Pete Alonso homered. Michael Conforto homered. Just like swell not so old times. Except they didn’t come close to tearing each other’s shirts off. Things change and move on. The Big Man can still bust the Citi and other ballparks in half, but he cycles through new handshake partners all the time. Does anybody in San Francisco refer to Conforto as Scooter? Conforto and Alonso dingered to a draw Monday night on the Coast, each going deep once with the bases empty. Alas, Conforto’s Giants beat Alonso’s Mets, 5-2, on Monday night. It was 4-0 before each of our home run heartthrobs of 2019, when th ..read more

Baseball: So Betts, Ohtani and Freeman reached base 12 times in Saturday’s Mets-Dodgers game. Me: OMG, did we lose by like two touchdowns? What poor position player threw the last two innings? Baseball: Oh, the Mets won, 6-4. Me: Huh? Baseball: [shrugs] — Jason Fry (@jasoncfry.bsky.social) Apr 20, 2024 at 11:46 PM Like I said, that was Saturday. On Sunday, the terrifying trio only reached base six times, but the Mets’ Houdini act stopped working. It was 2-0 LA after the third on an Ohtani homer, 10-0 LA after the fifth on everything but the kitchen sink, and if you paid much attention to wha ..read more

What do you suppose those 11 Mets and 13 Dodgers who were left on base Saturday did to amuse themselves while a baseball game was proceeding to nifty conclusion without them? Given what a beautiful day it appeared to be in Chavez Ravine, my guess is they broke out the wicker baskets and treated themselves to a leisurely picnic, the kind with lots of lounging that could be misconstrued as loitering if you thought they were just hanging out at first, second, and/or third for no discernible reason. Maybe they had some other activities planned only to find their more Type A acquaintances had alrea ..read more

How do you know things are going well? Here’s a sign: You take the lead off an opposing pitcher before he even throws a pitch. The Mets somehow did that Tuesday night, the culmination of several unlikely events. They were down 1-0 to the Pirates in the seventh after being smothered by Pittsburgh’s Jared Jones and watching that lone Pirate run come home on an excuse-me bleeder off the bat of Bryan Reynolds, the kind of evening that makes you think this time the deck is too stacked for you to find your way to safety. But with one out in the seventh Francisco Lindor walked and Pete Alonso singled ..read more

Ah, baseball. It’s a game of redemption, they say. The question sometimes is who gets redeemed last. Chris Taylor, normally reliable as a Dodger, has endured a nightmarish 2024 so far, one that left him hitting .029 going into Friday night’s game against the Mets. Things didn’t get much better for Taylor in his first AB: In the third he faced Sean Manaea with the Dodgers down 4-0 and trying to get back in the game. Taylor hit into a double play. But this was a quietly wild game best suited to playing on a seesaw. The Mets beat up Yoshinobu Yamamoto, not long ago the object of their offseason a ..read more

“Don’t you just love it when you come back from the bathroom and find your food waiting for you?” Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) asks Vincent Vega (John Travolta) over dinner at Jackrabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction, just as she has indeed returned from (ahem) powdering her nose to find the “bloody” Durward Kirby Burger she ordered waiting for her. The baseball version of this experience can be just as satisfying. For very recent example, on Wednesday afternoon, the Mets were leading the Pirates in the bottom of the sixth inning, 2-1. It was a game I was in and out of consuming live, as will happen on ..read more

The Mets should consider this a friendly suggestion. They should also look good in their new uniforms. This is a test, by the way. We’ve been having a few technical problems and hope to work them out so you can visit our site with ease, link to previous articles and share your thoughts Metwise. Thank you for your patience ..read more

The Mets are suddenly good. Well, not good exactly. Statistically speaking, they’re average. But in the vibes column — which you won’t find in your paper, on MLB.com or Baseball Reference, so don’t look for it — the Mets are killing it. They rose to average statistically and red hot vibe-istically by beating the Pirates in an odd affair on Jackie Robinson Night, with both Mets and Bucs wearing blue 42s on their backs and their meeting blessed by the regal presence of Rachel Robinson, now 101. She, of course, was very much a partner in Jackie Robinson’s drama, which is somehow both long ago and ..read more

I wish I had brought some string with me. An enormous spool of string. Had I, I could have offered some to each player I saw in the Shannon Forde Press Conference Room Sunday morning and asked him to align himself just so in order to form the most Amazin’ live-action Immaculate Grid you could ever hope to see. Mike Torrez of the Mets in 1983 and 1984, you also played for the Cardinals and the Expos and the A’s and the Orioles and the Red Sox and the Yankees. Please stand in the upper left. Gary Sheffield of the 2009 Mets, you came up with the Brewers and preceded to touch down with the Padres ..read more

Sometimes you stumble into something that catapults you toward something else. Shortly before the Mets, amid Sean Manaea’s off afternoon and a surfeit of Bobby Witt, stumbled Saturday into their 11-7 loss to the Royals, I stumbled into a nugget of information totally new to me. Sixty years ago, on April 13, 1964, the Mets held a season’s eve workout, itself nothing unusual. The club was about to travel to Philadelphia to begin its third year of existence, so they figured they’d get the last of their Spring Training in at home. Except home wasn’t ready. Shea Stadium would open on April 17, and ..read more