Tag: Max Scherzer

That’s the Ticket

Not that you’d necessarily want to, but you can’t buy a ticket to a Mets game this year.  Well you can buy packages of 20 or 40 or 81 games, but the old-school a la cart single-game ticket window hasn’t opened yet, and they’re not saying when.

Speaking as someone accustomed to creating my own season ticket one game at a time, that’s unusual. Individual tickets went up for sale in the first week of December last year, and several years before that. The last time I can remember tickets going on sale this late in the year, they were playing at Shea Stadium, and we lined up by Gate D on a frigid Sunday morning. Tim Teufel was there to make it all worth it.

It’s almost as if they knew that surrendering their most popular players through trades and free agency was going to do something to demand, and now, they must hustle to make it up.

I like Bo Bichette and happy the Mets got him and not Tucker. Right handed hitter, a batting champion candidate, hits lots of doubles. I’m not entirely okay with yanking third base out from under Baty when he’d finally had a decent year, but he hits well enough to play left.

The Mets still need a pitcher. There are the top-shelf free agents like Framber Valdez but I kinda like the under-the-radar guys too. He struggled early last year with an injury but Zac Gallen has been pretty good for years. I’m also not afraid to bring in Justin Verlander or Max Scherzer again. I think the young staff could use the right veteran, a la Orel Hershiser in 1999. Besides I’ve never even heard of our pitching coach, Justin Willard. They don’t even have a mugshot of him on the official site.

As noted in the comments it will be interesting to see what number they issue to Bichette, having assigned his No. 11 already to a different incoming free agent, Jorge Polanco. I feel like the Mets are too deferential to numerical identities formed on other teams. Neither the Rangers nor Orioles nor Dodgers replicated the respective jersey numbers of Alonso, Nimmo and Diaz, though it seems like they let them pick (To be fair, Frank Robinson and Roy Campanella may have something to with it, but I digress–I’d be happy to see Bo Bichette take up something new).

Diaz by the way is tempting the baseball gods by choosing No. 3. All relievers stop being effective at some point.

Maxed Out

I’ll miss David Robertson and his reliable socks more than I’ll ever miss Max Scherzer and his reliable gopherballs.

Who knows whether Luisangel Acuna actually becomes a star; what we know was that Scherzer wasn’t one anymore. At best, he was a fading one whose 2024 looks pretty risky, so I’m glad he and all that money are gone.

Next up? Probably Tommy Pham and maybe Brooks Raley. Verlander? He might stay. Hopefully the rest of these guys give us a starting pitcher because I’m not looking forward to David Peterson and Tylor Megill.

Up from Syracuse to take Max’s place is Vinny Nottoli. Reed Garrett, No. 75, replaced Robertson.

The Extra S

Joey Lucchesi slipped back into the 47 jersey he’d left behind nearly two years ago and authored the best starting pitching performance of the Mets season last night in San Francisco. It continued a seemingly unlikely hot streak for the Mets who are not only on a dreaded West Coast road trip, but losing guys to injury and suspension left and right.

You’d figure a veteran like Max Scherzer could figure out a way to cheat without getting caught, but he’s out for a turn in the rotation. Tommy Hunter returned last night from the disabled list and John Curtiss was the odd man out (the extra S is for Syracuse). It looks like we’ll be seeing more starts from guys like Jose Butto, Lucchesi and TBD for the time being.

Happy Ron Hodges Day & 50th Anniversary

The new beach towel attached to the sleeves of the Mets jersey looks even worse on the road, doesn’t it? Fortunately the Mets look a little better than that.

A 10-game West Coast road trip has gotten off to a promising start on Oakland although the Mets experienced the first roster churn of the year when Stephen Nogosek went down with an injury and Max Scherzer‘s start was delayed.

In Nogosek’s spot is Jimmy Yacobonis, whom I saw throwing in the bullpen yesterday wearing 42 in honor of Ron Hodges Day but who looks likely to turn up in the same 73 he wore in spring. That would appropriate for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Swingin’ A’s World Series championship being held in Oakland today. The Mets by the way aren’t going to bother with an Old-Timers day this year.

