National League Town (a Mets podcast)

Greg and Jeff get together in the post-trade deadline world and exchange ideas over where the Mets are going now that they’ve made deal after deal after deal. What legacy does Max Scherzer leave behind? What was Justin Verlander even doing here? How successful will the Steve Cohen Draft turn out to be? And how many euphemisms do baseball people throw around? National League Town puzzles out some a...

Run. Field. Throw. Hit. Hit with power. You know them as the five tools, or what we want to see out of every ballplayer for whom we root. But what about us? How’s our game? National League Town considers what it takes to be a Five-Tool Fan, with Greg and Jeff asking themselves if they have enough of the right stuff to excel at baseball, albeit in the stands or on the couch. Our co-hosts identify t...

National League Town heads out to the ballpark and looks to commend fellow fans for doing things the right way...but winds up doing a little more tut-tutting than planned. C’mon, people: get your acts together! Greg and Jeff have a few things to say about section captains, foul ball peer pressure, and plate appearance decorum. One team that had its own ideas about suitable conduct was the 1993 Met...

Going into the All-Star break, the Mets’ season looked broken. Can they put it back together in the 72 games remaining? National League Town will accept any glint of light that will allow them to discern a hint of hope. Maybe inspiration is to be had from Pete Alonso’s and Kodai Senga’s team winning the All-Star Game, a big boost for all fans of the NL (a.k.a. the ones in the dark pants). Maybe a...

Although Pete Alonso is the Mets’ only All-Star in 2023, National League Town salutes Steve Cohen’s stellar performance in his recent press conference, where he made himself available and positioned himself as accountable, even if concrete answers to what ailed the Mets in June were hard to articulate. On the sunnier side of Seaver Way, the Black Cat is spotted; not even Gabe Kapler can delay the...

For all the Mets we’ve loved before despite their never having made an All-Star team as Mets, we present the National League Town Retroactive All-Star Ballot, going back in time and selecting nearly two dozen Mets to be the All-Stars we’ve always believed they truly were. If you’re a Mets fan who’s wanted to right decades-old wrongs, this is the show for you.

In this Special Commentary, Jeff explains why Buck must be fired as the Manager of the New York Mets.

“Play better” covers most of what Greg and Jeff have to say to the thus far flailing 2023 Mets, but because they’re fans, they take apart the pitching, the hitting, the fielding, the thinking, the managing and everything that has contributed to this monstrosity of a disappointment and try to figure out if there’s any hope in there. But mostly, Mets: play better.

If it was the worst of times, it wouldn’t have been much different from what had been going on for a while. If it was the best of times, it had a funny way of showing it in the standings. From the perspective of 40 years later, it was probably more than a little of each. Welcome to 1983, when Met past, Met present and Met future blended. We remember one of the most pivotal seasons in Mets history...

National League Town is up on its feet and joining Citi Field in a standing ovation for the New York Mets Hall of Fame ceremonies, even furtively clapping inside the press conference room and press box where we otherwise maintain professional decorum (00:20). So happy are Greg and Jeff to have watched Gary Cohen, Howie Rose, Al Leiter and Howard Johnson inducted into the Met Hall in 2023, they are...

Now batting, now pitching, now broadcasting for the New York Mets: human beings. It might be helpful to remember those are people on the mound, at the plate or behind the mic. You are not legally required to bring empathy to a ballgame, but National League Town believes it doesn’t hurt to pack a little and keep it within reach, especially as a given season’s frustrations mount. And if you are goin...

There’s nothing quite like a Mets team emerging from its morass just in time for summer. Some years, a late May/early June turnaround will catapult the club clear to October. Other years, it simply makes for an enduring, joyful, perhaps Magical memory. Where will the 2023 Mets and their recent spate of pulse-quickening victories land? That’s to be determined — much as every night’s game story wait...

National League Town could come up with more than few choice words to describe the first quarter of the season, and Greg and Jeff surely do (4:30), but when a year like 2023 starts getting us down, we turn our attention to a year that can’t help but lift our spirits. In the latest edition of our series It Happens in Threes (18:00), we direct our attention to 1973, celebrating the fiftieth annivers...

