Greetings and welcome to another Mets recap where, contrary to popular belief, an update of the Mets’ loss yesterday at the hands of the Yankees had nothing to do with Yankee fans, but Ranger fans after Ben Lovejoy completely forgot where he was supposed to be in Overtime and allowed Hagelin the spacing to get his shot off.
So yeah, I ran and hid from internet trolls last night.
But I’m back and the Mets have just evened up the series against the Yankees. So yay for that. And since you wonderful people enjoyed my misery so much last night, you get a very special two-game Mets recap today! Don’t say I never gave you anything.
OK, so yesterday first. Yankees beat the absolute shit out of Jacob deGrom. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re waiting for me to bitch about the short porch in right field. Well, c’mon, yeah, it’s a fucking joke. But it’s a fucking joke that both teams should take advantage of. The Yanks did, the Mets didn’t.
Honestly, deGrom was about as bad through the first few innings as he’s ever been since coming to the bigs last May. Everything he was throwing early was up and he wasn’t fooling anybody. I know everybody wanted him out of the game earlier, but I actually agreed with Terry Collins leaving him in there. deGrom has been phenomenal since making his debut. He has had very few games where he’s gotten hit hard. Leaving him in here to get knocked around a little, save the bullpen, but more importantly, make adjustments was a good lesson. He responded well with a scoreless 4th and 5th, but the damage was already done.
As I said in a prior post, the Mets would have to lose at some point and it could very well be against the Yankees. I even gave you rules for how to behave. But no. Everybody in social media land just had to go and talk all this shit as if we were watching the 18th inning of the 7th game of the World Series. I honestly don’t get it. These Subway Series games have all the appeal of a Mets/Astros series to me.
But I digress.
Don’t think I’m discounting the Yankees in this game and just saying deGrom was bad because that’s not the case. Michael Pineda was very, very good from the start and you could see that the first of Mark Teixeira’s two two-run homers would probably be enough the way he going. I loved that trade from the Yankees perspective a few years ago. In fact, I thought getting Pineda (after what he showed in his rookie year with Seattle) for the paltry sum of Jesus Montero who was an all-bat, no position prospect on an older team who needed to use the DH as a spot to give guys a day off was an absolute steal.
I know a lot of Yankee fans hated it. It didn’t help the cause when Pineda got hurt almost immediately and took way longer than expected to get healthy. But last night he looked great. His slider was filthy and the Mets might as well have been swinging toothpicks.
If I seem at all distracted during this writing, it’s because I’m sitting by the pool and there’s a pretty hot Spanish girl in a bikini playing really awful guitar about 10 feet away. She is terrible. But as a whole, it’s great.
Which brings us to today’s game and was a #HarveyDay for the Mets fanbase. Yeah, we all know the deal already. We love Matt Harvey, he’s the best, he’s thrown 11 perfect games and invented Kobe beef all while juggling 2 chainsaws and a Russian model while hopping on one foot.
But if you can get past all of that, Matt Harvey is really fucking good at baseball.
What can you say? Harvey absolutely dominated the Yankees and went 8.2 innings leading the Mets to an 8-2 victory. He threw 107 pitches and struck out 7 hitters which left me…absolutely fuming at Terry Collins.
Whereas Friday, I thought leaving in deGrom was a good move, Saturday leaving in Harvey became the complete wrong one. Harvey was cruising with an exceptionally economical pitch count and with the Mets clearly in the driver’s seat, was the perfect opportunity to do exactly what’s been talked about all winter and spring: get the lead and hopefully sit him down a little early to save some bullets for the end of the year.
Personally, I thought he should have been given the handshake after the 7th inning. He had just given up a home run to Teixeira and could have sat back and enjoyed a job well done. The decision to leave Harvey in didn’t rub just me the wrong way either as the Mets broadcast booth of Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling were all in agreement that this pretty much went against everything the Mets had planned.
Look, I like seeing complete games. As I’ve said before, I somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to baseball so I love watching the starter finish his work and not have to turnover anything to a guy on the next shift. I think we all appreciate that as being able to finish 9 innings has become almost as rare as a Knicks win (hi-yoooo!). But, still in the early stages of his return from Tommy John surgery and with the Mets off to a sizzling start, this was dumb and short-sighted.
While it’s still April, it’s not unrealistic to think that the Mets may have a legitimate shot at a postseason birth. You need Harvey. And sometimes, you only get one chance at the postseason before the wheels fall off. We all know that, when it comes to the Mets, the wheels just never fall off: the car bursts into flames and falls off a cliff. We all thought the Mets would run the NL East for years after 2006. They didn’t. All the “experts” thought the Nationals were smart by shutting down Strasburg a few years ago and they’ve seemed to only get further away from being the dominant team they were then.
A complete game would have been a nice moment for Harvey personally, I’m sure, but when you have the chance to save some of the tread on the tires, you have to do it.
Aside from Harvey, other guys played for the Mets today too. The bottom third of the lineup (Juan Lagares, Wilmer Flores and Kevin Plawecki) were especially lethal going a combined 8 for 12 with 5 runs scored and 5 RBI. When you’re getting that kind of production from those spots in the lineup, things are just going well.
Plawecki hit his first career homer in the 4th off CC Sabathia who also allowed dingers to Lucas Duda and Eric Campbell. Like I said, both teams get to take advantage of the short porch and it was nice to see a few of the good guys capitalize.
We get the rubber match of the series in the night game tomorrow on ESPN. Jonathon Niese goes for the Mets against Nathan Eovaldi for the Yanks. We’ve seen Eovaldi before from his time with the Marlins. Throws hard, but his control can disappear at times. The Mets, as a whole, have showed improved plate discipline through the first month of the year and have had a knack for working deep counts and swinging at strikes. So far, it’s been a formula for success. Hopefully, the ball stays rolling and they’re able to take the series before heading to Miami for another three-game set with the Marlins.
I’ll be back with another update tomorrow nightwith all the good and bad that comes along with that. Until then: #LGM.
Joe DiLeo
elshoeshatemail@msn.com
@MaximusSexPower
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