Somebody’s Gotta Finish Seventh

After their 131st game, the 2024 New York Mets accomplished something Sunday they hadn’t managed to do after their previous 130: they posted their first Unique Record of the year. With their loss to the Padres, they appear in the standings at 68-63. No Mets team has ever been 68-63 after 131 games.

I can’t say I’d been waiting breathlessly for this, but I had noticed (because I keep track of such things) that for 130 games, the Mets inevitably had the same record they’d had in at least one other year.

• When they fell to 0-5, that put them in the company of the 1962, 1963 and 2005 Mets.

• When they shook off their wretched start and climbed to 12-8, they matched exactly what the 1971, 1973, 1984 and 1991 Mets had done after 20 games.

• When they plummeted to their first eleven-games-under nadir at 22-33, the details may have been unprecedented — did any of their predecessors have a reliever fling his glove into the stands on his way to designation for assignment? — but the record wasn’t; the 1966, 1977 and 2013 Mets had all posted it.

• And when they rocketed to seven games above .500 for the first time all season, their record of 55-48 was the same as that of the 1975, 1991, 1998 and 2021 Mets.

The irony here is the 2024 Mets have felt unique in so many ways, good and not so good, but in the won and lost columns, they were doing nothing that hadn’t been done by some edition of the Mets before. Until Sunday, that is…which leads to another ironic note, certainly to me.

On Sunday, I concluded that this is no ordinary club, yet they are producing very ordinary results.

Ever since that peak you see in the last bullet point above, the Mets have played some marvelous games and some dismal games. They’ve played games you wish SNY would reair as Mets Classics one commercial break after Gary Apple and Todd Zeile wrap up, and they’ve played games you’d be cool with some intern accidentally erasing. Some very high ups. Some very low downs. But the ups have been punctuated with a banger of a soundtrack and embellished with some hellacious celebrations, so the ups stand out, especially against the backdrop of the April and May downs that threatened to swallow the season at its most indigestible.

No doubt it was the pervasiveness of political-convention rhetoric a week ago that brought to mind this dig a major-party nominee took at his opponent in 1988: “He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe.” I thought of that George Herbert Walker Bush-ism while the Mets, for all their flair when they won, stood firm and resolute in the standings, their platform of losing approximately as often as they didn’t not moving the public-opinion needle. Beat the A’s. Lose to the A’s. Beat the Marlins. Lose to the Marlins. Beat the Orioles. Lose to the Orioles. Yes, another pleasant ballclub somewhere in the middle of the pack. GHWB, naturally, claimed he held a different viewpoint than the one he attributed to Michael Dukakis 36 Augusts ago: “I see America as the leader, a unique nation with a special role in the world.” Indeed, that’s how we like to enivision our Mets within the National League East…or Wild Card race, as applicable. You know — when we fight, we win, and nobody’s more fun or more special, regardless of record. #LGM! #LFGM! #OMG! #OMFGLFGM!

Yet, as politicians like to say, you can’t ignore the record. In the span that’s brought them from 55-48 to 68-63, the 2024 Mets have gone 13-15, one net-game shy of perfectly epitomizing win one/lose one. They’ve essentially run in place for a month, which would be adequate had other teams vying for the same prize they seek done the same. On July 26, when they ascended to 55-48, they also grabbed the very first Wild Card spot. Every team that wanted to enter the playoffs by the National League’s sanctioned side door lined up behind them. It was the Mets in the driver’s seat, a half-game up on both the Braves and Padres, with the Diamondbacks on the outside looking in, one game away from us. Assorted contenders and pretenders loitered close by, but we wouldn’t have to concern ourselves too much with the rabble if we kept up something resembling the Amazin’ pace that lifted us from 24-35 (our second eleven-games-under nadir) to 55-48.

That promising pecking order dissolved once the Mets commenced to producing very ordinary results, and their primary competition refused to do the same.

• Arizona, who the Mets play next, are now seven games ahead of New York. While the upcoming series against the Diamondbacks is critical to us, we’re not exactly in a position where it can be said we’re chasing them. Those Snakes have slithered into another league.

• San Diego, with whom the Mets just finished splitting a quartet of contests — when taking three of four was doable and close to necessary — has elevated itself into likely unreachable territory, leading us by five-and-a-half games, meaning that that the multiteam scramble we once led by an eyelash has transformed, basically, into us trying to keep up with the one rival we’re always trying (and traditionally failing) to keep up with.

• Atlanta, who it’s always a thrill to be ahead of, even for a day, holds a 2½-game edge on us. The Braves haven’t been their usual great, but they’ve been good enough to leave us looking up at them, which is never a thrill. If the Mets are fortunate enough to still be scrambling by the last week of this season, our three-game set at Truist Park September 24-26 offers two kinds of possibilities. I’ll leave it to you to infer the probabilities.

But that’s a ways away. Looking ahead any further than 9:40 PM ET Tuesday night in Phoenix won’t do anybody any good. Looking back one day is a matter of taste. Nonetheless, here goes.

I made a deal with myself as Sunday’s Mets-Padres game grew deeper and more tense that I’d think of it as a good game regardless of outcome. I rarely maintain much regard for Met losses, but I understand that a fan sometimes has to tip his hat to what he’s just seen and listened to. On SNY and over what remained until midnight WCBS-AM, it was a good game. I felt that way last Wednesday afternoon when Sean Manaea was flirting with perfection before the Orioles upended his come-on. No matter what happens, I thought, this is a good game. You have to respect that. I also thought the Orioles were going to emerge as the winners. When Jesse Winker prevented that circumstance, I didn’t have to make any judgments. The Mets had won in dramatic fashion. Of course it was a good game!

