It had been slightly less than a month since we’d lost a series.  It had been slightly less than a year since Noah Syndergaard had homered.  And before this year, it had been quite a long time since we’d had a player so captivating, so charismatic yet so innately talented, that his appearances on both sides of the ball were must-see TV.

Two of those have changed, and thanks to those changes, the third remains intact.  It’s still been a long while since we lost a series.

Noah Syndergaard hadn’t been at his absolute best in his previous few outings, and I’d been hoping for a return there.  So, when Corey Seager homered to tie the game in the third, then Yasmani Grandal hit one of his own to give the Dodgers the lead in the fourth, I wasn’t happy about it.

After the fourth?  Twelve batters faced, one hit, four scoreless innings.

The Dodgers had, of course, scored some runs of their own.  So we must have had some runs to counter them, mustn’t we?  Our offense must have been ticking!  Our lineup finally started working like it was supposed to!

Well, not exactly, but that didn’t make things any less fun to watch.  When Thor hit his first blast in the top of the third, it was nothing more or less than a stunning display of raw power.  It was a fastball over the outer half, and Thor blasted it through the proverbially home-run-crushing Dodger Stadium air and into the right field seats.  Stat-cast had its exit velocity a few ticks above 100.

We were down the next time he came to the plate, the seven and eight hitters having — completely improbably, in this hastily assembled mop-up day lineup — reached base to start the inning.  Thor versus Kenta Maeda.  Young versus youngish.  Superstar versus all-star.  Free agent signee extraordinaire versus homegrown, trade-swiped stud.

Sure, his talents lie chiefly on the mound.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to win this battle as well.

Sure enough, it was deep and it wasn’t coming back.  Straightaway center, perhaps a shade to the left side, the same place he reached, mind-blowingly, with his memorable Citi Field homer.

At that point, I swear, I thought he was going to hit three.  Hell, i thought maybe he’d hit four.  Thor looked invincible.  Put simply, against Kenta Maeda, he wasn’t going to make an out.

He didn’t, in fact, make an out against Maeda, although he didn’t hit his third and fourth home runs of the night either.  But his night was secure all the same.  Eight innings pitched, two runs allowed, a ninth that he should have pitched even though he didn’t.  Two home runs, four RBIs, both tying Mets records for pitchers.  Another brilliant argument against the National League ever co-opting the Designated Hitter.

How can you not love him, at this point?  He’s a soft-spoken behemoth, a laughing Norse God, a master on the mound and a purveyor of Big Sexy t-shirts.  He’s the kind of guy I want to know — the kind of Met who, as we speak, is receiving loads upon loads of fan mail, from fans eight to eighty, wondering, quite simply, how the hell he does it all.

But Norse Gods do not answer letters.

Honestly, though, what more can you ask?  Another series won (or, at least, not lost), another demonstration that our pitching is not to be toyed with.  All that could have gone better, I suppose, would have been Syndergaard pitching the ninth, although we’ve learned, subsequently, that he was apparently removed after eight out of precaution for a recently-examined elbow that, somehow, no one knew about.  It’s a scenario that reeks of LOL-Mets levels of incompetence — Terry Collins somehow claimed to have been unaware that Syndergaard had recently been to the Hospital for Special Surgery for an elbow examination — but honestly, having watched Thor hit 100 MPH on the gun in the eighth inning, I’m not sure how worried I can possibly be.

Back in the wins column, after a loss.  Still in first place, ahead of the all-out Nationals.  Headed to Coors Field, where we should demolish, after we take on Kershaw, who frankly doesn’t scare me anymore, with Bartolo, who should strike fear into his opponents.

As we’ve continually demonstrated over the last few weeks, there’s absolutely nothing we can’t do.  Defense up the middle.  Pitchers hitting.  Strong arms in the outfield.  Throwing out baserunners.  Being in every damn game right up until the end.  We can do it.  We are doing it.  We’ll keep doing it.

Tomorrow night, it’s Bartolo, who frankly has demonstrated that on the right days, he can go toe to toe with anyone in the game.  After that, it’s back through the turn again.

What a group of guys we’ve got, filling the ninth spot in the batting order!  And hell, they can pitch a little too!

We were always going to lose this one.

