As a resident of the so-called Tristate Area, I often ask people in bars what they think of the Mets season. That is not a question you should ask when the Knicks and Rangers are still in their respective playoffs, because literally no one will remember that the Mets are a team. They will reluctantly grant that the Yankees appear to be playing, although they can’t really tell you much about it. But baseball in Queens will not be acknowledged until Madison Square Garden closes for the home teams. At that point, they will realize that the National League has played a few games while they weren’t looking.

I will be attending the game tomorrow with one of the few Mets fans who is following the season, but he told me to forget going on Friday, and his accurate prediction of a one hour rain delay was prescient. (Look for me tomorrow just behind the Braves on-deck circle. I really like CitiField, by the way, while Yankee Stadium is a sterile off-putting pseudo-monument. Like John Rocker, I’ll be taking the 7 train there.)

Friday night’s tilt was Charlie Morton against José Quintana. In his preview, AAR covered their two careers, but I’d like to add a third comparison. While these two graybeards had a combined 3,832 inning pitched in MLB, that is only slightly over half the number of innings pitched by Cy Young. Between them, they have 5 career shutouts. Cy threw 76 shutouts. They have been paid around $225 million to play baseball, while Cy toiled for under $50,000 in lifetime earnings. These whippersnappers today have no gumption. Nice houses, but no gumption. Cy had gumption.

It was a raw rainy night in Queens, but my living room was made much warmer by a tumbler of Bourbon.

Charlie pitched 6 innings, giving up 2 hits walking 1 and striking out 7. Oh, but then he pitched the 7th where he gave up a long homer to Francisco Lindor. A.J. Minter and Raisel Iglesias completed the outing, with Raisel giving up a run and a near-tying clout that went foul.

The Braves got 4 of their 7 hits in the third inning, including three roundtrippers, from Ronald Acuña Jr. Ozzie Albies, and, mirabile dictu, Matt Olson. Altogether, 4 runs plus a prolonged offensive siesta for the rest of the contest.

But it was enough. 4 beats 2.

Statistical Anomaly of the Day

There have been four games in MLB history where the home team scored 4 in the third, the home team scored 1 in the 7th and there was no other scoring. Among them was April 22, 2011 when Tommy Hanson outdueled Madison Bumgarner at AT&T Park . Make of that what you will. [I wrote this paragraph anticipating that the Mets would not score in the bottom of the 9th. But I’m not erasing a Tommy Hanson reference. Tonight’s game was the only game in MLB history where the road team scored 4 in the third and gave up single runs in the seventh and ninth to win 4-2.]

New Color

Collin McHugh made his Braves TV debut as a color guy while CJ Nitkowski attends his daughter’s college graduation.. HIs analysis was fine, though he had the understandable tendency every new color guy does to talk a lot. HIs biggest impediment is a somewhat high-pitched voice. Not sure whether that gets better or worse with coaching.