In Better Times

The Colorados make their annual visit to Citi Field this week, and once again it's some weird 4-day weekday series and of course I have a ticket to one of the games (Tuesday). But for whatever reason, and at least now I can laugh about it because the Mets are doing well, every time the Colorados come in to town I have to think about the time they came in in August of 2012, with a record of 46-73, when their entire team was on the DL and they literally were running relief pitchers out to start games and pitch 3 innings, and they somehow swept the Mets 4 games because the Mets forgot that they were an actual Major League Baseball team and they should play as such. It was such an overwhelming debacle that I deemed the game I attended "Turd Sandwich Night," but more noteworthy, it inspired perhaps the most epic Mike Francesa meltdown of all time, where he came on the air after the final game and literally screamed his head off for 10 minutes, punctuating his tirade with a phrase that has stuck with me ever since: "NNNNNNNEY STINK!" At the time, yes, he was right. Ney did stink.

Fortunately, now, ney do not stink and the Colorados are in a rebuilding mode so the Mets, if they know what's good for them, ought to fare well in this series. Although if you look up and down the Colorados lineup they do have some legitimate talent, particularly since Carlos Gonzalez has stayed healthy and Nolan Arenado's bat has caught up with his glove. Also, guys like D.J. LeMahieu and Nick Hundley have managed to find themselves flirting with .300 but perhaps it's the rarefied air.

Regardless, none of them fared especially well against Jon Niese, who once again had a fine outing, allowing only a 2-run Home Run to Gonzalez in the 4th inning, which I'll give him a pass on even if it's a lefty/lefty spot because Gonzalez has been destroying everything lately. This particular inning then nearly unraveled into a Jon Niese Inning because these things happen, and perhaps back in 2012 when ney stank it would have, but Niese instead decided he'd better stone up and fix his own issues, and he did.

However the Mets could manage nothing against Jon Gray, the rookie pitcher who undoubtedly has an uphill climb as a member of the Colorados and may be ruined by altitude but nonetheless was drafted but one slot after Baseball Jesus so he can't be all bad. But the Colorados are protective of their young investment and thus he was finished for the game after 6 innings and 75 pitches in spite of the fact that the only hit he'd allowed was a Travis d'Arnaud Home Run.

Gray was replaced by Justin Miller, who succeeded only in allowing the Mets to load the bases, and when Walt Weiss then relieved Miller with Boone Logan, Logan made things worse by hitting Curtis Granderson to bring home the tying run, and then giving up a 2-run single to Daniel Murphy to bring home the lead runs. The bullpen then brought it home from there and the Mets got themselves back on track with a 4-2 win to open the series.

This was, certainly, the kind of game the Mets wouldn't have won when ney stank. Terry Collins said as much. Were it back then, Granderson, or whoever Granderson's 2012 equivalent would be, maybe Andres Torres or worse, Jordany Valdespin probably would have jumped out of their shoes to swing at a slider 4 feet off the plate and either popped out or struck out and the Mets wouldn't have gotten a hit the rest of the game. It's nice when ney don't stink.

Forgettable Endings

I was out and about doing an assortment of things over the weekend and as such didn't actually get to see much of the two Mets affairs in Tampa. I did, however, arrive home on both Saturday and Sunday in just enough time to catch the ending of the games, which led me to the conclusion that I hadn't missed much of consequence.

On Saturday, I didn't see Curtis Granderson belt a leadoff home Run and I didn't see Lucas Duda drive in two more to shoot the Mets out to a 3-run lead in the 1st inning. I assume by that point, after the 7 games prior, Mets fans couldn't have been blamed for beginning to make October arrangements. But, on this night, Noah Syndergaard didn't have it. This is an issue for him on the road as a general statement, because he's pitched rather poorly on the road (as opposed to usually excellent at home), and in this particular game, he took a 3-0 lead and promptly handed it back to the Rays. He did settle down somewhat, but only somewhat and ultimately it wasn't so much his own poor pitching that did him in, it was Ruben Tejada taking a bit too long to make a throw to 1st base, allowing Evan Longoria to beat the play and allowing what would ultimately be the winning run to score. Of course, all I saw was Brad Boxberger look quite UnBoxbergerlike and retire the Mets in order in the 9th to seal a 5-4 defeat that ended the Mets 7-game magic carpet ride.

Sunday, I didn't see the Mets charge out to a 3-0 lead again, and I didn't see Bartolo Colon sort of get nicked to death by what's a rather pesky Rays lineup, and I didn't see Kelly Johnson apparently misplay a ball that led to a pair of runs scoring, and I didn't see preternatural Rookie Richie Shaffer belt a game-winning Home Run in the 7th inning. All I saw was Jake McGee enter the game in the 9th inning and retire the Mets in order, while Keith Hernandez pontificated on the fact that McGee throws nothing but fastballs and tips his slider so badly he'd be better off not even throwing it. Not that that helped the Mets at all, they still lost the game 4-3.

