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Suffering through the Los Angeles Dodgers' brutal four-game sweep of the New York Mets last week was enough to shock me into the realization that this could be a losing season for the Amazin's. Of course, any reasonable human being would have concluded this long ago, but I like to think that fandom requires logic as only one part of its greater, more complex whole.
Thus, I--as, I imagine, many Mets fans have--have nursed the feeling that this season still holds promise. After all, my first favorite baseball player, Jose Reyes, is back and speedy as ever. Asdrúbal Cabrera can clearly play a mean second base. Yoenis Céspedes and his clutch-ness is locked in for years to come. Jay Bruce is raking and has, in a wildly unpredictable way, become the face and voice of the Mets' locker room. Curtis Granderson has kicked his early slump and blasted ahead to a .300-plus batting average in the second half of the season, according to a recent SNY report. Lucas Duda is at first and Wilmer Flores continues to flirt with .300 and Michael Conforto has made good on his two-years-ago potential and Rene Rivera continues to be a beast. It should be an exciting time to be a fan of the Mets! Instead, we've been treated to nightly pre- and post-game reviews of defensive inadequacies and an ever-lengthening list of injuries that threatens to derail a once-promising season but also promises to foster a parade of new faces to meet and learn about and allow us to be inspired to hope. The Mets' starting rotation has been hit hard by injuries, and with Robert Gsellman leaving tonight' game against Miami, there is only one original Mets starter who has not been hit by the injury bug--though I can't bring myself to mention his name here, for fear of courting superstitious disaster. This all brings me to an essential question: what is fandom, and what are its demands? In the simplest sense, being a fan should mean rooting for your team despite their place in the standings and being proud to support the players and, overall, the team that you've either grown up watching or grown to love. Taken another way, however, there are reasonable expectations of any major league team, and when they fail to meet them, shouldn't fans have a right to indignation and profanity? There is perhaps something healthy in this, as in expressing frustration and venting through sports in a way that is untenable or inappropriate in everyday life. Still, how much of a fan are you if you only support your team when it is winning. That seems awfully convenient... My takeaway tonight--after watching the Mets lose Gsellman to a hamstring injury and lose the game due to a number of reasons--is that baseball fandom is complicated and demands a commitment of the spirit that is challenging. Unlike football fans, baseball fans don't receive a retrieve until next week. Instead, we have a mere 24 hours before our favorite team takes center stage once more for better or for worse. This is frustrating and maddening, yet it is also exciting and promising. So, yes, I choose to hope: the Mets couldn't beat the Marlins tonight, but they might tomorrow and the next night. And if they can, then they could work their way back to .500. And yet, that doesn't matter as much as it could or should, because whether they do or don't recover this season, I'm going to keep on watching and rooting and that has to mean something in and of itself. Doesn't it? While it's much too soon to go throwing around words like "fate" and "too late" given April has yet to give way to May, I couldn't help myself. I'm a Mets fan, after all, and I have been since the early 2000s. I watched the Mets be mediocre since before I really understood what a major league baseball team could be or should be, or even what a full season entails. As a Mets fan, I know all too well the self-deprecating, self-identifying "I'm a Mets fan" talk that serves both to bond you with other Mets fans and to protect you from the criticism or pity of fans of those other teams -- you know, the winning ones.
But, as a Mets fan, I also know the joyful and hopeful "Let's go Mets!" chants that were answered in 2015 with resounding success across a season and up to somewhere early in the World Series of that year. I remember that there was a lot of winning early, though there were certainly dry spells and losing streaks. A glance back at the season (with the assistance of baseball-reference.com) reveals that most of the Mets' losing streaks in 2015 occurred outside of divisional play. While I'm not entirely convinced that divisional play is as important as some would suggest it is -- after all, wins and losses are counted the same regardless of the opponent -- I can't deny that dominance in one's division carries a sort of weight that influences fan perception, broadcaster commentary, and even team morale. The 2015 Mets had that dominance, and they had it to start the season. The good news for 2017 Mets fans is that we may have forgotten: the first serious rough patch for the 2015 Mets came in the last few days of April and into May. Starting April 27th, they lost two of three to the Marlins followed by three of four to the Nationals. By mid-May, they had weathered a five game losing streak, and after winning the next three straight, they lost five of six games between May 19th and May 24th. After a seven game losing streak in late June, they dropped below .500 for the first time since their fifth game of the season back in week one. In short, the 2015 Mets knew hard times and came out on top despite it all. Now for the important question: how is this relevant to the 2017 Mets? Well, it's not all good news. For one thing, the eleven game winning streak that the 2015 Mets put together