If you're lucky, you are just rising from a few hours of sleep. If you're like many others, you're making the schlep to work today following a restless night after staying up to watch the Mets fall to the Royals in fourteen innings by a score of 5-4. I'm not going to bore you with some postgame recap that you can find on 300 other blogs, but here are three things you should take away from last night's nail biter:
1) This series isn't over. I very much advise you to unfriend, unfollow, or flat out banish anyone who says so from your life. While tonight's game may be a theoretical "must-win", the Mets can clearly hang with this Kansas City Royals team. Yes, they will need Jeurys Familia to bounce back. They will need better play from David Wright, who struggle just about everywhere last night. They will need better defense (what on earth happened in the bottom of the first). But, this team has bounced back and managed to fight through obstacles all year. There is no reason to think this will be any different.
2) The Royals defense clearly isn't impenetrable. Don't believe me? Ask Eric Hosmer, who's eighth inning, Bill Buckneresque, misplay at first gave the Mets a short-lived 4-3 lead. In fact, they bobbled several balls last night, albeit sharply hit ones. Furthermore, the Mets managed to hit through the shift several times. The Mets managed 11 hits, stole a base, and had some decent situational hitting despite going just 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position.
3) Finally, Jacob deGrom pitches tonight. All he's done this postseason is pitch to a 3-0 record while posting a stingy 1.80 ERA and averaging 6 and 2/3s IP. The Mets will need deGrom to go deep into the game tonight after taxing the bullpen so badly in extra innings. Its unknown whether the likes of Bartolo Colon and Jon Niese, both of whom threw at least two innings last night, will be available. In fact, only Hansel Robles and Sean Gilmartin didn't appear for the Mets last night, and neither is much of a long relief option. Its quite possible that any realistic shot of winning this series rests on the shoulders of deGrom this evening.
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