Each was the talk of baseball. Each gripped the attention of New York. Each was on the mound in the ninth inning of the deciding game of the World Series. Neither appeared to be ever quite the same after his most glaring moment in the spotlight. Both were Mets pitchers whose stories were captured in movie form. One was Matt Harvey, the subject of a 2015 ESPN documentary (and so much more) at the h...

When the Mets reached .500 in May of 1969, it was cause to take heart in how far the ballclub had come. When the Mets reached .500 in May of 2023, it was cause to wonder what’s gone wrong. It’s a different time with different expectations, a state of affairs coloring National League Town’s discussion of the currently not great, not terrible (but lately more terrible than great) Mets. What’s Comeri...

We’re a little dissatisfied with an above-average road trip. We’re a touch impatient with an inconsistent offense. We’re underwhelmed with the starting pitching depth that has thus far presented its shallower side. We’re prone to bouts of moodiness and misery. We lack faith in the governing body of baseball and its appointed agents. We’re aghast at how much it costs to park at a ballgame and can’t...

Max Scherzer was ejected from the Mets’ final game in Los Angeles for having on his right hand what the pitcher said was perfectly legal sweat and rosin. Perhaps next time he’ll see if spit and vinegar meets with the umpires’ approval. Whatever substances were involved, the Mets got their California adventure off to an excellent start, running up a 17-6 score in Oakland, which is something you don...

For a week, 2023 loomed as the Year of the Pitch Clock. After two weeks, maybe we started getting used to it. Baseball’s ability to inject a foreign object into the game’s bloodstream and make you think there’s nothing unusual about it is unsurpassed. Before we know it, perhaps we won’t notice those enormous advertising patches on the Met uniform sleeves, either (yet somehow be overcome by an unco...

The first seven days of the Mets’ season have been put in the books, with four of them preferably printed on perforated paper. Alas, National League Town knows that onto every year a little rain must fall (and that was before this podcast’s hosts learned the Home Opener would be postponed by impending precipitation). Wet or dry, the starting pitching needs to wring itself out; reservations run ram...

Happy New Year from National League Town! Next season is now this season with the first of many games getting played, so no wonder Greg and Jeff are bubbling over with excitement. We look all over the diamond at the Mets we expect to see soon and a few of the Mets we expect to see eventually; we deliver, broadly and specifically, a sense of where we think the Mets are heading in 2023; and we even...

The World Baseball Classic was played to wide acclaim, but forgive National League Town if we’re not joining the chorus of media voices insisting the 2023 WBC was the greatest thing since sliced pepperoni. With Edwin Diaz’s patellar tendon a casualty of a postgame celebration we can’t imagine having taken place amid players going through admittedly humdrum Grapefruit League routines, let’s just sa...

Change is in the baseball air this spring, and some of it is no doubt daunting to lifelong fans who fell in love with what seemed like a perfect game as kids. Then again, as Greg and Jeff will attest, change has always loomed over the game we’ve thought of as “ours,” and we’ve never necessarily welcomed it with open arms. Yet somehow, some changes set in to our satisfaction. On this episode of Nat...

What can a Mets fan tell from one night at one Grapefruit League game? Jeff made the trek to West Palm Beach to take in the Mets who weren’t off to the WBC as they faced members of the defending World Champion Astros. The National League Town scouting report says some Mets are better than no Mets, and baseball being played right in front of you is always a welcome sight. Jeff also shares his thoug...

As we grapple with the permanent implementation of the unnatural placement of a runner on second to start the tenth inning (and any inning that accidentally occurs thereafter), we look for ways to make the rule designed to cut games off at their knees more palatable — and we pay homage to what life was like in “real” extra innings, when you had no idea when a game might reach resolution. You know,...

There’s always something there to remind us baseball season is on its way: Spring Training. These National League Town guys are in love with the Mets’ chances on the cusp of 2023. What our world needs now is every player in camp focused on learning the new rules, but the WBC is a magnet that will pull some far away from home. Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ won’t get us back all our ar...