For the Mets, it’s been an odd start to the 2016 season. First off, no one has ever opened a season with, basically, a continuation of the World Series. If Lucas Duda’s infamous throw had been on the money in game five, they would have headed back to Kansas City on November 2. Instead, it happened the following April 3. The season opener should always be played in the Monday sunshine. Period, ESPN be damned. But this one was pushed back to Sunday night to accommodate “the package” as delivered by said four-letter network. As a result, there are now two consecutive off-days in the first week of the season. There won’t be two off-days in a row again until the All-Star break. Such is life in the big city, I guess, but the game still had a kind of extended-spring-training feel to it, right up until the ball popped out of Yoenis Cespedes’s mitt in the first inning. Then it felt like it could have been game six. There was a lot of hoopla surrounding this mini-series. The dragged out honoring of the 2015 World Series champions smacked more than a little bit of rubbing the Mets’ nose in it. And who knew that KC people could bray and be just as insufferable as denizens of the Bronx, Boston or San Francisco? Anyway, in the middle of all this, there was some baseball.
All of two games into the 2016 season, a basic pattern has emerged for the Mets. When the pitching is right, it seems they’ll have just enough offense to carry the day. In the first game, Matt Harvey got no help from his defense, it’s true, but it’s not as if he had his best game ever, either. Once again, those pesky Royals pecked away at the best stuff he had that night – which, surprisingly, turned out to be not all that great. In just under six innings, he gave up eight hits and walked two, while striking out only two. Given the Royals’ style, that was enough for them to plate four runs off him. It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Harvey, who has endured an odd physical ailment and then put himself in exile from the press when they started making sophomoric japes about that ailment. He’ll come out of it, of course, but the Dark Knight is looking more like Affleck than Bale right now.
The second game could not have been more divergent from the first. Noah Syndergaard — target of much of the KC braying for having the temerity to demand his half of home plate in game three of the World Series – gave up a leadoff triple to start the game, then strike out everybody else. He bamboozled the Royals to such an extent that their manager, Ned Yost, declared the “no man alive” could touch up Syndergaard on this day. A two-run “welcome to the club” homerun by Neil Walker and a lock-down three innings by the revamped bullpen was all the support the big Texas Swede would need.
So the Mets come home 1-1. Last year they came home 3-3. From the lofty perch of two games, can we safely say that if they Mets pitch, they win? DUH!
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I’ll stop with this, since I commented elsewhere (my comments on Familia’s use in the WS), but G5 shouldn’t be positioned as an “if only” centering on Duda’s throw. The “if only,” in my mind, was waiting to put Jeurys Familia into the game after the score was 2-1 and the tying run was on 2B with nobody out.
Again: He got three weak groundball outs . . . and a blown save. And he was great all season long. TC sat on his hands and made the wrong decision. It happens, that’s life. But to me, that’s the “if only” when it comes to G5.
A 95-mph slider for Thor! Whoa! A four-pitch monster!
After throwing two aces in the first two games of the season, most teams have to endure three games of backend types that they just hope can keep them in games. We get deGrom and Matz, two pitchers capable of winning 1-0 games if needed. And big sexy might not be an ace but, for a fifth starter, he’s solid.