Admit it, you didn’t know who he was either.
When left-handed pitcher Nate Fisher entered the game for the Mets in the fifth inning of Sunday’s win in Philadelphia, even some of the people on the field were a bit unfamiliar.
“I didn’t know who this guy was when he came into the game,” said Mark Canha, Sunday’s offensive hero who undersold the Fisher story by calling it “pretty cool.”
“He did a hell of a job for us today.”
Fisher was a commercial lending analyst for First National Bank of Omaha in June 2021 before the Mariners took a flier on him, getting him out of the finance world and providing one more shot at achieving his MLB dream. Fisher appeared in 21 games for the Mariners organization at various levels of their minor league system, then was scooped up by the Mets for 2022. His first day in the majors had to wait until he threw 24 more minor league games for the Mets, 12 at Double-A and 12 at Triple-A.
As one of the more memorable figures in the Mets’ wacky weekend series in Philadelphia, hurling three shutout innings that were paused by a rain delay, Fisher immediately endeared himself to his teammates and gave even more legitimacy to the idea that these Mets are destined for greatness.
“It’s been a crazy journey,” said Fisher, summarizing both his own personal journey and that of the 2022 Mets. “Always believed in myself, never got down on myself. I’m thankful for the people around me that kept me going when there was some uncertainty.”
Fisher was also asked which thing is harder to get through, the Phillies’ lineup or a tough shift at the bank.
“Probably the Phillies’ lineup,” he said with a blinding smile. “But those days can get long at the bank, too.”
“The bank job’s a lot easier,” offered Buck Showalter. “I’m sure there’s some real hard parts of working for a bank. Believe me, I know the story. It’s pretty cool. The guys were so pumped.”
Those guys have now seen a long line of random, unheralded or previously unknown players step up for the Mets this season. Rookie outfielder Nick Plummer only made 31 plate appearances before being designated for assignment in mid-August and later outrighted to Triple-A. But in May, he helped the Mets beat the Phillies by cracking a game-tying home run in the ninth inning, then came back the next day with another homer and four RBI to take down the Nationals.
Tylor Megill, a.k.a. “Big Drip,” had to make an emergency start on Opening Day when both Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer began the season with injuries. He kept Washington from tallying a single run, threw 5.1 more shutout innings against the Phillies in his next time out, and three starts later began the Mets’ combined no-hitter by once again taking it to the Phillies, a recurring theme of this spring and summer in Flushing.
Now that the season series with Philly is over, the Mets can also take some time to appreciate just how thoroughly they dominated their southern neighbors. Each installment of the recent four-game set at Citizens Bank Park sounded like a Mets’ home game, and with the Mets winning three of the games, there were plenty of times that a “Let’s Go Mets” chant broke out, prompting Phillies’ fans to respond the only way their natural instincts know how: booing.
The Amazin’s 14 wins vs. the Phillies ties a single-season franchise record. The plus-37 run differential (100 runs scored compared to 63 allowed) shows that these two teams were never even that close. It’s hard to put together a trophy-winning season without cleaning up in division games, and while the Mets’ complete dismissal of the Marlins and Nationals is no surprise, kicking the playoff-hopeful Phillies to the curb adds another reason to believe these Mets can fulfill owner Steve Cohen’s championship prophecy.
It takes a village to win a championship. Some of those villagers — like Fisher, Plummer, rookie pitcher Colin Holderman and his 15 games of assistance, or supporting-cast relievers Stephen Nogosek and Tommy Hunter, separated by nine years of age and 468 games of MLB experience — are only going to be in town for a short while. That’s the nature of an MLB season and the amount of people that make it go. But whether it’s the role players, or guys like Trevor Williams and Daniel Vogelbach that have become part of the furniture, it seems like every person who puts on a Mets uniform this season is fated to do something incredible for the greater good.
Watching this team day in and day out makes it clear that they put the major in major league. The old team of destiny tropes may be mostly media-manufactured and are impossible to quantify or really define without falling into other clichés. But if the players on the field actually believe they’re pre-ordained for something special, that sort of determinism can be just as powerful as ninth-inning home runs to embarrass the Phillies.
As Fisher said on Sunday, being Major League Baseball players is what they all wanted, so the Mets might as well play elite baseball while they’re here.
“This is my dream, so I just tried to make the most of it.”
That doesn’t sound like a bad tagline for the season-ending highlight video.
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