Just Mets

The Mets continued their three-game set at Citi Field on Tuesday, beating the Phillies 6-5. Here are my takeaways from tonight’s game…

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. There’s a signpost up ahead–your next stop, Citi Field…” *

The Mets played perhaps one of the stranger games in their history on Tuesday night, and certainly the weirdest game I’ve ever seen. Everything happened in this game. You had Wilmer Flores and Michael Cuddyer (Cuddyer left the game but X-Rays were negative) get hit in their hands by pitches. Matt Harvey (2-0, 2.25 ERA) apparently hit Freddy Galvis which resulted in the Mets challenging except they didn’t challenge it was an umpire review except they weren’t reviewing the hit by pitch, they were reviewing whether or not Terry Collins asked to challenge in time; he didn’t.

Harvey later retaliated by hitting Chase Utley, who homered and hit an RBI single against him earlier in the game, after Flores and Cuddyer got hit by pitches, and both benches were warned. But wait, there’s more. The next batter was Ryan Howard who was awarded first base on a catcher’s interference call. To exasperate things, Howard’s bat clearly never made contact with Travis d’Arnaud‘s glove, but the call remained, and then Terry Collins was subsequently ejected from the ballgame.

Then, in the bottom of the 5th, d’Arnaud grounded a ball through the left side of the infield. Lucas Duda rounded 3rd and slid into home plate, which was followed by what felt like an eternity of he and Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz just standing there as home plate umpire Alfonzo Marquez made no call. Duda then dove back into home plate and was ruled safe. Then, the Phillies decided to challenge the call at home and the video review showed that Duda clearly touched home plate the first time, which was somehow missed by the home plate umpire, causing SNY analyst Ron Darling to express some of his frustration.

Then in the bottom of the 8th, David Wright pulled his hamstring (more on the injury here) on a stolen base and came out of the game. With the Mets having a four-man bench, and already replacing Cuddyer with Kirk Nieuwenhuis and using Ruben Tejada and John Mayberry Jr. as pinch-hitters, Anthony Recker had to play 3rd base in the 9th.

It was a truly strange night at Citi Field, and we’ve barely scratched the surface as to what actually happened in this game.

*I may or may not have paraphrased Rod Sterling at the top, there…

Matt Harvey was off, but that’s still better than most.

In his highly anticipated 2015 Citi Field debut–his first appearance at home since his final start before getting Tommy John surgery in 2013–Matt Harvey labored a bit. It started out electric, as Harvey mowed down the first two Philly batters, retiring them both on strikeouts, but it was old friend Chase Utley who changed the tempo of this game early, poking a Harvey curveball into the right field corner for a solo home run.

After being given a 4-1 lead later in the game, Harvey continued to struggle a bit, as he gave up two more runs–one on an RBI single by–guess who–Chase Utley, and another on a Cody Asche home run into the Pepsi Porch.

It wasn’t his most dominant start, and to Mets fans including myself, it felt as if he wasn’t very good, but that’s the bar that Matt Harvey has set at this point. He allowed three earned runs in six innings pitched, a quality start, struck out eight and got the victory. The guy is great, even when he’s not.

And, by the way, you never want to see anyone get hurt, and no one did in this circumstance, but it was awesome to see Harvey stick up for his teammates and retaliate by drilling Utley in the back. This is the kind of attitude this team has been lacking in year’s past, and it was awesome to see.

Citi Field was electric.

Early on tonight, I thought I was watching a playoff game. I’ve never heard the kind of pitch-by-pitch reactions by a crowd in the history of Citi Field–that’s including Johan Santana‘s no-hitter–that I heard in the first inning of Tuesday night’s game.

Matt Harvey kicked things off with a 97 MPH strike to Odubel Herra and the Citi Field faithful, doing their best to emulate the Shea Stadium faithful, were raucous from then on. I only had the privilege of watching tonight’s game on television, and still, I got chills.

Citi Field saw something tonight we haven’t seen before, and hope to see a lot more this season, and that’s a buzz.

The offense woke up–to an extent.

The Mets offense, which has struggled mightily to start the season finally showed life Tuesday night. When Harvey gave up that solo shot to Utley in the 1st, it seemed extra painful the way the team had been swinging the bats lately, but credit where credit is due as the offense backed up Harvey once again tonight.

After they put together a mini-rally in the bottom half of the 1st resulting in Cuddyer tying the game on an RBI single, Lucas Duda got the biggest hit of the night in the 2nd, ripping a 3-run double with two outs in the 2nd, giving Harvey and the Mets a 4-1 lead.

A few innings went by where the offense appeared to go back into sleep mode and the Phillies cut the lead to 4-3, but that was when Travis d’Arnaud got the big hit to give Harvey a little more cushion, pulling an RBI single into left field to make it 5-3.

Daniel Murphy added another run late by hitting not only the Mets first home run at Citi Field this season, but the first home run by anyone over the newly moved in fence in right field.

Still though, the Mets had plenty of opportunities in this game to add on and were unable to do so, as they went 4-for-18 with runners in scoring position.

Other notes from Tuesday:

Curtis Granderson went 2-for-4 with a walk and two runs scored in the win.

Lucas Duda went 2-for-3 with two doubles, three RBI and a walk.

Left-handed hitters went 1-for-2 against Sean Gilmartin with a home run.

Every Mets position player except for Juan Lagares reached base safely at least twice.

The Mets have only scored more than four runs in a game twice this season–in both of Matt Harvey’s starts.

The Mets are now 2-0 when Matt Harvey pitches this season.