in April served to sustain them as a winning team when the losses came. This year, there's been no such winning streak, and it's becoming difficult to imagine one coming any time in the near future. Still, I would argue that there's more good news than one might expect, save for one troubling element. First, the good news: the 2017 Mets are -- despite the rapidly growing list of injured players -- as good and better than the team of two years ago. If Yoenis Céspedes can avoid the disabled list and Michael Conforto can stay hot, the outfield is better than it was then. With the loss of Lucas Duda and David Wright, Jay Bruce (both offensively and defensively) and Jose Reyes (for now, only defensively) are hardly downgrades. To continue to underrate Asdrúbal Cabrera as a shortstop would be to court madness. And even though Neil Walker probably won't -- and shouldn't have to -- live up to Daniel Murphy's otherworldly stats, he is a steady presence at second base and has hit a couple home runs in the past two days that kept the Mets in the game despite the ultimately disappointing outcome. Finally, if Travis d'Arnaud can avoid the disabled list, he has shown signs of heating up in the big way fans were beginning to worry he could not. So, if the team is comprised of an outstanding and promising group of players, then what is that troubling element, that nagging concern? There is, of course, the losing record (8-10 after Sunday's loss to the Nationals), though that's not it. It's not the list of injuries, and it's not Jose Reyes' slump. These are not insignificant, though it is the intangible consequence of these accumulated frustrations that concerns me. To me, the main concern when the Mets return after an off day on Monday is the energy surrounding the team. As the frustrations mount, will they persevere and find their swagger again? If not swagger, then will they find motivation in the losses -- both to their record and to their lineup -- to rise up and prove their ability despite and/or in spite of the aforementioned frustrations? This is what I'll be looking for on Tuesday. As a final note, I should admit that I did not hold this semi-optimistic outlook during or even just after Sunday's game. However, when dawn breaks on Monday, I'm still a Mets fan, and as Tug McGraw said and as Mets fans have long held: ya gotta believe. Earlier today, I wrote about Zack Wheeler's first home start of 2013. While it was irrelevant to that post, my favorite memories of that game -- aside from finding that, yes, there can indeed be good memories when your team loses a game 13-2 -- came after Wheeler's day was over.
When Wheeler exited, the Nationals were ahead with a score of 5-0. Then, the game got even further out of hand when the Nationals scored six additional runs in the eighth, all attributed to Brandon Lyon. This pushed the score to 11-0, prompting Terry Collins to look for creative ways to save his bullpen. Thus, he turned to backup catcher Anthony Recker to pitch the top of the ninth. Sure, Recker walked Jayson Werth on four pitches and subsequently gave up a home run on a 2-0 count to Ian Desmond, but what I remember best came next. After the two-run blast, Recker was alone on the mound, having seen the Nats' lead expand to 13-0 and having recorded no outs in the inning. I can't imagine what he was thinking or whether Collins was considering taking him out. What I remember was the applause and cheering as Roger Bernadina, the third batter of the inning, came to the plate and flew out on the first pitch. Then, as Kurt Suzuki swung at a 3-1 pitch and flew out for the second out, the crowd's intensity increased. We all knew there was no conceivable scenario in which the Mets could rebound and win this one, but some of us -- and from the sound generated by fans that day at CitiField, many of us -- felt that Anthony Recker getting through a full inning on the mound could serve as a win of sorts, or at least an oddity to tell about later. Next, Chad Tracy stepped to the plate and watched as two consecutive pitches missed the strike zone. Recker wound up and fired the third pitch of the at-bat. Tracy launched the ball into the outfield for yet another flyout. He had done it! Recker had retired three batters in a row to end the inning! Did he end the day with an ERA of 18.00? Yes. But did his performance infuse a level of energy not felt that day since Wheeler's first inning? Absolutely. He treated Mets fans to an unexpected performance that invited us to be excited again, cheering for the underdog. And, for any pragmatists who point out -- and rightly so -- that cheers don't affect the box score or push teams to the postseason, it is worth noting that Brandon Lyon, a legitimate bullpen pitcher with a 4.16 career ERA, faced the same batters as Recker and fared far worse. With the exception of Ian Desmond, who lined out for Lyon and homered off Recker, the four other batters who faced Recker netted better results against Lyon: in particular, the three batters who flied out for Recker. Against Lyon, Bernadina hit a ground-rule double, Suzuki homered, and Tracy walked on five pitches. In retrospect, this was not a good game: for Wheeler, Lyon, or the Mets in general. It was, however, a good day for catchers: Recker came through, recording an inning of work on the mound as well as earning an ovation when he came to bat in the bottom of the ninth (he went on to strike out), and starting catcher John Buck blasted the ball over the left field fence with Josh Satin on base to save the Mets from a shutout loss. Indeed, it was a good day for catchers as well as for any fans who were able to delight in the small victories. In a season when the Mets lost 88 games, that was an important ability for fans to develop. Much has changed in the nearly four years since this game was played. Anthony Recker is backup catcher for the Atlanta Braves, the Mets were in the World Series in 2015, and they made it to the Wild Card game in 2016. Now, in 2017, we're hoping once again to delight in the big victories. SOURCES: - www.baseballreference.com: "Washington Nationals at New York Mets Box Score, June 30, 2013" & "Brandon Lyon." First and foremost, happy MLB Opening Day 2017 (part two?)