Not a fan. Maybe as the DH only..but he doesn't know the pitchers, and wouldn't be doing the staff much good.

Also...123 strikeouts in 411 minor league at bats this season..close to 200 for a full year. Against minor league pitching.

And he's the best prospect in baseball? Really?

I knew we'd lose when they sent the young deer Alvarez into the beaming headlights with the bags stacked with the tying runs. No. Just no. Not against a potential Hall of Fame closer. And a right-hander. Was Daniel Vogelbach busy with chicken wings?

We'll lose the division, and then we'll lose against the phu---untastic Phillies in the Numbfred Round. (slaps a tenner on the table)

I'LL TAKE THAT BET!!!! (grabs the tenner). There's no way we're going to lose to the Phillies!

(It's San Diego that likely has the #5 spot. Philly is battling the Brew Crew for #6 and the trip to St. Louis that comes with it.)

According to Chip Caray, Vogelfat was going to bat for Nido. Of course Alvarez (swinging at anything, apparently with his eyes closed and his hands not properly gripping the bat) and Naquin (who fouled off six pitches before whiffing…including three obvious balls …must be nice to miss the zone on 5 of 8 pitches and not walk the guy…) made that all moot, anyhow.

Buck later said that Jansen is just as hard on lefties, so there wasn't a point in going for the platoon advantage. I mean, look at Jansen's current splits


.555 OPS v. righties, .729 v. lefties. What's .174 worth of OPS difference with the game on the line?

Nah, much better to trust the rally to a kid who's yet to get a ball past Austin Riley when you need a solid drive to the outfield. Makes total sense.

Seriously, if you're not using Vogelfat here, why is he on the team?

Schmuck, er, Buck also defended his decision to try and work Megill into shape in the low-leverage situation of the season being on the line by saying he didn't have any alternatives. Lugo had thrown multiple innings…on, er, Wednesday. Drew Smith had pitched on Wednesday! (He threw 15 pitches. He hadn't pitched since Sunday. He pitched Sunday after pitching last Friday. The idea we can't use him on one day's rest is silly, IMO.). Nobody bothered to ask why, if Trevor May was tasked with cleaning up Megill's mess, May couldn't have started the inning. Especially as two of the first four Atlanta hitters (Olson, Rosario) were lefties.

I have to say, 98-59 doesn't suck. But any more game decisions such as this and I'd have to reconsider my (nonexistent) vote for Manager of the Year. What with Dave Roberts apparently about to surpass last season's 106-win total, and Snitker quite possibly overcoming a 10.5 game deficit to take the division.

Still, all Max has to do is win in order to ensure that the only thing stopping us from avoiding Juan Soto is Juan's ex-mates. So we'll see, tonight. One win here, and all we need do is sweep the Gnats. Thanks to the Tiebreaker! (God bless Rob Manfred! Such Vision!!)

Just as we swept them in…in…May. (After sweeping the DC Doormats in our first two series this season, we're a resounding 5-5 in the three series against them since.) Go, team!

Sooooo…Max can't hold a lead any better than Jake could. Didn't even get a "quality start".

Aaron Goldsmith said this game was why the Mets got Scherzer. Fail City, then. $78.8 M worth of "aces" and we can't win either game. Now we need Bassitt to save our assitt.

Just think, if we hadn't thrown $43.3 million (per year) at Max, maybe we could have afforded a bat or two. Could have had Freddie Freeman (I hear he's pretty good) for just $27 mill, and let Peterson/Megill have a regular rotation slot. And then we could have spared $700,000 to keep Brandon Drury around.

Or, we could have spent $21 million on Robbie Ray or the same money on Kevin Gausman. Heck, for what Max costs, we could have had them both. Or we could have forked over $16 million for Anthony Rizzo and still had room for Ray or Gausman.

Indeed, we could have had Rizzo and Freddie both for what Max cost. But since you can only have one DH and one 1B and we still need Pete, that's probably not the best plan. But you get my point.

And Lorde, do those bats look dead. I know we're 5th in MLB in runs and 2nd in OBA, but you can't tell it by this. I knew there was zero chance we'd trouble Jansen, after having had a shot at him last night. He's too good to be flakey twice.

Hell, we couldn't even touch Jesse Chavez, and he got waived this year. By the ANGELS. Yoicks.

So if Bassitt does better than the two old men [/bitter], we just would need to sweep the Nats to hang on by the skin of the Tiebreaker.

But if Sunday follows Saturday and Friday's form, then the Noc-a-Homas can pretty much break out the bubbly. All it would take is one win in Florida for them to clinch.

Damn. Here I wanted one last good memory, and I'm thisclose to reliving 1998 and 2007. Fudge.

I don't even know what to write.

I'm just numb.

