It Which Shall Not Be Named

[captainsblog]

There hasn’t been much discussion around here lately about my lifelong disease for which there is no cure. That’s because the 2023 New York Mets have regressed to almost the point that they were at when I started following them in 1967. There are any number of possible reasons for their inexplicable demise from winning over 100 games last season to being essentially out of contention before the halfway point of this one. There were injuries before and during the year, particularly to their best relief pitcher and biggest star on offense. The former, Edwin Diaz, had just been signed long-term, is recovering nicely and should be back next year; while Pete Alonso seems to have recovered from the beanball to his hand back in June and, despite the occasional rumor, I have every reason to believe he will likewise be signed long-term and back in action in 2024.

The bigger mistakes, I think, involved their choices in signing and not signing players from last year, and not anticipating what effect the new rules would have on a mostly older pitching staff. I was, and still I am, in favor of all of those rule changes,  particularly the “pitch clock“ forcing pitchers and batters to re-engage within a certain number of seconds after each pitch. The system has been in use in AAA for years and really speeds up the games. It seemed that the older starters on the Mets' staff had more trouble adjusting to it, and that led to a lot of games being not only speedier but losinger. They did not re-sign their two time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom, who left town for a yachtload of money from Texas in the off-season, but the more important choices turned out to be not bringing back several other reliable starting pitchers who have been much missed in the demise.

Around the end of July, with any reasonable hope of a playoff spot being gone, I turned my attention to the prospect of epic suck. No team in major league history has ever gone from winning 100 games one season, as we did last year, to losing 100 or more the following year. I could only find one that even came close: the 1914 and 1915 Philadelphia Athletics. They won the American League pennant in 1914 with 99 wins on a 154 game schedule, and proceeded to drop more than 100 the following year. I have every reason to believe they would’ve won at least one more if the season had the eight more games that it now does-  unless, I don’t know, Garrison Cohen and Heshie Rose quit covering the team because the A's had possums in the telegraph booth.

For a while, the goal of 100 losses became, as we say at the gym, a “challenging but doable“ endeavor. Unfortunately, the Mets have stumbled into too many blind-squirrel wins since then. It would take a ridiculous 2–28 bender the rest of the way to hit that hundred. Not impossible, but I’m not betting on it.

It hasn’t been much better across the Triboro. The general manager of the Yankees has referred to this season as a “disaster.“ They recently lost nine games in a row for the first time since, as one friend noted, “Keith Hernandez was still on the Cardinals.“ That was 1983, if you’re keeping score at home. This week represented the latest in a season that both New York teams have been in last place in their respective divisions.

I have not been down there for a game (or anything else) this year and can’t imagine what would inspire me to make that drive in the final five weeks. Last night and today were days I had tentatively circled on my baseball calendar during the off-season for a possible visit, because this is the semiannual appearance in Queens of those same Texas Rangers and our former star pitcher Jacob deGrom.  He'd had a history of injury in his last several seasons in  New York, and an early-season minor injury turned into a mid-season major one, requiring yet another surgical procedure that will sideline him well into 2024. The Rangers didn't even schedule a start by our more recently departed ace pitcher Max Scherzer, traded to Texas in the team's late July fire sale. So I had no real incentive to spend money on this series, or any other.

At least I won't have any distractions in October from the midst of Bills season and the start of the Sabres'.

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Jockeying for position with the Mets to occupy the NL East cellar have been the 2019 World Series champs, the Washington Nationals. Their fortunes also took a hit this week when their onetime phenom pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, announced his retirement at the ripe old age of 35 after a career of shining ups and injury downs much like deGrom's only beginning a bit earlier.  Unlike the Mets now being free of deGrom, though, the Nationals will be continuing to pay Strasburg a boatload of money for years to come for not playing for them.

The story of his premature demise reminded me that, way back in May of 2010 on his way up to the majors, Strasburg pitched for Syracuse, then the Nats affiliate, at a Red Wings game at Frontier Field that I got to go to. Such electricity in the air. He went 6 1/3 shutout innings with 9 K’s. The place was packed for a May ballgame. This would've been a couple years before the 50th anniversary conference, so I wouldn't have met any of my future Fybush friends there yet,  and I can't remember who, if anyone, I went with.

Never saw him in the bigs. Now it's thirteen years later and he's hanging it up. I wish him well in anything but managing against us.