Mets Rally To Save Season

This was shaping up to be one of those games that not only gets everyone fired. It was also a game which would lead to fans looking to tar and feather everyone. It was going to be that maddening a loss.

Noah Syndergaard struggled in his first start ever at Coors Field, and he made matters worse not holding on base runners. For reasons beyond explanation, Mickey Callaway allowed Rene Rivera to bat with bases loaded and two outs in the sixth with the Mets down 3-2.

The Mets offense had been shut down by Jeff Hoffman, a pitcher with a career 6.21 ERA and a 7.03 ERA this year. This was part of the them of how the bad Rockies pitching inexplicably shut down the Mets offense in a hitter’s paradise.

As the Mets entered the ninth down 4-3, you wondered if Callaway would get the same treatment Willie Randolph once did. Well, it’s not happening because the Mets had a rally to save their season and perhaps more than that.

After getting the Rockies out of an eighth inning jam, Bud Black opted to stick with Jairo Diaz to close out the game.

Wilson Ramos, who wasn’t used as a pinch hitter in the sixth inning, led off the inning with a pinch hit walk before getting lifted for Juan Lagares. J.D. Davis, another player who wasn’t used in the sixth, had a pinch hit single putting runners at the corners with no outs. That was the situation for Brandon Nimmo, who delivered the biggest hit of the year:

Jeff McNeil then had a great at-bat. He battled from down 0-2 to draw a walk in a nine pitch at-bat. That would be it for Diaz as the Rockies brought Joe Harvey to get them out of this jam.

Problem is Harvey wanted no part of Pete Alonso, who had hit his 49th homer of the year earlier in the game. Harvey walked Alonso on four pitches, none of which we particularly close giving the Mets a 5-4 lead.

The Rockies caught a bit of a break with Robinson Cano hitting into a 6-4-3 double play, but it should be noted a run scored on the play increasing the Mets lead to 6-4.

At that point, it appeared the inning should be over. After all, Seth Lugo was due up, and with the state of the Mets bullpen, there was a less than zero chance he was coming out of the game. Well, as it turned out, there was no need to pinch hit for him:

The Mets were once on the verge of complete collapse with multiple heads about to roll. Instead, they’d win this game 7-4 in the most improbable fashion. Even better, with the Brewers losing, they gained a game on them in the Wild Card standings.

Game Notes: Alonso’s homer tied Mark McGwire for the most homers by a rookie first baseman, and it set the new Mets team season record. Lugo became the first Mets reliever to have a win and an RBI hit in a game since Nelson Figueroa.

3 Replies to “Mets Rally To Save Season”

  1. Blair M. Schirmer says:

    Everyone cooperated and the Mets continue to toy with their casual fans. 3 GB, 10 to play.

    Alonso always seemed to get back on track for 50+ HR and 120 RBI, no matter how long those stretches lasted where his BAbip shrank to .050. 50 HR in his rookie season and even with the late start (24 yo is later than average for a HOFer, iirc) it puts him on the HOF track. Granted, he’s at something like half of one percent and will have to hit like this into his mid30s, but his kind of power is rare and it’s not impossible he’ll be the premier power hitter of his generation when it’s all over. Those guys often go in, though his below average D will dog him.

    == Nimmo comes back on Sept 1, has a .667 OBP after his first 4 games–not OPS but OBP–but then Callaway doesn’t hit him higher than 6th in the order (he bats 6th once) or otherwise higher than 7th until Sept 16th, even though during that stretch from the 5th through the 16th Nimmo added an OBP of .423 on top of that .667 run. This was while the Mets lost a couple of one run games, too. Nimmo wasn’t just getting on base, he was getting on base at a clip Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds used to, but for 16 days Callaway and the FO kept him at the back of the lineup. Combine this with the next dozen things the FO got wrong, and you lose a game or two in the wash in September.

    == Wags has so depleted the farm that the Mets have only 3 guys left in the top 100, all near the back end, and none of whom had a stand out season–while 2 of them had failed seasons.

    Meanwhile, their top ranked pitching prospect has all of 10 innings in pro ball.

    At most 1 player in their top 10 prospect list could be said to have had a good year in the minors. The rest are subpar to dreadful.

    Baseball America has the Mets farm system at #28 as of August 20 2019.
    MLB Pipeline has the Mets farm system at #28 as of August 1 2019.

    Wags: “Win today, win tomm… ah, screw it. As long as we’re pretending to contend for the 2nd wildcard and it keeps me from looking bad, who cares?”

    1. metsdaddy says:

      BVW is the worst thing to happen to the Mets since the Wilpons

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