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After the way they'd been hitting all week, Met hitters didn't have too many real friends.

Alonso and Conforto gave credit where credit was due.

Howie and Wayne Will diminish the pain

The whooping of Wheeler has begun!

Five years ago yesterday, however, Michael Conforto, was peaking. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN201604300.shtmlhttps://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN201604300.shtml SNY shared a graphic comparing Conforto's ‘x' plate appearances to a similar spot in Trout's and Harper's respective careers and it was very favorable. Also, people lined up like crazy for their Thor garden gnome. http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2016/05/01/sometimes-it-shows-in-april/http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2016/05/01/sometimes-it-shows-in-april/

About one week shy of five years (5/7/2016).

6 PM start.

Jorge Velandia, aiding and abetting the enemy these days. Baseball is the national sport of Venezuela. The country has sent 428 players to the major leagues — a number topped only by the United States (over 17,000) and the Dominican Republic (794), according to the website Baseball-Reference. Some of the sport's biggest stars over the past few decades are from the South American country: Miguel Cabrera, Félix Hernández, Johan Santana, Bobby Abreu, José Altuve. Venezuela's newest star, Ronald Acuña Jr. of the Atlanta Braves, trails perhaps only Mike Trout and Mookie Betts as the best player in baseball. Given this rich tradition, many in the sport were astonished that a Venezuelan had not reached the upper ranks of a major league club's front office until December, when the Phillies promoted Jorge Velandia, a former player who had been working his way up through the organization, to assistant general manager. “When we were first getting ready to make an announcement and we were talking about it and somehow it came up, that this was going to be the first assistant general manager from Venezuela, I was like: ‘Really? I had no idea,'” said Dave Dombrowski, the Phillies' president of baseball operations, who has run teams for more than two decades. Dombrowski's teams featured Venezuelan stars like Magglio Ordóñez, Carlos Guillén, Víctor Martínez and Cabrera but never one of their countryman as highly placed as the 46-year-old Velandia. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/sports/baseball/jorge-velandia-venezuela-phillies.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/sports/baseball/jorge-velandia-venezuela-phillies.html

Guillorme to IL, Peraza instantly back.

Nimmo CF Lindor SS McNeil 2B Alonso 1B Conforto RF J.D. Davis 3B D. Smith LF McCann C Stroman RHP

Peraza down, Zamora up.

Major League Baseball is placing Roberto Alomar on its ineligible list after reviewing an allegation of sexual misconduct against the Hall of Fame second baseman. Alomar's contract as a consultant to MLB in Puerto Rico was terminated, as anyone on the ineligible list is banned from working in the league office or for any team in the majors or affiliated minors. He also served on commissioner Rob Manfred's competition committee and worked for the Toronto Blue Jays as a special assistant, but that position was restructured as part of wider cost-cutting moves last September. The Jays are removing Alomar from their Level of Excellence as well. https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/mlb-puts-roberto-alomar-ineligible-list-reviewing-sexual-misconduct-allegation/https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/mlb-puts-roberto-alomar-ineligible-list-reviewing-sexual-misconduct-allegation/

This ran shortly after Madoff's death.

Skipper Soup!

Good times with much of the 2000 Mets pitching staff. https://sny.tv/shows/like-we-never-left/all-episodes/the-2000-new-york-mets-get-back-togetherhttps://sny.tv/shows/like-we-never-left/all-episodes/the-2000-new-york-mets-get-back-together

Roger Angell shares his Jacob deGrom thoughts with Jason Gay of WSJ. In the bottom half of the first, I called the legendary New Yorker writer and fiction editor Roger Angell, whose foray into baseball writing began in 1962 with the “grotesque early sufferings” of the expansion Mets under Casey Stengel (“a walking pantheon of evocations,” Angell wrote of the aging Stengel), eventually reaching a point of such stature and admiration in the sport that, in 2014, Angell was honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame. Angell is now 100 years old, and his eyesight is challenged, but he still locks in for the drama of deGrom Day. “There's something very intense about him, but it's effortless intensity,” Angell told me. “There's no grunting or groaning. His pitches up in the 100s are just so surprising, because the pitch comes so quickly, and from normal effort. He's immensely powerful, but it doesn't show itself much.” I noted the 41 on the sleeve of deGrom's jersey, a patch which the Mets are wearing this season to honor Tom Seaver, who died last August. Angell had known Seaver well. Did he see any comparison? “Well, aside from their fabulous efficiency, I don't see much comparison, because Seaver was essentially a drop-down pitcher,” Angell said. “He went straight down—that was his power; his knee would strike the dirt. DeGrom's is just very simple motion. I don't know where this enormous speed comes from. He's strongly-built, but he does not look overpowering. But he is. The amazing thing is that he's getting faster.” He is indeed getting faster. As the Journal's Andrew Beaton and Joshua Robinson noted earlier this month, deGrom's average velocity is climbing at a career point in which pitchers are usually learning how to be craftier, and less reliant on speed. One theory is that DeGrom is a late bloomer: he also played shortstop in college, and in his first season in the minors, he hurt his arm and had Tommy John surgery, missing a season and a half. DeGrom didn't throw 140 innings in a season until he was 25 years old, and the result is a delayed career arc that, as Beaton and Robinson humorously theorized, resembles F. Scott Fitzgerald's character of Benjamin Button. DeGrom appears to be aging in reverse, routinely hitting three digits on the radar gun. Against Boston, he was very good, but not his best. In the second inning, the Red Sox tagged him for a pair of doubles and a run, and while deGrom stopped the bleeding there, New York couldn't score at all off Boston's Nick Pivetta or his relievers, triggering another doleful night for the Mets faithful. A start like what deGrom delivered—six innings, three hits, one run, nine strikeouts, one walk—should be more than enough to get a win, most of the time. Once again, it was not. In Metsworld, the frustration slipped on like an old sweater. “He has had every reason over the last few years to throw teammates under the bus, and has not done it once,” the Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen said late in the contest. https://www.wsj.com/articles/jacob-degrom-mlb-new-york-mets-red-sox-pitching-strikeout-record-11619703843https://www.wsj.com/articles/jacob-degrom-mlb-new-york-mets-red-sox-pitching-strikeout-record-11619703843

Greatness indeed took the mound, but competence couldn't bother to come to bat.

Per Puma of the PST: For those wondering why there is an early start at Citi Field tonight it's dictated by the CBA, with the Red Sox traveling to Texas after the game.

Jerry with a nice message from Citi Field.

Taking the Jake Challenge: Hernández CF Verdugo RF Martinez LF Bogaerts SS Devers 3B Vázquez C Gonzalez 2B Dalbec 1B Pivetta P

...who's not in the navy, but is destined for alternate site. Per Mets tweet: We have claimed catcher Deivy Grullón off waivers from Tampa. He was optioned to the Alternate Site. We now have 40 players on the 40-man roster.

What a shame for the sake of the song that John Boccabella didn't quite overlap with Biff Pocoroba.

The baseball card thread Ceetar was seeking.