A sense of finality hovered over the Mets on Tuesday night. Last series of the proving-ground stretch versus the Dodgers and Giants, a span in which they’ve mostly proven they are almost if not quite completely done contending. Last serious shot, with 38 games to go from a distance of 6½ out of first, to begin making up ground on the Braves before it’s absolutely too late. Last realignment that might make a significant difference, as Francisco Lindor [1] returned to active duty to partner with Javy Baez [2] as the DP combo of dreams. Jeff McNeil [3] moved to left. Dom Smith and Jonathan Villar were on the bench. Tylor Megill [4], who stymied the Giants for six innings six days earlier in San Francisco, was on the mound.
Last chance, last stance, last dance. And Mets came in last in their last tango in Flushing. By a lot [5].
The Giants of the best record in baseball clobbered Megill and the spiraling Mets, 8-0. Our surprising rookie hurler was no surprise to the team that figured him out from the previous week. Three Giants smacked four homers off Tylor, who gave up eight runs on eleven hits without making it out of the fourth inning. No Met batter — not Lindor, not Baez, not McNeil nor anybody else — put serious wood to Sammy Long or the mop-up relievers who followed. Poor J.D. Davis took a pitch off his batting helmet, but didn’t leave the game. The game left the Mets, however. So, perhaps, did the illusion that the legitimate competitive aspirations they and we carried into August haven’t fully evaporated.
Except there’s another game Wednesday night, and if the Mets win that (it’s possible), they’ll cut a half-game off the idle Braves’ lead. And if they somehow win Thursday night (it’s not over before it’s started), that’s another half-game, with Atlanta mysteriously on hiatus two days in a row. Now we’re 5½ out and the Braves’ schedule toughens, while ours lightens up, and Francisco didn’t look bad at the plate by any means, and Pete is hitting pretty consistently, and Brandon keeps getting on base, and Jeff was pretty good in the outfield in 2019, and nobody can blame the Heath Hembree [6]-enhanced bullpen very much, and the more Carrasco pitches the more he’s bound to find his form, and isn’t Syndergaard about to begin a rehab assignment?
It will be all over mathematically eventually and over beyond semantics soon enough. Until then, you never know and can’t help yourself from hoping accordingly. Even if you pretty much know it’s hopeless.
But I do know that I sat for a full day’s interview with Nick in February 2020 for the film and that I saw my talking head among several others in a trailer teasing its premiere [7], so yes, by all means, watch it for that, too. (I’m the guy in the commercial who mentions “managers came and went, players came and went, but a core was being built.” Keeping track of Met comings and goings then didn’t require nearly as much energy as it does now.)
And as long as I’m in a self-promotional mode, I’ll add that if you’re in the greater Freeport area — Long Island, not the Bahamas — I’ll be at the village’s splendid library [8], 144 W. Merrick Rd., on Thursday September 16, 7 PM, the night after Once Upon a Time in Queens initially airs and an off night on the local NL schedule, to talk Mets fandom, Mets writing and, should circumstances allow, the Mets’ unforeseen rise through the current standings. For more information, check out the library’s September/October newsletter [9].