Mets Consistently Did the Improbable 

If you took a poll asking Mets fans to ask who was the player who got the big two out hit with the bases loaded to give the Mets the lead, the most popular guess would be Yoenis Cespedes. 

It wasn’t Cespedes as he was intentionally walked by Tanner Roark to load the bases. It wasn’t Jay Bruce as he was sitting. It wasn’t James Loney. Even though he played, Terry Collins finally had the good sense to stop hitting him clean up and move him to the eighth spot in the lineup. In fact, the batter who got the hit might’ve been more unlikely than Loney. No, it wasn’t Bartolo Colon. It was Curtis Granderson:

The two run single scoring Jose Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera was a long time coming. Granderson was 0-22 in his last 22 at bats with runners in scoring position. He was 2-42 with runners in scoring position and two outs all season. It was his first two RBI game without a homer since July 6th (hat tip @themainemets). 

Even more impressive than that was two of Robert Gsellman‘s feats. 

The first was being a Mets pitcher who actually holds on runners and pays attention to the running game. He has a good move to first. The result of which was him picking off . . . sorry catching Bryce Harper stealing. Seriously, the pickoff/caught stealing scoring rule is as it gets. 

More impressive than that was his escape in the sixth. 

The Nationals had two on and no out after an Anthony Rendon double and a Wilson Ramos walk. Both would advance on a Ryan Zimmerman ground out. 

It was a precarious situation not just because Gsellman is a young pitcher, but also because he isn’t a strikeout pitcher. He’s a ground ball pitcher in the ilk of a Chien-Ming Wang. 

Naturally, Gsellman would get a huge strikeout of Ben Revere, who is a tough batter to strike out. Gsellman then induced Danny Espinosa to groundout to end the inning. Incredibly, Gsellman got out of the jam, and he preserved the 2-1 lead.

It would be Gsellman’s last inning. Like his other starts, it was never pretty with him, but he managed to find a way. His final line was six innings, six hits, one run, one earned, three walks, and four strikeouts. 

Even more amazing than the aforementioned Granderson and Gsellman contributions was Loney’s. Loney came into the game not having hit an extra base hit in over a month and having gone 1-13 over the past week. Naturally, he hit an RBI double off Matt Belisle scoring Travis d’Arnaud making it a 3-1 game. 

It would stay that way in large part because of Michael Conforto‘s center field defense. 

Paint-by-number Collins brought in Jim Henderson because it was the seventh inning. Henderson allowed a one out single to Jayson Werth creating a hazardous situation with Daniel Murphy and Harper due up. With the two lefties coming up, Collins went to Josh Smoker. 

It was a huge appearance for Smoker not just because of the situation, but also because who he was facing. The Nationals were the team that made him a first round pick and the team that released him after his injuries. 

Murphy would hit a sinking line drive off Smoker that was almost assuredly a base hit until Conforto did this:

Smoker responded the same way we all did:

Smoker made the play stick by getting a huge strikeout of Harper to end the inning on a pitch that wasn’t in the next next batter’s box – it was in the next county.  

Smoker was equally pumped after that strikeout:

After Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia combined to pitch a scoreless eighth and ninth, Mets fans were celebrating like Smoker. 

With the Cardinals losing, it was a huge win that brought the Mets within one game of playoff position. It also kept their faint NL East hopes alive. 

Game Notes: Give Dusty Baker credit, he tried to win the game making an estimated 350 pitching changes to get the right match ups in critical spots. It was really six, which is still a lot. Olympic Gold Medalist Laurie Hernandez threw out the first pitch:

Pennant Race: The Cardinals lost to the Reds 9-1. The Marlins lost to the Indians 8-3. The Pirates trail the Brewers 6-3 in the eighth. 

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