Looking Ahead to Game Two

Sailing down the road when a truck runs into you Injuries and doctor bills You don't know what to do If that happens don't go it alone. Ne someedone to call your own. They got your back. Don't fight solo. If you get hurt, call Trant olo and Trant olo . Get your free case assessment at Tranolot Law.com . When the stakes rise and the lights get bright, that's when you find out who can really swim. Deep Waters is a new UFC podcast from CBS Sports. Every Monday , myself, Dean Thomas, alongside with legends of the sport, Chris Wideman, Jorge Masvedal, and Dustin Poirier, bring you inside the octagon like no one else can. Deep waters, new episodes every Monday . Watch on YouTube or listen on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else you get podcasts. It's the amazing Rico Bronya Podcast with your host, Evan Roberts . Rico Brona How we doing? There are certain games. There's 1 62 baseball games, but there are certain games that at the end of the season you won't forget. Sometimes they 're incredible wins, sometimes they're painful losses, and sometimes they are games that are just completely drunk. And the New York Mets, Washington Nationals, May 18th, game one of a four-game series was one of those games that I mean it had everything. This this game was stupid by the end. We had dumb umpires that don't know the rules. We have blown leads. We have weird managerial decisions. We've got weird bunt attempts. I mean, this baseball game between the Mets and the Nationals had absolutely everything. And this night in sports has had absolutely everything. Because besides the Yankees and David Bednar holding on to win their game, I've been glued to this Thunder Spurs game. And I admit I am doing this Rico live while simultaneously watching the conclusion of Oklahoma City San Antonio. So if I'm distracted, I apologize. Let's get to this game. Number one, thank God they won. Because there was a part of me as the Mets went down three to one and as they took the lead and then blew the game in the eighth inning, and we sweated out all those nationals' rallies with chances to win in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh inning. It felt like the goodwill of the five and one road trip and the good feeling of the great comeback on Sunday in a weird way gets wiped away if you lose this game. Especially a frustrating game. Especially a game that would have given you all the hallmarks of the Met struggles. Like to go back to seven games under 500 as we're trying to get out of the abyss. I don't know. I don't know if anyone else felt that way, but it would have been like going backwards. It would have felt like what did that homestand mean? So this game, as it continued and as it got crazier and crazier and crazier. This was one of those games that I wanted more and more. This would have been a bad loss . This would have been a frustrating loss on a lot of levels. And somehow this team who's starting to slowly, and it is a slow process, slowly try to win us back in believing in them was somehow to pull, somehow able to pull this game off. Where do we start? Can I start with the umpires? Is is that asking too much? If you are Todd Tishner and Chris Siegel and John Bacon and uh Clint Vondrak, whatever the hell these guys' names are, don't you have to understand the rules of baseball? And I know that some of these rules are new. The extra inning rules are weird. The position player's pitching rule is weird. But how do we have a delay in the twelfth inning of this game when the Nationals decide to punt it? They basically decide: all right, no mass, we've lost. Let's back the truck up . How do you not know that they're able to use a position player. The fact that we sat there for eight minutes, because I think it was eight minutes, and we gotta watch the confusion on their faces and the disgust from Keith Hernandez. I love when Keith gets disgusted. I tell you that that very much entertains me. How do you not know this? I thought the rule was pretty straightforward. Gary Cohn explained it too, which is, yeah, it has to be a blowout to use a position player in the regular nine innings of a game. But once you get to extra innings, you've got that choice if you want to tap the hell out . So that was one thing that drove me nuts. But the other thing that I loved that was just crazy was the fact that Vidal Brujan is laying down a goddamn bunt with the bases load ed. A buddy of mine texted me and said, I don't know if that was smart or not. You don't know if that was smart or not? It was acidine . Again, Keith Hernandez basically said that and Gary Cohen's retort was, well, that's what Vidal Brujan does. He buns for base hits. Okay. When there's a force at home and there's a force at any base, is it really the wisest idea ? And you go back and you look at that bunt by Vidal Brujan, and this is how baseball is such a game of inches. So at this point, the Mets took the lead on the infield hit by Carson Bench, the one that went