It sure looked like we were never going to win another game after that Pittsburgh series. What would be the catalyst? It turns out, a few unexpectedly effective bullpen games and a few Brandon Nimmo grand slams.
The big wheel keeps on turning. Several retreads have made their way back, like Chris Devenski and Austin Warren. Tyler Zuber, whom I thought they saw something in, was DFAed, as was Colin “The Pooch” Poche, who I think may have resigned a minor-league deal. Then there’s newly arriving reliever Zach Pop, who deserves to hang around just because his name is Zach Pop (he should pitch to Coco Crisp). New York, London, Paris Munich–everybody talkin about Pop’s uni. It’s No. 56.
Prepare for reckless speculation from now till July 31 about the Mets’ appetite for starters and relivers, maybe some from here. I’m officially starting the Zac Gallen to the Mets rumor. He wears No. 23!
I guess the thing to watch in these last 10 days is who winds up taking Alvarez’ spot–will it be the guy wearing No. 85 (Jackson Reetz), the dude in 97 (Chris Williams) or the one in 98 (Hayden Senger)? There’s always a trade possibility too as teams have roster crunches around now. But let’s root for Senger, a 24th round pick who not only had a double and a pickoff today but like a real person is making ends meet as a Whole Foods stock boy. He’d be the first 98 in team history.
So it seems that in addition to more money ever paid to any player in any sport ever, Juan Soto gets possession of No. 22 written into his contract. Rules in the new CBA state players aren’t supposed to switch numbers without alerting the league office well in advance or by acquiring the inventory of materials bearing that combination of name and number, so there’s a further outlay Steve Cohen must make to erase the retail existence of Brett Baty.
Catching up with other moves, Frankie Montas has worn 47 throughout his career and will step into that here with Joey Lucchesi gone. Jose Siri (No. 22 with Tampa Bay) will be shopping for a new number. And No. 35 is available for Clay Holmes, who also came from the Yankees.
Finally congrats to David Wright, who will be getting his number retired next summer. Let’s hope it’s the last for a long time. many of you probably know I’m a “small hall” guy when it comes to number retirement and a little uncomfortable with how freely to Mets have been distributing that honor. I’d much prefer the team Hall of Fame get some attention and player number issued with more awareness of history. Don’t issue 16 or 17 or 18 to any guy, but reserve it for the special ones.
I hope Pete Alonso is back. I like him! I know he’s limited–he basically does one thing well and he didn’t do that as well as he should have last year. Who knows what will happen.
Until he broke out with three hits last night, I was worried about Nimmo who wasn’t even sprinting to first on walks with the same gusto. And if you stayed up late last night you also saw Paul Blackburn make his debut, wearing No. 58 and ringing up his WHIP score with guys on base every inning. He persevered though, with the help of a couple DPs and generally wasn’t hit hard.
The other night it was Huascar Brazoban making his Mets debut, wearing R.A. Dickey’s former 43. Tyler Zuber has been assigned No. 54 but is still in the minors.
One way the Mets made room for the new guys was cashing out Jake Diekman and Adrian Houser, trading Josh Walker to Pittsburgh and Cole Sulser to Tampa Bay and releasing Ty Adcock. Will Adam Ottavino survive the pending return of Sean Reid-Foley and Reed Garrett?
I can’t think they fired Buck Showalter only to wind up with a Yankee coach nobody’s ever heard of, so it seems like someone miscalculated the ease with which they’d gather in Craig Counsell. I was no fans of Counsell anyway so I’m glad he’s not here but in the end I’d have stayed with Buck all along.
Carlos Mendoza will wear No. 28, and said all the right things at his press conference, but we’ve heard plenty of good press conferences before.
Mendoza’s staff will include returning hero John Gibbons as bench coach, Jeremy Hefner remains as pitching coach and Eric Chavez mercifully becomes the hitting coach again. New to the staff is first-base coach Antoan Richardson and third base coach Mike Sarbaugh. None of these new guys have been assigned numbers yet; Gibbons wore 8 for the Mets until Gary Carter came along, then took 43 and 45.
I don’t pretend to know what awaits the Mets on the free agent and trading markets but reports that the Yankees somehow have a leg up in the Yamamoto sweepstakes by reserving his No. 18 seems worth a thought here. The Mets could play that game too if they weren’t suddenly retiring every number. They in fact used 18–a number traditionally reserved for aces in Japan–for Takashi Kashiwada and Ryota Igarashi, though safe to say, neither was an ace. But both came years after Darryl Strawberry left Flushing in 1990 and nobody seemed to care.
The Mets did the kindest thing they could and sprung Eduardo Escobar from this drifting shipwreck. The veteran infielder, who actually looked useful if redundant as a reserve, was traded to Anaheim last night for two minor league pitchers. It’s nice that Steve Cohen paid his salary on the way out which leads to a better haul of prospects in this case, /looks it up/ Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux.
I didn’t get to see Vinny Nottoli make his Mets debut but he’s wearing the No. 68 most recently belonging to Adonis Medina. I have gotten a look at sidearmer Grant Hartwig, who is making history as the first Met to wear No. 93.
As to Narváez it looks like the available numbers are 2, 7, 15, 16, 18, 25, 29, 30, 33, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, before we get into the 50s. Alvarez may want one of those lower numbers himself. It’d be cool if Narváez gets 15, and Alvarez takes 16, while Escobar stays in 10.
Although closer Edwin Diaz signed a new 5-year deal already, there could be three starting pitchers on their way out: Jacob deGrom who apparently has interest in Texas; Chris Bassitt, who rejected the qualifying offer, and Taijuan Walker who didn’t get a qualifying offer.
He’s pretty much that now, I’d ague, even if Todd Hundley has a season’s worth more games played, more home runs (123-63) and way more RBI (388-212). But Nimmo has the superior OBP (a 9-best .385) and his slugging percentage is just a tick below Hundley’s at .441 to Todd’s .447. Nimmo is in fact 4th overall in career OBP among all Mets, so he’s not the kind of guy a contending team wants to lose.
We’re at a point in the Mets’ season where the injuries have piled up and so have the solutions, and my own failure to keep up has made the Mets roster resemble a junk drawer. You’re looking for something and you find an old watch, coins from a foreign country that you don’t collect, a half-a-dozen half-used Chap Sticks, leftover business cards from a job you no longer have, various pens and pencils, cheap earbud headphones that may or may not work and you definitely don’t want to stick back in your ear to find out.
Into the ziplock bag have gone designated-for-assignment Mets Travis Blankenhorn (27), R.J. Alvarez (71) , Patrick Mazeika (4), Jake Reed (72), Kramer Robertson (15), Chasen Shreve (43), Travis Jankowski (16), Yennsy Diaz (64), and Nick Plummer (18), making those numbers available. 
Those foreign coins I can’t spend and don’t collect are now in a separate pile reflecting number changes I’d failed to account for or through looking for additional free numbers are failed to realize till now. For example the database never reflected till now that Mazeika ever wore 4, I fixed that, or that Mason Williams was still “current” at 70, and forgot to note that Thomas Szapucki (63) was traded in the Ruf deal. No longer.
The used business cards are coaches who are tricky to get into the database due to a design error we haven’t yet fixed between the awesome Ultimate Mets Database, where I record and 