And sick to watch it unfold. On a Sunday evening in late May, sitting among my fellow Mets faithful at Citi Field, hope sprang. The crowd that night was the best I’d heard it all year. Optimism pumped from our fragile, achy hearts—we were hopped up on rookie magic and daydreams made real. All three Babies were in the lineup. Alvarez, the youngest major leaguer to ever catch Justin Verlander, guided the future Hall of Famer through eight strong frames. “I can’t say enough good things about him,” Verlander later remarked. In the 9th, I deliriously banged my palm against the seat in front of me as the Mets completed a weekend sweep of the Guardians. It felt like salvation. The Baby Mets had rescued the team not only from offensive futility, but from a bloated, dispassionate state. Really, they had rescued the Mets from themselves.
The Opening Day Mets had been… I don’t know—were they the Mets at all? In the offseason, Steve Cohen, the richest owner in baseball by far, had thrown around his weight, signing Verlander for an annual $43.3 million (tying teammate Max Scherzer for the record) and bringing right-hander Kodai Senga over from Japan for $75 million. He nearly signed Carlos Correa for another $300 million-plus before a suspect physical spoiled the deal. Afterward, unsatisfied, he added redundant veterans to the slew he’d acquired last year. By the season opener, salary committed to players 37 and older was about $125 million—more than Boston’s payroll—and the only such geezer who’d been a Met for more than a year was Robinson Cano, who was A) a forever Yankee and B) cut from the roster last June. The Babies were stuck in AAA Syracuse. Hours before first pitch, Verlander disappeared with a vague shoulder thing and missed all of April. Scherzer, even in his second year, looked about as natural in a Mets uniform as Manny Ramirez in Tampa or Ichiro in the Bronx. The roster felt distant, greedy—Yankeesesque.
Cohen himself acknowledged that the geriatric crew was meant to be a “bridge” to another era. Back on Opening Day, I wondered when we’d reach the other side.
Then, on April 9th, Alvarez filled in for the injured Omar Narvaez (31). Baty arrived a few weeks later, replacing Eduardo Escobar (34) at third, and then Vientos got the call, siphoning DH at-bats from Tommy Pham (34) and Daniel Vogelbach (30). Cue the moonshots and matching shirts. Lasagna for everyone!
Now, with each passing day, fans bang the table for more—more at-bats and more rookie magic. There is little mystery as to where they think it’ll come from next.
Back in 2017, Tanous caught a glimpse of a lanky teenaged infielder in the Dominican Republic. Ronny Mauricio stood 6’1”, maybe 140 pounds, with a “loopy swing” that generated no power at all. “You had to use your imagination a little bit with him,” Tanous recalls. Still, he liked what he saw—and placed a call to then-Mets GM Sandy Alderson. The team had already burned through its international signing money for the year; Tanous nudged Alderson to obtain more through a trade. So on July 5th, Alderson sent minor leaguer Milton Ramos to Baltimore for the needed wiggle room. (You’d be forgiven for not remembering this trade.) Later that month, the Mets signed Mauricio for $2.1 million.
Six years later, Tanous says, “he doesn’t look anything like anything like the 15-year-old we saw.”
Today, at age 22, Mauricio leads all minor leaguers in hits and doubles. “His bat-to-ball skills are insane,” Baty says. “I feel like every time he hits the ball, it’s over 110 m.p.h.”
In other words, the Baby Mets crew is still incomplete—and we can’t walk (or crawl) across Cohen’s bridge to glory until everybody gets here. Just when Mauricio might arrive is uncertain. But whenever the moment comes, Mauricio, who has sprouted to 6’3”, 222—“built like a tree, moves like a gazelle,” Baty says—will take his t-shirt in a XXL.
His buddies in the clubhouse will be waiting. “I’m really excited for that moment when we’re all up here together,” Alvarez tells me. “Those three have become more than just my teammates, they’re my family.”
Leo Sepkowitz
Source link