! Despite the fact that the first three of this season's 4,860 major league match-ups took place yesterday, it didn't feel like baseball had really begun given all the teams waiting until today to play. Regardless, we've finally arrived and the season is fully under way. To mark this occasion, my season-long challenge to post every day begins now, fittingly with my first weekly feature.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What exactly is the definition of a great closer? In terms of sheer volume, Mets closer Jeurys Familia took top prize in 2016. ESPN agreed in their "MLB Closer Report" for 2016, listing Familia first. The format of this report is simple: a line of stats and rows for each qualifying player, prioritizing -- in this case -- the number of saves. (Only after writing this article did I realize several limitations of this "report," such as not properly registering combined numbers from players who were traded to other teams during the season, and so I turned to the more reliable "Sortable Stats" at MLB.com to revise before posting.) Beyond his league-leading 51 saves, Familia also met or surpassed most of his competition in terms of innings pitched, games, and games finished. Familia's save percentage ranked high at 91.1%, though Zach Britton clearly set the bar with an otherworldly 100% across 47 saves. Despite these numbers declaring Familia's success, he was left off several recent lists of top closers. In "2017's Top 10 Right Now: Relief Pitchers," MLB.com's Mike Petriello noted that uncertainty surrounding Familia's pending suspension removed him from the running. Given that this was published before his fewer-than-some-predicted 15-game suspension was announced, as well as the "right now" filter in the title, this makes sense. Elsewhere, sites such as the New York Daily News and The K Zone have released their "best of" lists for closers entering the 2017 season. With some variation, the top five on these two aforementioned lists are quite similar. For instance, Kenley Jansen, closer for the LA Dodgers, tops both lists, followed by Aroldis Chapman (NY Yankees), Zach Britton (Baltimore Orioles), Mark Melancon (SF Giants), and Wade Davis (Chicago Cubs). Seung-hwan Oh (St. Louis Cardinals) takes fourth place on the Daily News list with Davis in sixth, while The K Zone has Oh in sixth and Davis in fifth. There is clearly some consensus here regarding what makes for an excellent closer. The question remains: what exactly is the definition of a great closer? In terms of quantity, Familia's league-leading number of saves failed to put him on top of or even anywhere inside the top ten on these lists (he ranked 15th on the Daily News' list). In terms of quality, Britton's league-leading 100% in save opportunities failed to push him into first place. Furthermore, Britton's 0.54 ERA over 67 innings pitched was not enough to earn him the top spot. Why do Jansen and Chapman stand out so clearly above the others? For one, their postseason heroics in 2016 certainly demonstrated their worth to anyone willing to notice. Beyond this, though, are a multitude of other statistical accomplishments that are clear upon a deeper dive into the numbers, as noted in the brief write-ups that accompany the Daily News' rankings. These stats -- including K/BB ratio, WHIP, and many more -- serve to complicate rather than to clarify the answer to the closer question. The fact that some articles, like the Daily News list, are published with fantasy baseball participants as their intended audience may serve to add further complexity. (It occurs to me that researching the memorable closers of recent and distant baseball history may be more helpful than a look into a single season, so expect more to follow on this at some point in the future.) For now, suffice it to say that a great closer is a player on whom the manager can call to finish the work his other players have begun. A great closer must be consistent and reliable in spite of the increased pressure of his role, so as to drive any doubt from the manager's mind -- and the fans' minds -- before he steps onto the mound for his first pitch. And, ideally, a great closer should be dominant: he is, after all, the final pitcher you'll see before leaving the ballpark or switching off the television... that is, if he has been successful. SOURCES: - "2016 Regular Season Sortable Stats." MLB.com. CLICK HERE FOR LINK. - Duffy, Mike. "Top 10 Closers." The K Zone: Baseball News and Interviews by Mike Duffy. https://thekzonenews.wordpress.com/2017/03/31/top-10-closers/ - "MLB Closer Report: 2016." ESPN. http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/closers/_/year/2016. - Petriello, Mike. "2017's Top 10 Right Now: Relief Pitchers." http://m.mlb.com/news/article/213303526/miller-tops-top-10-relief-pitchers-for-2017/ - ROTOEXPERTS. "Fantasy Baseball 2017: Top 25 Relief Pitchers." New York Daily News. March 21, 2017. www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/fantasy-baseball-2017-top-25-relief-pitchers-article-1.3004240 |
WftF.com is a blog by a baseball fan -- and a Mets fan specifically -- who is learning his way into the wide world of baseball history, current events, debates, literature, and personal connections to the above.
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