So I owe a quick update: As we know Corey Oswalt was up., down and now back: He made his MLB debut the other night in No. 55. Gerson Bautista in the meantime has also come and now gone, having left behind a few ineffective relief appearances. Bautista as we know wore the dreaded 46.
The Mets have me worried, and it has little to do with how disappointing Harvey and Matz have been (actually I was expecting that). It’s the hitting, or lack thereof, that’s really been the problem lately. We need to get Cespendes and Bruce going, Conforto needs to start collecting some extra-base hits, we need to play Brandon Nimmo more, which may mean moving Jay Bruce to first base, and we really ought to go get a catcher who can hit.
In personal news, you may know I have written a new book on baseball, but it’s not about numbers, or the Mets.
ONCE UPON A TEAM tells the forgotten true story of the worst team ever to play major league baseball, the Wilmington Quicksteps of 1884. I know, it’s a really obscure topic so you figure, this would never be published if there weren’t a pretty remarkable story there: There’s drinking, contract disputes, arguments, treachery, guys falling down elevator shafts, cuthhroat business decisions, baffling racism and at the center of it all a very good minor league baseball team caught up in crazy circumstances that thrust them briefly and tumultuously into the ranks of the highest levels of the sport where they left behind a virtually unassailable mark for futility.
It’s a story how baseball was played and consumed in 1884, and how much — and how little — has changed. It’s also a cautionary tale about business risk and the high costs of pursuing one’s dreams.
If you’d like a copy it should be in bookstores May 1 and online. Let me know if I can get you an autographed copy!
Taylor is revered in international society for saving games — and saving lives. Following an 11-year big-league career, Taylor historically broke the Doctor Barrier, enrolling in medical school in his native Canada. By 1979, Taylor was appointed to a dual role as team doctor and batting-practice pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. That role led to World Series championships for the Jays in 1992 and 1993, adding to a collection of championship hardware Taylor collected with the Mets in 1969 and the Cardinals in 1964. Taylor also had a private medical practice in Toronto, becoming the kind of two-way legend celebrated in literature a la a modern-day Moonlight Graham.
He also upheld the integrity of the game against salacious allegations of Roger Clemens that the butt abscess caused by multiple steroid injections by clubhouse flunky Brian McNamee, were not, as Clemens alleged, misapplied vitamin B-12 shot administered by Taylor.
This annual joke on my part usually works better when the associated Met’s career stands in starker contrast to Jackie Robinson, but Ron Taylor indeed was a remarkable figure in his own right: Check out Maxwell Kates’ 
The rampaging Mets return to Citifield tonight without both of the catchers they left with.
The Mets also signed Johnny Monell (remember him?) and assigned him to the minors to address the organizational stress on the catching ranks. Monell wore No. 19 during his appearances in 2015.
I’ve been struck by the (mostly good) parallels between this year’s opening stretch and that of 2015, when the Mets unexpectedly took it to a Washington team that appeared a bit too confident in itself and rode it to a big April winning streak.
Plawecki’s older and maybe a little better today but he’s going to be the man for a while as the word on d’Arnaud is a bad elbow injury that may require the dreaded Tommy John surgery. That can’t be good for a guy who’ll be a free agent after next year, wasn’t a great throwing catcher to begin with, and whose prior injuries have prevented him from becoming much of the hitting star we’d imagined.
Tomas Nido, whom we saw briefly toward the end of last year, has been recalled and issued No. 3. You might recall his wearing 77 last year. You might remember No. 3 most recently on the back of Curtis Granderson.
The opponents are doing us the favor of being quite beatable every night but that’s not to take anything away from the Mets who after worrying me with half-assed play and blah results in Spring Training have won an unprecedented 9 of their first 10. Guys are returning from injury early. Hansel Robles and Robert Gsellman are getting big outs. Asdrubal Cabrera looks happy. Adrian Gonzalez has a few hits in his bat still.
The biggest disappointment of the young season was yesterday’s demotion of Brandon Nimmo, but that was a “good” problem of having no place to play him every day. The move accompanied a brief callup for AAA pitcher Corey Oswalt, but Oswalt was sent down again so that Zack Wheeler could make tonight’s start. Oswalt was issued the same No. 55 he had this spring.
As everyone knows, feel-good opening-day roster-maker Phillip Evans was demoted to make room for the early-arriving Michael Conforto, and Robles took the place of injured reliever Anthony Swarzak.