When the Mets and Braves finally squared off in front of nobody Thursday night, I found myself watching with the intensity I normally bring to a split-squad game in mid-March. I had to remind myself that, hey, this one counts — in fact, it’s pretty damn important.
I wasn’t being arrogant — I remember late leads that seemed plump until late September ran them through the funhouse mirror. (Believe me, I remember.) No, it’s that I was tired — mentally spent from three nights of watching the Mets break the Nats’ spirit in ludicrous fashion over and over again. It’s been a long time since I watched September baseball that mattered; the soaring euphoria and gnawing anxiety was immediately familiar, but I’d forgotten just how exhausting all this is.
I think Terry Collins [1] and even most of us would have forgiven the Mets a letdown game against the Braves on Thursday — Terry rested plenty of guys with an eye towards rebuilding emotional reserves that had been tapped in D.C. But the Mets coolly dismantled the Braves anyway, shoving the Nationals another half-game back, and then sent the regulars back out again Friday night behind Steven Matz [2].
Matz was OK, but it wasn’t a good night for David Wright [3], who twice left runners at third with less than two outs. But here’s the thing — Wright’s poor night didn’t matter. Not with the bullpen sending out Erik Goeddel [4], Addison Reed [5], Tyler Clippard [6] and Jeurys Familia [7] to scatter three hits over four innings, and not with Yoenis Cespedes [8] being Yoenis Cespedes.
We call ourselves the blog for Mets fans who like to read, but words fail me trying to describe Cespedes. All I can do is recite his deeds. He opened the scoring with a ringing double over Michael Bourn [9]‘s head that chased home Curtis Granderson [10] from first, and then bookended that with a simply ridiculous clout in the ninth into the left-field seats, a ball that soared above and beyond whatever spectators were left. As Cespedes glided around the bases, the fans started clambering up the concourse in the direction of the shadows that had swallowed the ball, like mountaineers plotting a course to a distant, wind-whipped flag.
The Mets spent a good chunk of this year asking complementary players to shoulder burdens best reserved for stars, which went about as well as it usually does. In that state, the team had to play close to perfectly to win, beginning each game with a worrisomely thin margin for error.
But that was the 2015 Mets 1.0, a team that no longer exists.
The 2.0 release — remade from both within and without — is the opposite, a mix of solid complementary players around a superstar who’s playing this game about as well as it can be played. It won’t last forever, but Cespedes can do anything right now, and it’s let every other player in the lineup relax and surf along in his slipstream. If one guy doesn’t execute, there’s another dangerous hitter strolling to the plate. If a starting pitcher falters, the resulting deficit seems more like an interesting challenge than an impossible task.
The Mets had to overcome some offensive fizzles and crazy-good plays from the Braves Friday night, but they did, forging a slim lead from a clutch hit and an Atlanta balk and then a passed ball. And then Cespedes recreated Sherman’s March to the Sea with a baseball, and you knew the game was over [11]. Meanwhile, down in Miami, the Nats lost again — in five days the Mets have added 4 1/2 games to their lead. Anxiety has yielded to respectful caution, which will be maintained here, but even superstition allows salutes to bygone Mets that just might have some not-so-secret relationship to relevant mathematics. (Tip your hat to Jerry Grote [12]! This fist raised to the sky is for you, Gil [13]!)
Cespedes wears No. 52, a uniform number that even the most ardent future Mets fan probably won’t invoke in a pennant chase. If they do, it’ll be a pretty amazin’ year indeed. But that would be fitting — because whatever happens the rest of the way in 2015, we’ll remember this time, and what it was like to watch a player who seemed borrowed from a league of the imagination.