I knew it, you knew it, we all knew it, we pretended we didn’t know it, but we knew it.  It was one of those games.  We weren’t going to score. We just weren’t hitting.  It happens to everyone; today it happened to us.  What the hell can you do.

It’s a shame, though, that we had to waste such a sterling effort from Jacob deGrom, despite still not having his best stuff.  deGrom is 3-1, with a 2.12 E.R.A.  After allowing two runs in the first inning, he went the next six scoreless.  If and when he does recover his best stuff, it’ll be downright scary.  Until then, however, he’s just gotta keep doing what he did tonight, absent the less than perfect first inning.

So it’s a game that, on a better offensive night, we could have — should have — won.  But it wasn’t a better offensive night, and that’s perfectly fine.  It happens to the best of us.

Our effort wasn’t a total waste, at least: Chase Utley struck out, made a stupid looking flip, and made a laughingstock of himself in the field, which, if we’re honest, was my prime objective from this series.  As of now, it looks like retribution for his itsy bisty infraction — sorry, I meant breaking a guy’s freakin’ leg — will either wait, or has been suspended.  Personally, I’d like nothing more than to see retribution when the Dodgers come to town May 27th-29th, 1986 celebration weekend.  Is there any better way to honor the1986 Mets than by starting a long-deserved brawl?  I didn’t think so.

We didn’t hit; it’s that simple.  There’s not much to say, no analysis to be done: we had a bad night.  First base apparently being coated in vaseline didn’t help, nor did Yasiel Puig’s presence in right field, but we just weren’t hitting.  It was obvious: we weren’t going to score.  Sometimes you have that kind of night.

Eh, we’ll be fine.  They’re the Dodgers, a failed team chasing a dream that simply doesn’t look attainable.  They’ve got Kershaw tomorrow.  Somehow, I’m not too worried about it.  We’ve got Thor, who, after something of a funk recently, should break out and rack up some strikeouts against an offense that’s mediocre at best.

Plus: the Nationals lost.  We remain atop the division.  All we’ve got to do is win, and in terms of winning, we’ve been more than fine so far.  We’ve won far more than we’ve lost: there’s no reason that should stop anytime soon.

Tonight was no fun: fun isn’t guaranteed.  But when you’ve got a team like we have, you’ll have fun more often than not.

Steven Matz continues reminding us that having four aces in five spots is nothing if not abjectly wonderful.

Who knew that Chase Utley’s dirty slide into Ruben Tejada would prove useful in both the short and long runs?

It certainly was in the short run: despite costing us our most proficient defensive shortstop, its negativity swung the series in our favor.  After everyone was through talking about Chase Utley, they realized that we’d already won the series in five, and were well on our way to sweeping the Cubs as well.

And in the long run?  Chase Utley was so scared of retribution, last night, that he was removed from the lineup.  He’d been the Dodgers leadoff man, one of the only parts working well on a team that’s barely clinging to .500.  And now he was on the bench.

He didn’t hit until late in the game, when he entered to make a pinch-hitting appearance.  And he made a harmless out.

Maybe it’s just me; maybe it’s irrational.  But I’ve got a feeling that after today, Chase Utley’s brief days as leadoff hitter and reinvigorated offensive player extraordinaire are over.  Playing the former team of the shortstop whose leg you broke will do that to you.

And again, while everyone was focused on Chase Utley, the Mets were going ahead and winning.

The pitching matchup, in its own way, was an intriguing one: lefty phenom versus former lefty phenom, upswing versus tail end, future versus past, you name it.  Steven Matz on one side, the unfortunately traded Scott Kazmir on the other.  And as if seeking revenge for everything, Curtis Granderson sent the first pitch of the night over the right field wall.

RBIs from Granderson, right there in the first, Plawecki in the second, and Matz himself in the sixth, to go with the daily RBI from Cespedes.  That’s how our offense works: everywhere, up and down, attacking from every angle until you don’t know whether to forfeit or just keep giving up runs left and right.  Sure, we only scored four.  With our pitching, that’s more than we needed.

The bullpen is bad. No.  NO.  GOOD.  The bullpen is GOOD.  Let’s get this through our heads, because we’ve all been denying its truth for far too long.  The bullpen is just GOOD.  Jim Henderson, Hansel Robles, Addison Reed, and Antonio Bastardo are all good, and then there’s Familia, who even bullpen skeptics have admitted is good.  It’s a damn good bullpen.  Against the Dodgers, they proved it, or at least, they continued proving it as well as they possibly could: three scoreless innings, only one walk and no hits.

