Mack’s Morning Report – 10-31-15 – 7 Train, Game 3

Good morning.

Mack's Mets ‏@JohnMackinAde  Port Orange, FL - @kevinburkhardt  - we miss you Kevin but we also are all very proud of you

 Kevin Burkhardt ‏@kevinburkhardt  -  thanks John. Means a lot

Cute story on the Mets –

Anecdotally, there are two main spots on the walk from the 7 train to Citi Field where people start making noise before a Mets playoff game. The first is on the initial descent from the elevated platform, during the shoulder-to-shoulder rush down a blind flight of gray stairs and into the concrete breezeway that is the Willets Point-Mets subway station. This is where you get the little flarings-up of Let's Go Mets chants, which echo satisfyingly in the tight stairwell but dissipate as the crowd empties into the wider space and adopts the cutback-heavy broken-field walking approach favored by New York pedestrians with someplace to be.

Mack – One of the things I am really enjoying this week is all the articles being written by writers that normally never have a kind word to say about the Mets.

On Game 3, what can I say? On one hand, I’m thrilled the team that I root and write for is in the World Series; however, I had hoped they would have played a little better in the first two games than they nad.

However, let’s give the Royals credit. They can hit up and down their lineup and don’t seem to have any trouble tagging ‘The Big 3’ and their fastballs. Still, the Mets have played sloppy baseball, something you should be past doing once you’ve reached this far into a season.

I guess we will never find out if Thor’s dust ball on the first pitch of the game was intentional, but it sure gave the Royals a reason to come out swinging.

Still, two Mets two-run homers (David Wright, Curtis Granderson) and a timely infield single by Michael Conforto did give the Mets a 5-3 lead after four innings.

It’s almost as if Noah Syndergaard had to give up three early runs to set up his fastball so his secondary pitches could take over later on in the game.

It sure looked like Terry Collins made another decision in the sixth inning that Reese Kaplan would write a post on. I really though leaving Syndergaard in after loading the bases was a bad move, but the (cough) Gold Glove (cough) fielding shortstop Wilmer Flores might have saved the outcome of Game 3.

This was followed by what turned out to be another great decision by the Mets, activating Juan Uribe for the World Series. His opposite field single scored the sixth Mets run… followed by Wright’s two-run single… and all of a sudden it looked like the victory was in hand.

The strange thing about this game was that I never felt that the lead was safe. Maybe it’s just the years of losing that just set me up for the fall I was waiting for the entire night.