Stop! In the Name of Won

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Beehiiv informed me Gmail doesn’t allow gifs that are more than 1MB. The problem is pretty much all gifs are over 1MB? If the gifs don’t show up, click the “read online” option.

A terrible send and seemingly limited options in the bullpen doomed the Mets to a 4-3 loss in ten innings to the Pirates. 

Nolan McLean was rusty and/or too amped up in the top of the first, resulting in bases on balls to the first two batters he faced. A Ryan O’Hearn “dork” hit (Keith Hernandez’s term) to left plated Oneil Cruz to give Pittsburgh an early 1-0 advantage.

Pirates starter Carmen Mlodinski meanwhile looked unhittable, striking out Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto, and Bo Bichette in the bottom half of the first. Ah, but he had to face Luis Robert Jr. at some point! With one out in the second, Robert hit a single to right. Brett Baty followed with a ringing base knock to the right of the second baseman to push Robert over to third. Marcus Semien cashed in with a sacrifice fly to center. Tie game. 

After a 1-2-3 second, McLean fell into trouble again in the third. He permitted a one out home run to that damn Brandon Lowe. With two outs, Ryan O’Hearn hit a sharp single to center, and McLean plunked Jared Triolo. He managed to get out of trouble with a Spencer Horwitz strike out on a wicked curveball. 

The Mets responded by having their 1-2-3 hitters all strike out. Again. It was the first time in Met franchise history where the top three hitters in the lineup all struck out in two consecutive turns at the plate. Cool.

McLean’s fifth inning was interesting. Cruz challenged a strike call and it was upheld, and as a result the other Pirate hitters were too scared to challenge strike calls, which they absolutely should have. Oh well. McLean struck out the side to finish his day, all on the curve. 

The Metsies tied it up again in the bottom of the fifth. With one out, Lindor tripled off the right center fence, barely making it to third base but making it all the same. It was his first three-bagger in two years. Soto drove him in with a single. That ended Mlodinski’s afternoon.

Huascar Brazobán was again outstanding, retiring all five batters he faced on 14 pitches. He was followed by Sean Manaea, whose velocity did not in fact go up with the expected regular season adrenaline rush. Still, he worked his way through an inning and a third without allowing a run, and that’s all that matters. He permitted just one hit, walked two and fanned two. He threw 29 pitches. 

The Mets had a shot to take the lead in the bottom of the seventh against the southpaw Mason Montgomery. Luis Torrens and Lindor each had one-out singles, but Montgomery struck out Soto on a high fastball as well as the slumping Bo Bichette. After Bichette’s strike out, some fans booed Bo. I wish I could say it was “Bo-oooooooooo”, but alas, fans are really booing a player’s third game with a new team. 

The first sign that the Mets were not equipped to win this game was when Luke Weaver came on to pitch the top of the ninth in a tie game instead of Devin Williams. Carlos Mendoza would say after the game that Williams and Brooks Raley were not available (and presumably Tobias Myers and Luis García weren’t either.) With this in mind, Mendy might have been better off keeping Manaea in the game and let him build up his pitch count befitting of a starter. But that isn’t what happened. Instead, Weaver kept the game knotted at two in the most heart attack inducing way possible. He worked around two walks before managing to get a razor-thin close force out at second for the final out. 

The Mets fecklessly went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the ninth against Dennis Santana. Richard Lovelady, who threw 21 pitches the day before, was tasked with the top of the tenth. He gave up an RBI single to Ryan O’Hearn to start before getting a beautiful tailor-made 6-4-3 double play for two quick outs. Unfortunately, Lovelady walked the next two dudes and served up a base hit up the middle to bring a fourth run in for Pittsburgh. Nobody was warming up behind Lovelady. It’s possible that if there were an 11th inning Mendy would have gone to a position player to pitch (Who though? Emergency hurler Torrens was pinch hit for in the 9th). 

Former Astros starter José Urquidy was next out of the bullpen for the Pirates. He walked Lindor to put runners at first and second (the Manfred Man Francisco Alvarez). It was Soto’s time to shine: he doubled on a line drive to left center. Alvy scored easily. Lindor tried to score from first on an aggressive send by third base coach Tim Leiper. It didn’t end well.

After the game, Mendoza defended the send, saying the plan against the Pirates was to be aggressive on the basepaths against them. They simply rose up to the challenge and made a good enough relay to nab Lindor at the plate.

Those excuses don’t explain away sending a runner when you could have had runners at second and third with nobody out, down a run with your 3-4-5 hitters coming up to the dish. Not an intelligent decision. 

Bichette grounded out to short, which moved Soto to third, but with two out Polanco hit a drive deep to right that landed 348 feet away from home plate, good enough to land in the right fielder’s glove on the warning track. On a summer day, maybe that would have won it for New York. But they wouldn’t have deserved it. 

Bichette took the booing in stride, even though it was ridiculous. He was asked if he expected to be booed so early in the season, and Bo responded, “If anything, I thought it took too long.” Heh. Bichette will be fine. It might take two months like it did for Juan Soto last year to get acclimated to his new club, but I doubt it. He works hard. And hey, he didn’t make an error in the field yesterday! 

Brett Baty played first instead of Polanco yesterday. He mostly looked the part. 

Why were Devin Williams and Brooks Raley unavailable? I’m guessing the front office doesn’t want them to pitch back-to-back days so early in the year. If true, that’s awfully conservative. I would have had Williams pitch the 9th and Weaver the 10th, or had Manaea go at least one more inning. If that would have made Williams and Weaver unavailable for tonight’s game against the Cardinals, so be it, because Tobias Myers will probably be good to go for multiple innings. 

There’s a Reddit thread about all of the new changes made to Citi Field. The dividers between the men’s urinals was way overdue. 

The Triple-A Syracuse Mets took advantage of four Worcester errors to beat the Worcester Red Sox 10-8. ‘Cuse hit top prospect Payton Tolle surprisingly hard for four earned runs (six total) in four innings. Christian Arroyo, Ji Hwan Bae, and Cristian Pache had two hits each. One of Bae’s hits was a two-run dinger. Pache stole two bases. Austin Warren pitched a clean ninth inning for the save.

On this day in the yearrrrr 2000,  Benny Agbayani hit a pinch-hit go-ahead grand slam in the 11th inning to give the Mets the lead over the Cubs in Tokyo.

Tonight the Mets travel to St. Louis to begin a series with the allegedly rebuilding Cardinals. Clay Holmes will make his 2026 regular season debut. The Cards will counter with RHP Kyle Leahy. Leahy dominated the Mets, throwing four perfect innings, 23 days ago. But that was spring training, man. First pitch is scheduled for 7:45 pm eastern. The game will air on SNY and Audacy Radio 880 AM.