Lost in the California Sky

Morning Dose: Wednesday, June 4

☀️ GOOD MORNING:

If you’ve allowed yourself to stay awake for these past two games at Dodger Stadium (or you’re watching from the west coast), you’ve been treated to playoff-like baseball in June. Regardless of the individual outcomes, we are seeing two of baseball’s best teams battle it out on a nightly basis. They have played each other five times over the past two weeks, with three of those games ending in extra innings.

Baseball is a game that can pack many storylines into the same game.

On Tuesday, what started as the Tylor Megill-crashes-and-burns game turned into one of his most impressive outings of the season. What looked like the Juan Soto and Pete Alonso game turned into the Reed Garrett magic show. What was nearly a Mets win turned into a lost fly ball and Dodgers win.

☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!

---

Box Score | Full Standings

---

🎆 THAT CALIFORNIA SKY

Image Created using AI (DALL-E)

Off the bat, it looked like it might be gone. That’s what Freddie Freeman thought. He told reporters as much after the game. He was looking for a pitch “up” in the zone that he could hit the other way in the air, either to drive home the winning run or at least avoid a double play so he could give Teoscar Hernández a chance to win it next.

↖️ SWING PATH: We’ve talked a lot about swing path over the past few weeks. Freeman has one of the steepest swings in baseball. It’s an uppercut approach that creates a golf-like slice on the ball when he hits it the other way.

His swing in the 10th sliced towards left field, the marine layer and dew keeping the ball from carrying out of the park, as we have seen on several hard-hit balls this series.

Brandon Nimmo was playing in to set himself up to gun down the winning runner at second base had Freeman snuck the ball the other way on the ground. Naturally, the ball sailed over his head, forcing him to race back while tracking it, and he lost it.

NIMMO: “I thought I was going to be able to make a play on it. It just did what I didn’t think it was going to do there at the end. I have a lot of years of experience that tells me the reaction of these things, and that was out of my reaction. I was very surprised to find it on the other shoulder. Very unfortunate time for that to happen.”

A ball that started over his left shoulder when he started his path back, ended about 10 feet to his right by the time he took his eye off the ball to track the wall. That’s what a slice does in a dense LA sky. It’s no excuse, but it is an excuse for Nimmo.

🪄 MAGIC ACT: Of course, the Mets almost lost this game a few innings earlier when the Dodgers put runners on second and third with no outs and somehow didn’t score.