After the Mets had a seven-game winning streak snapped just over a week ago, Mickey Callaway came up with this sound idea.
“Let’s just start another streak,” the manager said.
That was last Friday night in Pittsburgh, after Steven Matz had stumbled against the Pirates and, while the premise sounded great, the Mets seemed due for some sort of market correction.
Don’t look now, but the Mets have won eight straight games since Callaway proposed another winning streak. Saturday night they beat the Nationals 4-3 before a sellout crowd at Citi Field, much of which was in paradise, clad in orange giveaway Hawaiian shirts.
Luis Guillorme was allowed to keep his shirt on after hitting a tying, pinch-hit homer in the eighth, a night after Michael Conforto was stripped to the waist celebrating his game-winning hit. But considering Guillorme had never homered in his major league career, spanning 107 plate appearances, maybe a teammate should have at least fired Guillorme’s cap into the crowd. Soon the Mets had another rally, punctuated by J.D. Davis’ sacrifice fly that scored the go-ahead run. So even on a night when the ultra-reliable Seth Lugo allowed a go-ahead homer to Juan Soto in the eighth, the Mets didn’t lose.
And now you are left to wonder how high this latest winning streak can climb, with ace Jacob deGrom heading to the mound Sunday, when the Mets — already winners of a seventh straight series — will go for the sweep of the Nationals.
“It’s pretty reminiscent of 2015,” Noah Syndergaard said, referring to this improbable August run.
Of course, that run four years ago came after general manager Sandy Alderson had retooled his roster, with Yoenis Cespedes, Juan Uribe, Kelly Johnson, Tyler Clippard and Conforto among the significant arrivals. This latest charge has occurred with just about the same group that was sitting 11 games under .500 after losing the first game of the second half last month in Miami.
After this latest celebration had ended, Callaway was asked about his “Let’s just start another streak” comment from eight days earlier.
“You always are optimistic about what your team can do,” Callaway said. “I think the main reason is after we lost that game in Pittsburgh we told [third base coach] Gary DiSarcina that he was going to start taking out the lineup card and that he’s got to outdo what [quality control coach] Louie Rojas did. Call me superstitious, but I think it’s about who takes the card out at this moment.”
In a deviation from the personal-catcher plan that had teamed Syndergaard and Tomas Nido for the pitcher’s previous seven starts, Callaway went with Wilson Ramos behind the plate.
The two appeared to click. Granted, Soto hit a two-run homer against Syndergaard in the first inning, blasting a full-count change-up into the left-field seats, and the Nationals had two hard-hit balls in the second. But from that point, Syndergaard and Ramos might as well have been conducting a symphony in an almost effortless manner.
“When Noah is Noah it doesn’t matter who is catching him, it’s very similar to deGrom,” Callaway said. “We got deGrom on a little bit of a roll at the aid of Nido, and [the catcher] is more something that is in the back of their mind at that point, and then when they get on a roll it doesn’t matter who catches them.”
Ramos is valued because of his offense, and that bat — on his 32nd birthday — came alive with a blast against Patrick Corbin in the fourth that tied the game, after Davis had homered two pitches earlier.
You might remember those two names: Davis and Ramos were instrumental in the Mets’ comeback victory a night earlier. Both delivered hits against Sean Doolittle in Friday’s ninth inning before Todd Frazier homered to tie it and Conforto untied it and was undressed by Pete Alonso.
Now the winning streak is eight. It’s just what Callaway envisioned from the visiting manager’s office in Pittsburgh.
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The post Mickey Callaway setting high bar is extending unlikely Mets run appeared first on Fox USA Live.
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