Home Run in extra innings. Last night, the Mets won because Curtis Granderson came up in the 11th inning with the Mets down a run and hit a Home Run to tie the game, and followed that up by coming up in the 12th inning and hitting another Home Run to win the game, so, you know, why not? Why not get a pair of Home Runs from the same guy in back-to-back extra innings?

Seth Lugo, whose general M.O. has basically been to eat innings while keeping the Mets in the game, did that again. He wasn't at his best; he seemed a bit wild early, but outside of a 3rd inning Home Run from Eddie Rosario he allowed the Twins nothing of consequence over his 5 innings of work. This was fortunate, because the Mets were doing nothing against Ervin Santana. Santana continues to toil away for a woefully overmatched Twins team and, well, the Mets saw a bit of him back when he pitched for Atlanta that time and it seems he hasn't changed much. Santana had the Mets stopped cold through 7 innings and only in the 7th did they pose a credible threat, and even then Santana struck out Michael Conforto to end the inning and finish out his night.

And, of course, as soon as Santana left the game, the Mets tied the score. Ryan Pressly, who I suppose is posing as Minnesota's setup man (if you asked me who their closer was I probably wouldn't be able to tell you), gave up a first pitch hit to Jose Reyes, wild pitched him to 2nd and then Reyes moved to 3rd on a Cabrera ground out. And that brought up Cespedes, and for whatever reason teams continue to pitch to Cespedes in opportunities where he can beat them. Miami did it and it wrecked their precious little season. Minnesota did it and ended up getting beat as well, as Cespedes just flicked a 3-2 pitch over the 2nd baseman's head for the tying hit.

And, so, it then became a bullpen fest. The Mets had already burned through Josh Smoker, Fernando Salas, Jerry Blevins, Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia by time the game moved to the 10th, and so the game was turned over to Hansel Robles. The Twins countered with several pitchers you've never heard of, unless you're somehow related to J.T. Chargois or Alex Wimmers. Robles moved to the 10th, but in the 11th he was burned, and I mean legitimately burned, by Byron Buxton, who may be starting to get his sea legs under him. Buxton hit a Home Run up into a part of Citi Field where it seems only people named "Miguel Cabrera" or "Cespedes" can reach and the Twins not only had a lead, but a chance to use their closer and for me, a chance to see who their closer actually is.

Brandon Kintzler, said Twins Closer, came in to try to close things out in the last of the 11th and of course gave up a Home Run to Curtis Granderson on his 2nd pitch to re-tie the game at 2-2. Kintzler then appeared ready to just end things right there, giving up subsequent hits to T.J. Rivera and Brandon Nimmo, which brought up Kevin Plawecki—remember him?—for his first At Bat since June or thereabouts. Plawecki had a hard time up here earlier in the year and this time just hit into bad luck as his line shot glanced off Kintzler's glove and right to Brian Dozier, who threw him out. Kintzler then hit Matt Reynolds with a pitch, and then struck out Jose Reyes, which meant that after all that crotch-grabbing, we were just going to play more baseball.

Josh Edgin pitched the 12th inning for the Mets without incident. Michael Tonkin entered for Minnesota and retired the first two batters, then was subsequently removed by Paul Molitor in favor of Ryan O'Rourke—you know, the great Ryan O'Rourke. I'm not sure why at this point Molitor felt he needed to play matchups, but Granderson had one of those At Bats that Cespedes usually has, where he starts fouling off pitch after pitch and eventually gets something he can handle, and he did, and he hit it down into the little slip of seats in the Right Field corner for the game-winning Home Run and the Mets had won this absurd mess of a game 3-2.

And, of course, shortly after the Mets won, the Cardinals won, coming back on the Giants to win and knock the Giants back into a tie with the Mets for the first Wildcard. Can you believe this? The Mets played the Giants about a month ago at perhaps their worst point in the season, and now they're not only tied but because they hold the tiebreaker, the Mets are, in fact, in position to host the Wildcard game. But, they're not there yet. They have to keep winning these games against teams that are clearly overmatched.

