Certified Ghostbuster

In the first inning, the Mets had three hits but somehow, no runs against Pablo Lopez. Francisco Lindor hit into a double play, and then after two singles, Tyler Naquin flew out to center to end the inning after being overanxious and swinging at the pitcher’s pitch. That was all followed up by 2021 Carlos Carrasco returning to give up a run in the first inning to give the Marlins a 1-0 lead, and I couldn’t help but think “no … not this … not again.” The ghosts that have tortured Mets fans for so many years, the same ones that I’ve been bolting the door to keep from getting in, were knocking louder, and louder, and louder.

But the bats that they’ve been looking for, the bats that need to show up and say hi now that Starling Marte has finally gone on the IL with his broken finger, showed up and stayed a while. Jeff McNeil tied the game in the third with an RBI single. Then the fourth inning came. Mark Canha led off the inning with a walk, followed by a single by Daniel Vogelbach. Then Eduardo Escobar, who has been fulfilling his promise of giving Mets fans a reason to cheer him since returning from his injury, doubled home Canha to make it 2-1. James McCann then blooped a single to right to bring home Vogey to make it 3-1. Hilariously, because it was a bloop, I had it in my mind that Chen Zhen would actually hold at third on a bloop single with first base open. But he had just enough speed to get home.

Pablo Lopez then walked Brandon Nimmo, which was then followed by a hard single by Lindor to make it 4-1, and then Jeff McNeil hit a sac fly to make it 5-1. When Pete Alonso followed with a fly out to left for the second out, you figured that it was a nice rally but with Naquin swinging at everything, it would probably be over. Sure enough, he fouled the first two pitches he saw from Lopez to go down 0-2. Perhaps because Naquin does have a tendency to swing at everything, Lopez threw four balls out of the zone thinking he’d swing at one. But Naquin, in what was really the key at-bat of the game, showed some patience and walked after being down 0-2 to keep the inning going.

GRAND SLAM MARK CANHA!!!

IT'S AN EIGHT-RUN INNING FOR THE METS!!! pic.twitter.com/yI8PFf5aag

— SNY (@SNYtv) September 10, 2022

Nori Aoki may have used Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” as his walk up music in 2014, but Canha has proven himself to be a certified ghostbuster with his grand slam off Andrew Nardi. The key hits that he has gotten for the past month have been incredibly huge for the Mets. And don’t be fooled that Canha’s first career grand slam brought the score from 5-1 to 9-1, because with all the consternation about the lack of hitting on this team and the drum beat to bring up Mark Vientos (which finally happened today to correspond with Marte’s IL stint), that grannie gave everyone a sigh of relief and drove all the ghosts of Mets disappointments away from the door for the time being. (And if we’re being honest, Slimer kinda looks like Jeff Torborg.) Canha is Ray Stantz.

(Side note: Max Scherzer is Venkman, Marte is Winston Zeddemore, and Nimmo is Spengler. This correlates to a conversation about the Mets as A-Team characters, with Scherzer being Mad Dog, Marte as B.A., Buck as George Peppard, and Canha as “Face”. I think next spring the Mets social media team would do well to create a Ghostbusters or A-Team vignette. No need to pay me, as this one is free.)

Carrasco settled in to go six innings and only give up the one first inning run, while Lindor and Escobar added dingers which basically served as extra dip for the party to help the Mets take it home. With all the talk about how the Mets have lost 4 of 6 to bad teams (and yes, that’s a low point), a win tomorrow means that they would have taken both series from the Pirates and Marlins. So it’s all in the way you look at it. It would look a lot better with a Mariners victory tonight, because then the way you would look at things would be downward.