Back to Form...on Both Sides of deBall

There is no end to dePuns we can come up with when it comes to deGrom. What a sight for sore eyes, even though my ears were doing the work last night when I got a chance to tune in. Throughout the night, I and most Mets fans had flashbacks to his Cy Young season, when luckily he was too damn good to overlook giving the award. The lack of support he got on the offensive side, however, was a big reason we were mired in the disgusting grime of the sewage that was the 2018 season.

Elsa/Getty Images
Photo via nytimes.com

The Reds, who are trying to grow themselves after years of frustration, have not yet won the series but have already left two bad tastes in our 9th inning mouths. I have never been a fan of pitching your closer in the 9th inning of a tie ball game. Logic would dictate you want your best relief pitcher out there to keep the game intact. Edwin Diaz, and numerous other closers, however, have a history of having ERAs and AVG against that tick up when in these situations. I couldn't tell you why this is, but even going back to Mariano Rivera, and of course the 2016 Wild Card game with our former closer now on our IL, I would love to see how widespread this is across the league over the last 20 years, and whether my trepidation is warranted. Many point to the fact Seth Lugo only pitched to one batter before Diaz was brought into the 9th, a valid point to make about the managing.

The turnaround to the next game is the first of its kind this year with a 12:10 game today and temps heading into the 70's. No matter whether we split this 4 game series, the bad taste of yet another uneven series, where even the game we've won so far had to be salvaged in extra innings, makes optimism with the way this team plays the game right now hard to process. Still, you must keep that head held high, because no one in the NL East is running away with anything as of yet. I wish I could just stop everything and head on out to Flushing, Queens, today, but alas, I will have to find another time to take in my first game of the year. I wasn't able to make it out to Citi Field until September last year, the two games I watched the Mets lose in Denver notwithstanding. No matter how much I currently have on my plate, I could use a little Metsian teacup as soon as possible.

KEEP. ON. PUSHIN'.

LET'S. GO. METS.

(as I got back to work last night having taken a dinner break that coincided with the end of the game, this was the first song the Pandora app played for me on the oldies station I was listening to. I voiced it on Twitter as well at the time that I appreciated the optimistic sentiment.)