Everything Counts In Small Amounts For The Citi Field Mets Experience

Anyone heading to Citi Field tonight will do so with many questions in mind.

Can the suddenly skidding Mets — two games out of first place with three to play after being swept over the weekend by the Braves — maintain their flickering NL East hopes by beating the Nationals while getting some help from the Marlins against Atlanta? How will the struggling Carlos Carrasco fare in what might be an audition for a Game 1 or Game 2 start in an NL Division Series against the Dodgers? Can an offense that relied on an old-fashioned approach throughout a 98-win season snap out of its slump and eventually produce enough to win in the playoffs?

And also, will Nationals first baseman/designated hitter Luke Voit become possibly the first player to ever twice serve as the subject of the pregame Bettor’s Box feature sponsored by Caesars Sportsbook?

“The question was ‘How many buttons would Luke Voit have buttoned on his shirt?’” said Brendan McKeon, the Mets’ executive director of in-game operation, looking back last week on Voit’s first trip to Citi Field this season with the Padres in late July.

The answer was none.

“He looked up, he saw it and he just unbuttoned some more of them and he played to it a little bit,” McKeon said. “So it’s that kind of fun stuff that we love to do and we love when the players kind of react to it.”

McKeon chuckled.

“I’ll say we’re too online,” McKeon said.

McKeon and Bobby Clemens, the Mets’ executive director of creative content, have overseen an irreverent overhaul of the gameday experience at Citi Field — a cacophony of sights and sounds that serve as a combination of the old-fashioned way in which most fans used to get their baseball information as well as an in-stadium approximation of a broadcast on SNY, the network that carries most Mets games.

“I like to think of it as like we’re creating a daily newspaper everyday, where the big parts are consistent throughout but we’re changing the little stuff,” McKeon said.

The in-game experience at Citi Field began changing when no one was quite sure when the Mets would play their next game. The Mets generated momentum prior to and during the owners’ lockout by signing free agents Mark Canha, Eduardo Esocbar, Starling Marte and Max Scherzer to contracts worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars and by hiring Buck Showalter as manager — moves that symbolized a change in philosophies, up and down the organization, heading into the first normal-ish season of Steve Cohen’s tenure as owner.

“The ownership change kind of brought a different vibe, I’ll call it, to the whole organization,” McKeon said. “So there was a little bit more, we thought, creative freedom that we were able to have — a little bit more fun on the scoreboard and stuff like that.”

Once the lockout was settled, McKeon and Clemens headed with the Mets to Port St. Lucie — where the most relaxed part of the season for players is the most frantic and intense for the duo. All the footage for the Mets’ pre-game montage — filmed in front of the “Amazin’ Deli” set, which was brought to Citi Field last week — and most stock photos were taken during spring training.

“Put that life-size bodega inside of a 100 x 50 tent and going ‘hey this is pretty cool, what can we do next?’” Clemens said. “Definitely felt that change.”

Once the season began in April, McKeon and Clemens embarked upon the task of bringing the experience of watching a game with friends to the thousands of people sitting inside Citi Field — complete with inside jokes and the type of banter that can only be exchanged by those who, as McKeon says, are too online.

The Caesars Bettor’s Odds promotion requires the delicate threading of a needle that both helps a sponsor while not actually offering a bet on something tangible. Hence, the buttons on Luke Voit’s uniform, or the number of infield flies in an Aug. 4 game against the Braves, who lost the 2012 NL wild card game when umpire Sam Holbrook called the infield fly rule on a pop to shallow left by Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons, which negated a hit that would have loaded the bases in the eighth inning.

During the series against the Texas Rangers in early July, the scoreboard aired one of New York’s most timeless questions: Do the Texas Rangers and New York Rangers ever get together for lunch, followed by a clip of someone prank calling former WFAN host Mike Francesa with that very same query.

On Aug. 31, Clemens helped coordinate the on-field appearance of Timmy Trumpet, who played Edwin Diaz’s entrance song “Narco” as the closer jogged to the mound to close out a game against the Dodgers.

“I remember I had my head set on and I just told my crew ‘Well, see you on the other side, guys, because this is about to happen,’” McKeon said.

Last month, DJ Razor, the Mets’ in-game disc jockey, acknowledged the Mets’ piecemeal approach to offense — and perhaps poked fun at the criticism of said approach — by twice playing the Depeche Mode song “Everything Counts,” first following a Jeff McNeil sacrifice fly against the Nationals and then after McNeil scored on a balk by the Marlins’ Richard Bleier.

“Some of the stuff is a little ‘if you know, you know’ kind of niche stuff,” McKeon said. “But if you get it, it is really funny.”

Jon Baron, the Mets’ content coordinator, handles the flow of in-game information — from Pete Alonso’s pursuit of the franchise single-season RBI record, the company Tyler Naquin joined by homering at Citi Field for his first Mets hit and Daniel Vogelbach hitting what Alonso might term a “sick grannie” to the tongue-in-cheek facts about and images aimed at opposing players.

Joey Votto, a native of Toronto, stepped to the plate to the headline “Interesting, eh?” above information about the Trans-Canada Highway, which is the world’s longest highway at 7,064 kilometers (4,275 miles). It was also noted that Nick Castellanos, he of the infamous deep fly to left, hadn’t yet homered to left field when the Phillies visited Citi Field for the first time this season in April.

And on Sept. 3, the Nationals’ Patrick Corbin, with a major league-leading 17 losses at the time, warmed up to a fact box headlined by “No, this is Patrick,” a reference to SpongeBob SquarePants’ well-meaning but largely unsuccessful friend Patrick Star.

“We’re into memes — we love the memes,” McKeon said. “If it’s on the Reddit baseball page, we’ll lean into it.”

Once the game begins, McKeon said those in the production booth like to “…just jinx stuff in the room — so we’ll just say ‘Hey, he’s got a perfect game going in the second inning.’”

On Apr. 29, the jokes turned semi-serious when five Mets pitchers combined to no-hit the Phillies during the first Friday night home game of the season. As the Mets closed in on the second no-hitter in franchise history, McKeon and Clemens worked with designer Josh Rosenman to build the graphic of the five pitchers picture beneath the headline BLACKOUT, referencing the Mets wearing their late ‘90s all-black uniforms in the victory.

Two players — starter Tylor Megill and Joely Rodriguez — had never pitched for the Mets on a Friday night home game, which necessitated airbrushing the black uniforms on to the duo.

“That becomes a little stressful, because it’s like, all right, it’s not one pitcher, it’s five,” Clemens said. “A little bit of pressure that worked out perfectly, too, that night.”

With the playoffs likely to begin with a wild card round this weekend, McKeon and Clemens both said the tone will change a bit to reflect the heightened urgency of the games. But the goal will remain the same — to bring an in-game experience they’d enjoy to 40,000-plus people inside Citi Field.

“You have a microcomputer in your pocket — you’ve got to give people a reason to be engaged,” McKeon said.

“Baseball’s a long game,” Clemens said.

“Yeah, especially the beauty of baseball is like kind of the journey of the whole season — it’s a long season,” McKeon said. “But at the same time, you remember the random Wednesday night when they came back against the Phillies or whatever it was. And you’ll remember when you came to the ballpark and you saw a funny meme on the scoreboard.

“That’s the kind of stuff you remember and we’re really aiming for that. We are aiming for that when you come to the park, you’re going to say you had a great time and you’re going to tell your friends you had a good time.”