Adding Yacobonis to the 40-man roster meant designating the out-of-optins Dennis Santana for assignment; he looked okay to me so hopefully he clears and accepts a Syracuse appointment. Pitching instead of Scherzer this afternoon is Jose Butto who we saw briefly last year wearing No. 70.

 

Losing Ugly

You wonder if this isn’t some psychic damage from having lost Diaz and Quintana and Verlander at inopportune moments, but the Mets look awful in Milwaukee so far.

Last night if you could bear to watch you saw Max Scherzer give up a buttload of hard hit balls and get relieved by Denyi Reyes, who was making his Mets debut. Reyes was in because Tommy Hunter went to the injured list after himself getting beaten up the day before. Reyes, who was signed as a minor league free agent and has a few innings of MLB experience with the Orioles, was wearing 72, last seen on the back of Jake Reed last season.

You’re bound to get thumped a few times over the course of a long season but you’d prefer they not be in a row during the season’s first week. It makes you look unprepared and that’s a thing that has to rankle Buck. Let’s hope they get out of Milwaukee with some dignity and a winning record.

Cy Old

It didn’t take long for the Mets to address the vacancy of Jacob deGrom as Steve Cohen threw a pile of money at Cy Young winner Justin Verlander who joins 38-year-old Max Scherzer at the top of the rotation. Verlander will be 40 next year so I’m tempering my expectations while still fretting over the prospect of retaining or replacing Brandon Nimmo, securing a reliable designated hitter, and making sure the club has a rotation that’s young enough and deep enough to count on. Carlos Carrasco, the current No. 3 starter, will be 36. Then you’ve got the relatively unproven arms of Tylor Megill and David Peterson. Another arm would be nice.

Verlander will be the first Mets 35 of any substance since Dillon Gee (2010-2015) even though eight guys have worn it since him, most recently the emergency catcher Michael Perez.

SHaMeful

Not to put too fine a point on it but September pretty much sucks far for the SHaMs, with patsies beating us up and the Braves still winning and we’re not in first place anymore, at least not alone and at least until the first half of what had better be a sweep today in Pittsburgh, or else.

Max Scherzer is on the disabled list, veteran lefty Alex Claudio has joined the group and Yoan Lopez is back as the 29th Man. How silly is that? Baseball should have smaller rosters, at least smaller active ones like hockey does. 25 guys, dress 22 or 23. Doubleheader, switch between games.

I get it, there’s something in the player’s union for this. These easy to beat Mets put me in a bad mood.

Mountains of Geese

Here we go again.

The Schwinden-of-the-Moment is Bryce Montes de Oca, a name even more distinctive than the guy he succeeded numerically, Rob Zastryzny. Translated, the name Montes de Oca means “Mountains of Goose” which if you’re feeling optimistic could suggest Bryce could be a bigger version of Rich “Goose” Gossage, a Hall of Fame reliever who like Montes de Oca, throws hard.

Bryce as you may have seen is a giant of a guy, listed at 6-foot-7, 265, and he fired a few 100-mph pitches last night. He’s also not just any brute but the valedictorian of his Kansas high school and a U of Missouri product who at one time was rated a top-100 draft guy but whom the Mets got in the 9th round of the 2018 draft because he’d had a ton of injuries including a Tommy John so he was something of a Powerball lottery pick.

Montes de Oca, whose father was born in Cuba, is the third guy to wear 63 this year, after the Polish duo of Zastryzny and Thomas Szapucki were spit out. He’s been more walkable than hittable over his minor league career and everything but his uni number looks promising if he improve his control. Were it up to me I’d issue Montes de Oca a more intimidating number, like 98 or something, so as to avoid the Fate of Schwindens.

Montes de Oca got the call when Trevor May caught COVID. The other September call-ups are Deven Marrero (again) and Adonis Medina (again). Medina didn’t have much last night. Let’s hope Max Scherzer is OK.