You know?  Sounds like a good bullpen.

And this is what’s so great about this team: now we’ve got deGrom, and then we’ve got Thor, and whoever the Dodgers throw out there simply will not measure up.  Series win?  Let’s go get it.  Series sweep?  Same response.

And my favorite part?  Chase Utley was barely mentioned, because his contributions to the Dodgers are now so insignificant that his play doesn’t bear even a token mention.  Ah well, that’s what happens, and he deserves significantly less than he’s got left, but I’ll take what I can get.

We’re going to go out there tonight and win the series, and go out there tomorrow and sweep it.  And the Dodgers won’t go down easy; they’ll put up a fight.  But so long as they’ve got Chase Utley on their side, we’ve got fair fortune on ours.

Heroes can come from anywhere, including — in fact, especially — unexpected places.

Jerry Blevins could have been the hero of today’s game, if he’d gotten Jon Jay to open the eighth.  Jon Jay has become nothing short of tiresome, a hitter we simply can’t deal with, someone who you know shouldn’t keep getting on base, but does so anyway.  Blevins didn’t get him.

Addison Reed, likewise, could have laid claim to the day if he’d been able to retire the two hitters he faced.  Will Meyers and Matt Kemp, two sluggers, two dangerous hitters standing between Reed and a successful inning.  He didn’t get either of them.  The bases were loaded.  Antonio Bastardo was coming in.

Bastardo, so far, had been okay, so-so, meh, however you want to say it.  The sight of him didn’t send me into paroxysms of anger a la Oliver Perez, nor did it fill me with confidence, like, strangely enough, Addison Reed.  To me, to this point, he was just another reliever, slightly overpaid, moderately talented, serviceable but certainly not great.

I had, however, noticed the same thing that GK&R had noticed, early in the season: Bastardo’s fastball produced swings and misses.   He doesn’t throw as hard as he used to, but hitters simply can’t seem to catch up.

Derek Norris — whose name I can’t say without involuntarily adding “the insufferable” — Melvin Upton, and Alexei Ramirez.  A tall order, not to mention the fact that the bases were loaded and any reasonably well-struck ball in play would bring home a run.

A hard-fought strikeout.  A cleverly induced pop-up.  Another gut-wrenching, multi-pitch, strikeout.  Inning over.  Three up, three down, three runners inherited, no runs allowed.

And there you are.  There’s your hero.  From bases-loaded, no outs, up only a run, came a guy who just defined his Mets career.

A lot of Mets have these kinds of moments.  The ones we all remember, the watershed points.  The moments that make players Mets.  “He’s one of us,” we’ll say after moments like these.  “He’s a Met now.”

Tonight was Bastardo’s moment.  He’s a Met now.

Bastardo’s success is all the more important in that it came as part of preserving a lead for Matt Harvey, whose sudden rebound to his old self would have been the story of the game, but for Bastardo himself.  Indeed, despite Bastardo’s one inning of Houdini-esque escapism, Harvey probably deserves the lion’s share of game credit.

As he took the mound in the bottom of the first, it was, as have been Harvey’s past several starts, a casual first pitch with the potential to define our season.  In his past few starts, when Harvey had come out throwing 92 or 93, I’d shaken it off, telling myself that he could still be fine.  Today, when he came out in the bottom of the first throwing 96, a seven-start weight lifted itself off my shoulders.

Six innings, ten strikeouts, touching 97 on the gun.  One bad pitch aside, an almost perfect outing.

Matt Harvey is back.  And with it, our season is back on track.

Just look at the rotation: Matz and Thor are already working.  Harvey, after tonight’s start, is working as well.  Once we get deGrom working, now, the four aces will be right back where they were supposed to be, and we’ll be in even better shape than we already are.

Harvey’s sudden resurgence is the ultimate optimistic Mets fan victory.  Two starts ago, he looked better.  Then last start, he tailed off.  He wasn’t improving, some claimed.  He’d simply lost something.

