Reese Kaplan -- Sometimes Lowered Expectations Can Pay Big Dividends

Every now and then something happens on the baseball field which defies expectation, yet it gets relatively little notice compared to the score of the game, the big play, the egregious error or something else considered more newsworthy.  

Starting on Friday night in Miami the Mets received some unbelievably good pitching performances that didn’t get the accolades they deserve.  The first that came to mind was from big reliever Trevor May.  If you only looked at his baseball card stats, then he’s been a great acquisition, but many folks shudder when he’s brought into a high stress situation as he’s very emotional and doesn’t seem always to respond well to adversity.  

When he entered the game in the 8th inning the score was still tied between the Mets and the Marlins.  It seemed somewhat natural to have him join during a setup inning but at the same time it also seemed like the lid could come off at any time.  Sure enough, he walked two batters, one of whom was given the free pass courtesy of some atrocious umpiring by Tim Timmons.  It appeared as if May was going to get overly rattled.

Instead, May struck out the side, allowed no runs to score and seemingly let his war whoop upon closing out the inning serve as a warning shot to the man in blue.  You could see him jawing in the dugout long after the inning ended with Tomas Nido confirming the missed strike calls by Timmons done with hand gestures.  May served the team well and stepped it up big time when they needed him most.  

Another somewhat unsung hero from that game was injury rehabber Drew Smith. He arrived to the Mets as part of the long forgotten Lucas Duda trade and started off with a fairly impressive performance.  Then came a seemingly long time away from the game with injury but now he’s back out of depth necessity and he was like a machine Friday night getting the Marlins quite easily in his inning of work in the 11th.  

The magic unfortunately came to and end the very next day when it was Smith who served up a bottom-of-the-9th home run that gave the game to the hometown Marlins, but given the state of the team’s pitching right now, it is understandable that everyone was going to be pushed to or over the limit.  Miguel Castro had done the same thing on Friday night, too.

Saturday saw a pitcher who fans were ready to toss onto a Syracuse bus (or under it) come through with his best work in a Mets uniform.  Sometimes starter, sometimes opener and sometimes reliever Joey Lucchesi has been flat out awful.  When word came out that he would get the nod to start the day game against the Marlins, you could hear the fans’ collective groan all the way back in Flushing.  

So who in the Mets universe could have foreseen a 4-inning starting performance in which Lucchesi would give up just a single hit during that period of performance, not walk a single batter and strike out eight of the Marlins he faced?  Wow!  The club needed someone to give the performance of his career and Lucchesi did so just as it was scripted to happen.  

The expectations for Sean Reid-Foley were quite the opposite.  He was virtually unhittable in his early trials in the majors for the Mets, so when he stepped into Saturday’s game everyone was confident things would again go very well.  Unfortunately, it was not the night for Reid-Foley’s arm to save the club as he gave up four hits and a run in his 2.1 innings pitched.  Those numbers are not exactly awful, but they were unneeded at a time when all of the arms have been overused out of necessity.  

On the plus side, Aaron Loup who was not good Friday night bounced back to bail out Reid-Foley on Saturday with 2 thirds of an inning without allowing a baserunner.  Sometimes you never know when good things will happen.