Good news: the Mets weren’t eliminated from winning their division Monday night, cleverly getting rained out while Atlanta (you’re not gonna believe this) lost. Not only did the Mets gain ground by not doing anything but pulling a tarp over the field, but Jeff McNeil overtook a declining Freddie Freeman in the batting race simply by not getting wet. WE’RE NO. 1 at something.
Bad news: the Mets weren’t eliminated from winning their division Monday night, which is only bad news if you’re in the get it over with already camp, which I will admit visiting until first pitch in Miami, when my true orange-and-blue instincts took over and snapped me back into wishing the Braves not even incidental goodwill in theoretical service to our desire for clarity. The Marlins seemed unlikely to sweep the Braves heading into their final series. They seemed unlikely to postpone the inevitable at all. But they beat the Braves once and still have two games to go. What the hell? Brew up a mug of Bigelow and tease proudly.
Good news: The Mets are one of three teams from their division going to the playoffs, speaking not only to our still having something to look forward to after the events of the past weekend, but to the strength of the division that has catapulted more than half of its occupants forward toward potentially greater things.
Bad news: We intensely dislike those two other teams from the Mets’ division who will be joining us in the postseason tournament, but we’d intensely dislike them regardless of where everybody finished.
Hail the unusually potent National League East; its Mets; its Braves; and its Phillies, each accomplishing a clinch of some sort in the same season. How unusual is that? If it were the usual, it wouldn’t be noted here. This is the first time we’ve sent three NL Easterners to the playoffs. The NL East has been around since 1969. Three teams from the same division in the playoffs have been a possibility since 2012’s expansion to two Wild Cards per league, yet 2022 (with its expansion to three Wild Cards per league) makes this circumstance a maiden voyage.
Congratulations?
Too soon for anything but the rending of garments over the Mets’ recent momentum shift and the spitting of venom at the Braves and Phillies, especially should we cross paths with either of them later this month, but together, these three are having a good year. Not only are three postseason berths in the NL East a first, reaching the season’s final breaths with three teams having as many wins as these teams can claim is rare. The Mets are at 98 wins and holding. The Braves have a couple more. The Phillies won their 87th on Monday night, which got them their first playoff spot since 2011. How often has the National League East featured three teams with at least 87 wins?
Glad you asked. The last time it happened was 25 years ago, in the golden year of 1997, more teal than gold in light of the world championship captured by the Florida Marlins, who made very good use of their Wild Card (the first achieved by an NL East club), topping the already perennial division-winning Braves in the NLCS. This was only the fourth year of the five-team National League East, only the third that was played to a strike-free conclusion, but the Braves were already making it their happy hunting ground, having taken the title in 1995 and 1996 while preparing to take the title from 1998 through 2005. And nipping at the heels of both? The revivified 1997 Mets, who went 88-74 after a veritable eon in the desert (six consecutive seasons of losing records, but as with all episodes of Met despair, it felt longer). Bobby’s V’s low-profile Mets made a legit run at a playoff spot. They fell short, yet they might have stitched together something even rarer for this franchise than the pouring of champagne. They left you feeling very good despite technically going nowhere but home at regular season’s end. That’s an emotion an 88-74 record that doesn’t rate as much as a six-seed will probably never elicit again.
Following 1997, the National League East shaped up as a powerhouse for years to come, with the 101-61 Braves being, you know, the Braves, and the 92-70 Marlins being stacked. Then Wayne Huizenga decided his defending world champions weren’t likely to draw more than millipedes and centipedes from the South Florida market and went about destacking his talent. This worked out pretty well for the Mets, as it directly provided us Al Leiter and Dennis Cook; indirectly provided us Mike Piazza; and eliminated the Marlins as an archrival, save for a couple of key series a decade later, but you already went there in your head.
For another handful of hours, we situationally root for the Marlins. That will expire as soon as we finish our mug of Bigelow. #TeaseProudly
Prior to 1997, the 87-win barrier being breached three times in an NL East season happened three times. Once was in 1993, when the Mets weren’t one of the three teams — the kooky Phillies, the spunky Expos and the Jefferies Cardinals — with 87 or more wins (87 or more losses is a different story). Once was in 1987, with the 91-71 Expos staying within striking range of the 92-70 Mets and 95-67 Cardinals, though the stretch drive was primarily a two-team derby that doubled as a miserable 1986 hangover headache. Another instance can be said to have sort of happened in 1981, if you prorate the winning percentages of the first-half champion Phillies, second-half champion Expos and overall-for-naught best-record-holder Cardinals across 162 games, which you’d have to for a season that played out minus a middle. Plus the Mets weren’t involved. We can say definitively it didn’t happen.
The only other version of the National League East to contain three teams with at least 87 wins actually had four teams with at least 87 wins, and that was the 1969 National League East, which was the very first National League East and quite the crucible. The defending National League champion Cardinals of Bob Gibson and Lou Brock finished fourth with 87 wins. The not-too-distant-future division champion Pirates of Roberto Clemente and Wilie Stargell finished third with 88 wins (they’d improve to 89 and take the division in ’70). The team that was in first place more days than any other in the East, as if that’s something they give out a prize for, the Chicago Cubs of Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams and so many more who were thought to be so unbeatable, finished second with 92 wins.
And your 1969 New York Mets finished first with 100 wins. Which is something the 2022 Mets can still do. The finishing first…maybe not so easy (go Marlins!?!?). The 100 wins…that would be nice if it doesn’t rain too much on the Mets and the Nats between today and tomorrow. The title the 1969 Mets are remembered for winning most…thanks to that playoff spot we clinched fifteen long days ago, we can still have the 2022 edition of that to raise up the flagpole on Opening Day 2023. I swear, it won’t even take a miracle.
More often than not, we Mets fans only have the regular season. So even without the division title (Braves winning 2-1, bottom 8th as I write this), 100 wins earned over 6 months and 162 games means something to me. Heck, the 90 the Mets won in 2015 meant something to me. It’s been a long time since the Mets won 100. A wildcard berth is not the prize that usually comes with 100 wins but I’ll take it.
It was always a matter of immense pride when in 1974 and 1975, Lindsey Nelson, Ralph Kiner, and Bob Murphy would say, on many occasions, that the Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates were the only teams to win the NL East since divisional play began in 1969.
Imagine that, our light-hitting NY Mets mentioned in the same breath as the Lumber Company, one of the super teams of the early to mid 1970s.
And if you were a little kid in that era, those two seasons (1974-1975) felt like an eternity, not to mention the 7 seasons from 1969-1975.
And how about this for a final postscript? If they had the 3 Wildcards from each league in 1976, our New York Mets would have been the 3rd Wildcard team behind Pittsburgh and L.A.
As the great Mel Allen would say on This Week in Baseball, “How about that?”