For the ninth time in franchise history, the New York Mets have completed 108 games, or two-thirds of a regulation schedule, with a playoff spot in hand. In six of the eight previous instances when they led either the NL East or the NL Wild Card race at this juncture (1986, 1988, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2015), they went on to the postseason. The two times they didn’t were 1985, when they could have used a future format, and 2007, when they could have used a rescue squad and trampoline.
I heard James McCann mention the other night that the season is 162 games long. It came up after a loss, a.k.a. only one game out of 162. Players on teams that have just won never mention the length of a season, probably because they’re not asked what’s wrong with the team. The Mets get asked a lot lately what’s wrong. Nobody has a really great answer, but they all have a helluva handle on how many games make up the schedule.
At the two-thirds mark of the current season, we can hope sweet precedent prevails, but project only that one-third of the season remains. We base that calculation on James McCann and mathematics. No matter how you wave your probabilities and your playoff odds, we can project nothing else at this time. The precincts that have reported — approximately 67% of them — tell us only what has happened to date. The 108 games that have been played aren’t necessarily an indicator of the 54 to come. Each component of that final third is so new that not a blessed thing has happened in them. Not a cursed thing, either. Steve Kornacki at the Big Board would be handy to have around here to counsel patience and urge us to wait for all the results to be counted.
Which is what I guess James McCann was doing when he invoked the magic 162. Right now, in the wake of another underwhelming defeat at the hands of the Marlins, all a Met or a Mets fan who wishes to walk around under something other than a cloud of doom can do is point out there are definitely games yet to be played. And that none of them has yet been lost.
The most recent game, however, has been lost, 4-2 at Miami on Thursday afternoon. It was lost on leaky defense, imperfect relief pitching (abetted by an iffy ball four call) and, most ostentatiously, invisible offense when the bats most needed to show themselves. The Mets put all the runners you could have wanted on base — 8 hits! 8 walks! 2 opposition errors! — and hardly any of them across the plate. When you counted up the tops of the innings and how each of them ended, fifteen Mets in toto lingered on base. For all we know, they’re still there.
Except for Javy Baez. He struck out five times and thus avoided all charges of loitering on first, second and/or third. He also engineered a spiffy 6-4-5-6 double play in the field, lest “STRUCK OUT FIVE TIMES” be the extent of the man’s Thursday epitaph for those tempted to bury him altogether not one week since his acquisition.
After nearly three months of unmitigated use of the delightful adjective “first-place,” we’ve received a notice that we may have to return it to the library. The Phillies apparently put their names on a waiting list and they may get to lay their philthy mitts on our favorite descriptor next. How convenient that we could get to drop it off in person this weekend. While the Mets were resisting the last-minute urge to put multiple runs on the board in South Florida — 3 LOB in the 9th, though it seemed like more — the Phillies burst from behind in Washington in their ninth inning to pull out a fifth straight victory and pull to within a half-game of us. I didn’t watch any postgame Zooms from Nationals Park, but I’m gonna assume nobody in the visitors’ clubhouse was helpfully stressing the presence of 162 games in a baseball season.
Our next three are indeed in Philadelphia; it’ll be an opportunity for somebody. Then three at home against the newly useless Nationals. Then thirteen completely outstanding precincts appear on our electoral map: games against the Dodgers and Giants, in New York and in California, versus (due respect to Milwaukee) the two best teams in the National League. Those baker’s dozen dates, August 13 through August 26, have been lurking all year long, with L.A. and San Fran having piled up wins after dark and us having gotten as far as we have without having to play them once. Well, we’ll soon play them a lot. A lot. In a row. Gosh, it would have been nice to have taken advantage of these four with the Marlins, just as it would have been swell to have made the most of those seven with the Pirates just before and after the All-Star break, which was right about when our stagnation commenced to devouring our momentum.
Ah, but those games were also outstanding precincts in their time, except they didn’t daunt so much as beckon. A lot of lip-licking went for naught. We didn’t know the Pirates weren’t going to be pushovers or that the Fish wouldn’t flop. We might have suspected, but the odds said we would roll up Ws more than we’d absorb Ls. Instead, we the first-place Mets lost seven of eleven to those last-place denizens, providing another modicum of proof that you don’t know what’s going to happen until you actually play the games.
Admittedly, “the Mets lost to lousy teams, therefore you can’t say for sure they’ll lose to better teams” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that we’re primed for a step up in class just as our guys have forgotten how to drive in or, for that matter, optimally prevent runs. But it does have counterintuitiveness going for it. At the moment, we don’t have a lot else to bank on, except that after going 21-27 in our last 48, and 2-6 in our last eight, we’re 0-0 in our next 54.
We haven’t lost the games we haven’t yet played. Somebody unfurl me a blank bed sheet and toss me a can of spray paint. That baby’s going up on a banner.
El Magoo — as in Mr. — helplessly whiffs all five trips to the plate?? And leaves 8 on in the process?? What a spectacular deadline pick up. Bravo.
And all Looie the gas bag is worried about is for the guys to have fun and not to show anger?
We are in big, big trouble.
BRILLIANT! he’s blind.
as in even a blind squirrel finds a chestnut…
it’s a shame no one in the front office thought to fire sale the team at the deadline. where’s the smart hedge-fund guy where you really need him?
i’d rather wait for a future crew to (hopefully) blossom than for the current group to puttefy, which we seem to be witnessing in real time.
conforto for a decent pitcher if no stomach for a full year-down.
hate to say it but i fully expect this team to be 10 back by sept 1.
i dare this anti-achieving bunch to prove me wrong.