Sucker Punched

Nothing to be alarmed about, but now I have a different reason for temporary spotty availability. But while I’ve got the chance to say it I was shocked the Mets didn’t do any more at the trade deadline and underwhelmed with what they did but that it appears to be working so well shows how little I knew, and not for the first time. The takeaway as I see is Billy Eppler and Steve Cohen’s hedge-funded baseball geniuses might know more than me and I should trust them now, or we’ll find out I was right along but now I don’t want to right now.

I never thought Contreras, even as he fit one need rather nicely, being a catcher who could hit, was quite the right solution (catchers are hard to break in the best of circumstances and with Alvarez en route, foolish to put those kinds of expectation on him in the moment). It also tells us the Mets had seen enough of the each of nearly every opening-day best-case-scenario options at DH (Robbie Cano, Dom Smith and JD Davis), have all three failed given the shots they had; but also they saw none of the temp-depth guys (Inciarte, Jankowski, Blankenhorn, Lee, Plummer) belong here at least now.

Plus Tyler Naquin was the last of the three Reds I might have taken soonest (Luis Castillo and Tommy Pham were available too, no surprise).

And that they had a lot more faith in me of the following:

We’d see Jacob deGrom ever again.

That Trevor May would ever resurface. Maybe even Tylor Megill.

That the problem with Drew Smith wasn’t, as I’d suspected, part of the bad luck all around the night Max Scherzer called for the trainer and walked off the mound, when it appeared all Smith could do to resist an inappropriate thing on on a baseball field with 30,000 watching with one of the three Sports Illustrated swimsuit models throwing out a ceremonial first pitch right there between home plate the pitcher’s mound (she seemed to be considering it is all I’d say as a body language interpreter in the Promenade that night). Instead it was some kind of injury, only the kind of injury that makes you give up way too many home runs.

So that’s also why we have Mychal Givens in the bullpen, along with May, and deGrom is in the rotation but I missed most of the game. Givens is a guy whom I know Buck trusted, so you have to think he asked for it too and though so and I’m beginning to definitely trust in Buck. Like Megill, Givens’ first name seems spelled wrong too.

Quick wrapup for these Mets who are unpredictable in all the right ways and went sneaky-smart at the deadline when balls-out was the seeming call to action.

Naquin is hitting the crap out of the ball in 25. Givens is No. 60. Darin Ruf (who seems to spell his first AND last names improperly) was assigned 28 and platooning with Babe Ruth Vogelbach at 32. That Davis-Ruf trade was also a straight-up Uni-Swap and I think the Mets paid more for him and for Vogelbach as I liked Holderman and Davis but I’m not arguing with results.

That was a magical win over Atlanta last night, in a magical year, and they did it while the Braves did seemingly did so much more to prepare. I watched the game last night and wanted nothing more that to be there. That was something, and I was at the Wednesday night Yankees game.

Someday I’ll tell that story.

 

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The Buck Starts Here

Count me among the majority for once: I was very much behind the Mets’ pursuit of Buck Showalter as manager and was pleased if not terribly surprised to hear the club reeled him in. One thing these recent Mets clubs have been missing is a presence as a manager; we last experienced it in Terry. Plus you can be assured Buck won’t go around many losing games by being out-strategized by the other guy. And if he can light a fire beneath underachievers like McNeil and Smith, that’ll be a bonus.

Buck managed the Yankees and Diamondbacks and Rangers while wearing No. 11; and the Orioles with No. 26, which he wore as a tribute to late predecessor Johnny Oates. No word yet on what Buck will wear under his jacket.

As relayed a few weeks ago, the arrivals of Mark Cahna, Eduardo Escobar, Starling Marte and Max Scherzer shook things up a little. McNeil is now listed in No. 1, his third issue since 68 and 6. Escobar takes 10, which has gone more than a decade without a player occupant. Marte is taking over No. 6, Cahna gets 19. That belonged most recently to Showalter’s inexperienced predecessor. Scherzer gets 21, which I’ve always kind of liked for a pitcher.