off, uh, the pitcher's glove, Paxton Schultz by an inch. I mean, really, he feels that ball. He at least has a play at the plate to nail Tyrone Taylor. But after the Bob achette base hit and the Juan Soto intentional walk, Vidal Bruhan does that bunt attempt. So it's a's a close game. It one-run game. If that ball is caught and it came pretty close to Schultz being able to catch that, it's an easy double play. Carson Bench is racing home. He ain't messing a round . So the Mets got a lot of breaks in this game, a lot of by an inch. And again, I don't feel bad about that because it feels like at times the inches have gone against this team. Line drives right at people, diving catches. So I'll never complain when the inches go our way. But think about just those sequences, right? The game-winning hit by Carson Bench is a comebacker off the glove of the pitcher, Paxton Schultz, who should have fielded it cleanly, didn't, but like he's an inch off from fielding it cleanly. That turns into the lead run. Vidal Brujan hits a or bunts a ball that's in the air. It's not even a good bunt. And Schultz comes pretty close to catching it. Even the Beau Bouchette base hit, it's a ground ball up the middle. It's a few inches to the left. It's an out . But maybe it's a sign of things starting to turn for this for this team. That the brakes are now starting to go our way. But you go back to that 12th inning where this team needed to score a run. I completely agreed with bunting with Hayden Sanger. I thought that was a no-brainer because I think when Hayden Sanger is in the game, I'm gonna treat him like the pitcher spot. So even in a tie game on the road, move that runner. And also you've got your top of the order coming up. So the worst case scenario is you get a run and you take the lead, even if there's a good chance you'll give it right back a half inning later. But then you also give Benj, Bachet, and potentially Soto a chance to get at bats in that inning with a chance to drive in more than just that run that's on third base and less than two out. So I have no problem with the bunt by Hayden Sanger. Carson Bench continues to be a fire plug or a fire spark, whatever the hell it is. I don't know. I just watched four hours of baseball at a classic Western Conference Finals game. I don't know. Words don't make sense right now. Nothing from that game makes sense right now. But Bench continues to be a fire plug. And this was a good, good game for Bob . This was a positive day for Bobachette. And it didn't start off that way because when he walked in the third inning and instantly gets picked off, I think all of us are throwing our coffee or throwing our beer or throwing our water. But he gets the sacrifice fly in the fifth inning, which was valuable because it advanced the runners. So that was at least a quality at bat by Bo. He obviously hits the home run in the seventh inning, which felt important, an insurance run. Something that I think we felt all night long the Mets were gonna need every inch of it. By the way, this this Spur Thunder game is just and this is gonna be a seven-gamer. Well, maybe not, but it's going to be entertaining for however many games we see. Anyhow, he gets the other sacrifice fly in the tenth inning, which was also important because at the bare minimum, when you come up with the runner on second, you got to move that runner. I'd love for you to drive him in. You're making $42 million , but at the bare minimum, you have to move that runner. And Bobachette did that in the 10th inning. And then he gets the base hit in the 12th inning, which was a very important hit in that inning, right after they took the lead. And then sure, why not the two-run double off of Jorbert Vivas? It all counts the same, even if we know it was a lob. It's something maybe I even I could have made contact on. But this was a step in the right direction for Bobachet on a lot of levels. Juan Soto had a big hit, the two run single in the fifth inning. You know, Mark Vientos had a terrible day. He's the one who bounced into the double play in the 10th inning. But that's really what Vientos his season has been. It's been a lot of start and stop . The good news for Mark is that even off of a game like this, in which he goes oh for five and bounces into a double play in the tenth inning, he knows he's in the lineup the next day. But Brett Beatty hit that monster home run and then came up with the big two run single in the 12th inning. Marcus Simeon had the sacrifice fly that gave them the lead. Tyrone Taylor had two more hits in this game. Luis Terenz had an RBI double. So contributions all the way around. But how about the Escape Act by Waskar Brazaban ? And that really is where we all thought this game was dead. You know, after Tobias Myers g ives up the game tying hit in the eighth inning, the RBI double by Curtis Meade, you know, as this game moves into the ninth and the tenth and the eleventh, we know we have to sit through those moments where the game can end on one pitch. And