Cap Trade Friday

The Mets began their final homestand of the season Friday night, which is something that I usually look at kind of wistfully, although this year not so much. It seems as though it's arrived rather quickly this year. Maybe it always feels that way. This year, though, it has the odd juxtaposition of the overwhelmingly likely scenario that, come September 25th, the Mets will play their final home game of the season but nobody will know for certain whether or not it's actually going to be their final home game of the season.

Regardless, you want to enjoy the time we have left as much as possible, and I'll be at 4 games on this final homestand, the first of which was this evening, in a game against a team I've never actually seen play the Mets before, the Minnesota Twins. This isn't the first time I've seen the Twins--I in fact saw them play in Toronto three years ago--but now I get to cross them off the list of teams I've never seen play the Mets. This now leaves the Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers as the lone teams I've never seen--and Texas will be in town next season.

But next year is rather far away and the Mets still have a Pennant Race to deal with and so the Mets and Twins were my 18th game of the season. I have gone over my choice of game hat over the years and for 2016 I'd been wearing a new hat, with the 2015 World Series logo on it. It's proven to be middling in terms of luck and at my last game, I discovered something rather disturbing about it. I'd bought it at size 7 1/2, thinking that was my preferred cap size. But it never fit properly. It seemed too large in some areas and just didn't look right. At my last game, my other half, who has taken to wearing my old game hats, was complaining about it and wondered why I didn't go back to wearing last year's game hat, a 2012 50th Anniversary cap, since that seemed to have much more luck in it. She was wearing it and I compared them, and of course that cap fit much better. Surprise, surprise, that cap was 7 3/8! No wonder I'd had the stink this year! I was wearing a cap that was too big. So, tonight, I wore the old hat. As you now know, the Mets won, 3-0. So I think, superstition being what it is, I have to go back to the old cap. The fate of the Mets depends on this.

The fate of the Mets also depends on guys who played key in tonight's win. Bartolo Colon was chief among them. Colon right now defies any and all logic and is just a force of nature that we should just sit back and marvel at. He befuddled a young and inexperienced Twins lineup for 7 innings, allowing 3 hits, 2 walks (both to Joe Mauer) and no runs while striking out 6. He walked Mauer in the 1st and immediately got Jorge Polanco to follow by hitting into a DP. In the 3rd inning, he allowed the Twins to load the bases with two outs, but managed to get Polanco to fly out. In the 4th, Max Kepler reached when Cespedes nonchalantly dropped a fly ball directly at him (he gave no fucks, in typical Cespedes fashion), but Colon then proceeded to pick Kepler off 1st base.

He'd been backed minimally, as all the Mets were able to muster off of Francisco Berrios and a bevy of obscure relievers with bland names to that point were back-to-back Home Runs by Jose Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera in the 3rd. Berrios, who appears to be no older than 16, was ripe for the taking, as he had demon stuff but little control and seemed content to hand the Mets plenty of runners, but a key hit never came. Berrios was gone after 4 innings, and outside of one rally in the 7th inning that culminated with an RBI single from Yoenis Cespedes.

It seemed like it would be a coast to the finish; the Twins were overmatched by Colon, and again by Addison Reed in the 8th, but in the 9th Jeurys Familia made things unnecessarily sweaty by walking Mauer, and then with two outs walking Kurt Suzuki, the only two players in the Twins lineup who seem to have any sort of Major League tenure to them, and this brought up a rather burly gentleman named Kennys Vargas. Vargas hit a towering fly ball out to Left which, for a second, looked horrifyingly like it might land in a bad place, but it didn't quite have the legs and Cespedes settled under it and allowed everyone to exhale as he gloved it for the final out.

So, now 15 games remain for the Mets and they're still holding steady in that 2nd Wildcard spot, and still sandwiched directly in between the Cardinals and Giants, who happen to be playing each other at press time. It may end up being that the Giants will hold on to the 1st Wildcard spot, but if they can continue to beat the Cardinals and open up a little distance between them and the Mets, that would be just as helpful. As usual, the Mets just need to worry about themselves. That seems to be the most important thing here.