Why tonight's game is even more crucial:

tl; dr version:

Mets Magic Number is 5 (must win tonight and then sweep away, or get help), or 6 if they lose tonight (would need to sweep AND have the Fish sweep Atlanta).

Braves Magic Number is 3 (a win tonight and one win in Miami does it), or 4 if they lose tonight (need the Mets to do worse against the Nats than the Chop Shop does against the Fish).

Miami, trying desperately to get butts in seats as they wind down, is running ads asking snowbird New Yorkers to come out and root against the Noc-a-Homas. Maybe Keith (who owns a house in Florida), unable to broadcast due to his bum shoulder, will swing by for a game or two.

(Probably not.)

I don't know everything, but if batting Tomas Nido for James McCann is the big move your bench allows in a must-win October game the loss really happened in July. Which isn't a knock on Buck, who I think has got more mileage out of this guazzabuglio than anyone else would. Or Nido even, he can't hit and should be he SYR/3d catcher.

Hope for the Padres to draw the ticket I guess,because dropping two at home to PHI would be the rotten cherry atop the curdled cream on the melted ice cream of a 98-100 win season.

Hey, guess what?? Chris Bassitt is 8-1, 2.22 since August 1st. Tied (w. Kyle Wright) for most wins in MLB over that span, 4th in ERA.

So that's three aces! Take that, Bravos!

Jacob deGrom ($35,500,000): 6 IP, 3 ER, L
Max Scherzer ($43,333,333): 5.2 IP, 4 ER, L
Chris Bassitt ($8,650,000): 2.2 IP, 4 ER, L

Total : 14.1 IP, 11 ER (6.91 ERA), 0-3. All for the low, low price of $87,483,333. (average salary: $29,161,111)

Odds the Mets win World Series: .0001%
Odds the Mets beat San Diego and get past the Numfred Round (™Westheim): ~20%
Odds the Mets win one game against San Diego, instead of just getting swept: ~30%

Odds the Mets win one game, period, rather than going 0-8 after Wednesday's "Escobar to the Rescobar!" semi-miracle: ~60%
Odds the Mets take 2/3 from Washington, reaching 100 wins for the 4th time in team history: ~33%

Odds that Schmuck Bowalter will admit the season was a ****ing disaster: less than 1%

"I'm not going to apologize for winning 100 games or close to it" —Schmuck Bowalter, three-time Manager of the Year.

Remember, Schmuck has never won a World Series. He's never reached the World Series. His career post-season record is 9-14, losing 4 of the 5 series he's been in, and also a wild-card game.

It's all well and good to have a strong start, Schmuck…but the goal is to FINISH THE JOB. Loser.

(OTOH, the 1996 Yankees and 2001 Diamondbacks both won the Series immediately after firing Schmuck. So…opportunity awaits?)

Note: I'm on delay, so I'm writing this BEFORE the top of the 9th. Let's make one last prediction:

Odds Kenley Jansen strikes out the side in the 9th, 1-2-3: ~40%. (I think McNeil might make contact. But it won't matter, anyhow.)

Ha! Nimmo grounds to SS! That'll show me!
Lindor grounds to 1B! Oooh, the Mets have their hitting shoes on!!
And McNeil takes Acuña to the track! Hit Show! Devil Rays, center stage, Hit show! Yeah, baby!

(I guess I have to watch the next few games, just to see if McNeil wins the batting title. Plus it will be my last few games with Gary, Ron and possibly a Keith cameo. But I'm gonna vomit listening to them talk about getting ready for the playoffs, knowing that there's precious little chance they'll do anything but choke, again, some more. Maybe I'll just skip it.

Bye, baseball! Bye, Mets!! It's been fun.

Just not as much as it could have been.)

ETA: To be fair, in the 1969 NLCS, the Braves (led by Henry Aaron's 3 HRs) scored 5 runs off of Tom Seaver, 6 runs off Jerry Koosman, and knocked Gary Gentry out of the game in the 3rd inning. The difference is that those Mets could hit.

(Key hit, Nolan Ryan [BA .103] singling to set up Garrett's series-winning HR. Never mind Nolan's arm, apparently we needed his bat. Huh.)

"[The Braves] played a little better than we did"
"They beat us one game more than we beat them"
"I haven't really gotten into that negative vibe"
"I'm moving on to the Nationals"

Oh, IF ONLY, Schmuck! Washington has lost 100+ games. Sounds right up your alley.

Say, Schmuck, given that Vogelfat had finally gotten hot (HR, then RBI single), why did you pinch-hit for him in the 5th inning with a kid who is 0-for-LIFE at this level? (Who still hasn't hit a ball past the infield, btw.)

Did you somehow think that the Braves wouldn't put a right-hander in later in the game? Have you not heard that Raciel Iglesias and Kenley Jansen are both righties?

Gee, I guess somebody should have told you that. What a Schmuck.