a credit to everybody, Luke Weaver, Was gar Brazzabon, forget Craig Kimbrell because he came into the game, it was mop-up duty. Both Weaver and Brazzaban need ed to make enormous pitches. And we'll start with Luke Weaver in the ninth inning. Gives up the leadoff at first pitch single to CJ Abrams. And we saw some unfortunate hit bats mans in this game. We'll get to Christian Scott in a little bit and what turned his start. But after Weaver gets that big strikeout, he's ahead of Joey Weimer, the counts even of Joey Weemer, and he drills him. And that puts the winning run on second base and forces Weaver now to get two outs without giving up a hit and without letting this game slip away in the bottom of the ninth inning. And like I said at the top, it would have been a bad loss . He strikes out Jose Tenna. He gets Jorbit Vivas to pop up right. I think as Gary Cohen gave that stat that Jorbit Vivos is like 0 for 19 with runners in scoring position. Which I thought was going to be like the ultimate jinx if Vivas walked us off at that point . But Luke Weaver followls up that performance he had on Saturday against the Yankees. He follows up his Rico, I'm the man right now, star of the series, with a gutsy performance. He wasn't great, but he was able to make the big pitch when he needed to. And then you've got Was kar Brazaban in the tenth inning of this game. Slam it home, Jalen. There you go. If you get hurt in an accident, most insurance covers try to minimize your pain and your payout . 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Terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Sorry, I'm rooting for the thunder. What do you want from me? But you got Waskar Brazeban in the 10th inning, and the 10th inning felt like torture. That's where you really thought they were going to lose this game because the Mets didn't score in the top of the 10th inning. And it feels like when you don't score in the top of the tenth inning of an extra inning game, you may as well put the game on eye. Like you don't. It creates such an easy opportunity for the home team. And look, that 10th inning was the thing I briefly described, Bachette had the sack fly. They walked Juan Soto. Viento spanced into a double play. I actually was envisioning that top of the 10th inning even before it happened. Because with a runner on second and nobody out, and Bachet being someone who actually is really good at going the other way, that's all he does. In my mind, I'm thinking, all right, if you're not going to come through Bo with a big base hit, at least advance the runner. But the problem is if Bichette advances the runner or doesn't, Soto's not getting a chance to hit. Like the only way Juan Soto was ever going to get a chance to hit in that spot is if Bo Bichette drew a walk . Because like even a base hit where the runner doesn't score, you probably still walk Soto . You probably still at that point say we're not going to let Soto beat us. So you could envision that inning playing out exactly the way it did. Bachet makes out, you walk Soto, Vientos double play. I was hoping in that inning that since Juan Soto has now become aggressive on the base bats . We saw it in the series against the Yankees. That would have been a good opportunity for Soto to steal second base. And Cohen, Gary Cohen brought it up to Keith Hernandez, who said, nah, I wouldn't do that. I'm thinking, what why would you not do it? Vientos is a prime double play candidate, prime as hell. So if you can steal second if you're Juan Soto , why not eliminate the possibility of a Mark Vientos double play. But anyhow, they don't score in the 10th inning. And how about the work of Huascar Brazaban? Gives up the bun sacrifice immediately, which is predictable because it's a tie game in the bottom of the tenth inning. Intentionally walk James Wood predictable. So the whole thing is to form . You're looking at first and third, one out with Curtis Mead at the plate. And at that point , I was kind of willing to do what Mendy did, which is, hey, let's try to turn two . Let's try. Sorry. This . Are you watching this basketball game, Hoff? I mean, my guy. Victor Juan Banyamo with a game time three with 26 seconds to go in the first overtime. Yeah, like today's just a crazy sports day, dude. Like they don't want games to end. I know. The Yankee game was entertaining. Obviously, this Met game was wild. And the Western Conference Finals, which is coming with such incredible hype, as you can imagine it deserves. It's lived up to it in game one. But anyhow, I'll talk about that on Evan and Tiki . Back to Waskar Brazeban. He falls behind Mead and walks him, and it sets up this bases loaded. You can't screw up. You need either a pop-up , a strikeout, or a ground ball right at somebody. And even if it's right at somebody, you just never know. I mean, you you get a ground ball right at Mark Vientos, there's a chance he pulls a Lucas Duda . So Nunez comes up. I'm already preparing for all right, they're gonna lose this