Today’s Lesson

So I tell my wife “Hey, put on the Mets game. Your favorite is pitching.” Now my wife has had her picture taken with Jacob deGrom and is always excited to see Noah Syndergaard. So when I say “favorite”, it could be any number of pitchers. Tonight, however, was all about Bartolo Colón. An unexpected treat since it was supposed to be Noah on Tuesday, but TC flipped the script to get Syndergaard some extra rest after an elevated pitch count, or so he says. (Because having him take his next turn against the Nationals helps too.) So Bartolo and his jolly disposition and his devil may care attitude it is.

Then he gets hit on the meat part of his thumb and has to leave the game. “You’re kidding me … one batter?” My wife says. And with that, she learns yet another lesson about the cruelty of baseball. See, her dalliance with the Mets is just beginning. So a lot of the pain I learned back in the late 80’s, she’s learning now. It hit her hard during the Series last year. Made her seethe when Syndergaard was ejected. And now that Bartolo is nicked, just sadness. In a calendar year, she has already gone through most of the stages. “She’ll learn”, I think to myself. “Poor girl.”

She actually missed a pretty good game, as Hansel Robles of all people kept the Mets afloat for three and 2/3’s in Colón’s absence to help the team to a 2-1 victory over the Royals. Now you know that I’m not one to try to get into athletes’ heads, and explain every performance with “mindset”. But there really does seem to be something to pitchers who go into games with little notice and pitch really well … no matter what your definition of “really well” is. For Hansel Robles, what he did tonight qualifies as “really well” even if it was only three and 2/3’s, and even if he tired out at the end because Collins got greedy and tried to get another inning out of him.

It was around here that I got a text from my mole in Kansas City who must have been involved in a really bad, hours long traffic jam because he texts me “what happened to Thor?” Umm, well you’re not going to believe this …” Yes, my friend. You missed a lot. Including Keith Hernandez working Keith’s Grill.

I love the woman working the grill, who is probably wondering who the big mouth is behind her.

https://twitter.com/falsebinary/status/745420404274003969

My Kansas City friend says he should be in the next “Just for Men” commercial with Keith because they have something in common: They both whine about traffic … whether it be the Shawnee Mission Parkway or the LIE to Sag Harbor.

Erik Goeddel came in and got the Mets to through the fifth and sixth, and Jerry Blevins, Addison Reed, and Jeurys Familia finished it off and made home runs by Yoenis Cespedes and Asdrubal Cabrera stand up. So this could have been a washout of a night as other “bullpen games” have been this year, but on Tuesday, the Mets bullpen came through and saved, for one day at least, questions about why Travis d’Arnaud’s return to the lineup couldn’t spark the Mets to 17 runs on 34 hits. But I’d rather ask why, if d’Arnaud’s return was so important to the lineup, was he hitting eighth?

Oh that’s right, because he’s a .190 hitter.

So now, Syndergaard with his extra rest will go on Wednesday afternoon. And I hope he enjoyed that extra rest because he’ll probably have to go nine, maybe fifteen innings to save that bullpen. The good news for the ‘pen is that Sean Gilmartin and Logan Verrett will be there tomorrow. The bad news is that Gilmartin probably isn’t available until Thursday because he threw 100 pitches on Sunday. But with Colón perhaps out for a few, maybe Gilmartin will have to be that fifth starter for a while anyway.

But we’ll all just rejoice in this win for a few hours (which couple with a Nationals loss to the Dodgers to put them four and a half back.) I was very happy to tell my wife that the Mets came through without Bartolo to beat the defending World Champs. Impressive, right?

“And yet, they couldn’t beat the Braves.” -my wife.

And that’s today’s lesson. Baseball is a strange game. She’s learning quicker than I thought.

Today’s Hate List

1. Danny Espinosa
2. Tanner Roark
3. Peter Bourjos
4. Makiel Franco
5. Jace Peterson