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Harvest Happiness. If anybody remembers the Hanukah song by Adam Sandler back in the day, the lyric that I'm thinking of is Paul Newman's Half-Jewish, Goldie Hahn's Half-2. Put them together. What a fine-looking Jew.
Well, it kind of in that vein, and I'm saying kind of. If you could put together first half of 2017, Jason Vargas, and second half of 2018 version of Jason Vargas, what a fine-looking left-hand picture that would be. Alas, the first half of 2018 happened, it did not go well, but boy Vargas, looking great down the stretch, Mets all over the Braves again. They went 4-1, kicking the Braves out of New York.
We're gonna recap for you next on the daily Mets podcast. Nice and all the lyrics, by the way, to the Hanukah song. Guess who eats together at the Carnegie Deli, Bowser from Sean and I, and the bar through funds are really. But we're not gonna go there.
We've got other things we must do. Must do. This is a big podcast. This is a boy.
We're getting down towards the end. There's only three more of these bad boys after this one here, so just dry your eyes. Don't get all weepy on me yet. Let's go.
Let's do the Mets 4-BRABS1 recap on a day where we celebrated Gary Cohen at the ballpark. Not everybody, but the radio guys and the TV guys. We all got together. Somebody baked a cake.
What a cake it was too. Blue icing with a nice little orange and white striped tie on it. And Gary's 30 years in now in the Mets organization started, of course, as a young Gary Cohen with Bob Murphy. It worked 13 years in that regard.
Then it was two years with Howie. And now, gosh, all these years on the TV side. And congratulations to 30 years for the great Gary Cohen now in the Mets employee. And thanks for the candy corn too.
It was great cake, but there's also candy corn at this pre-game party. I was really appreciated. I had meatballs and candy corn. That was my dinner tonight.
I think I'm 12 years old. Yep, meatballs and candy corn. Alright, so the game itself, this was a Jason Vargas start. And Jason now over his last eight starts is 5-1 with a 2.62 ERA.
Where has this been? Great change up, good looking knuckle curve. He'll end the season 7-9 with a 5.77 ERA, but we'll know that down the stretch, it was so much better. The Mets starting pitching in general in September has been great.
2.67 ERA in September. That is number one in the major leagues. Vargas kept the ball down. This is a guy that had allowed 18 homers in his first 80 innings this year.
But just a lot of strikeouts and grounders in this one. He struck out six and seven innings. First time he'd gotten through seven innings. Back first time he had gotten into the seventh inning at all.
He got 21 outs. He allowed only three hits. And the bullpen was shaky. Soresak came and got nobody out.
Zamora with a big strike out of Tyler Flowers. Drew Smith got hit a little bit. Robert Gazzalman made it a little dicey there in the ninth. But he got his 13th save.
Took him 22 pitchers, but he got it. He hit Adam Duvall on an 0-2 count to make it 2-1. And Freddy Freeman pinched it. That's a dangerous proposition there.
But he got Freeman and the Mets end up winning it 4-1. The offense coming from the catcher. Kevin Ploueki the starting catcher. A home run number seven.
That and the third inning gave the Mets the lead. And then off the bench, Devin Mezzaraco reminding us that he's on the team. Three run, pinched at home run. Nine of his 11 home runs this year from the seventh inning on.
That's a nice little trick that he's able to pull off there. Mezz now 16-9 in September. They were 17-9 back in March slash April. And again, we keep talking about this, but that very soft underbelly in the middle.
If they could just go with how they looked in April and September. This would be a playoff down ball club. But alas, that did not happen. No, Cesspedus.
Very little of J Bruce this year. And it just was not going to be the Mets season. Now it's all about David Wright going forward. You're figure he's going to get a pinched appearance probably in the game tonight.
Get him ready for the game on Saturday. David certainly earned the admiration of everybody in that clubhouse before the game Thursday. He brought in engraved, personally engraved bottles of Don Julio, which is fine tequila. And left those in the locker of all of his teammates.
Even the guys that he hardly even knows. You know, class act to the very end, David Wright. And we'll talk a lot tomorrow, by the way, about David and just kind of some memories and all of that. But for now, we might as well get to Mickey Calloway and talk about what happened in this particular ballgame.
They got them at 75-84. And Mickey's still taking some heat for not giving Jacob to go on his proper due when he left the game the night before. No curtain call, didn't let him pitch to one batter in the ninth and then take him out or something like that. Well, obviously the grime's going to get a lot of regard and a lot of attention going forward because there's November he'll be named Cy Young.
Well, not actual person Cy Young, we'll get a Cy Young award. Everybody that Harold Reynolds seems to agree, this is a thing that, I mean, look, last 24 starts were all quality starts, longest single season streak in major league history. 29 straight starts of allowing three runs are fewer, longest single season streak there as well. And you know, if people want to get stuck on only 10 wins, it's the last time I'm going to even go down this road.