game. And I think at that point I had already said to Hoff maybe we should do a Rico . Because the way we do this is obviously, when a series is over, we always do a Rico. And then sometimes we'll do pop-ups based on the game, based on the craziness of a game, based on if it deserves an instant reaction. This game obviously it became known throughout. Okay, maybe maybe this is crazy enough to talk about as soon as it's done . But Nunez comes up, and I'm expecting I wasn't in I wasn't sure what to envision on how the game was gonna end, but I thought the game was over don't we all and he hits the ball right at mark vientos and credit to vientos because even though the ball's right at him and it's a routine play mark vientos is still someone you are not comfortable with complet ely. And he made a perfect throw home, got the lead runner , and now Brazzaban is a batter away from getting through it, but he's got a face CJ Abrams, the same guy who had the sacrifice fly in the seventh inning, the same guy who led off the ninth inning with a base hit, and the same guy who's killed us at times this season . So now I'm envisioning Abrams ripping one into the right field corner. And that's how they lose. That's now how I'm envisioning how they win this or how they lose this game. And even when Brazoban gets ahead of them one and two. Aren' wet all thinking the same thing? All right, here we go. This is where they lose the game after being ahead of the count. This is where they give up the big hit after being ahead of the count, which we've seen so often. We saw it in Anaheim with the extra inning game they lost on that Saturday night. And Brazzaban threw a great changeup on one and two, and he struck him up. Brazzaban has been great this season. And for all the crap we've given David Stearns, rightfully so, the trade of Huascar Brazaban two years ago, even if it didn't pay the immediate dividends in 2024, he continues to be one of their most important relievers. In the 11th, they get the run kind of the same way they were building the run in the 10th that they didn't get. Sacrifice fly by Brett Beatty. Sacrifice fly by Marcus Simeon. They don't take advantage of the error by Gus Varland to try to pick off A.J. Ewing and threw it away. And with a one-run lead going into the bottom of the 11th inning and the bottom half of the nationals order coming up , my confidence level had now shifted towards we may not win it here, but at least we can take it to the 12th. That's how I felt going in to the bottom of the 11th in ning . And you've got Brett Beatty in this game at first base because rightfully so Mendy Pinch ran for Vientos in inning earlier with Vidal Brujan. Made complete sense. Like if Vientos is your base runner to start, and that was the case in the 11th inning, put some speed out there. And so going to Vidal Brujan, who you basically forget is on the team, is a no-brainer, but now it shifts everybody defensively. You have Bruhan at shortstop, and I haven't seen enough of him to know if you should trust him or not. Bobachette back to third base, which he hasn't played a lot recently, and Brett Beatty to play first base. And maybe the most underrat ed , or I guess, less identified big moment of the game was some of the defensive plays that Brett Beatty made in extra innings after that move is made . Let's start off with the fact that on the very first pitch to Dalen Lyle, he hits a little Q shot back to Braz ban , who makes an off-balance throw ? It's not a great throw, and Beatty calmly, the right footwork, scoops it out, avoids disaster . That's number one for Brett Beatty . Number Number two, after Joey Weimer gets the infield hit, which was no man's land. Once he chopped that baseball with a runner on third base less than two outs, Bobchette was better off not trying to barehand it, but just trying to field it and throw Wemer out at first base . That was his best option. Instead, Bo's trying to barehand, they had no shot to throw out the tying run. So the Nets even it up, which is that one area of I kind of expected it. And then Brett Beatty makes one of the gutsyest. And again by an inch, we talk about the Mets and how different this game could have been based on an inch to the left or the right. Brett Beatty on a ground ball to first base, decides to go to second, which I was surprised about as soon as he made the throw, and the throw came within I'd say a half an inch of hitting the base runner, Joey Wemer, who's a big man. And if he hits Joey Weimer, it's two on one out, and who knows how this game ends. It probably ends right then and there. Maybe a batter later . But the confidence of Beatty at first base, I'm impressed by it. Granted he's not playing a lot of first base, and he may not play a lot of first base for a while until at least Lindor is back . But he has shown like a level of confidence. Like the miscues that Beadim has made at first base hasn't been about first base. It's really just booting ground balls, which he could make the same