Now with Diamondbacks, Tommy Pham says he enjoyed playing for Buck Showalter's Mets
Arizona Diamondbacks right fielder Tommy Pham bats against the Mets during the first inning of an MLB baseball game at Citi Field on Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Tommy Pham knows about the scrutiny of the big stage, and how, especially in a season like the one the Mets are in, fans and media continue to search for reasons things went so wrong.
Which is exactly why Pham isn’t surprised that his former manager is taking so much flak.
In a lot of ways, Buck Showalter designed it that way. And it made Pham appreciate him all the more.
“It’s New York,” Pham said on Monday as the Diamondbacks got set to take on the Mets at Citi Field. “New York is different. The fans, they love their teams and the media — this is like the biggest media [market]. The way he handled it — he never threw a player under the bus. He took accountability. He took all the heat. That’s what makes you respect him even more. You know, [Francisco] Lindor was the same. As bad as the season was for us as a team, Lindor took everything on him. He never threw a guy under the bus. It just makes you respect him more as a teammate.”
Pham (3-for-4) burned his old club Monday night, hitting a tying home run off Trevor Gott to lead off the eighth in Arizona’s 4-3 win. Drew Smith allowed a one-out single by Alek Thomas in the ninth and Ketel Marte doubled him home on a ball Jeff McNeil lost in the leftfield corner.
Despite a season going nowhere, there’s no lack of fascination with this train wreck of a year. The Mets underperformed in historic fashion: Key injuries handicapped the season, a miserable June punted them out of the playoff race, and by the Aug. 1 trade deadline, they had shed six Cy Youngs-worth of pitching in Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.
Pham, who was on a one-year deal, was one of the bright spots: a player signed to essentially be a fourth outfielder who played his way into becoming a far more valuable asset. He was well-liked by Showalter and well-liked by teammates, his private persona often at odds with a public perception defined by a few negative but high-profile incidents (he slapped Joc Pederson last year after a fantasy football disagreement and previously was stabbed outside of a club).Now with the Diamondbacks, Pham is helping them in their ongoing attempt to hold on to a tenuous wild-card spot.
It was an unexpected turn of events, and not because Pham, who’s in his 10th major-league season, is somehow naïve to baseball’s realities.
When he was with the Reds in 2022, he had a feeling he’d be gone by the trade deadline and planned accordingly: He got a small apartment, he said.
“I packed very light,” he said. Wouldn’t you know it, he was with the Red Sox by August.
“Here, I did the opposite because I didn’t think the Mets would be selling,” he said. “I think if you were to repeat this season 10 times, I think you’d probably get that result maybe once. Nine out of 10 times, I think guys would perform like they were expected.”
He’s not alone in that. Showalter said he’ll always remember his phone blowing up after Edwin Diaz suffered his catastrophic injury in the World Baseball Classic. He also wonders how this season could have been different if Monday’s starter, Jose Quintana, had been healthy from the outset (Quintana allowed two runs in the fourth, but the Mets answered with three in the bottom of the inning, on McNeil’s solo homer and Ronny Mauricio’s two-run double. Quintana gave up five hits with two walks and four strikeouts over five innings).
“Yeah, you think that,” Showalter said. “That’s normal human [emotion]. We tried to figure [the Diaz situation] out with [David Robertson]. We tried to figure it out with other guys . . . Your depth is always going to get tested, but unfortunately, the guy who was scheduled to pitch the second game of the season and the closer coming off a historic year [got hurt]. But it’s an excuse. We should have played better to make sure we had an opportunity to make it not matter.”
It was, of course, more than that.
“Injuries happen,” Pham said. “I’ve never seen a lot of guys all struggling at once [either]. It usually doesn’t work like that.”
But regardless, Pham doesn’t harbor ill will toward the organization.
Having been traded in his career three times before this year’s deadline, he simply asked that Mets general manager Billy Eppler be honest, and he was.
“I appreciated it,” Pham said. “I was just like, you know, hey Billy, I’ve been in this situation before. Can you keep me in the loop, give me a heads-up? He did. I respect that as well.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
