On the morning of June 1, the Mets and the Astros were suffering from the same condition: Baseball Catatonia. The first two months had been unkind to each of them. They both exhibited the classic symptoms:
No hitting when the pitching was good.
Horrible pitching when the hitting was OK.
And awful defense, baserunning, leaky bullpens and general ineptitude tossed liberally into the mix day after day after day.
It seemed like both teams had a book of postage stamps awaiting them at the breakfast table the morning of June 1, the better to mail in the rest of the season. The Astros were 25-33 (after being as many as 12 games under .500) as May clicked to June. The Mets were 24-33 (after being as many as 11 games under).
Then a couple of funny things happened.
For the Astros, who will visit Citi Field for three games beginning Friday night, it was a bit simpler: They started to more closely resemble the elite baseball machine responsible for two World Series wins and seven straight playoff appearances. They are 15-7 in June. They are 40-40, at even par for the first time all year.
The Mets are even better: 15-6 in June, and 39-39, at sea level for the first time since losing to the Braves on May 10. There are a few things that have helped, notably an 11-3 stretch of games against teams with losing records (plus two with the Yankees, who are presently playing like one) in which they’ve won five straight series, righted their pitching and their hitting, haven’t blown a ninth-inning gimme in a while — all things you need to do to build a winning stretch.
There’s one other thing:
Francisco Alvarez is in the lineup every day.
And, lately, because the schedule has had an unusual surplus of off days and day games, he has truly been in there every day. That’s generally a good thing anyway, having one of your front-line players around. For the Mets, it’s been just about everything.
You want to credit the Grimace — the overstuffed, anthropomorphic purple taste bud that threw out the first pitch before a game against the Marlins on June 12, a night that kick-started the seven-game winning streak at the heart of the team’s June surge? That’s fine. That’s cute. And the site of Grimace guzzling beers during Wednesday’s rain delay was a perfect touchstone for all of this.
Give Grimace his due.
Or think about Grizzly, which isn’t Alvarez’s nickname although it should be, as a 1-2 combination with Pete Alonso’s Polar Bear, and represents the larger-than-life presence that Alvarez has been to the Mets this year. Consider:
They are 22-8 when he plays, including brief stints as a DH and a pinch hitter.
They are 22-3 in the last 25 games he’s played, which bookend a 51-day stay on the disabled list during which the Mets felt like they were spinning off the equator and straight into a full and total July sell-off. You can’t say Alvarez is the only reason for this. And the fact is, one of the great finds of the season has been Luis Terrens, Alvarez’s backup, who will get his share of starts when the Mets start the 17-games-in-17-days stretch that’ll take them to the All-Star break.
Still, 22-3 is 22-3.
And Alvarez hasn’t just been a good luck charm. He’s been … well, a grizzly with the bat in his hands. He homered and had three hits against the Yankees on Wednesday, lifting his average to .313 and his OPS to .904. After a 2-for-14 scuffle immediately off the injured list, he’s been raging hot: His last eight games he’s had three home runs, nine RBIs, seven extra-base hits and he’s slashing .556/.647/1.037.
That’s a 1.684 OPS. It’s crazy. It’s nuts. And, alas, unsustainable.
But Alvarez’s impact doesn’t have to be, especially because Mets pitchers love throwing to him. They have a 2.71 ERA throwing to him, and are well over 4.00 throwing to everyone else. That’s not just coincidence. And neither is the fact that the Mets seem looser and happier in the same lineup as Alvarez, who seems to be having a hell of a good time even when he takes a foul ball off his mask.
“He cares, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said this week of his second-year catcher. “They’re feeding off of each other, and Alvy’s right there in the thick of it.”
Improbably, the Mets are back in the thick of the playoff chase now, and so are the Astros, two teams left for dead in tire tracks right around Memorial Day. The Astros seemed to get better simply by remembering they are the Astros. For the Mets, it was something else. Some want to thank The Grimace. Better to thank the man who should soon be known as The Grizzly.
