Casual Diehard

According to Stathead’s data, last night’s home run by Mark Vientos off Aroldis Chapman was the 98th time in Mets history that they’ve gotten a solo shot with two outs in the ninth inning, and the third time this season.

It’s the second time this season that a rookie has saved the Mets from being shut out this way, as Francisco Álvarez also did it on July 5 in Arizona. The difference there was that the Mets were only down 1-0, so it was a game-tying home run — one of 13 out of these 98 when the Mets were one swing of the bat from getting even, and got even with the one swing of the bat.

The Mets went on to win that game on Mark Canha’s triple to score Brett Baty later in the ninth, and a 1-2-3 bottom of the frame by David Robertson. They did not win the other game when they got a solo shot with their last gasp, as Eduardo Escobar only got the Mets within 9-8 against Atlanta on May 1, the final score of that one.

The most recent walkoff on a two-out solo shot by a Met was nearly five years ago, September 13, 2018, as Todd Frazier ended the first game of a doubleheader moments after Michael Conforto had also homered off Kyle Barraclough for one of those 13 game-tying solo shots.

There have been 58 of these homers when the Mets have been behind in a game, including Vientos last night. His dinger followed Escobar into a more exclusive club, the 24th solo home run in Mets history when down to their final out at home.

Only three of those have been tying homers: Conforto in 2018, Jerry Buchek off Atlanta’s Dick Kelley in 1967, and Gus Bell in the fifth game in Mets history, off Jim Golden of the Houston Colt .45s at the Polo Grounds. Herb Moford gave up a three-run homer to Don Buddin in the 11th inning and the Mets would need to wait another six days to get their first-ever win.

Vientos’ homer saving the Mets from being blanked at home puts him in a club that only started in 1976, when Ron Hodges went deep off Pittsburgh’s Doc Medich, followed like last night by the final out of a 2-1 game. On August 27, 1985, Darryl Strawberry ended Jerry Reuss’ bid for a complete game shutout, but Tom Niedenfuer came out of the Dodgers bullpen to strike out George Foster and notch another 2-1 verdict.

The disappointment was not as stark, nor as important, the following September 8, when Strawberry denied Bob Sebra a shutout at Shea. Sebra got the complete game win, and did shut out the Mets three weeks later in Montreal, on just two hits — a Gary Carter double in the second, and an infield hit by Lenny Dykstra in the sixth.

There was even less drama on October 2, 2001, when Jay Payton denied Bronson Arroyo what would’ve been his first career shutout. He still got his first complete game and a 10-1 win, but had to wait until 2006 to twirl the first of his six career shutouts.

Strawberry and Hodges are the only ones there with Vientos in homering to get the Mets one more chance in a game they trailed 2-0. The last time before last night that the Mets broke up a shutout at home this way, it would’ve taken a lot more chances: Brandon Nimmo got the best of Danny Barnes on May 16, 2018, and Wilmer Flores followed with a double, but Barnes managed to compose himself and get Conforto to ground out and lock down the Blue Jays’ 12-1 triumph.

Earlier that year, on April 15, Flores tagged Matt Albers of the Brewers for a two-out solo shot that was a walkoff. He also did it on July 22, 2017, off Oakland’s Simon Castro. That ties Flores for the team record for a career, but not a single season, because Cleon Jones turned two 1-1 ties into 2-1 wins, just one week apart, in 1971 — August 21 off San Diego’s Dave Roberts and August 28 against the Dodgers and Jim Brewer.

Other than Flores, Jones, and Frazier, the Mets’ walkoffs on solo shots, one out from extra innings, belong to Rusty Staub on May 9, 1982 off San Francisco’s Greg Minton, and Mike Cameron off Danny Patterson to beat the Tigers on June 18, 2004.

Cameron walked off Patterson and the Tigers the next night, too, delivering the decisive base hit in the 10th inning.

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There is one way that the 2023 Mets might outdo the 2022 Mets in a positive way, and that is with their power. Brandon Nimmo hit his 19th home run of the season last night, which puts him one away from giving the Mets four players with 20 or more.

When Nimmo next goes deep, he’ll join Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor, both of whom cracked 20-plus last year, as well as Francisco Álvarez, who like Nimmo has a career high this year — the catcher, of course, is a rookie. Last year, Eduardo Escobar gave the Mets three 20-homer guys.

