Mets Win A Pill Of A Game

In the Matrix, Morpheus said to Neo, “You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” 

Apparently, Tyler Pill is the blue pill because there were a number of strange things that happened at Citi Field that only the most ardent Mets fans could believe:

Jose Reyes started over a red hot Wilmer Flores. More than that, Zack Davies appeared to strike him out looking. Instead, the home plate umpire called it a call leading to a Reyes bases loaded walk. 
Travis d’Arnaud threw out last year’s stolen base leader Jonathan Villar:

Jerry Blevins allowed an inherited runner to score. 
Fernando Salas not only got an at-bat, but he also got a hit. 

More than that, Pill only allowed one run over 5.1 innings. 

Despite Pill having a minor league 1.60 ERA this year, his peripherals indicated his ERA should be over 4.00.  Long story short, Pill has been extremely lucky this year. While that luck escaped him in his major league debut, he brought it with him today. 

Starting with his warm-ups, Pill was in trouble all night. He hit Keon Broxton, who was the very first batter he faced. He’d be the only one to score against Pill after a Travis Shaw double. 

From there, Pill had no 1-2-3 innings. He somehow stranded seven batters including Eric Thames, who tripled to lead-off the fifth thanks to some poor Jay Bruce defense (that was believable). 

Through of all this, the Mets had a 4-1 lead scoring twice in the fifth and sixth innings. In the fifth, Curtis Granderson and Asdrubal Cabrera hit a pair of doubles to tie the game at one. The Mets would then load the bases, and Reyes drew the aforementioned bases loaded walk.

Neil Walker hit a lead-off double off Brewers reliever Eric Sogard, and he would score on a Lucas Duda homer:

This left Pill on the long side on a night despite allowing six hits, three walks, and a hit batter over 5.1 innings. Despite all of this, he wouldn’t get the win. 

He didn’t get the win because in the seventh inning the unthinkable happened. Yes, it was easy to believe Salas would walk two to help load the bases with one out. It’s easier to believe that happened when you consider he was running the bases in the top half of the inning.

Blevins came on, and it appeared he did what he had to do. He struck out Shaw looking. While he did issue a bases loaded walk to Domingo Santana to make it 4-2, he did get Jett Bandy to pop up to short. 

That’s when the unthinkable happened. The sure-handed Cabrera Luis Castilloed it:

https://twitter.com/therendermlb/status/869733991867445248

Thankfully, Santana was not hustling like Mark Teixeira did meaning the Brewers merely tied the score on the play instead of potentially going up 5-4. 

The bullpen did its job. Josh Edgin and Addison Reed each pitched a scoreless inning, and Josh Smoker pitched three scoreless. Smoker got into a jam, but he got a huge strikeout to get out of the 10th.  We then saw one of his signature celebrations:

What’s interesting is Terry Collins had the opportunity to double switch both Reed and Smoker into the game to possibly get an extra inning out of them. He passed both times. 

Finally, the Mets got something started in the 12th. T.J. Rivera led off with a pinch hit single off Wily Peralta, and Conforo walked. After Reyes couldn’t get a bunt down, he hit a fielder’s choice with Thames getting Conforto at second. The Mets finally won it with a Bruce single against the drawn-in shifted infield. 

A long bizarre game finally came to an end with the Mets winning a game they have typically lost all year. The final score indicates Mets fans really took the blue pill. 

Game Notes: Walker’s two doubles on the night gave him 1,000 hits for his career. Mets are 3-10 when they walked six or more. They walked eight. 

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