Sailing down the road when a truck runs into you injuries and doctor bills you don't know what to do if If that happens, don't go it alone. Need someone to call your own. They got your back, don't fight solo . If you get hurt, call Trantolo and Trantolo Get your free case assessment at trantolo law.com . At Mitchell Volkswagen, take advantage of our Memorial Day sales event going on now. Get 1.9% APR for 60 months or a $3, 500 retail customer bonus on a new 2026 Volkswagen Atlas. Or choose a new 2026 Volkswagen Jetta with 3.49% APR for 60 months or a $1,500 retail customer bon us. Visit us today in Simsberry or at MitchellVW.com. Financing subject to credit approval through Wells Fargo Bank. NA. Not all applicants will qualify. Offer ends May 31st, 2026. Terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. The all-new whoop is here. Now more advanced than ever. Train smarter. Sleep deeper. Recover faster . Extend your healthy years. Understand your cycle phases. Now 7% smaller with 14 plus days of battery life. So your data never stops, and neither do you. Power your best performance with memberships made for every goal. Join Whoop today . So gutty play by Beatty, great play by Beatty, and then Vivas rips a double in which off the bat, I thought it had a chance to split the outfielders, go to the wall, and then this game is over. And it gave Braz ban one other opportunity to get through it, and he gets Drew Millis to ground out. So again, on death's door step, Waskar Braz ban makes the big pitches he needs to. And then obviously the explosion in the twelfth inning that we went through, the sacrifice bunt by Hayden Sanger, the infield hit by Carson Ben ge, the Bull Bachette base hit, the bunt by Vidal Brujan, the two-run single by Brett Beatty, the RBI single by Marcus Simeon, and that forces the Nationals to tap out. Let's go back earlier in this game , though, to when Christian Scott had a dominant performance go bad . Because it feels like it was a year ago, but Christian Scott started this game and retired the first five batters he faced. And he struck out CJ Abrams and Dalen Lyle back to back to start the second inning. And it felt as if Christian Scott may put together like a dominant performance that we may be seeing a great one from Christian Scott. And he gets ahead of Jacob Young and he drills him. And it really feels like that drilling of Jacob Young, a guy he knows , it affected him. Because Christian Scott was a completely different pitcher after he drilled Jacob Young, who had to leave the game, and hopefully he's okay. I say that just to be a classy guy because Jacob Young stuck it up our ass last year with those incredible defensive plays that he made. But it felt as if Scott was really bothered by it. He gets ahead of Jose Ten of the next hitter, gives up an RBI double, walks Vivos, gives up a hate base hit to Millis, has a shaky third inning, had a decent fourth inning, but at that point, his pitch count was so high. I got why Mindy pulled him at 81 pitches in four innings. But what could have been a dominant start seemed like it got affected by maybe the emotion of him hitting his friend . So what do you make of Christian Scott's start? Not much. He continu es to show the potential. He continues to show the stuff. He continues to give you like these flashes of what he could be, but he hasn't put it together. And when you only go four innings, you're asking your bullpen to do an awful lot. And Austin Warren did a great job. I feel good about Austin Warren. Austin Warren has graduated from guy on the Syracuse shuttle to guy firmly entrenched in this bullpen . That's how good he's pitched, how well he's pitched, and he did it again. A clean fifth, gets around a leadoff walk in the sixth. The the disaster was Brooks Rayleigh, which is so rare. You know, Brooks Rayleigh is usually so good, so solid, so dependable, that when you see him struggle the way he struggled, it's just something you don't expect. A double back-to-back walks . And that's where this lead became dicey. Because they're down two to one, they're down three to one. They come back three to two, one Juan s Soto.oto gets the big two run single to give him the lead . And now you're wondering: does the bullpen have enough juice to get through this entire game? To get through five innings after you only got four from Christian Scott. You get two from Austin Warren, you're counting the outs, at least I am, thinking, okay, they need nine outs, and they're not getting any from Devin Williams, who's not going to be available in this game. And this was just the stinker from Brooks Rayleigh. I give him a little bit of credit because after he put the first three guys on base, he was able to get the two outs of CJ Abrams and Dalen Lyle, and he got bailed out by Tobias Myers, one of the many big outs with guys on base when he struck out Jose Tenna. And then Tobias Myers lost it out of nowhere. Because he gets out of that mess of the seventh. He gets the first two outs in the