So I was out there on Friday, watching the team in the black jerseys that are unreadable from the stands, and felt the magic. People were going crazy, the Grimace was there, people watched the comeback and walked out chanting LGM, giving one another high fives and the only thing that worried me was the realization: This team is one game over .500. And now, after losing the last two games of the series to the Astros due to their complete lack of pitching depth, the team sits 40-41, exactly half the season gone, and “on pace” for 80-82. It’s been a great month anyway.
Lots of new Mets to meet.
On the mound there’s Ty Adcock, who was given No. 52. Tyler Jay (74) is back and we were unfortunate enough to make acquaintances with Matt Festa, who stunk it up wearing No. 73 tonight. Gone are Edwin Diaz, popped for a stupid sticky-stuff violation that is hurting the entire team. Sean-Reid Foley has been out since June 22 with shoulder trouble, and Drew Smith out since June 24 with elbow issues.
Smith’s issues appear to be serious enough to warrant season-ending surgery. That’s too bad because he will become a free agent in the offseason.
I wanted a long time for Smith to be the closer I thought he could be, and reward for the trade of one of my favorite all-time Mets, Lucas Duda. He was all over the places though. He wore 62 then 40 then 33 (he’s pretty much still a 62 to me). He had long hair for awhile, remember that? For a time it was easy to confuse him in print for Dominic Smith. If boxscores still existed, it’d be DrSmith and DmSmith.
Now he’s gone, and so is Tomas Nido, a forgotten man in the catcher scrum until resurfacing briefly this year. Here’s a fun piece of trivia you might have forgotten in the seven years that Nido’s been a Met: He started off his career wearing No. 77, in September of 2017.
For a moment we saw Joe Hudson as a Met, wearing 57 like he was Eric Valent out there, and now there’s Ben Gamel, wearing 21 like he’d Duda or something.
Promising pitching prospect Christian Scott is arriving even sooner than I would have guessed and without an obvious need for a starter (unless they cut bait on Adrian Houser or something). Clubhouse video from Florida, where Scott will start tomorrow, shows he will wear No. 45, which belonged last to Sam Coonrod (it belonged to Cole Sulser in Spring Training, only to see him turn up in 54 for his ineffective appearances).
I’m glad they are giving Scott a pitcher number to begin his career and so won’t have him looking like a clown as they’ve forced Jose Butto into with that unseemly No. 70. Butto should go to the clubhouse and demand No. 21 while its still available. He’s a good enough pitcher to pull that off.
Yesterday we saw Danny Young become the all-time Mets leader in wins by a guy wearing No. 81. If you remembered that Johneshwy Fargas was the first to wear 81, you win a prize of some kind.
Tomas Nido is back but he’s not about to be the starter any longer now that Francisco Alvarez has settled in. He’s pretty good. Brett Baty isn’t bad either though he may be having his first Big League slump. Mark Vientos? His swing looks long to me and I’m afraid he’s going to strike out too much. I’m a little scared to pull the plug on Tommy Pham yet.
I was in the stadium when Josh Walker made his first and still only appearance as a Met. He became the first 91 since Carlos Gomez broke it in in his brief return to the Mets in 2019.
My trusty assistant Google then revealed: Frewsberg Native Connor Grey Called Up to the New York Mets, only then I didn’t know where Frewsberg was and had to look THAT up. It’s way out in Western New York; the nearest big city is Erie, Pa. 
In two days, the momentum that seemed unstoppable ground to an abrupt halt, and we’ve been overpowered twice by the Braves who have the opportunity to make back all of what they lost during their humiliating 4-of-5 defeat in New York.
So I finally learned last night 
Alvarez last night removed himself from that list, still wearing 71, and in my mind enters a category something akin to an “Apparition Met,” being a Phantom Met whose disguise was yanked off him in the top of the third inning last night as though Walker’s back spasms were the gang from Scooby-Doo revealing Alvarez was not a ghost, but a shaggy-haired, bearded relief pitcher about to turn a 0-0 game into 3-0 game via tape-measure home runs and hard-hit balls everywhere, and he’d have gotten away with it were it not for those meddling kids. Marrero was unmasked as a flamed-out first-round draftee of the Red Sox with experience there and as a Marlin whom the Mets added from the roster of the Long Island Ducks in June.