But the Mets somehow went 14 and 18 when DeGrom started, not his fault. Guys got a 1.70 RA. The Elias Sports Bureau found us 40 starting pitchers in the last 40 years, whose teams went exactly 14 and 18 in their starts. The lowest DRA before DeGrom was 3.07 by Heroki Kuroda in 2011.
The median ERA was about 4.2. Ricky Romero, for the Blue Jays in 2012, had a 5.70 RA and his guys went 14 and 18. Well, DeGrom was 1.70 and his team somehow went 14 and 18. 6 lowest ERA since the Bob Gibson season in 1968.
And the bullpen didn't know favors. The bullpen allowed 56 runs and 62 innings coming on for DeGrom this year. We don't need to go through all that. DeGrom was your Cy Young Award winner.
Anyway, the game recap I probably should have mentioned to you was brought to you quite lovingly by our great friends. And we do have very, very fine sponsors by the way. We got to give them their due. Thank you very much all year to all of them, but certainly to Berkley Vilitation, who brings you this part of the program.
Their outpatient therapy is great. Give him a call at 914-597-2200 or check him out at berg.org for more info. As for Mickey Callaway, he's always bought C5 Ridgewood Savings Bank. You know at Ridgewood, you'll find the same time saving online in mobile tools as the Big Banks, but with better service for your fees and then at the runner-round.
Go to ridgewoodbank.com, member FDIC, equal housing lender. Postgame Mickey, coming at you here. It was, I think he had everything working. He was able to bounce the brick and ball.
We needed to get the change up and then the sinker, you know, the fastball to where he wanted to. He did a great job. He finished the season strong for us. And that was good to see.
Did you think about pushing him back out there? Did you want him to end on a note like that? Well, we were going to send him back out, but we needed the three-run homer by Mesoraco to win the game. So, but yeah, if we, if we hit in his spot, had to come up, we were going to send him back out.
I know I asked you this before the game, but given the way he finished the season, is this, is this something that he can kind of take out and feel good going into the offseason? Or do you think, especially knowing him, that the totality of the year is just going to be a bit of a disappointment? I think both is true. I think he's going to take pride in that he finished strong and knows that when he was on his routine that he can still be successful.
And I think he's also going to be motivated to come back and be better never because it wasn't the season that he probably wanted to have overall. I know he's probably still disappointed in himself and would never use, you know, his routine or lack of spring training as an excuse because he's such a professional. I've been using that excuse for him. He would never use that.
So, he's going to be more motivated than ever to have a great winner and come into the season next year and have a successful year. Alright, thanks very much to Mickey Calloway as a Mets indeed improved to 75 and 84. If they run the table and the Phillies keep losing, which is possible because they stink right now, pretty amazing. Now, the morning of September 1st, the Mets were 13 games behind the Phillies.
It could be that the Mets end up tying the Phillies by the end of September in the standings. That is the fade that the Phillies have done, almost to completion here. As for what's going on for today, it's brought to you by the coffee bean and tea leaf, another fine sponsor. We thank them very much, coffee bean and tea leaf.
Soon there will be a location near you. Here come the Marlins with one really good player, a guy that I think would help the Mets a lot. J.T. Real Mutos, there's not a lot of great catchers out there, but here's a guy hitting 280, 21 homers, 73 runs, bad at end.
They've got 30 doubles, plays great defense, doesn't walk a lot, but we're nitpicking here. The Marlins hitting just 238 as a team. They've hit only 128 home runs. Obviously they missed Stanton and Yellich and O'Zuna.
Yellich is going to end up being MVP. It looks like in the National League and they've not got a lot of return for him. He's not quite yet. They've allowed 192 home runs.
They've hit only 128. So the last plays team coming in, chance for the Mets to get fat here at the end. And we do look for David Wright. Obviously Saturday, you know, they'll be playing on Saturday, but wouldn't it be nice if you could actually get in there in a pinch hitting role.
It'll be Jose Urania in the Friday game against the Mets, Corey Oswald. Saturday, Trevor Richards will start from Miami. That'll be the guy that David Wright can watch a lot of video on. Stephen Matts will make the start for the Mets on Saturday.
Sunday, the season ends with Sandy Alcontra against Noah Cindergaard, two guys who each throw 100 miles an hour. So if indeed it's going to be a look to swing early day, get on out of here and end the season in two hours in 12 minutes or something, strikeouts could be a big thing. A couple guys throw that hard. We could be seeing the season end with a flurry of strikeouts.
But anyway, heading down to the final three games of the year, the Mets and the Marlins will be finishing up and podcasts will be finishing up on Sunday as well. Thanks everybody for tuning in all year. This is Josh Lewin. This is the Daily Mets Podcast.