The team record is five players with 20 or more, set by Alonso, Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Todd Frazier, and Jeff McNeil in 2019. Unless Daniel Vogelbach, currently at 12, has a huge September, the number this year will be four, and the Mets have done that three other times:

* 1987: Gary Carter, Howard Johnson, Kevin McReynolds, Darryl Strawberry

* 2000: Edgardo Alfonzo, Mike Piazza, Robin Ventura, Todd Zeile

* 2016: Asdrúbal Cabrera, Yoenis Céspedes, Curtis Granderson, Neil Walker

From 2006-2008, Carlos Beltrán, Carlos Delgado, and David Wright each hit 20 or more homers, but never had a fourth slugger join them.

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When Francisco Álvarez was hit by a pitch yesterday to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning, Buck Showalter made the move that any manager would, sending in Tim Locastro to run for his catcher, needing him to go 270 feet to win the game.

It turned out that Álvarez just could have scored as easily as Locastro did, as DJ Stewart singled, Mark Vientos walked, and Rafael Ortega laced the walkoff single to right field.

The last time the Mets had a pinch-runner come in and score as part of a walkoff rally was three years ago today, Billy Hamilton in the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium, in a doubleheader nightcap where the Mets were the home team. In that one, Jeff McNeil walked against Aroldis Chapman, and Hamilton came in and stole second base before trotting home on Amed Rosario’s two-run shot.

In that instance, Hamilton represented the tying run. So did Juan Lagares when he scored on Dominic Smith’s home run to end the 2019 season. But it is Lagares who was the previous Mets pinch-runner to bring home a walkoff run. On September 26, 2017, Kevin Plawecki greeted A.J. Minter with a single as the Mets were tied 3-3 with Atlanta. Smith walked and Rosario struck out before Travis Taijeron delivered the winning hit.

There’s been only one time in Mets history that a runner entered the game, stole a base, and scored the winning run, and it was in the 13th inning on April 23, 1992, after a duel between Bret Saberhagen and Donovan Osborne went scoreless into extras. The Mets had already caught Rex Hudler stealing in the 12th when Dave Magadan singled with one out in the 13th — he was replaced at first by Rodney McCray, who became famous the year before.

You’ve seen that video a million times. You probably haven’t seen McCray go to second on a Junior Noboa single, steal third, and after an intentional walk to Charlie O’Brien, score the winning run when Juan Agosto hit Daryl Boston with a pitch. Well, now you can, because that game is on YouTube, with Tim McCarver and Ralph Kiner on the call.

Shoutout to Keith Miller, who pinch-ran for Garry Templeton after a leadoff single in the ninth inning of a 5-4 game, got picked off but advanced to second because Expos pitcher Barry Jones threw the ball away, then stole third and eventually scored on Kevin McReynolds’ walkoff grand slam off Scott Ruskin. That was the last walkoff grand slam the Mets hit at Shea, following Mike Jorgensen in 1980 and Tim Teufel in 1986. Tim Harkness and Jim Hickman each did it in 1963 at the Polo Grounds, while Citi Field has had walkoff slams by Jordany Valdespin in 2013, Ike Davis in 2014, and José Bautista in 2018.

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Editor’s note: There is no editor’s note today, in the interest of getting this episode posted to your feed at the normal time. Sorry for the mix-up earlier in the week!

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We’re back for more Vroom Vroom time with Addy, Britt, Jesse, and Lily, getting back into gear after F1’s summer break with an attempt to make an alignment chart for the boys in fast cars.

As the discussion of our beloved Ferrari reveals, alignment is really more of a spectrum than trying to find the right box for everyone. Some of those corners are easy to peg, but this allows for some drift — and you can be sure that we’ll be coming back to this chart, because we absolutely didn’t get to the whole grid. And how could we, what with everyone having to catch up after not having been able to vroom for so long? We didn’t even get to the possibility that Max Verstappen is transcending even this metric… we’ll save that for after his next win. So, real soon.

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Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo each went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts last night in Georgia, another rough night in a rough season, and another little edit to the Mets’ history books.

The list of career three-strikeout games is an interesting one, because it’s one of those things… like… you’ve got to be pretty good to be in the lineup to strike out three times regularly enough to be on the list. So, it’s probably not a surprise that David Wright holds the record at 61, for as long as he was a power-hitting Met. It’s a pretty wide gap, 10 of these games, to number two on the list, Michael Conforto at 51. Then it’s Darryl Strawberry at 48, and now a tie for fourth at 44 between Dave Kingman and Alonso.

Nimmo already was in the top 10, and now has broken his tie with Ron Swoboda for ninth place. Nimmo’s 30th three-strikeout game puts him six behind the two men tied for sixth, Tommie Agee and Lucas Duda. Rounding out that top 10, with 28 times striking out three times in a game, is Jerry Koosman, who more than made up for it with the strikeouts he racked up on the mound — 1,799 of his 2,556 career K’s came in orange and blue.

