Mound Visits: Give the Mets a hand ... foot or mouth

Welcome to Mound Visits, your weekly recap of the best things you might have missed in baseball every week. This week brings us the Mets descending even further into parody, Max Scherzer having sort of a weird week, and the a Reds fan pulling the fire alarm to thwart a no-hitter. Plus everything else you missed this week.

Have a favorite baseball moment from the week? Tweet it at me, and I’ll include it in next week’s column.

There are other fun players in baseball, of course. Bryce Harper has a good time. Multiple Red Sox players are goofballs. But nobody in baseball is quite as weird as Joey Votto. This week, he shared how he was planning on getting the success of the Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter to “rub off on him” (and was thankfully stopped).

He also said he wants to drive a school bus driver after he’s done with baseball and is a bit older, which is so sweetly off kilter that I don’t even know how to express my joy that it’s a real thing a baseball player said.

Sure he purposefully trolls other fans and isn’t the most endearing person at times. But he’s also probably the only baseball player who can be equal parts rude, honest, and hilarious all at the same time — and all the time.

In a week where the Wilpons and the Mets once again proved their dysfunction with the mess around Yoenis Cespedes’ injuries and eventual surgery, that particular controversy not being the top Mets story seems truly wild.

Noah Syndergaard going to the disabled list with hand, foot, and mouth disease sure is a story topper though. Not only did he catch a viral infection that is usually only seen in children, he was experiencing the painful and weakening symptoms while he was on the mound. At this point, I can’t imagine the Mets somehow staying at this level of dysfunction being at all satisfying.

Someone needs to get croup or maybe even scurvy. Let’s get in to some real 18th century diseases and see what happens. They can’t possibly be entertaining as a normal team so the unexpected twists must continue. It’s The Mets Way.

WARNING: Stop now if you don’t want to cry wherever you are reading this column.

Okay, I did warn you.

Chase Utley’s final series in Philadelphia was this week, and if you were worried he wasn’t going to get a wholehearted farewell from the Phillies faithful you shouldn’t have been. They gave him a standing ovation when the lineup was first introduced ...

... and when he first came up to bat, AND when he flew out to the warning track in that at bat. They got an emotional hat tip in return, as you would expect from someone who values those fans as much as Utley clearly does.

Now, somebody please get me a bucket so my tears have a place to land and I can avoid flooding the apartment.

Max Scherzer’s week involved both fighting with his recently-back-from-injury teammate and owning a local reporter in the children’s game of Connect Four. Your ace could never.

Anthony Rizzo finally got his chance to pitch for the Cubs this week, and he was SO happy about it. It’s something he’s wanted to do forever and even though he topped out at 62 miles per hour from the mound it was a joy to see. Rizzo said it’s the last time he’ll pitch now that he got the chance, which is fair.

Go out on top and head back to your normal spot. It’s only smart.

Kiké Hernandez also pitched this week, and he didn’t fare so well. In the 16th inning of a marathon game against the Phillies, Hernandez got the nod and then let up a walk-off three-run home run. He had fun with it though. Which is really all you can ask for from a player who had his team’s chances on his shoulders and couldn’t pull through in a tough spot.

Position player pitching giveth, and position player pitching taketh away.

For the second night in a row, the Reds were staring down being no-hit by a Cardinals pitcher. On Tuesday night, someone had had enough and took things into their own hands by pulling the fire alarm.

The no-hitter ended shortly after, so even if the fire alarm wasn’t the direct cause the person who did it can pretend that’s the case. The Reds later claimed it was a “malfunction” which I am taking to be code for “a team employee.”

A fan during a Rockies-Reds game back in June caught a foul ball while his baby hung out in whatever the generic version of a Baby Bjorn is called. One Phillies fan just one-upped that catch by snagging a home run while holding their baby IN THE OTHER ARM.

Even going for that ball takes a lot of chutzpah, but executing the catch while protecting the baby is impressive as hell. Hopefully that baby’s mother thinks so as well or he probably got an earful later that night.

You want more cute baseball babies? You get more cute baseball babies.

Here’s Jackie Bradley, Jr.’s daughter encouraging her dad through the television while he was batting. It’s just plain adorable and Erin Bradley should be thanked forever for sharing this cuteness with the world. What a baseball-loving munchkin.

The Baltimore Orioles, on an historically bad loss pace, have pretty much pushed baseball to a new low. You can tell that just by looking at them, but for people whose job is to look at them for hours on end, things are far worse.

One pro scout said that he’d rather get hit with a foul ball or by LIGHTNING than watch the team play. Which, for someone who has probably seen some bad teams in their day, is really saying something. Baltimore won’t stop until even people who love baseball enough to work in the game are sick of baseball.

Oh boy then do the Padres have a deal for you! If you’re a Padres fan and would like to watch an unlimited amount of losses through the end of September or five San Diego home wins — whichever comes first — for the low, low price of $100 dollars then jump on the Five-Win Pass and have a ball. The Padres are so bad this year that the pass could turn into a lot of cheap nights eating ballpark hot dogs and drinking beer for a lower average ticket price every time it’s used.