It's Bad, But It's Not That Bad
The reality of the Mets right now is a duality, and a short-lived one, because we'll all know soon enough what getting swept in Atlanta really meant for a team that's still going to the playoffs
It’s Bad
By Roger Cormier
To quote Chris Bassitt from all the way back in April – sweet, glorious, April – it's bad, and everyone knows it. All the Mets had to do was win one of the three games in Atlanta against the racist baseball team to be in decent shape to win the division and avoid an entire round of playoffs. In that next-to-worst case scenario, New York would have had the tiebreaker, giving them essentially a one-game advantage with three to play. But one win seemed like asking for too little. No, two out of three was totally doable. A sweep wasn't exactly a pipe dream, either. Instead, the Mets won zero.
Jacob deGrom had blister trouble and for the second start in a row looked shockingly human. Max Scherzer, paid a lot of money, was also not near his best self. Bassitt, the rock of the rotation, the one who was able physically to take the ball every fifth day, only worked until the third inning. Dansby Swanson and Matt Olson homered in each of the three games, while the Mets continued their season-long effort to string a bunch of hits together, because that's what hitting coach Eric Chavez wants, because he believes the myth that you can't win in the playoffs if you just go for homers, which is odd because Atlanta is dinger-or-bust 24/7, and those bastards won the World Series literally last year. The Mets were swept. Embarrassed. They needn't have bothered to leave Queens for the weekend. It would have been far less humiliating if the Mets lied and said every plane they tried to board had something wrong with it and gotten caught in their obvious lie.
Yeah, it's bad. Real bad.
But…the season isn't over. The thing is, the Mets are probably going to finish with 100 or 101 wins. At the very least it's a 98-win season. We're only complaining because they can't win 103 or 104. Personally, I feel kind of silly about how I feel, but I can't deny my feelings. I'm disappointed. A little angry. I feel like I've been had. It was supposed to be different. A season spiritually dying in Atlanta? Is this a rerun?
Technically, the season isn't over. The Mets will likely play the San Diego Padres in a best-of-three series at Citi Field next weekend. Winning that is doable: They don't have that Tatis guy, and Soto isn't Sotoing. Of course, winning one freakin' game in Atlanta was more than doable. If they advance, the Mets would face the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have won 200 or so games this regular season, but lost the season series to New York. Then, an Atlanta-Mets NLCS is a possibility. Then, who knows? The postseason is a crapshoot, man. The best team doesn't win these things. It's the buzzsaws. Maybe right now is the part when the Mets are seemingly finished, but the announcement of their passing proved to be premature, and they end up winning the pennant. That would also seem like a repeat.
But It’s Not That Bad
By Jesse Spector
I have the luxury of having read everything Roger just wrote before writing this, but I’m not going to use that as any kind of advantage because this isn’t a debate beyond how you want to approach sets of facts.
I thought about writing something after the game on Sunday night. I told Addy as early as the seventh inning to be ready to read some thoughts on the Mets’ season seemingly dying in Cobb County, because I had it cooking in my head. I sat on it because I wasn’t sure if I was Homer Simpson chasing his roast pig, yelling, “It’s still good! It’s still good!”
But there are facts to work with here, and the facts are — well, some are a little bit based on feelings and narrative shaping, but the playoffs being, as Roger described them, a crapshoot, and I’ve been trying to figure out what the facts of the weekend mean, and ultimately, it’s not that bad.
The Mets are 15-13 so far in “September” (in baseball, “October” goes into November, of course). They went 13-12 in June, their worst month of the year – and first winning June in a decade.
How did the Mets respond to their June “swoon” this year? By going 36-19 in July and August. As rough as September has been, as haggard as the Mets have looked against some of the dregs of the majors… do they really have a fundamental flaw?
Okay, there’s one, and it’s missing Starling Marte, which drastically changes the Mets’ entire lineup. The bad news is, Marte doesn’t appear close to returning. But it’s not really the lineup that’s been a problem. Here are some September lowlights for Mets pitchers:
Jacob deGrom: 1-3, 4.50 ERA, 6 HR in 26 IP
Carlos Carrasco: 1.477 WHIP, averaged 4.1 innings per start
Taijuan Walker: 2-2, 4.15 ERA, 5 HR in 30.1 IP
Max Scherzer: 4 HR in 22.2 IP
Chris Bassitt: Sunday night
If that’s the Mets’ rotation in the playoffs, then, yes, the dream season is over, they ran out of gas, that’s all too bad. It’s reasonable to feel that this is what we’re witnessing, and certainly there’s no blame for Mets fans who see falling out of first place on the last weekend of the regular season is “bad.”
Of course it’s bad. But let’s go back to the playoffs as narrative. Thanks to the lockout, the Mets still have three regular-season games scheduled. And it is a big thanks, because… can you imagine having ended the season with those three games, and going from one game up to two games out, then having to go straight to the wild card series?
Yes, the Mets lost their bye, but now they may have something better: the chance to get some innings in against the Nationals during the interregnum between pennant race and chase – they’ll have extra playoff games, but not the question of dealing with rust from the bye, a real uncertainty for everyone involved, and no small worry for Mets fans who remember 2015. How many innings is weather permitting, but truth be told, the rainout on Monday wasn’t the worst thing, either.
Now, there’s little to no question as to whether the Mets should start deGrom on Wednesday or give him the extra two days before Game 1, and a bunch of guys who have no playoff experience get a taste of it in the wild card round. And if they lose there, then surely this year was never a thing of destiny and none of it mattered anyway.
But right now the question of narrative comes back to this: Since Jerry Seinfeld came after Edwin Díaz, Timmy Trumpet, and the very concept of fun, the Mets have been able to call on their closer for a ninth-inning save situation in exactly zero home games. Díaz has had a five-out save and two non-save ninth innings appearances in Queens in the last three weeks.
Sunday night in Atlanta, as Díaz entered the game in the bottom of the eighth, “Narco” sounded over the PA in Atlanta because, of course, it’s the at-bat music for William Contreras. And here’s the question of narrative: Was that Atlanta dispatching the Mets with a little poetic twist, or was it the moment of the villain’s greatest treachery before getting his comeuppance?
Of course, there’s a whole bunch more movie after George punches out Biff, and plenty more times where Marty McFly still had a chance not to make it back to 1985. The Mets, too, have gone through this much, yet there’s still plenty of reason to believe that they’ve only just begun.