This, Sunday, was a good game. Subjectively speaking, it would have been better had J.D. Martinez’s fourth-inning solo homer been supplemented by more Met runs, particularly when the Mets immediately followed their DH’s blast by loading the bases to no avail. It would have been better had Jose Quintana’s inning after inning of shutout ball wasn’t being left to tiptoe along a tight rope à la Leon Russell. One side ice. One side fire. Yet a resurgent Quintana kept surviving. After second baseman Jose Iglesias recorded his biggest hit of the summer with a 4-unassisted in the bottom of the sixth that left eye- and earwitnesses spouting “Oh! My! God!” for real (not just a diving stop of a hot grounder, but the presence of mind and foot to tag second to force the oncoming runner); and after Mark Vientos at last doubled the Mets’ lead with a solo homer of his own in the top of the sixth; and after the Mets escaped the bottom of the seventh — the last inning in which Quintana pitched — when Luis Torrens and Francisco Lindor combined to cut down a two-out stolen base attempt, I considered the setting and declared in my head that if this game at Petco Park was taking place in any other season, the Mets would find a way to lose it.

You know how certain perceptions don’t keep up with reality? I perceive the Mets as perennially getting walked off in San Diego at least once every annual trip they make out there. The Padres get to Billy Wagner or Francisco Rodriguez and the blue skies and sunshine couldn’t appear any grayer or cloudier. The Mets did indeed suffer some last at-bat devastation in the days of closers past (even if Wagner was never the losing pitcher of record in those particular games), but entering Sunday it hadn’t happened to them since 2014. Funny how time compresses the more we age. Still, just the fact that I processed Jose Butto and defensive assistance clearing out the bit of mess Jose Quintana left behind in the seventh as a sign that this was part of a special year warmed my heart’s cockles. In any other year, the Mets would find a way to lose a game I was believing the Mets were destined to grasp and win.

Alas, San Diego reverted to the San Diego of my perception, a getaway day hellhole into which the Mets stumble like Ozzie Smith into the Springfield Mystery Spot, never to be found. There’s Jurickson Profar belting a two-run homer off Butto to tie it at two in the bottom of the eighth. There’s Robert Suarez setting the Mets down sans sweat in the top of the ninth. And there’s Jackson Merrill ending everything versus Edwin Diaz, announcing our departure with 104.4 miles per hour of exit velocity, 379 feet of home run distance, and unquestioned authority. Next stop: Arizona and a whole lot more scuffling.

Good game, sure. Lousy result, absolutely. Unique Record? For what it’s worth, yeah. Also for what it’s worth, had the Mets held on and won what instead landed as a 3-2 loss, their record would not be unique. The Mets have been 69-62 twice in their past, in 1975 and 2005, which I mention not for bookkeeping but for context. Those were both seasons when we as Mets fans got our hopes up in late August. We were closing in on where we needed to be when were 69-62 in 1975 and 2005. The first-place Pirates were in sight 49 years ago after the Mets had played their 131st game (Tom Seaver threw a six-hit, 7-0 shutout at San Diego long before it became a getaway day hellhole). The lone available Wild Card was a half-game from our reach 19 years ago after the Mets had played their 131st game (Ramon Castro, whose physique bore a passing resemblance to Grimace’s, socked an electrifying three-run homer in the eighth for a 6-4 lead Braden Looper didn’t blow).

A record of 69-62 wasn’t enough to launch those respective Mets clubs into the September stratosphere, and I doubt the 2024 Mets’ record of 68-63 will be sufficient to do the same in the next month, regardless that six teams now qualify for the postseason in each league. The Mets’ wonderful days don’t bring them enough extra credit in the standings to counter their crummier days. Neither Winker’s walkoff nor Alvarez’s last week counted as more than one win, even if each coursed through my veins like five wins apiece.

I won’t stop allowing for the chance the Mets will cease averaging out to ordinary and become consistently extraordinary, which they pretty much have to be to make up all the ground that’s opened up between them and the NL’s top six. I’ve given up on giving up on all kinds of ordinary seasons at the first hint that they were capable of morphing into something better. Fans make those deals with themselves all the time. If it doesn’t happen, it will be frustrating, but I’ll have to remind myself it can be worse. Last year, when the Mets were 60-71 after 131 games, was far worse. Though it seems extreme to invoke them, this year’s White Sox are far, far, far worse. Since the Mets wouldn’t be playing until 4:10 PM Eastern on Sunday, I decided to tune into the 31-99 White Sox on the MLB app. An Indianan friend of mine was at the game, so I thought I’d offer a little audio solidarity. Besides, I was curious to hear what a genuine pursuit of the 1962 Mets sounded like live (before we get to watch it for ourselves this coming weekend).

It sounded grim. It sounded like their announcers knew that the Sox’s early 3-1 lead over the Tigers wouldn’t last. It sounded like waterboarding, joined already in progress, compared to the overtones of festiveness I’ve picked up in the background when I’ve listened to recordings of Mets games preserved from 1962. It sounded exponentially worse than any combination of 1979 and 1993 Mets games I listened to as they happened. The 1979 Mets were 52-79 after 131 games, the 1993 Mets 46-85. After losing Sunday, the White Sox fell to 31-100, two games off the pace of the 1962 Mets, representing a strain of unique nobody who looks at records should know from.

What I’m saying is going 13-15 in our previous 28 and being 68-63 with 31 games to go isn’t ideal, but there are worse things than not being quite good enough in a given year. The best thing about where we are? Somehow, we still might be good enough. We just aren’t at this moment.