Just Mets

Heading into the 9th inning of Monday night’s game, despite holding a slim 1-0 leading over the St. Louis Cardinals, I felt good about where the Mets were. Matt Harvey dominated in a game where he didn’t have his A-stuff, pitching eight gritty shutout innings. As Terry Collins pulled Harvey after eight–no controversy there as he was over 100 pitches–I was confident that this team was going to get the win with Jeurys Familia, who had been 13-for-13 in save opportunities this season, on the mound.

Things did not go well in that 9th inning, however, as the Cardinals got to Familia and were able to rally on a pair of one-out singles and a Jason Heyward sacrifice fly to shallow right field.

How many times have we seen this before? Matt Harvey, or past aces such as Johan Santana, go out there and pitch their asses off, get little to no run support, and when they come out of the game something goes wrong. Not only was Harvey robbed of a win for the second straight start–he left his last start with a 1-0 lead after seven innings and got a no decision as well–but now the game was in jeopardy for the Mets.

In year’s past, this Mets team loses this game. Hell, even just a week ago in Chicago the Mets did lose this game, as they allowed a run in the 8th and a walk-off walk in the 9th to lose 2-1. As last night’s game entered extra innings, I said that one way or another, we were going to learn a lot about this Mets team by the end of that game… And we did.

After five one-hit, shutout innings from relievers Hansel Robles, Eric Goeddel, Alex Torres and Carlos Torres, we reached the 14th inning stretch. The Mets had their fair share of opportunities to win the games in the bottom halves of the last few innings, but were incapable of getting that big hit. It was in that 14th inning that they got something going, however, as Cardinals reliever Sam Tuivailala walked the first two batters of the inning.

St. Louis manager Mike Matheny then made the bold move of bringing his closer Trevor Rosenthal into a tie game on the road. After Michael Cuddyer grounded into a fielders choice to advance the winning run to 3rd and the Cardinals opted to intentionally walk Daniel Murphy to load the bases, the Mets were just a hit, a walk, a deep enough fly out, a fielding mistake or a well placed ball from the win.

In stepped in John Mayberry Jr., who has struggled mightily early in this season, looking for his first pinch-hit of the year. The Mets were passive at the plate all night, finding themselves down in counts and taking a lot of pitches around the middle of the plate with runners on base. That trend did not continue here as Mayberry attacked the first pitch, grounding it to the left side where Jhonny Peralta made a nice diving stop, but couldn’t throw out Eric Campbell at the plate, and the Mets got their first walk-off victory of the season.

A win like this is telling to me. It showed resiliency, it showed guts, and it’s not as if the Mets were playing the last place Brewers again on Monday. No, instead they did this against a Cardinals team that entered the night with the best record in Major League Baseball. This team could have easily folded, lost this game and limped into today off of a tough loss, but they didn’t do that, they took matters into their own hands and they won the damn thing. That’s something we haven’t seen in awhile from this franchise, and it’s something I’m excited about.