But the optimists among us saw things differently.  He’d been sick, Terry Collins said.  He’d looked good early, but had tailed off later.  Perhaps it was nothing more than an inconvenient confluence of circumstances, the sickness coming just as the mechanics were on their way back.  One more start, we said, and he’d be right back to normal.

Especially in moments like this, I love being a Mets fan.  What other reason do you need to support a team, when our guy, our ace, the most outspoken of our four aces, takes the mound and affirms the franchise’s central pillar, that ya do, in fact, gotta believe?

And speaking of believing, today’s win, combined with the Nationals’ loss, shot us into first, half a game ahead of the Nationals, two games ahead of everyone else, even as the division has, so far, surprisingly failed to be the cesspool of horribleness that was predicted.  Right back ahead of the pack, even after our early struggles, the Nationals’ hot start, and the predictions that Dusty Baker finally had his team working just like they were supposed to, we’re back in front.  Back in the New York Groove.

We’re back in first, Steven Matz goes tomorrow, Matt Harvey is back, and Bartolo Colón hit a home run yesterday.

Oh, and tomorrow, we face Chase Utley.

Yeah, it’s a good time to be a Mets fan.  When you lead your division and everything’s clicking, try as some might, it’s awfully hard to find a negative.

Bartolo Colón affirms the meaning of life

Some things went wrong tonight.

The world is not perfect.  There are still problems to be fixed.  From world hunger to our bench not hitting enough, not everything was good.

Bartolo Colón hit a home run.  Nothing else matters.

When the ball left his bat, my heart seemed to slow.  Or quicken.  It was far from normal, is all I know for certain.

You could hear it in Gary Cohen’s voice.  Gary has called record-breakers, walkoffs, and no hitters.  This was the most excited he’s ever been.

You could hear it in Ron Darling’s involuntary outburst as Colón rounded the bases, rivaling Keith’s last year, when Cespedes homered off Drew Storen, effectively handing the division to the Mets.

This was better.

Why are we Mets fans?  We’re here for the moments.  We’re here for the stories.  We’re here for the human side of the game, the players we regard as friends even if they don’t feel the same way towards us.

What more is there to say?

Bartolo Colón will be 43 in 17 days.  He’s had more than 200 career plate appearances, and prior to tonight, had never hit a home run.

We love him.  He plays the game for the right reasons, the right way.  He’s out there because he loves playing baseball, and he gives us everything he has every time he takes the mound because it’s the right way to play.

And tonight, Bartolo Colón hit a goddamn home run.

“Bartolo the kid,” I once called him, and tonight, it was clearer than ever.  He simply loves the game.  He’ll play until he can’t anymore.  None of us want to get old, not even 43-year-olds who no longer even remotely resemble athletes.  Bartolo doesn’t want to have to leave either.  Eventually, he will.  But not right now.  Not tonight.

Tonight, he hit a goddamn home run.

He signed back for $7.5 million despite higher offers, because he wanted to play as much as possible, and because he liked New York.  He’s started the season 3-1, an E.R.A. under 3.00.  At 43, he looks as good as he did at 42, 41, and 40.

And now, he’s hit a goddamn home run.

This is what baseball’s all about, even more than the postseason and potential World Series.  It’s about the stories, the incredible moments, the players who defy obstacles and continue doing things that ordinary people can only dream of, conveying the message all the while that anything is possible if you just work at it.

Bartolo Colón couldn’t hit in 2014.  He improved slightly in 2015.  He kept working.

Tonight, he hit a goddamn home run.

Baseball is the greatest game in the world.  If tonight didn’t convince you, nothing will.

The National League must never adopt the Designated Hitter.  If tonight didn’t convince you, nothing will.

I’ll never give up on the Mets, because even at the lowest of moments, not that this was one, something like tonight can happen.  And after tonight, or anything like it, there’s always reason to keep going, to soldier on, to keep giving it your all.  Because as we learned tonight, life is freaking great.

To have spent time alive, on this planet, at the same time that Bartolo Colón was hitting a home run, is nothing short of a gift.  It’s an event that is so joy-inspiring, so momentous, that it’s hard to understand, even now.  Watching Colón drive the ball and then round the bases made me happier than anything I can remember in quite a long time, but even now, it’s hard to understand why.

