The Super Bowl is a distant memory, the Olympics are over, and the snow is melting (tomorrow’s bomb cyclone notwithstanding). Baseball’s back! Down south at least. There’s still another month until games that count, but Topps already has two 2018 releases out the door and we more or less know who will be on the Mets to start the season. As to how the team will do this year… They’ll have some cards, so let’s just see what to expect on that front.
Less than two months into the 2014 season, the B-Mets already have played their last regular season game of the year in Manchester, NH. They leave New Hampshire with a 7-3 record at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium after shutouts, blown leads, big hits, occasional downpours, and a 14-inning finale. Through all of it, the Binghamton roster has remained almost completely unchanged. Only backup catchers changed places, with Blake Forsythe (on the DL for his entire 2014 B-Mets stint) dealt to Oakland and Nelfi Zapata (who did not appear in a game in Manchester) replacing Xorge Carrillo after the latter’s call-up to Las Vegas. That’s effectively a stable 25-man roster to work with.
While I try to cover minor league games with as much useful information as possible, I have my limits. When it comes to giving an illustrated first-hand account that goes beyond what the box score will tell you, I can at least fake competence. But when people start asking about mechanics, I’ve got nothing. I don’t like watching games from behind home plate and I can’t tell a curve from a slider. I can juggle multiple electronic devices and capture photos and video while live-tweeting a game though. So I added a video camera to my usual game pack and quickly realized that getting sharp video at night games just wasn’t happening. Oh well. What does it all add up to? Damned if I know.
Let’s kick things off with Wilfredo Tovar enthusiastically grounding into a double play. Is this something he learned during his stint in the big leagues last year? Wherever he got it from, that’s a heck of a follow-through.
Rainy Lara’s previous outing at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium consisted of 7 scoreless innings with just 3 strikeouts. Despite the results, Lara was clearly gassed by the 7th inning and got lucky on a couple of fly balls to center. This time around, the strikeouts were up but so was Lara’s 7th inning luck. Ryan Schimpf had accounted for all of New Hampshire’s offense with a pair of solo home runs before Lara went an inning too far and nearly threw away a 4-run lead. John Church did his best to limit the damage and Cody Satterwhite pitched a perfect 9th to close out a narrow 6-5 victory.
They’ll let anyone to second base around here…
Rainy Lara kept things quick and clean for the first three innings, giving up only two hits while striking out three over that span. The Mets struck first in the top of the third with three runs on hits from Travis Taijeron, Wilfredo Tovar, Brian Burgamy, and Kevin Plawecki plus a Matt Clark HBP. Clark was in serious pain after being hit but stayed in the game to run the bases. Cory Vaughn took his place as DH the next time through the batting order.
Lara got three more strikeouts in the 4th, but only after giving up a solo home run to Ryan Schimpf. Schimpf hit a second solo home run in the 6th, but that was the extent of New Hampshire’s scoring over the first six innings.
The Mets added a run of their own in the top of the 6th on a Travis Taijeron double that missed being a home run by mere inches. It was still enough to score Jayce Boyd, who walked earlier in the inning.
Darrell Ceciliani scores from first on a pair of throwing errors
The 7th inning got started with a Darrell Ceciliani single that apparently bugged New Hampshire pitcher John Anderson. Repeated pickoff attempts have a way of going bad, though Rainy Lara got away with a whole bunch at once earlier in the game. For Anderson, three was his limit. Ceciliani made it to third base when the pickoff went awry and then scored when the throw to third had the same result. I guess that’s one way to get rid of a runner…
In a surprising twist, Cory Vaughn, batting well under .200 this season, hit a double with two outs. Kevin Plawecki, batting well over .300 this season, then doubled Vaughn home on what appeared to be a routine fly ball. That would do it for the Mets’ offense, but when’s the last time they blew a 4-run lead? Oh, right, last night…
It’s never a good sign when runners are rolling around the bases…
Three hits and one out later, Lara was pulled from the game with the lead cut to 6-3. John Church would go on to allow both inherited runners to score, but neither team managed anything other than a strikeout or groundout over the rest of the game.
Cody Satterwhite strikes out Jon Berti to end the game
Final Score: Bingamton 6, New Hampshire 5
Matt Clark watches one of 20 balls he saw on Sunday
Matt Clark is not the fastest runner on this team. Twice this series, Clark grounded out on plays with less than stellar fielding. He also had two home runs, so that brisk jog is working rather well for him. In the series finale though, Clark proved that the eye is mightier than the leg with five straight walks, two of which eventually brought him around to score. All that walking pushed the game time past the three hour mark despite a lack of offense on the opposing side as the Mets finished off the series with a 6-0 win over the Fisher Cats.
Hansel Robles hasn’t seen his prospect status rise since his playoff run two years ago on the all-star Brooklyn Cyclones rotation. He hasn’t gone bust either, but this outing illustrated why he’s in prospect limbo. At times, he was lights out, with six strikeouts over five shutout innings, two of which saw the Fisher Cats go down in order. It took him 81 pitches to get through those five innings though, two of which ended with the bases loaded. It was a mixed bag of an outing that left the B-Mets bullpen on the hook for another four innings.