The next 10 are pretty interesting as a mix: Curtis Granderson and Mookie Wilson at 24; Todd Hundley, Howard Johnson, and Cleon Jones at 22; Ike Davis at 21; Mike Piazza at 20; Carlos Beltrán and Tom Seaver at 19; and it’s actually 11, not 10, because tied for 20th place on this list are Carlos Delgado and Francisco Lindor, with 18 three-strikeout games as Mets.

Lindor was 1-for-2 last night, with a walk and a hit by pitch. That moved him up to sole possession of 48th place on the Mets’ all-time list for reaching base three times in a game. He’s done it 65 times now, snapping a tie with Ángel Pagán. Next time Lindor gets on base three times, he’ll tie George Foster and Todd Zeile for 46th, with Gregg Jefferies (67), Hubie Brooks (69), and Ron Swoboda (70) on the radar. Wright has that team record at 336, with Nimmo the active leader at 142 (13th all-time, between Mookie and Lee Mazzilli), and Alonso even with Jeff McNeil at 109 (a 22nd-place tie between Conforto and Kevin McReyonlds).

The top 11 Mets, ahead of Nimmo and Wilson, for reaching base three times in a game?

* Wright, 336

* José Reyes, 238

* Edgardo Alfonzo, 196

* Strawberry, 192

* Jones & Piazza, 186

* Keith Hernandez, 185

* Beltrán, 171

* HoJo, 170

* Bud Harrelson, 168

* Ed Kranepool, 154

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Last night was the third straight game in which the Mets got fewer than five innings of work from their starting pitcher, with Tylor Megill exiting the mound in Atlanta having recorded just 14 outs. That was the same number as David Peterson on Monday night, and two more than Carlos Carrasco managed on Sunday in St. Louis.

Carrasco has had 10 starts of fewer than five innings this season, matching his total of a year ago, and becoming the first Mets starter to have multiple seasons of such futility. The record is 11 starts where no amount of offense would have qualified the pitcher for the win, set unsurprisingly in 1962, by Jay Hook — who did complete 13 of his 34 starts that year, too. Glendon Rusch completed one of his 33 starts in 2001, and also got bounced early 11 times to match Hook.

Along with Carrasco, the Mets have had Al Jackson in 1963 and Jack Fisher in 1965 reach double figures in this sorry category. So, never more than one pitcher in a season, although they’ve been close: Jackson had nine in 1962, as did Galen Cisco in ‘65. Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan each had nine in 1971, as did the trio of Mark Bomback, Ray Burris, and John Pacella in 1980. Peterson is one away from making it another sour trifecta.

It was the 1980 Mets who set the team record for this with 58 games in which a pitcher failed to get through five innings. Last year, they got to 40. It’s not September yet, and they’re at 38, with Carrasco one away from tying the team record, Megill now at eight, and Peterson with seven. The remaining 13 of those starts: three apiece by Joey Lucchesi, Max Scherzer, and Kodai Senga, two by Denyi Reyes, and one each by José Butto and Justin Verlander.

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We talked about Pete Alonso in the newsletter the other day, and now here he is with 39 home runs, right there next to Darryl Strawberry’s pair of such seasons. Of course, with more than a month to go, Alonso has his sights set on much larger numbers. We’ll see where he goes from here, to 40 and beyond…

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When Luis Urías hit a grand slam on Saturday at Yankee Stadium, it was the first time that a Red Sox number nine hitter collected a salami in the Bronx, and only the second time ever for the man at the bottom of the Boston order to go deep against the Yanks with the bases loaded. Luis Rivera had done it at Fenway Park on August 31, 1990, and that was it.

Overall, the Yankees still have a 4-2 lead in ninth-hitter grand slams against their rivals, three by pitchers: Red Ruffing in 1933, Don Larsen in 1956 (months before his World Series perfect game, what a year), and Mel Stottlemyre (inside the park) in 1965, all at Yankee Stadium. Fred Stanley took Mike Torrez out of Fenway on June 20, 1978 – sort of the opposite of Larsen, as Torrez would go on to give up Bucky Dent’s division-deciding blast over the Green Monster.

The Yankees last had their No. 9 batter hit a grand slam in 2021, Gary Sánchez off Baltimore’s Keegan Akin. The Red Sox’s last No. 9 slam before Urías was… also Urías. Last Thursday. Two days earlier.

So, in a span of three days, Urías went from having hit 46 home runs as a major leaguer without a grand slam to 48 homers with two grand slams, both out of the No. 9 hole. Only three players have done that more in an entire career: Rich Reese (for the Twins in 1969, 1970, and 1972), Dick Schofield (for the 1985 and 1986 Angels, and 1994 Blue Jays), and Yuniesky Betancourt (for the 2007 Mariners, then two for the 2010 Royals).