We’ve been waiting for it for all the time that he’s been here, and that’s certainly got something to do with it, but why have we been waiting?

Maybe for just the reasons I outlined.  Maybe because this is precisely why we root for this team in the first place.  Maybe because watching a Bartolo Colón home run, telling our grandchildren about it in 60 years, and knowing that for one brief, shining moment, anything was possible, is why we made that long, bitter choice to be Mets fans.

We just watched Bartolo Colón hit a home run.  Frankly, that’s all I think I need to say.

Were there problems tonight?

Sure there were. Problems were the reason we were shut out instead of scoring six runs. Problems were the reason we gave up two runs instead of giving up none at all. But problems aren’t always the worst thing in the world.

I can’t remember the last time a Mets pitcher backed a hitter off the plate. That’s a problem. Thor, today, threw too many fastballs, and didn’t come inside nearly enough. So, problerm: pitch selection. Fortunately, that’s just about the easiest problem to fix I can think of: just put down different signs.

We seem to have stopped hitting. That’s a problem. But will it last? No, is the short answer. Everyone’s gone cold right now; Duda, Granderson, Conforto, not to mention Rene Rivera at catcher. We’ll hit again: the last time we went cold for a few games, we came back with a stretch of 12-2, or whatever that streak was. We’ve got an offense, and a good one. All offenses go cold for a game or two here and there, good ones included. We’ll be fine.

But look on the bright side, and I do, because I’m a goddamm Mets fan. Those were our problems: their hitters on our pitchers, our offense suddenly gone cold. We can fix those two problems: it could happen relatively easily. And then where are we?

We’re winning. We’re dominating everyone we face. We’re pitching shutouts and putting up runs, and we’re unbeatable.

Of course, it didn’t help that, through these first two games, we haven’t exactly gotten the benefit of luck. More than a few times, we’ve hit balls hard and had them caught. It’s yet another thing that all teams go through. We all know the symptoms: you barely look up on a deep fly ball, because you know it’ll be caught on the warning track. You don’t even get excited on a check swing, because you know we’re not getting the call.

Again, this has happened to us before, and what did we do, the last time it did? We went out and won five straight series.

We’re due an improvement in BABIP, just as we’re due for our opponents’ BABIP to drop. We’ve got a few problems: when we fix them, we’ll be just fine.

And while we’re at it, look at the positives from tonight. The captain walked twice, as he’s done and should continue to do. Henderson and Reed were flawless. Rene Rivera threw two bullets from behind the plate. Cabrera had two more hits. Hell, even Wilmer got off the schneid, with a double that could or should have scored a run, depending on your interpretation of an increasingly murky rulebook. But I digress.

We’ve lost two in a row; that happens. They haven’t been terrible losses, but the kind that all teams go through. We’ve got some luck coming our way, and with the team we’ve got, that little bit of luck should translate into a big bunch of wins.

Tomorrow, it’s Bartolo — just the guy we need, to change something up and turn fortunes our way. After that, it’s Harvey, over his illness and looking to finally bring himself back. Call me overoptimistic; I think he can do it.

Thor didn’t bring the lightning today, at least not to its full potential, and the offense wasn’t exactly electric either. Neither of those things are the norm: both figure to be rare occurrences.

And when the norm comes back, we start winning again. So let’s just stick with the team we’ve got, and go get a win tomorrow.

Through six we were no-hit
I was thinking oh shit
Our bats had seemed simply to fade

Every ball that we struck
Couldn’t seem to find luck
Padres defense was perfectly played

Grandy hit one well
From contact I could tell
That today it would simply be caught

We’ve been hitting the ball
But our liners won’t fall
We all hope it won’t go for naught

deGrom wasn’t great
As the innings got late
He just couldn’t get on a tear

Lord, please fix our arms
Protect them from harm
To hurt them is simply unfair

Yo broke up the bid
A slow single he did
And hoped that our offense would follow

But it was not to be
And against Colin Rea
Our offense continued to wallow

To the ninth we went
When Granderson sent
A pitch soaring right back up the middle

The fence it cleared
And I silently cheered
But it seemed like too late and too little

The captain drew a pass
As a man of great class
Always willing to walk, ‘cause he’s selfless

Got it to Yo
And we all seemed to know
That Brad Hand on the mound was just helpless