Travis Taijeron frequently looked lost on the basepaths
New Hampshire pitcher Aaron Sanchez had a few problems of his own, but fastball speed sure wasn’t one of them. At 92-95, Sanchez’s fastball was easily the fastest of the series. Speed alone wasn’t enough though; the Mets put runners in scoring position in each of the first two innings but failed to score because of double plays and baserunning blunders like Travis Taijeron getting a late read on the stop sign after rounding second and getting caught with nowhere to go. Taijeron would find himself in a similar situation later in the game when he rounded second on a fly ball that was caught and couldn’t get all the way back to first base in time. The lane from second to third claimed another victim in the 8th when Wilfredo Tovar saw the runner ahead of him hold up at third and turned around to see second base occupied. Tovar held perfectly still between second and third and went unnoticed for a short time before someone realized that the count of runners vs. bases was off. Looks like Binghamton will be working on some baserunning drills…
Dustin Lawley follows Matt Clark’s walk with a HBP
After going down in order in the third, the B-Mets got on the board in the fourth inning without putting a ball in play. After Matt Clark took his customary walk, Aaron Sanchez hit the next two batters to load the bases and then used a 95mph fastball to walk in the game’s first run. After giving up a sac fly and an RBI single, Sanchez struck out Darrell Ceciliani to end his outing on a high note.
Brad Glenn strikes out to end the 5th inning
Robles got into his biggest jam in the 5th when Mike Crouse hit a ground ball down the right field line that veered into the New Hampshire bullpen and settled under a tarp. Crouse reached third by the time Travis Taijeron was able to dig the ball out from under the tarp but the ball was never ruled dead. Binghamton Manager Pedro Lopez came out to argue, to no avail. Robles, clearly flustered by the situation, got the next batter to ground out and then hit Kenny Wilson with a pitch, drawing words from the home plate umpire. A strikeout, stolen base, and walk loaded the bases with two outs, but Robles struck Brad Glenn out to end the inning with a smile.
Cody Satterwhite took over to pitch the 6th and 7th innings, giving up just one hit in that span. John Church struck out the side in the 8th and Jon Velasquez pitched a perfect 9th to secure the shutout victory. That side of the game went quickly, but the top half of each inning slowed the pace considerably.
Dustin Lawley finds a less painful way to get on base
While the Fisher Cats only managed a lone single over the final third of the game, the B-Mets put runners on second and third in three straight innings. Darrell Ceciliani scored on a passed ball in the 7th, but that was the only Mets run in the final third until Dustin Lawley doubled in a run with nobody out in the 9th. Cory Vaughn drove in the game’s final run with a pop fly before the B-Mets stranded Lawley at third.
This lopsided story left me nothing to say about Jon Velasquez. So here he is, presented without comment.
Mike Crouse strikes out to end the game
Over, and over, and over, and over, and over…
The first few at-bats of a game can set the tone for the rest of the night. That was certainly the case last night when the B-Mets recorded two home runs before the Fisher Cats recorded the game’s first out. Noah Syndergaard, due to start next Sunday’s Futures Game for the USA team, made his Manchester debut against his former franchise in the Saturday night spotlight previously held by Rafael Montero. A two-out home run in the bottom of the 6th gave the Fisher Cats three runs and would have made this a close game, if the Fisher Cats had managed to retire 27 straight Mets batters after the opening act. They only managed to get 12 before the game got out of control.
Runner on first? Big mistake.
While the Mets took almost half of the game off offensively after their first two home runs, the Fisher Cats didn’t fare much better against Syndergaard. The Fisher Cats singled off of Syndergaard in the first, third, and fourth, but Syndergaard answered back each time with either a pair of strikeouts or a double play. With a fastball that started at 95 and only got better as the game went on, the Fisher Cats just couldn’t keep up. Syndergaard almost seemed bored if there wasn’t a runner in play.
Wilfredo Tovar, power hitter?
The fifth inning would be Syndergaard’s first real test of the night. Well, the top of the fifth anyway, which went on long enough to make inactivity a concern. Blake Forsythe broke the streak of 12 straight Mets outs with a double off the outfield wall and Joe Bonfe drove him home with a single. Wilfredo Tovar, not known for his power, cleared the bases with his first home run as a B-Met. A walk and two singles loaded the bases with no outs, but somebody flipped the switch back to “outs” and three straight ended the inning.
With Syndergaard’s fastball cooled back down to 95, New Hampshire got a runner to second base for the first time of the night with a pair of singles in the bottom of the 5th. That was as far as they would get though, as Wilfredo Tovar tagged the lead runner out on the next play and Syndergaard ended the inning on a strikeout. He opened the bottom of the 7th with another strikeout, changing speeds from 79 to 96 and back down to 78. Wilfredo Tovar then misjudged a ground ball on the bounce to put Brett Lawrie on base, followed by an A.J. Jimenez single. Syndergaard went back into strikeout mode on Brad Glenn, but Clint Robinson was able to send an 80mph curveball over the right field wall for three unearned runs. Another strikeout ended the inning, but the B-Mets had lost half of their lead.
Until Darrell Ceciliani added a pair of runs on yet another home run in the 7th. The Fisher Cats tried to rally back in the bottom half with a single and Syndergaard’s first walk of the night, but we know how this one goes. A strikeout (Syndergaard’s 7th of the night) and a double play (3rd of the night, line drive straight to Wilfredo Tovar and a short toss to Muno to get the runner at second) ended the threat and Syndergaard’s night. But at 8-3 after 7 innings, this game was far from over.
A bit too far for many of the fans who were waiting for the postgame fireworks show. Part of the problem was the top of the 8th, which is when all hope for a Fisher Cats comeback was lost. Two pitchers, 5 walks, one strikeout, a home run, a triple, a single, and a sac fly. I probably lost your attention with just that sentence, imagine what it was like to be there in person. The next six outs went by quickly with just a HBP worth noting (erased on a double play). And we’re on to the bottom of the 9th.
Bottom of the 9th, two outs, bases loaded, down by 11. This is not exactly the situation you dream of when you’re a kid. With Adam Loewen facing Adam Kolarek, the Fisher Cats had done their best to deny their fans a short wait for fireworks. Loewen watched strike three from Kolarek and that was the game.
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