Done With You, Finally

The Mets finished out their season series with the Washington Nationals yesterday in one of those weird 4pm games, where the field is half-bathed in shadows and Pitchers tend to have an easy time of things. Not surprisingly, the final score of the game was 1-0. Unfortunately, it was the Nationals who came up with the 1, thanks to a Home Run by Fire Hydrant Head, of course, off of Fernando Salas in the last of the 7th inning.

There is, like many games I had no opportunity to see, not much to say about the game itself, so instead I have to think larger picture here. The Mets lost two of three in this series, which isn't great, but also hasn't been ruinous to their chances, because it seems like every time they lose, the Cardinals and Giants also lose, and when they win, both of them also win, and so the Mets now head into their final homestand of the year half a game ahead of the Cardinals for the 2nd Wildcard, and half a game behind the Giants for the 1st Wildcard.

That the Mets remain in this heated position of contention given everything that's gone on is amazing in and of itself and of course it makes you think what if all these guys were healthy, but then again, the Mets may get some of their wounded back shortly, as I keep hearing bandied about. That being said, it's one thing to have these guys back, but they need to come back and be effective. Robert Gsellman on Wednesday was effective. Seth Lugo has been effective. Rafael Montero...not so much.

There's 16 games left in the season now, and the Mets will have 10 of them at home and none of them against a team with a +.500 record. The Mets are absolutely battered and look nothing like the team that took the field all the way back in April. If they can pull this off, it's going to be a minor miracle, but I'm hard-pressed to see how this translates in the Postseason. They'll probably have to take on 1 game against Madison Bumgarner or some similarly intimidating pitcher for the entire season, and of course if they parse their way through that, they face America's Darlings, the Cubs, in the NLDS. That, of course, is a whole other beast and I'd rather not go too much into that unless I have to.

Of larger import, the Mets are done with Washington, done with Daniel Murphy for the regular season. The Mets were 7-12 for their 19 games (all 19 of which involved a hit from Murphy), which actually is better than I thought it was, but still not especially great. It's certainly better than when Washington used to annihilate the Mets to the tune of 4-15, but not as great as last year, when the Mets went 11-8, and 6-0 when the games really counted. It's also been enough to give Washington a rather insurmountable lead in the division and more than likely the 2nd best record in the NL going into the Postseason. But that's not our issue at this point. I'm just glad I don't have to think about them anymore for this year. I think...

Drivera Me Crazy

Several years ago, during one of those years where the Mets were a contending team that wasn't really a contender, Braden Looper became the first Pitcher to successfully blow two Saves in the same game, in an instance where the Mets had a lead in the 9th inning, blew it, took the lead in the 10th inning, blew it again, and then lost the game altogether (I had to go to the internet to look it up, but I've successfully found it).

Last night's game had that sort of eerie reminiscent feeling. Fortunately, Jeurys Familia didn't equal Looper's feat (Terry Collins being slightly the wiser than Willie Randolph, Familia didn't actually get the chance to blow the Save again). But in a harrowing affair that ran into an Extra frame, the Mets managed to emerge victorious thanks to the exploits of T.J. Rivera. Rivera picked a fine moment to hit his first Major League Home Run, in the 10th inning of a tie game off Mark Melancon, which ultimately proved to be the winning run in the Mets 4-3 victory in Washington.

This was another one of those games where I was late in tuning in, and as such I missed Noah Syndergaard's 7 scintillating innings of work. This was April Syndergaard, where he basically stoned the Nationals cold, giving up 1 run and striking out 10, while the Mets scratched out a run here, a run there, and by time I'd tuned in, they had a 3-1 lead and everything seemed just fine.

Then, of course, the 9th inning happened and Daniel Murphy interjected himself into the proceedings and everything kind of turned to mush from there. It wasn't an especially hard hit ball, and lord knows that Murphy probably spent at least 25% of his Mets career hitting ground balls towards Second Base like that, and 9.75 times out of 10, he was thrown out. But this newfangled Daniel Murphy beats the play at 1st, and the next thing we know, Jose Reyes is airmailing throws and Ryan Zimmerman is bunting, and there's more hits, and Fire Hydrant Head is involved, and my head was spinning, and Keith Hernandez wasn't making sense, and the game was tied and I was waiting for Danny Espinosa to hit the Walkoff Grand Slam and put us all out of our misery. Except that Familia managed to induce someone to hit into a Double Play, and I think the Nationals hit for Espinosa. Regardless, the game hadn't ended, and the Mets were still alive. Barely.