Sure enough Yo went deep
And if not quite a leap
I did give a bit of a prance

Tying run on deck
And our lineup ain’t drek
Suddenly we had a chance

But it was not to be
As we could all see
Luck was simply not on our side

A game we should have won
But hell, it was fun
Obvious how hard our guys tried

We ended the night
On two line outs to right
As far as areas go, that one’s gray

On the one hand it’s bad
But it also helps pad
Our batting average on balls in play

Though we may have seemed thin
This should have been a win
When you take away errors and such

I don’t really mind
For tomorrow we’ll find
That we hit once again in the clutch

We’ve done plenty fine
One loss won’t undermine
In this series we should win three more

In game two it begins
And we’ll look for a win
Because out on the mound we’ve got Thor

All seemed lost yesterday, didn’t it?  We couldn’t hit to save our lives; we hadn’t scored in 17 innings; we had just lost to the Braves, the worst team money can buy.

The difference 24 hours can make has been illustrated, by games like today’s, time and again, but it never fails to amaze.

I sat in a hot, sweaty room, taking a spanish test, as the game began.  I’ll be done in two weeks; until then, I’ve got three hours of Mets baseball a day to sustain me.

My phone buzzed; I checked the clock.  1:37.

Was it the bottom of the first?  Top of the second?  Bottom of the second?  Who had scored?  I had no way to tell.

But didn’t I?

We’d had some of our worst luck of the year the previous night, hitting line drives left and right that simply refused to find the grass.  We had Steven Matz on the mound, rearing to continue lowering his E.R.A. from its high-water mark of 37.20.  We had luck on our side.

Of course we would score first.

I will admit, though, that upon checking my phone after finishing the test, I was more than a little surprised to find that Rene Rivera had done the hitting for us.  I’d thought that Rene Rivera was one of those guys whose offense was rumored, but never actually observed.  As the Mets have been doing since being 2-5, he proved the detractors wrong.

Two in the second; four in the third; two in the fifth.  And all this scoring without the captain in the lineup; with Conforto taking an ofer, along with Granderson and Walker; with Plawecki on the bench as well.  But this is what good teams do, and we’re nothing if not a good team: they beat the obstacles.  They win even when things don’t look good.

Of course, given the performance that Matz turned in on the mound, a loss, today, would have been hard to come by.  Matz is 4-1, 2.83 E.R.A.  His E.R.A. is less than 1/13 of what it was after his first start.  He’s won four consecutive decisions.  Since that infamous anonymous scout assessed that he needed some more time in the minors, his E.R.A. is substantially below 1.00.

In offseason discussion of the four aces, consensus was that Matz hadn’t yet proven himself.  Has he done so yet?  Can we, to paraphrase an erstwhile former presidential candidate, dispense with the fiction that Steven Matz doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing?

Just look at the line: 7.2 innings, two hits, no walks, no runs, eight strikeouts.  Yes, it’s the Braves.  It’s also a Braves lineup that scored three runs yesterday.  Matz was masterful; Matz is, as a matter of course, masterful.  Or Matz-terful.  He’s got a name that befits mastery for the Mets, not that his name has contributed at all to the success he’s seen so far.

We’re 17-9, and that’s despite some bad luck, a struggling Matt Harvey who may yet return to form, and a 2-5 start.  Can you imagine what we’ll do when we’re working perfectly?

Hell, it might start tomorrow.  I mean, it could start anytime — that’s the beauty of this team.  But really, it might start tomorrow.

We’re off to San Diego for three with the Padres.  We’ve got deGrom, Thor, and Bartolo.  They’ve got three Padres starters.

My dad texted me after the win, as he’s taken to doing since I’ve been away from home.  “The Mets won their sixth consecutive series for the first time since 2006,” he wrote.

Six?  That’s nothing.  We’ve got the Padres coming up, then the Dodgers, then the Rockies, then the Nationals.  Let’s make it ten.  Hell, let’s win every series we play.

It’s almost hard not to, when you’ve got deGrom, Thor, or Matz going three out of every five days, not to mention Harvey and Bartolo on the other two.

“I take positives out of negatives all the time,” David Wright once said.  I’ll try to channel that sentiment here, because if we’re honest, there’s not a whole lot that the Mets did wrong today, and there’s even less that the Braves did right.

