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 [1] to the Rangers. The Mets did next to nothing in the clutch, scoring on a pair of homers by Starling Marte [2] and Eduardo Escobar [3]; 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.