Let’s put it this way:
It’s not exactly the best harbinger that the first official sign that the 2024 New York Mets do, officially, own both a pulse and blood pressure didn’t arrive until the top of the eighth inning. That was when the Brewers’ Rhys Hoskins — regularly a stone in the Mets’ shoe when he was a Phillie — slid into second base spikes high, trying (and succeeding) to break up a double play.
Jeff McNeil, the target of Hoskins’ cleats Friday — and, according to McNeil, back when he was channeling Chase Utley’s soul in Philadelphia — took exception. He yelled at Hoskins. He pointed at him, aggressively. Soon Hoskins was jogging off the field, turned his head, muttered something that probably wasn’t “Let’s go, Mets!” and so the dugouts emptied, and then the bullpen doors opened and pitchers and catchers for both teams lumbered onto the field.
“We’ve kind of had a past,” McNeil would explain later.
“Just playing hard baseball,” said Hoskins, wearing an expression that hinted he had a few more opinions on the matter that he was managing to swallow.
Here, at last, was an opportunity for the 42,137 inside Citi Field to clear their throats. They yelled at Hoskins. They cheered McNeil, who said later that he’s been a regular target of Hoskins. And they did, actually, go to the old standby, “Let’s go, Mets!” A couple of times, in fact.
And … well, yep. That was it. That was that. It took a standard-issue baseball non-fight to keep everyone from falling into a mass slumber on Opening Day. The Mets generated exactly one hit, a second-inning home run from Starling Marte. They sent exactly two hitters over the minimum up to the plate. They didn’t get a man in scoring position until the seventh, Francisco Lindor walking and taking second on a wild pitch. He perished there.
It ended 3-1, Brewers. That was it. That was that. Freddy Peralta breezed through six and the Milwaukee bullpen cruised the rest of the way. On the bright side, it only took a brisk 2 hours and 20 minutes so there was plenty of time to get home for dinner.
“Peralta was really good,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “When he’s on he’s tough. We hit some balls hard but he was on today.”
It was right to wonder about this Mets offense heading into this season, especially where it stands in the next few weeks, while J.D. Martinez works his way up to speed. It is concerning to see McNeil hitting fourth, for instance.
McNeil’s a professional hitter, and his every-other-year pattern suggests he should have a year more like his batting-title season of 2022 and less like the perpetual string of 4-3s he put up in ’23, but this might be the first paragraph in his life in which his surname appears with the word “cleanup” in the same sentence.
DJ Stewart was a nice little story last year, and it was a terrific thing for him to make the club out of spring. He was also the Mets’ No. 6 hitter Friday. That doesn’t exactly strike fear in the hearts of pitchers. It sure didn’t faze Peralta. Stewart actually drew a walk, right after Marte’s homer; naturally he was promptly picked off. It was that kind of day.
And … well, this is where a sports columnist is required by law to remind you that it’s one game, that there’s 161 more to go, that the Mets have had too many seasons to count that started off 1-0 and fully went off the rails a day or a week or a month later. And that the ’69 Mets started off 0-1. So consider that a duty fulfilled.
That said? If ever there was a team that could’ve used a feel-good opener, it was this one. The park was full, and the energy was there, even as Howie Rose introduced the lead intern to the assistant food-service director and everyone else during an endless pregame in which the Mets greeting line nearly extended beyond the right-field wall and all the way to Ozone Park.
They’d come despite a winter that ranged from discontent to despair to disappointment, to at last a begrudging acknowledgment that they might as long go along with the Mets’ long-term plan. David Stearns and Steve Cohen spoke earnestly before the game about where the Mets are and where they hope to go. They both expect to contend for the playoffs this year. There’s time for that.
But this would’ve also been a good time to exhibit a heartbeat.
“We had good pitches to hit,” Lindor said. “We just couldn’t get it going.”
That, alas, will have to wait for Saturday. At least they should be well-rested.