The Braves scored three runs, all wholly undeserved in true Atlantean spirit.  The runs came on a home run from Mallex Smith, which came on one of the least powerful swings I can remember seeing, an A.J. Pierzinski double, which frankly shouldn’t count anymore given how much of an absolute turd A.J. Pierzinski is, and a wild pitch, that somehow snuck under Plawecki’s glove despite the fact that the glove was on the ground, which allowed Pierzinski to score from third, after he’d gone to third on a sacrifice fly, which, again, will almost certainly not happen again this millennium.

Fuck the Braves, honestly.  They deserve nothing; tonight, they got everything.  They deserve 19 losses in 19 tries against us this year; it seems we’ll have to settle for 18 out of 19.

Because losing a series to the Braves?  That’s just not something we’re going to do.

Everything was conspiring, today, to turn the game in the Braves’ favor.  You could tell from the outset, with Grandy lining out to Freeman, the captain lining out to Smith, Conforto walking, and Cespedes making an out.  It just wasn’t going our way.

If we’re honest, Harvey didn’t even have that bad a game.  No, he didn’t look good, but he also allowed his runs in the most undeserved fashion that I can possibly imagine.  His velocity was down, but until he got tired, he was fine.  In fact, he was sick, according to rumors before the game — he was hitting 95 on the gun in the third and fourth innings.  Being the optimist that I am, I’ll go ahead and say that the fifth is when the sickness kicked in.

Harvey, after all, had been improving prior to this start, and we’ve seen, in the past, that sickness has diminished his capabilities.  Is it any wonder, given the luck he’s had over his career, that his sickness just happened to coincide with his period of improvement?  He’ll be back and he’ll be better when he takes the mound in five days; you can take that to the bank.

But really, the forces conspiring to give the game to the Braves were hard to fathom.  Gary Cohen mentioned, at one point, that Matt Wisler, who was one-hitting the Mets despite allowing line drives that, well, whistled past his head every other batter, had worked over the offseason on his changeup.  He’d been instructed by Tom Glav!ne.

Seriously, Tom Fucking Glav!ne.  As if the Braves needed another reminder of all the luck they’d once had.

Wisler’s performance was referred to as “spectacular” or “brilliant” or some variant thereof by the SNY booth roughly once a batter, and frankly, they should have known better.  This wasn’t a stunning display of pitching any more than Ruben Tejada’s improbable inside-the-park home run last year was a stunning demonstration of power.  Wisler had four — count ‘em, four — strikeouts.  He barely threw more strikes than balls.  He gave up about twelve line drives that should EASILY have gone for hits. Our BABIP, today, was low enough to shock: namely, it was one over however many balls we put in play.  Our line drive percentage, meanwhile, not to mention our hard-hit rate, was off the charts.

So how do you take a positive from a negative here?  It’s not hard; we’ve got the Braves again tomorrow, and 13 more times after that.  Today, we earned about 13 wins worth of luck against the Braves going forward.  Combine that with the fact that the Braves have one of the worst teams of all time, and you’ve got a recipe for continued success against the Braves going forward, especially when we face Matt Wisler once again and serve him up a reminder that line drives, as a matter of course, don’t usually find opposing mitts.

That’s another great thing about this team: it’s hard to get down.  We’ve got Matz tomorrow; he’s great.  Then we’ve got deGrom; he’s damn good as well. Then Thor; we all know he’s mighty fine.

They’re the Braves. They suck.  Let’s go win the series tomorrow, when luck turns back our way.  ‘Nuff said.

Who was it who said, for the first time, that you couldn’t predict baseball?

Well, he was right tonight, and then some.  Because just as I was thinking of how applicable the quote was to the instance at hand, of a 43 year old, 300 pound pitcher throwing eight shutout innings and, by appearance if not reality, on his way to a complete game shutout, baseball proved, yet again, that even when it’s unpredictable, you can’t predict it.

What was Jeurys Familia doing on the mound in a 4-0 game?  Against a Braves team that had barely hit all day?  Replacing a pitcher who had cruised through the previous eight innings?  Neither of us knew either.

Familia is our closer, an arm we may need tomorrow, a fireballing, young reliever who is in his place amongst the National League leaders in appearances.  It was not a save situation.  Bartolo, you felt, could have thrown eight more innings if necessary.