Betancourt’s pair in 2010 came on July 17 and August 21, but there are 29 players now, including Urías, with two career grand slams out of the No. 9 hole, and 34 days was not the record for temporal proximity there.

The record for games between grand slams by a number nine hitter is 0, set by Tony Cloninger when the Atlanta pitcher gave himself all the run support he would need on a first-inning slam off Bob Priddy, grounded out against Priddy in the third, then hit another granny off Ray Sadecki in the fourth. Cloninger gave up a solo shot to Sadecki in the fifth, but got himself a ninth RBI in the eighth, driving in more than half the runs on his way to a 17-3 complete game win.

There have been a few other No. 9 hitters with two slams in a season. Brandon Inge had a week for the 2004 Tigers, hitting a grand slam off Cleveland’s Jason Anderson on April 23 and Anaheim’s Scot Shields on the 27th, the closest anyone got to Cloninger until Urías.

In 1996, Kevin Elster hit grand slams out of the nine-hole for the Rangers on April 19 and August 5. Like Don Larsen, Madison Bumgarner had a more memorable moment in the 2014 World Series, but also hit grand slams on April 14 and July 13, both in San Francisco. The following year, Hank Conger hit grand slams for the Astros as the number nine hitter on August 1 and September 4.

The players who did it in back-to-back seasons, in addition to Reese and Schofield?

* Dizzy Trout (1949 and 1950 Tigers)

* Tom Brookens (1987 and 1988 Tigers)

* Milt Cuyler (1991 and 1992 Tigers)

* Jose Valentin (1994 and 1995 Brewers)

* Sean Berry (1995 Expos and 1996 Astros)

* Mike Matheny (1996 and 1997 Brewers)

* Darren Bragg (1996 and 1997 Red Sox)

* Hunter Renfroe (2018 and 2019 Padres)

* Raimel Tapia (2018 and 2019 Rockies)

* Martín Maldonado (2021 and 2022 Astros)

And the ones for whom the second grand slam was a repeat of more years gone by?

* Rick Wise (1971 Phillies and 1973 Cardinals)

* Casey Blake (2006 and 2008 Cleveland)

* Jake Rogers (2021 and 2023 Tigers)

* Omar Vizquel (1993 Mariners and 1996 Cleveland)

* Byron Buxton (2016 and 2019 Twins)

* Julio Lugo (2003 Devil Rays and 2007 Red Sox)

* Camilo Pascual (1960 Senators and 1965 Twins)

* Denny Neagle (1995 Pirates and 2001 Rockies)

* Bob Gibson (1965 and 1973 Cardinals)

* Kelly Johnson (2008 Atlanta and 2016 Mets)

* Champ Summers (1975 Cubs and 1984 Padres)

* Glenallen Hill (1989 Blue Jays and 1998 Cubs)

And the record for the longest time between grand slams as a number nine hitter? Jim Sundberg, at Fenway Park for the Rangers off Rick Wise (who should’ve known to be careful with No. 9 hitters, shouldn’t he?) on June 9, 1975, and then 12 years later as a Cubs pinch-hitter, blasting a game-tying slam off Lance McCullers (Sr.) of the Padres, followed by four more Chicago runs for a wild 12-8 triumph.

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This is very specific to Pete Alonso and to the Mets, because the 37 home runs that he hit in 2021 are his career-low for a non-pandemic season, and his 35th home run already gave him the Mets record for 35-homer seasons with four, but now he’s also got the Mets record for 37-homer seasons.

It’s not just that 37 is the number of homers Alonso hit two years ago, it’s that 37 was the Mets’ team record for more than a decade, from Dave Kingman doing it in 1976 (breaking his own team record of 36 the previous year to finally eclipse Frank Thomas’ benchmark of 34 in the inaugural season of 1962) until Darryl Strawberry hit 39 in 1987 (and 1988; Kingman also hit 37 in 1982).

Alonso’s 37th homer also is notable because it means we’re now into single-season leaderboard time. There’s a four-way tie for eighth on the club list at 38, so Alonso’s next home run will draw him even with Carlos Delgado (2006, 2008), Howard Johnson (1991), and Mike Piazza (2000).

Strawberry owns both of the Mets’ 39-homer seasons, and then there’s two guys at 40: Alonso last year and Piazza in 1999. After that is the tie for second-most, Todd Hundley’s former team record of 41 from 1996, tied by Carlos Beltrán in 2006. Everything from there to the Polar Bear’s 53 as a rookie in 2019 is open to be claimed as a first for a Met to land on at the end of the year.

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