Thursday night’s Mets game was everything that the second half of their season hasn’t been.
The Mets coasted to a 12-3 win, just their 28th since the All-Star break. The win came against the Marlins, who despite their sorry state had won nine of their 18 matchups with the Mets prior to Thursday. Rich Hill got the win, just the ninth time a Mets starting pitcher has earned a win in the second half. The artful performance by Hill came in the last game of the season at Citi Field, and potentially the last start of his 17-year MLB odyssey.
Speaking of which, Michael Conforto was playing perhaps his final home game as a Met. The impending free agent stroked two RBI singles, a rare sight in 2021 from the outfielder whose worst season happened to coincide with his contract year. James McCann — another poster child of the Mets’ offensive despondency — got in on the fun too, socking two RBI of his own. Francisco Lindor kissed the stadium goodnight with a screaming line drive over the right field fence for his second grand slam of the season.
The fans who have stuck it out this deep into the season deserved a game like this, which gave them plenty of instances to cheer, especially when Pete Alonso clubbed his second homer of the game. Thursday night was a fun role reversal as well, with the Marlins, not the Mets, leaving eight men on base. The home team got their licks against the band of toddlers who make up Miami’s bullpen, and their own bullpen preserved the lead given to them by baseball’s eldest statesman not named Pujols. The 26th out of the night also allowed the crowd to give Conforto a proper send off, as he made a tumbling catch in right field and tipped his hat to the crowd for several seconds afterward.
“There were a lot of emotions,” Conforto said. “It all hit me toward the end of the game, making that play and hearing the reaction from the fans. Fans were cheering my name and telling me don’t go. It really was a special night for me. When you have a crowd like that supporting you, it’s a great feeling.”
“Michael deserves that kind of treatment,” manager Luis Rojas said. “He’s a guy who bleeds blue and orange. He does special things like this. He’s shown it here for six years now, consistently. It was nice to see the fans give love back to Michael. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”
Brad Hand was the immediate replacement for Hill, who, if this was his last show, went out playing the hits. Hill lobbed several pitches that made the Citi Field scoreboard flash “86 MPH FASTBALL” and several others in the 68 or 69 mile-per-hour range that were classified as “UNKNOWN” pitch type. He pounded a thundering clap into his glove as the final out of the fifth inning fell into Lindor’s mitt, ending Hill’s night at five innings, three runs (two earned), six strikeouts and 86 pitches.
“It was very emotional,” said Hill, who also proclaimed that he wants to play next season. “Getting traded over here, I had expectations and wanted to obviously contribute more down the stretch than I did. To get one more start at home in front of these great fans meant a lot.”
Miami’s starting pitcher, Edward Cabrera, only stuck around for three innings before being lifted with a blister on the middle finger of his right hand. The rookie, making just the seventh start of his career but his third against the Mets, gave up two hits and two earned runs. The blister led to one of the rarer feats in the game, a reliever coming in and drilling the first two batters of his outing. That’s exactly what Sean Guenther did, opening the fourth inning by hitting Javier Baez and Jeff McNeil with pitches. Both Baez and McNeil would score later in the inning, sealing a win that will ultimately be meaningless in the standings, but surely provided some nice feelings for the players and fans still hopelessly invested in this team.
As the temperature in Flushing dipped, so did the attendance, but the Mets’ lead never wavered. Miguel Castro, Trevor May and Heath Hembree followed Hand’s scoreless outing with stellar ones of their own, skirting the type of razor thin margins that have defined the Mets’ season. After the Mets’ four-run onslaught in the bottom of the fourth, the Marlins never got within three runs. The players draped in blue and orange sent Conforto and Rojas out of Citi Field on the shoulders of a nondescript win, about as good of a parting gift they could give for a man who’s endured so many excruciating games in such a short time.
If this was Rojas’ last home game, as everyone in the galaxy expects, it was a tremendous break from the drama, blown leads and general suffering that often envelops the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club. Whoever gets the job next will have it no easier than Rojas, but they’ll take over a team starved for relevancy, something that Thursday night’s game, fittingly for this group of underachievers, did not have.
With a win carrying them to the exits, the feeling in the stadium aisles and subway platforms was a common, if naive one: maybe next season will have more of those.