I don’t know what Familia was doing in the game.  Sometimes, I think Terry Collins just likes to see what happens when he manages completely against common sense, and for now, at least, it turned out fine.

Bartolo, with the win, surpassed Pedro Martinez on the all-time list of wins by Dominican-born pitchers, and a more fitting successor, I’m sure Pedro himself cannot imagine.  Pedro, who once started dancing when the sprinklers disrupted his start.  Pedro, of current fame for his oft-vined shout of “THOOOOOOOOR!” during last year’s World Series broadcast.  Pedro, who by all accounts was the goofiest, funniest, liveliest, most energetic guy in a clubhouse that also contained Jose Reyes.

Pedro’s down to number three now; Bartolo is at number two.  I doubt either of them cares very much.  I can’t help but imagine some kind of TV special, “A Conversation With Pedro and Bartolo.”  The kind of thing the producers hoped be a serious conversation about what it meant to pitch in the major leagues, but would inevitably turn into shared stories of clubhouse pranks, wacky escapades, and ridiculous hijinks that, while perhaps not the most poignant, were certainly more than their share of fun.

And as the producers looked on in horror, watching their show that was meant to be deep and somber, turn into a festival of laughs, they’d be the ones forgetting that those kinds of things are what it means to pitch in the major leagues.

We all love players who are enthusiastic, energetic, youthful — guys who have maintained a sense of fun from little league fields of childhood, who are playing baseball because it’s the greatest game in the world.  Of course, most players are like that, but there are guys who go the extra mile.  David Wright, the captain, who cares more than anyone on the field but always remembers that it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.  Curtis Granderson, about whom the same could be said.  And, of course, Bartolo.

It’s the behind-the-back flip that makes of love Bartolo like we do, but even more, the guilty smile after the play, as if he knows that he shouldn’t have done what he did even if it worked out fine.  It’s the wild, flailing swing that occasionally makes contact and even more occasionally puts the ball in play — he nearly lined the ball down the left field line for what I like to think would have been a triple today, but it was foul by a foot or so, and in all likelihood, would have gone for a double regardless — but even more than the swing, it’s the smile after he’s done at the plate, that says that even though it’s not his job to hit, he’s gone up there and given it his best.

Bartolo the kid reacts with ageless enthusiasm as Grandy drives him home with a homer, neither expression looking out of place on a little league field

And, of course, it’s the fact that he’s still out there, a long, bumpy, 22 year career, 220 wins in the bag and a few more to come.  “We’re all told at some point that we can no longer play the children’s game,” said the well-meaning but badly mistaken scout in Moneyball.  “Some of us are told at 18, some of us are told at 40.  But we’re all told.”  Correct, obviously, in the vast majority of circumstances — but this isn’t one of them.  Bartolo’s still out there playing the children’s game with all the energy of a 15 year old kid, and as long as he’s pitching eight scoreless innings and being denied the chance at a ninth, he’ll continue to do so.

Meanwhile, while Bartolo was stealing the show and our hearts, we were scoring four runs in the first on home runs from the captain — another who is still playing the children’s game — Cespedes, and Duda, good for two runs more than we would need.  Come on — they’re the Braves, on track to have the worst season in MLB history, and looking, early on, like they might just stick to that track all the way to the end.  We’re a team and a damn good one, with a dog in the fight for the National League.

And when we get done sweeping the Braves on Wednesday, and later in the year, when we finish beating them in every one of our 19 matchups, we’ll have gone a long way towards proving it.

Our streak of eight ended yesterday; tonight, a new one began.  We’ve got the Braves, then the Padres — those are six chances, right there, to show we’re as good a team as we say.  Then we’ve got the Dodgers, who are due a world of hurt at our expense.  Then the Rockies, who we showed we could beat last year, then the Nationals, who are due for a little reminder that they can’t lay claim to the division just yet.

Sound like a tough stretch?  No?  Well, that’s because for us, no stretch is particularly tough.  We’ll get through the Braves, and the Padres, and whoever gets thrown at us.  We’ve got four aces to make sure of it.

And then, on the fifth day, when we don’t have an ace, we’ve got the most endearing of the bunch: Bartolo himself.