LET GO: METS
He fits right in. Don’t forget, this is the team that happily surrendered Tom Seaver’s 51-year-old strikeout record.
yes baez fits right in.
by the time he’s back at citi he’ll be getting booed like the second coming of lindor.
(sorry for the typos: *putrefy, *tear-down)
I am obsessed with a new stat. Total runners left by all batters, not just the last one in each inning. So today’s 1st inning was 9 LOB. 354 since the All Star game. At 181 innings, that’s nearly 2 loitering runners per inning. That’s a lot I think.
What Baez did in striking out five times in five at-bats was historically bad.
He is the first Mets player with five strikeouts in a game since Ryan Thompson on Sept. 29, 1993, and the first Mets player to strike out five times in only five at-bats since Dave Kingman on May 28, 1982.
I think Gary mentioned there were a few other Mets who accomplished the Platinum Sombrero.
Hey Javy, can you limit your Ks to maybe two per game?
The others were Swoboda twice and Taveras. It bears noting one of Rocky’s was in a 24-inning game and that Thompson’s was in 17. It doesn’t bear noting I was at the Taveras game, but I’ll note it just the same.
“We haven’t lost the games we haven’t yet played.”
Is that a double negative? I.e. “we’ve lost all the games we have played?” It sure feels that way…
No.
Maybe this is who the 2021 Mets really are. A team that came in last place the previous season. A team that is only a few months removed from the worst ownership in baseball. A team whose success revolved around otherworldly starting pitching by Jacob deGrom, finally claimed by the most horrendous injury list in team history, as well as by a bunch of backbenchers playing way over their heads who inevitably gave way to the same regulars who were a last place team last year. A team whose previous GM blew out their minor league system in only two years. Finally, a team that, had they not been in a truly miserable division, would never have come close to first place, or even be expected to.
In other words, Steve Cohen 2021 is roughly equivalent to Nelson Doubleday 1980. Maybe the magic is indeed back, but it could be in its embryonic stages, and maybe all the postseason talk was kind of unreasonable to begin with. It took Doubleday and Frank Cashen five years to get the Mets a winning record and seven for a World Series. Maybe this season was the same mirage that the second-half ’81 Mets were. If so, we need to tighten our belts and move on. We’re Met fans. We know how to be patient, even if we don’t much like it.
On the other hand, we are still in first place. For the moment.
Well said!
I agree with you 100%—sigh….
A few weeks ago when we were losing to Pirates, I told a pal Mets would finish 76-86-this season presuming we got entire schedule in.
Hope I am very wrong.
Let’s Go Mets!
Yes, the Mets offense now is suspiciously like the 2020 last-place Mets offense.
Hill’s start was as good as we can expect. Shame to waste it.
The Marlins played poorly enough to lose. The Mets just played worse. That first inning was peak RISP LOB. Pinch-hitting Drury for McCann, who’s supposed to be a hitter, struck me as a starving grab at the depleted Bench Mob clutch magic.
How we feel now is how I imagine Nationals fans felt at the same point in 2015. Half game and 1.5 game leads over the reinforced Phillies and Braves. Giants and Dodgers playing up to their own pennant race looming. This is the season, here and now.
If Crow-Armstrong becomes a good player, the Baez trade will look bad not because of Baez, but because why trade away the prospect for a rental at the trade deadline at all if the Mets weren’t going to make enough changes to fix the team’s fatal flaws?
The failure to score in the 1st inning was a portent to the outcome of the game. While I don’t have statistics to back me up, I can’t remember a team failing to score from third base with less than 2 out as often as our boys do.
And while we’re at it, so far Baez looks like another big name middle infielder that comes to the Mets in a trade that doesn’t play up to the numbers on the back of his baseball card. Can you hear me, Baerga, Alomar and Lindor?
the mets they’d better flick some switch
or else they’ll dig, dig,dig their ditch.
that’s about as hopeful as i can be tonite…
Tonight- bases load. Nobody out. We couldn’t score a single run. And to think the Mets fired Chilli Davis.We suck!!!!!!!!!
well there were some good things to take away:
diaz is back. i read *after all* that his return from
pa leave was key. the point on the harper homer was the gravy.
baez *almost* hit pete on that routine grounder in the eighth
stroman didn’t hit into a bases loaded DP with no outs.
per rojas the mets are gonna come back tomorrow
and play their best baseball.
SNY’s ad for tomorrow’s game talked about the mets’ divisional dominance as they battle…” or something like that.
the gaslight burns bright for those not paying attention….i guess.
just as early in the game thorne gushed about what a great aquisiition baez was….what??? then again his play by play was
flat as the mets’ play….
Dull team to follow now..Nothing really good to say..More of the same failure with the bats and the same hope and expectations for the absent to suddenly appear and save us and the season..
That team average with the bases loaded tells it all..
Watching Met reliever Edwin Diaz point up into the air, like it’s a routine fly ball, as one of his pitches literally soars out of the ballpark, reminds me of when former Met pitcher Hansel Robles pulled the same schtick, when one of his pitches left the stadium like a Saturn V rocket. I vividly remember when WFAN’s Sal Licatta launched into a twenty minute long tirade, ripping Robles for his annoying habit of pointing up into the sky. It’s like Mets dens vu all over again.
And, what about former Mets GM, Brodie Van Wagenen, or as I call him, “ Brodie Van Woeful,” A/K/A “Brodie Van Woebegone”? Do you think Brodie ever calls up his former boss, Met COO Jeff Willpon and says, “Hey, Jeff, it’s a good thing we both got out of Citi Field before Edwin Diaz started blowing so many games this year?”
They all point to the sky, don’t they? Nimmo points to the sky after a walk, for heaven’s sake (no pun intended). It’s seriously weird.