So, the Mets are now done with this particular random Interleague series, although they do have three more which will pop up at what are certainly inopportune times, including one against the Yankees in the middle of September which I think is absolutely asinine. The Mets stand a very good chance, if things hold to form, of being in the thick of a pennant race in September for the first time in several years. The last thing they or any Mets fan needs at that particular point is to play the Yankees and deal with the bunch of bullshit that brings with it. Schedule the games in June when the weather is warm and nobody cares. You could schedule these games in November and they would still sell out. But the middle of September is probably the worst time for that to happen, although that's probably much more from a fan's perspective. I'll get off the soapbox now.

Resiliency

The Mets tonight won their 7th game in a row by doing the sort of things they've been doing quite a bit of over the past week. They're taking advantage of the opportunities they have. Give them an inch and they seem to be able to capitalize on it. It's rather similar to the kind of good fortune they had very early in the season when they were 13-3. Now, this has cycled back to them and they've gone from 52-50 and trying to bridge a 3-game difference between them and the Nationals to 59-50 and 2 1/2 games in the black. They did it tonight by just not letting up, coming back from deficits 3 separate times and eventually shoving a pair of 9th inning runs across the plate to give them a win.

Leading up to the 9th inning, the story of the game might have been that Jacob deGrom was simply unlucky. He'd missed location on a couple of pitches to Grady Sizemore (who has somehow resurfaced on Tampa) and James Loney. At least for the first 6 innings, the Mets had done nothing in response, not so much because they'd left their bats in South Florida, but because they were being tied up by Jake Odorizzi, who heads up what's a sneaky good Tampa Bay Rays pitching staff. It took until the 7th for Odorizzi to break, when he made a mistake and hung a pitch to Juan Uribe, and Uribe sent the pitch into the Gulf of Mexico. At that point, yes, the game was tied, but then deGrom gave the lead back. But the Mets bounced back again in the 8th, when Daniel Murphy reached Jake McGee (whom the Gary-less duo of Keith and Ron reminded us a Healy-esque number of times that he only throws one pitch) for a catwalk-scraper of a Home Run. The Rays, however, grabbed the lead again when Evan Longoria hit yet another Home Run, this one coming off of Tyler Clippard.

And thus the stage was set for the 9th inning against Rays closer Brad Boxberger, whom I hadn't heard of beyond the fact that he'd made the All Star Team and I assume that any player that comes out of the Rays system is probably decent, because they're one of those organizations that just constantly produces good players. But, somehow, I felt calm because I figured the Mets would find a way to get the job done. Lucas Duda was up, first of all, and if you've been following him around you know that he's had the knack for coming through in key spots lately. He didn't do it in his conventional fashion this time around, but his 40 foot squib to the left side of the mound threw Boxberger off enough for him to make a terrible throw to 1st base. Boxberger's subsequent wild pitch got Duda to 2nd. Uribe popped out, which brought Michael Conforto to the plate. This, in my mind, was a great test for Conforto. You didn't have to dig too deep to know that this was the biggest at bat of his career, although hopefully there will be others sooner rather than later, and you'd like to see how the kid responds in a situation like this. The result, of course, was the kind of hitting you really like to see, because Conforto didn't try to hit a 6-run Home Run, he just tried to get a hit, and by sticking his bat out and hitting a little bloop into Left Field, he not only got Duda home with the tying run, but he also got himself to 2nd Base. This proved important a few batters later when the Mets #1 Folk Hero Wilmer Flores dunked a ball into Right Field in front of the glove of Brandon Guyer because Conforto then scored to give the Mets their first lead of the night.

The Mets then had to survive the last of the 9th, which the past few days has been a dicier proposition than any of us would like it to be, although with a 1-run lead Jeurys Familia was summoned to start a clean inning, but he still didn't do himself any favors by allowing a leadoff single to AsdrubAl Cabrera. This set the stage for Guyer to come up and hit into a pair of Double Plays, except that they were both deemed to be excruciatingly foul. But Familia held his ground and eventually got Guyer to hit a fair ball that resulted in an out. Kevin Kiermaier and Curt Casali followed but did not cause quite as much drama and the Mets escaped with a 4-3 victory and once again we're all wondering how the hell they manage to keep winning these games. This team certainly doesn't roll over when they're going well, and I would suppose they don't do so when they're not going quite as well except that when things were bad, it's sort of hard to tell when the team is trying their best. Nowadays, it seems like the effort is much more evident.

Eyebrow Raiser

The Mets finished off their sweep of the Marlins like they were supposed to do last night, although I can't say I was really encouraged by the way things finished out. For 8 and a half innings, everything was just fine. Matt Harvey laid the smackdown on Florida, like he's supposed to do, and bucked that annoying trend he'd had of having bad games in the Puke Green Hell Hole. Juan Uribe hit a 3-run Home Run, Cespedes and Duda continued to come up with big hits, and the Mets raced out to an 8-0 lead and everything was just hunky dory.