eighth so quickly that I'm even giving the thought of do you let Myers finish the game if he gets the third out quickly? Like, why screw around and go to Luke Weaver. If Tobias Myers is really looking that good, you may as well keep him in the game. And out of nowhere, he's ahead of James Wood again. Being ahead of guys and giving up base hits, I think it was a fastball right down the middle, if memory serves correct. And James Wood pounds a base hit to right field, and then he gives up the double to Curtis Mead, which again seemingly came out of nowhere. So from Myers' potenti ally finishing this game out to Myers promptly giving up the lead . And it was air out of balloon. A two-run lead disappears. You're now in these late extra or late game potentially at extra innings against the Washington Nationals, and you're doing it with a bullpen that you're pretty short on. You're not completely short, but you know off the top, you don't have Devin Williams. You know that you don't have Sean Mania , and who knows about the new kid that they called up? Dur ant Dur anty. I'm not that familiar with him, to be honest with you. I think I looked up how to pronounce it earlier. I think it was do dur ant . It's do- a -r-a-t-e. Yeah, I looked it up this morning and I completely forgot about it. But he didn't . And the only reason he's up here is because he had an opt-out and the Mets needed to call him up if they wanted him to at least remain here. It's pronounced Duarte . That's what it is. Daniel Duarte , who is from Mexico, and he's 29 years old, hasn't pitched in the major leagues since 2024 when he made two appearances for the Minnesota Twins. And in the minor leagues, let's see how he was doing this here. I think he was actually pitching well. Yeah, at Syracuse, a two point six zero ERA, 17 and a third innings , 13 hits, 14 strikeouts, nine walks. So you could have gone to Dur ate , Dur ate , but you really didn't have that many great options . So a lot of big pitches needed to be made in this game to the point where I'm counting it up on my scorecard. The nationals left nineteen guys on base. An absurd number . 19 guys on base . They left nobody on in the first inning because Christian Scott pitched a one-two-three inning. After that, two , two , one, zero0, one- 1-3-1-2-3-2-2 to end the game. So it's a testament to really the incredible pitching the Mets had in this game. The incredible ability to hold on. It wasn't easy. They walked a ton of guys. In fact, let me count that up: four, six, seven, nine walks, and two hit bats men . So essentially 11 free passes by Met pitching in this game. You said it to me off before we started. It it wasn't pretty. They're not playing great. But hell, they won the game. And lately they've been winning games despite it being not the prettiest thing in the world, despite not playing great baseball. And that continued here . Let me read some of your emails. I'm sure the uh the Rico email was uh very entertaining throughout this. Let's see what we got. Christopher writes, wonderful win tonight. Team continues to have fight, but I'm really starting to hate ABS. On average, there were ten missed calls a game. Most likely those ten pitches are split between the two teams. Now at the challenge system, one team seems to benefit more than the other. If it's just 10 pitches, can't we just autumn autom ake it? Automate it. The only benefit has been umpires have seem to call an overall better game. I struggle with blaming the players for using challenges and letting umpires off the hook. I I was thinking about ABS tonight as well, because once Teren z lost his two challenges, they were both on him . It felt like there were so many pitches that I was looking at saying, Can you challenge that? Can you challenge that? Can you challenge that? And while I don't hate the challenge system and I don't dislike it as much as I thought I would , I do kind of agree. Like you may as well just get everything right . You may as well like just have everything correct. Dan writes, our good friend Dan, big two days of first baseman run prevention. He's right. The double play in the tenth inning against Austin Wells, in which Vientos made the perfect throw, and Brett Beatty making that throw by an inch . Joe in California writes: it sucks when you worry about a 10-run lead with Craig Kimbrell on the mound. Sheesh. I didn't have that worry. Believe it or not. I felt comfortable with a 10-run lead in Craig Kimbrell on the mound. Uh Daniel writes, Ev, love the podcast. I'll keep this short and sweet. I didn't do the math, but are the Mets the best team in baseball minus the 12-game losing streak ? All right, let's do some math on this. So the Mets are now 21 and 26. If you take out the 12-game losing streak, which you know you can't do, their record is 21 and 14 . Is that the way we're going to look at this? We're going to say, hey, just take the losing streak out. They've got one of the best records in baseball. Ah, that's very, very creative. Good job .