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Ode to Dingers: Mets 16, Phillies 7

The Phillies flashed some early offense but were no match for the oddly omnipotent Mets.

By Eric Chesterton
Don't ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for everybody.
Don't ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for everybody.
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Some people, particularly those whose writing style is limited by the bylaws of the AP Stylebook, are unable to utilize the word "dinger." I'm not sure of the reasoning behind this and, to tell you the truth, I haven't exactly taken it upon myself to look extensively into the matter, but it is a fact nonetheless.

And you know what? That fact is a sad one. It's sad for the writers who don't get to drop the word dinger into their work and get the pleasure of hearing the word in their heads as they think it, then type it, then dwell on it some more. It is sad for the readers of those writers who don't get to hear "dinger" in their heads as they read it and whose children do not get to hear "dinger" read aloud to them. It's a sad state of affairs altogether.

We here at The Good Phight are not subject to such an authoritarian editorial regime, so I'm going to name each dinger of the game.

1st inning: 3-run dinger by Ryan Howard.

2nd inning: David Wright dinger. Cameron Rupp GODDAMMED DINGER

3rd inning: Juan Lagares dinger. Dom Brown #DomBombDinger.

4th inning: Wilmer Flores Weeping Dinger. Travis Ding'Arnaud

5th inning: Wilmer Flores Dingers of Joy. Michael Cuddynger

6th inning: Dinger Murphy

9th inning: Yoenis Cespedinger

It doesn't take some SABR analytics nerd to figure out that that's a hefty helping of dingers, but we're lazy. Fortunately, Todd Zolecki was around to do the gory addition:

These are words that capture what we intuitively felt: A lot of home runs were hit tonight, so many, in fact, that it might be some sort of notable occurrence.

So the dingers were hit. We saw that, we felt that, we heard that, we KNOW that. But the context of those dingers matters at least a little.

Things started out looking swell for the Phillies. Cesar Hernandez drew a rare five-ball walk to start the first. Then Freddy Galvis singled. Just a bit later, Ryan Howard did a little oppo boppo (I promise not to do that again) to give the Phillies a 3-0 lead. The dingers kept flying and before the third inning had ended, the Phillies had hit 3 dingers and Mets starter Jacob deGrom had been removed from the game. It was the shortest start of deGrom's career. If you rig up the units just right, you'd see it was the only start that was shorter than his hair.

So the Phillies were in the clear: They had a 7-2 lead against a team with an anemic offense in 2015 that needed at least 6.1 innings of bullpen pitching to get through the game. Not so fast!

Hoagiefest might be over, but the Mets weren't about to come to Philadelphia and not get a dingerfest. Over the next 3 innings (4-6), the Mets scored 11 runs with the help of five (5) dingers, including one from Daniel Murphy that he capped off with a lengthy staredown and forceful bat flip:

That was the last of the Mets three-inning barrage and the six run lead it gave them proved to be sufficient for their efforts to win the game.

A GIF was created of those Mets dingers. It was announced to the internet by means of a tweet that will likely draw ire 'round these parts:

What of the Phillies who scored 7 runs in less than three innings against one of the best pitchers in baseball? Surely they put up a fight and offered some resistance against this Mets offensive attack! Resistance was not something the Phillies gave here. Non-de Grom Mets pitchers combined for the following line: 6.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 6 SO, 1 BB. Resistance didn't even go so far as to prove futile. I just wasn't there at all.

One question remains unanswered: Were the Mets unstoppable or were the Phillies pitchers just crap? I'm not prepared to answer that question, but I will leave the following information for the more intrepid among us to explore in the comments in the interest of solving this mystery:

  1. The Mets have scored 14 or more runs in 3 of their last 4 games.
  2. The Phillies sent Adam Morgan, Hector Neris, Justin De Fratus, and Adam Loewen to the mound tonight.
The Phillies presumably will try to be better at baseball tomorrow night as they send Jerome Williams to the mound against the guy Mets fans call Thor because they're (rightly) too lazy to learn how to spell his given name. Prediction: Pain.

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