During the early part of 2022 the Mets were deadly in the clutch.
They were a lot of other things too — strong defensively and gifted with solid starting pitching — but their uncanny ability to collect big hits with games on the line felt like their defining characteristic.
Move forward into summer, and things look a bit different. Suddenly the Mets are coming up empty with runners in scoring position, leading to strings of games defined by frustration, riddled with the coulda woulda shouldas of at-bats that went the other guys’ way. Other things have changed too — most notably the starting pitchers proving physically vulnerable and/or human after all — but as fans, hitting in the clutch looms larger than everything else.
If a team has a run of hitting in the clutch, particularly in the beginning of the season, we confuse it with a lot of qualities that may or may not be present: We see grit, fortitude, preparation, battlefield cool, leadership, camaraderie and a whole lot else. Replace the hot dice with cold ones, as has happened to the Mets of late, and we wonder what moral failings have crept into the clubhouse, turning our baseball Eden into a dismal Nod.
Anyway, these problems were on display in Saturday’s thoroughly dull, dispiriting loss to the Rangers. The Mets did next to nothing in the clutch, scoring on a pair of homers by Starling Marte and Eduardo Escobar; the Rangers scored six of their seven runs on homers, making for a game that was like watching paint dry.
I suspect streaks like this weigh more heavily on fans than on players, who know far better than we that it’s a long season and luck runs hot and cold in ways that can’t be explained and will drive you crazy if you let them lure you down a rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the Braves can do no wrong and have cut the Mets’ seemingly insurmountable double-digit lead to a skinny two and a half games.
The Mets weren’t as good as they appeared then and aren’t as hapless as they’ve looked of late; reverse those characterizations and you’ve summed up the Braves. Despite how things may feel, the Mets are in fact still in first place, with the prospect of adding a pair of Cy Young winners to the rotation. Your inner fan, like mine, is probably screaming otherwise, and I’ve learned it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to argue with one’s own fandom, but there are other perspectives to keep in mind and consider quietly when fandom tires of howling alarm and needs to take a breath.
Or, if that fails, you could wait for the Mets to regain their moral compass and rediscover their better qualities, with results to match, and praise them when that day comes.
“Despite how things may feel, the Mets are in fact still in first place, with the prospect of adding a pair of Cy Young winners to the rotation.”
Yes, we are holding onto the prospect that Scherzer and deGrom will come back like Verlander with the added hope that the slumping offense perks up to score enough runs for the aces to win and the shaky bullpen holds those leads since neither injured aged ace will return as a rubber-armed workhorse.
“Things may feel” like 2021 again because the Mets of late look like the 2021 Mets, despite that the point of the particular veteran free agents signed, and more than the players, the point of Showalter over Rojas was that the 2022 Mets would not revert to their 2021 form.
Yet at game 78, the Mets are in 1st place by 2.5 games. At game 78 last season, the Mets were in 1st place by 2.5 games. The 2022 Mets have a better record, but the defending champion Braves began their charge a lot earlier this year.
If the current 2021-esque team slump worsens into a return to form of the 2021 team, then we can conclude that the analytics snobs are right and managers really don’t make much difference, and the team should have just kept the homegrown Rojas, like the Mets should have kept homegrown Gimenez and Rosario over Lindor. Heck, maybe the year-wiser Rojas is the secret ingredient of the Yankees success this season.
All that said, I am holding onto the hope of Scherzer and deGrom. And the new wild card format. I don’t expect Cohen’s money to amount to a trade deadline cure since last season it amounted to giving away Crow-Armstrong for Baez.
It’s not yet time to break the glass and pull the red handle, not by a long shot. Yes, some of the stalwarts have gone cold lately, but then again, some guys who had been scuffling for a while seem to be snapping back to form — Escobar had a helluva series against the Rangers, and Carasco seems to have righted the ship, yielding the Mets’ rubber-game win on Sunday. Their next seven games are against much less formidable teams than the two Texas clubs, and if all goes well, Max may start the first game against the Braves next week.
[…] through Monday night’s game, my kid asked me a question: Since I’d fumed about how boring the Mets’ home-run-heavy loss to the Rangers was, was I also bored tonight? […]