ETA: Fun stat from Gary Apple. Remember when the Champions came to our stadium in July and we beat them 4 out of 5 and had clearly shaken them, for good?

Since then… Braves 6 wins, Mets 1 win. Braves outscore Mets 42-19. Winners win…and chokers choke.

I like Pete's response better:
If Judge signs with your team, promise you will send us Alonso as a consolation. :)

(hours after watching the game, still lies face-down in his pillow, not particularly caring about the vultures picking bits of flesh out of his body)

So, the rainout yesterday was nice.

One, I really didn't want to watch a game after the weekend.
Two, I don't want the Braves to clinch because we lose. Let them do their own damn work.
Three, the Braves didn't win. Apparently, deGrom and Scherzer and Bassitt are all trash, but Jesus Luzardo dominated them. Peruvian Power for the win! (Literally. He got the win.)

Braxton Garrett goes for the Marlins tonight. Wednesday would be Sandy Alcantara…he wants to pitch, Donnie Unemployment wants to pitch him…but management insists on shutting him down. After all, he'd only have six months to rest. (How much the Braves are paying the Marlins for this decision is unknown.)

Anyhow…so I got to watch Five Days in Flushing again, and then they had the Friday game (with Wilmer's walkoff homer) on Mets Classics, and I normally don't get to watch Mets Classics (DirecTV classifies it as a re-air, and won't show it outside of the local market), but because this was an unscheduled airing, this was still part of the "Nationals at Mets" slot that they were showing me (because they think I have Extra Innings, even though I've cancelled it), so I was excited to watch it and maybe keep it in my DVR. So I was ecstatic…

…but because they showed Five Days first, the game ran into what would have been the Mets Postgame slot, and somebody had figured out that there was no postgame, as there was no game, and changed the listing and so the last two innings didn't record. Grrr. So close.

And now, today, I get one last REAL doubleheader with Gary and Ron. No "split" double-header, just baseball and then more baseball. No 7-inning bullspit. A whole day of baseball. Utter bliss.

…unless, of curse, one of the games goes into extra innings and I have to turn it off. (Never seen a "ghost runner", not going to start now. I don't even understand how it works.) But let's hope the Mets can do their business, properly, twice. As a farewell, that wouldn't suck.

Ah, fudge! Ronnie's working Phillies-Astros for TBS, so we get Todd Zeile instead. I actually like Zeile a lot, but I want GKR proper for my farewell. Tomorrow, then.

(They're letting Ronnie into Houston these days? Times have changed, lol.)

***************************
Fabulous Freddie Freeman took an 0-fer against Colorado last night, and so Squirrel McNeil leads the batting race by less than 1 percentage point.

As exciting as this is, it's a bit depressing that there are only 3 batters in the entire league batting over .300

McNeil .326
Freddie .325
Goldschmidt .318

Trea Turner…. .298
Machado .294

Yeesh, that's a chasm. Huh.

Pretty crazy that the Mets and the "Barves" ended up tied for first, after all. Tiebreaker rules, though. A 101-game winning Wild Card.

JEFF MCNEIL!! Batting champ of the whole damn league, the little bugger! :)

Best thing that will come from this season. :closedeyes:

McNeil not only led the NL, but all of baseball. (Luis Arraez won the AL crown with a puny .316.)

Pete tied for top RBI honors with that big guy in the Bronx, 131 apiece. And of course, that fellow hit 62 dingers to lead everyone.

So all the MLB leaders in the "triple-crown" categories were representing NYC. Good year, Big Apple.

**************************
When the Mets led off the second game on Tuesday with three consecutive homers, I flashed back to the first time that happened.

Back in 1987, the Padres' Tony Gwynn, John Kruk, and Carmelo Martinez all took Roger Mason (pitching for the Giants) over the wall to start the game. The twist here is that the Giants won that game, 7-5, and Mason got the win. Points for persistence, there.
******************************

Not that he was second-guessing, Gary Cohen swore, but after Alvarez hit that massive bomb, Gary wondered if perhaps working Alvarez in against the weaker teams (rather than throwing him in at the deep end against the World Champions) might not have helped Francisco find his groove sooner.

I think about it the other way around: maybe the Braves are too good for Alvarez right now. But we also needed his help against the Gnats and Fish and Cubs and A's…maybe if we'd broken him in against the weaker teams, we might have actually taken advantage of that "easy schedule". Oh, well.

Yes, we should keep that in mind, you Mets fans and those folk who merely live in the area and root for New York teams as a matter of course. The two Big Apple baseball teams won 200 games between them! When has that happened in the past, if ever? (When they faced each other in the 2000 World Series, the Yankees had won 87 and the Mets 94 regular season games.)

Sweep of the hapless Nats may not be impressive, but the team has its buddy "Mo" back heading into the playoffs.