New York Mets News: Two Petes, an Empty Booth, and a Goodbye

The New York Mets news that stings this morning has nothing to do with the standings and everything to do with two first names and one voice. Two Petes who once shared a clubhouse in Queens are sitting on top of their respective leagues' home run charts, and the broadcaster who called both of their arrivals in the big leagues will not be back in the radio booth next season. Elsewhere, the Yankees are talking themselves into circles about a playoff rotation that the numbers have already sorted out, and the White Sox lost one of the genuinely great pitching coaches of the last forty years.

Busy Thursday. Let's take it in order.

Where are Pete Alonso and Pete Crow-Armstrong now, and how many home runs do they have?

Pete Crow-Armstrong has 45 home runs, tied for the National League lead with Kyle Schwarber. Pete Alonso has 41, tied atop the American League with Yordan Alvarez and Junior Caminero. Neither one of them wears orange and blue anymore. That is the entire story and it does not need embellishment.

What makes it land harder is the shape of the two careers. Alonso was the known quantity, the guy whose power was never the question, and he is still doing exactly what he has always done, just in a different league with a different logo on the helmet. Power does not evaporate. It relocates.

Crow-Armstrong is the different animal. He came up as a glove and a motor, the kind of center fielder you plug in because he saves you runs, and the bat was the open question everyone politely talked around. Forty-five home runs is not a step forward. That is a reclassification. He is in the National League MVP conversation and the conversation is not a courtesy.

You can do the counterfactual math yourself and I would not blame you, because I did it too: those two bats in the same lineup, at the same time, with Crow-Armstrong roaming center. That team does not have a power problem. It does not have a defense problem in the outfield either. The Mets did not keep them, and both of them went somewhere else and got better, which is the specific flavor of front-office heartburn that follows an organization around for a decade.

Why is Howie Rose leaving the Mets broadcast booth?

The reporting says Howie Rose will not return to the Mets booth next season, and that a late effort to change that outcome did not get there. I do not have the full internal version of how that conversation went, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I do know is what leaves with him.

Rose is a signature-call broadcaster in a sport that has very few of them left. "Put it in the books" is not a catchphrase you manufacture in a marketing meeting. It is a thing a guy says a thousand times until a city hears it in its sleep and it means the night went fine, the Mets won, go to bed happy. That is not a small thing to hand off.

And radio is where baseball still works best. Television gives you the picture, radio gives you the pace, and a great radio voice makes a Tuesday in August against a last-place club feel like something you would be foolish to miss. That was Rose's actual gift, more than any one call. He made the nothing games feel like something.

The replacement, whoever it turns out to be, walks into a job where the bar is not ratings or polish. The bar is a generation of fans who learned the rhythm of a baseball season through one man's cadence. Nobody clears that in year one. Nobody should be expected to.

Should Cam Schlittler and Carlos Rodon start Games 1 and 2 for the Yankees?

Yes, and I do not think it is especially close.

Since coming off the injured list on August 18, Carlos Rodon has posted a 1.89 ERA with a 0.82 WHIP and a .146 opponent batting average. That is not a nice stretch. That is one of the best runs any starter in baseball has put together over the last five weeks, and it is happening at precisely the moment of the calendar when it is worth the most. Cam Schlittler has been the other best arm on the staff. Those are the two you ride.

The complication is Gerrit Cole, and I understand the pull. Reputation is real, October experience is real, and no manager wants to be the guy who benched his ace in the Wild Card round. But a rusty return is a rusty return no matter whose name is on the back, and the postseason does not grade on résumé. Ride the arms that are throwing like this right now. Aaron Boone has three good options and is treating it like a trap.

The lineup question got its answer separately: Aaron Judge has confirmed he is playing in the Wild Card series, no hedging, no rehab-timeline language. He is carrying a .987 OPS and 35 home runs, and the difference between that bat in the four hole and that bat in street clothes is the difference between a real offense and a lineup that has to manufacture everything. The Yankees host Tampa Bay tonight at 7:06 ET with that resolved, which is more than they could say a week ago.

Remembering Don Cooper

Don Cooper has died at 70. He spent 33 years in the White Sox organization and served as the pitching coach for the 2005 World Series champions, a staff that threw four consecutive complete games in the postseason, the first time that had been done since the 1928 Yankees.

Coop was, by every account of the people who pitched for him, the rare coach whose real work was conviction rather than mechanics. He got arms to believe they could not be touched, and for one October in Chicago, they could not be. Baseball is quieter this week.

What I'm watching next

Three things, in descending order of how much they will occupy me.

First, the home run races, because both of them are live and both of them are tied. Crow-Armstrong and Schwarber at 45, and a three-way knot at 41 in the American League, with the season running out of days. Ties at the top of a leaderboard in the final week are the best free entertainment the sport offers. The Mets visit Texas this afternoon at 2:36 ET, one of the last regular-season Thursdays on the board.

Second, who the Mets put in that radio chair, and how long they take to announce it. The timing of that decision will tell you plenty about whether the organization understands what it just lost.

Third, the Yankees' Game 1 announcement. If Rodon and Schlittler get the first two, the numbers won the argument. If they do not, we will all learn something about how this front office and this dugout weigh a five-week sample against ten years of name recognition. I know which way I would go. I have known for about three weeks.