Then, of course, there was Rivera hitting his first Major League Home Run to put the Mets back on top, which as I already mentioned was good timing on his part but just another in a string of fine performances he's had so far in the Major Leagues. He is, perhaps, Murphy-lite, in that we don't know very much about him other than he's from the Bronx, and he can hit a little bit, and nobody's really sure what his best position is in the field so we just have to throw him somewhere and hope for the best. But if he comes up with hits like this, it's all good.

Of course, the Mets had to survive the Nationals again, and Fernando Salas was in to try to pick up his 1st Save as a Met, and he got the first two guys easily enough, but then Jayson Werth singled, because Jayson Werth always singles at inopportune times, and that brought up Murphy. Of course it did. Jerry Blevins was then summoned to try to get his first Save as a Met, and I'm sure every Mets fan had some horrible image of Murphy getting a hold of one and skipping around the bases. That would be a fitting epitaph for this mess, wouldn't it. But it didn't happen. Blevins made it as hairy as possible before finally slipping a 3-2 curve past Murphy to end the game, and that, coupled with a late-night Giants loss has now sandwiched the Mets equidistant from their Wildcard competitors. Half a game up on St. Louis, half a game behind San Francisco. 17 to play, and after tomorrow afternoon, none of them against teams that are over .500. That's a mighty fine Pennant Race.

Turn It Off

I was slightly late and out of sorts in getting home on Monday night, and by time I did so, much to my dismay, the wheels had long ago come off the Mets for the night. It was only the 5th inning, but the Nationals had slapped Rafael Montero all over the yard. Fire Hydrant Head had hit a Home Run, Montero was walking guys, and he'd even suffered the indignity of having the opposing pitcher, Mert Lagos go deep against him. With the game not worth sticking around for, and with the broadcast having dissolved into the Keith Hernandez Follies, I took my leave for the night and clicked over to ESPN.

I know that it's still the middle of a pennant race, so don't think this is going to be like past seasons where I essentially threw in the towel come September and started writing more about the 49ers than the Mets. Last season, of course, I barely had anything to say about the 49ers. It didn't help that the Mets played Baseball into November, but by time I would have chimed in, the 49ers season was beyond hope. This season doesn't exactly pose to be much better. Sure, the 49ers have a new coach in Chip Kelly, but the team is kind of a random mishmash of reclamation projects combined with raw talent. And Colin Kaepernick and the social lightning rod he's now become.

Suffice it to say, I'm not expecting great things from the 49ers this season. Unlike the Harbaugh years, they're not even on TV here in New York that much, but they did make an appearance on Monday Night Football this week, albeit at 10pm New York time, facing the Los Angeles Rams, who returned to Los Angeles after a 21-year purgatory in St. Louis. I never liked the Rams regardless of where they played, but I have to say that the 49ers/Rams rivalry makes a hell of a lot more sense with them in LA than in St. Louis.

And for this appearance on National TV, the 49ers represented themselves well, as they shut out the Rams, 28-0, to get their season off on the right foot. The 49ers didn't exactly play well, but as compared to the Rams, they looked like a Super Bowl contender again. The Rams appear completely clueless and undisciplined on both sides of the ball, in stark comparison to the 49ers, who while lacking in talent at some key spots, still played a clean game, not committing a penalty until the 4th Quarter and not making any mistakes. Blaine Gabbert, who's now the Quarterback after washing out in Jacksonville, showed some flashes, but for the most part only survived, which works against the Rams, but probably not against a better team.

So, in the end, at least I got a win out of one of my teams on Monday night. In fact, Monday Night continues to be kind to the 49ers, who won on the solo stage for what seems to be the 8th consecutive time, and each time they've handled their opponent with relative ease. However, I have a feeling this might be one of the higher points of the 49ers season. The Mets will probably have better days before the curtain falls on 2016.