But then in the bottom of the 9th, everything just went completely haywire, and I find it a little more disturbing than I probably should. Eric O'Flaherty, who was picked up off the scrap heap prior to the game, made his Mets debut and finished out the 8th inning, but then in the 9th, he started getting dinged around a little bit, and then Hansel Robles came in and the Marlins dinged him some more, and then suddenly someone who wasn't Greg Dobbs but may as well have been hit a 3-run double, and 8-0 turned into 8-5 and now Jeurys Familia had to come in the game. And Familia hasn't exactly been his usual lockdown self of late, and Dee Gordon got a hit and this Elmer Cookie Miguel Rojas fellow scored with some Marlin shit-eating grin on his face, and now it's becoming What The Fuck Is Going On Time. It's ceased to be funny because against any other team, the Marlins would have probably done what they do best and just laid down and died. All we needed was Stanton to materialize and clock one off of the Mystery Machine in Center Field to turn this into a full blown catastrophe. Familia did himself no further favors by walking Derek Dietrich, but mercifully Christian Yelich pounded one right to Lucas Duda at 1st to end the game.

This is sort of where not having Jenrry Mejia is biting the Mets in the ass. Bobby Parnell wasn't himself to begin with and now he's struggling. O'Flaherty was brought in because Alex Torres proved himself incapable of providing any kind of positive contribution, but he also seems to be a shell of what he once was. So he's a crapshoot. Tyler Clippard has pitched well but he can't be called upon every night. Robles pitches like a rookie relief pitcher, probably because he's a rookie relief pitcher and for every good outing there will invariably be a stinker. And Familia might be suffering from overuse or underuse or general ennui, but whatever it is, he's got some things to work through. Add this all up and it's enough to temper whatever optimism this now 6-game winning streak has generated, primarily because everyone still has that 2008 Bullpen PTSD, only the Mets haven't contended in such a long time that it's never had a chance to manifest. Well, now it's manifesting. And when your bullpen allows 6 runs in the 9th inning to a team that has no business scoring 6 runs in a game period, it's troubling. I feel troubled even though the Mets won the Damn Game.

This, of course, is just the peril of bullpens in general. Bullpens are generally a horrendous mishmash of ragamuffin dreck thrown together in a stew because relief pitchers aren't quite good enough to be starters, but they're also not quite bad enough to not be Major League quality pitchers. So you just sort of have to hope you catch lightning in a bottle with these relievers and they all pitch well at once. It can happen to anyone, but don't be fooled, because a reliever that has a great year one year will more than likely have a horrible season the next year, because that's what it is to be a relief pitcher. We just have to hope that this is merely an occasional hiccup and not something that's going to snowball.

The Right Roles

A problem the Mets had earlier in the season, and in fact a problem that's reared its ugly head several times over the course of the past several years has been a lack of reserve depth, particularly on the offensive side of things. The Mets have managed to field lineups that are decent, but tenuous and when someone inevitably goes down, a suitable replacement is nowhere to be found. So, what ends up happening is that guys like Alex Cora, or Jason Pridie, or Omar Quintanilla, or Andrew Brown end up playing way, way more often than players of their caliber should be playing. Not surprisingly, the team suffers for it.

When the Mets are performing at an optimal level, as they appear to be over the past 5 games now, it's these reserve guys that are playing about as often as they should be playing that come up with necessary hits. Such was the case of Eric Campbell in the 8th inning last night. Campbell has been one of my leading flogs this season (slightly above Jon Niese, but way behind the leader in the clubhouse, Daniel Murphy) because he's not good enough to be an every day player, nor will he ever be, and even when he's pushed into action on a semi-regular basis, he's exposed. But with these new faces on the roster, Campbell's face time has decreased and so what you end up with is he has less chances to look bad, and it exponentially increases the chance that he might do something useful with the playing time he does find. In the 8th inning on Tuesday night, with the game tied 1-1, Campbell came up to pinch hit for Niese with 2 on and 2 out, after Flores had popped up a bunt attempt and Tejada had struck out. And all he did was stick his bat out and knock a little floater over the shortstop's head, just enough to score Lucas Duda with the lead run and open the floodgates for Juan Lagares and Curtis Granderson to drive home 3 more runs afterward as the Mets came away with their 5th win in a row.

Campbell's case is the most obvious example, but for the moment the entire team is functioning at an optimal level. Were this 3 or 4 weeks ago, Campbell would probably have started in left and gone 0-for-4, Niese would have taken the tough-luck loss in spite of allowing 1 run in 7 innings and the Mets would have spent the night smacking themselves in the head with their bats wondering how they lost a 1-0 game to a team that looks like they're already on the 5th Green. Instead, the Mets waited out David Phelps, eventually tied the game in the 6th thanks to a clutch hit from Ruben Tejada and an equally clutch slide from Wilmer Flores (whose fan club has traveled all the way to South Florida), and eventually pull away late.

Niese was the beneficiary tonight and outside of the one start against the Dodgers when he probably shouldn't have pitched, he's rather quietly been just as good as the other starters on the team, which I have to consider appreciable. Niese was one of the guys on the hot seat at the beginning of the season and for about 2 months he looked like he was pitching with one foot out the door. I've talked many times about how he continues to trade high on a good year he had 3 seasons ago but he's started to recapture that form, probably because there's now too much competition around him and he feels pushed. On the one hand, that's not always the sort of thing you want to do to motivate a player, but then again, some players just need to be kicked in the ass a little bit. I guess you could say that about most of the team but some examples are more stark than others.