I’ve covered Katoh before and somehow missed both Sam Clay and Kramer Robertson. Clay is lefty reliever who’s done a tour of the NL East’s farm clubs this season being DFAed first by the Nationals then by the Phillies before he arrived as a Met depth guy and remains on the 40-man roster where he’s assigned 46.
Kramer Robertson sounds like a made-up name to me but he’s a journeyman minor league infielder who was assigned 15 and called up to the Mets and DFAed a few days later, and re-signed by St. Louis, making him an Actual Ghost Met and not just a potential one. His number now belongs to Marrero, who is a flamed out one-time First Round Draftee of the Red Sox with experience as a reserve there, Arizona and Miami and whom we scooped up as AAA depth in late June when he was cut loose by the Marlins.
It’s not all terrifying though. Anthony DiComo has 
baseman Brett Baty, is reportedly en route to Atlanta. Baty was a No. 1 Mets’ draft pick in 2019 and has been compared to David Wright. He’s killing it wearing No. 2 for Syracuse; on the Mets’ 40-man roster, that number belongs to Baty’s current AAA teammate, Dom Smith, which should be frightening if only for Dom and what remains of his cheering section.
Just as we feared, the Mets’ failure to capitalize on the graciousness of struggling divisional opponents early this season is turning the second half into a complete disaster.
Trevor Williams, collected in the ill-fated deadline day giveaway with the Cubs, in the meantime has been up and back and now back again, wearing 29 and reminding me of another Cubs-bred Met starter, Steve Trachsel and adding to our league-leading collection of Trevors. Travis Blankenorn (73) is back. Geoff Hartlieb (40) has been up and back. Patrick Mazeika (76) is even back (Tomas Nido is injured, because). What difference does it make?
It was bound to happen. The Bench Mob eventually came back to Earth and are now getting hurt themselves, and the offense is scuffling along as the starters reemerge. That this all happened only once the Mets hit the 10-games-over high-water mark and resumed intra-division play is worrisome, moreso given that Alonso, Lindor, Smith or McCann are still looking for some kind of consistency.
Jeff McNeil, Kevin Pillar and Albert Almora came back, Joey Lucchesi, Jordan Yamamoto, Juerys Familia, Tommy Hunter, and Robert Gsellman are out, and now it looks like Jonathan Villar and Tomas Nido might be hurt.
Last night we saw the Mets debut of Jerad Eichoff, the first 43 since the unforgettable Erasmo Ramirez last season. Some guy called Travis Blankenhorn was up and back wearing No. 73. Steven Tarpley (46), Sean Reid-Foley (61) and Yennsy Diaz (64) are back with the group; Mason Williams (70) is designated and Jacob Barnes (40) was designated then traded to Toronto.
My friend Edward raised an interesting point that the 40-man roster as a thing has remained constant despite nearly everything else affecting it (disabled-list assignment lengths, roster sizes etc) all changing–some dramatically so, and it’s made a mess of the Mets. I actually looked this up, it’s the 100th birthday of the 40-man roster as a thing, despite a few tweaks over the years (a 48-man roster to allow for Wartime players in the 1940s; and a brief period before imposition of the player draft in the early 1960s when dumb rules forced clubs to carry prized young talent or risk losing them (the roster size then was 41, not 40).
It’s a shame Sandy used that joke already because anything to diffuse the one on the field every night would be welcome. Lots of bad news on the injury front–besides the return of Jacob deGrom this evening which I’ll be watching live (or dead) in Citifield tonight.
Their 4-0 victory over the Phillies April 13 was achieved behind a starting lineup whose summed uniform numbers totaled 64–obliterating the lowest combo we found the 
But when trying to construct a mock Met lineup whose combined total would surpass the magic number of 300 I could barely do it (the record for highest-ever lineup, we’ve figured, occurred 
Albert Almora, who intrepidly smashed face-first into the fence the other night at Citifield (we we over in the left-field corner: the sound was scary), is on the IL and Khalil Lee, the prospect acquired from Kansas City in the three-team deal that facilitated Andrew Benintendi’s move from the Red Sox to the Royals (Franchy Cordero went to Boston, along with Josh Wincowski, a relief pitcher the Mets acquired in the Steven Matz trade–plus an Ex-Met To Be Named Later) is up with the club, wearing No. 26, and has inherited Almora’s role as the least-used guy on the roster. Like Daniel Zamora, who’s been up-and-down a couple of times already, he’s yet to seen any action.