MIAMI – This is the way it’s going to be for the Mets from here on in, long days and longer nights of grinding, scoreboard watching, and remembering that there is a reason why teams like the Marlins and the Nationals are where they are, at and near the bottom of the standings.
“We’ve been giving stuff away lately,” Willie Randolph said through weary, bleary eyes last night. “It’s good to get a little help from someone else.”
Pedro Martinez wasn’t in top form and didn’t have to be. The Mets seemed straddled early in the game by an all-too-familiar malaise, and didn’t really need to shake it off, because the Marlins were more than happy to do it for them, committing six errors.
Throw in a 2-hour and 21-minute rain delay?
You have the makings of a long day and a longer night at the office, grinding, scoreboard watching, and, most important, surviving.
“We need to get back on track,” Martinez said. “Hopefully, this does that for us.”
The final score was 9-6, and it was a blessed relief to enter the ninth inning with a three-run lead and leave with it fully intact. Billy Wagner said he was feeling better, but there’s no way of knowing just how long his back spasms will afflict him, or when they will decide to strike. Having a day-to-day closer is a recipe for disaster, but for one night (and morning) it didn’t affect the Mets.
Martinez was cuffed around early, but bounced back nicely once the Marlins started handing the Mets runs the way your grandmother used to hand out dollar bills. He spotted the Marlins a 3-0 lead, and throughout his 90-pitch night the Marlins and their young bats seemed to find Pedro’s stuff particularly hittable.
Still, there was a vintage Pedro moment, the kind that makes you stop and shake your head and realize that for however much his pure talent may be eroded through age and wear and tear and surgery, we are still unlikely to see his kind again very soon.
The Mets had tied the game at 3-3 in the third inning thanks to two errors and a passed ball, the first three of an astonishing eight unearned runs surrendered by Scott Olsen. Olsen isn’t what you’d call even-keeled even in the best of times. This was a sign the Mets surely would have an opportunity to break the game wide open.
But first they had to remain tied.
This was supposed to be Pedro’s time as a lab experiment, a low-pressure jog into the teeth of important autumn baseball. Get his pitch count up. Get his arm strength back. It was supposed to be about simulation, with the idea being he would be hitting his stride just as the Mets were hitting October.
That was the plan, anyway.
Now, with one out in the third, Miguel Cabrera doubled and Josh Willingham walked and Mike Jacobs singled, loading the bases, putting Pedro in peril, forcing him to confront the first true critical stretch of his post-op career.
As you would expect, he was splendid. First, on a full-count to Cody Ross, Martinez threw one of the most gorgeous change-ups you will ever see, dead at the knees. Ross thought it ball four but he should know: Pedro Martinez gets that call. Cody Ross does not. Not at this stage of their respective careers. As an encore, Pedro threw three straight textbook curveballs to Miguel Olivo, and Olivo stared at all three.
“That,” Pedro said, “was the turning point of the game. And maybe it can be the turning point of this stretch we’re in, too.”
From there, it was a baseball blur: five more unearned runs by the Marlins. Two more innings from Pedro. Then the rain delay that felt like it might never end, starting just before 9 o’clock, ending just before 11:30.
In any other time of the calendar, they would likely have called it with a free conscience, but the Phillies already had won and would have brought in the Supreme Court if someone had granted the Mets a 15-out victory.
So they played. Carlos Delgado hit a home run in his first game back after more than two weeks. The Mets beefed their lead up, then tried to hand it back in the eighth before Scott Schoeneweis jot Jeremy Hermida to look at strike three.
And when Schoeneweis returned in the ninth, got the Marlins 1-2-3 and ended the game 5 hours and 44 minutes after it started, the grinding – and the surviving – was done for one more day.