Without knowing what they paid, I’d say the Mets got an excellent rate on their weekend spa treatment. They’ve rarely entered a Monday appearing more relaxed and ready to face whatever awaits them. In this case, it’s a playoff chase in September.
The 2024 White Sox will make anybody look and feel fantastic. The 2024 White Sox have elevated the 1962 Mets into a position the 1962 Mets have never been in: well ahead of competition in any standings. The 1962 Mets lead the 2024 White Sox by four games pacewise, 35-103 to 31-107. I do believe the Worst Ever record we’ve treated as treasured will belong to another before the month is over. This makes me happier than I would have imagined when I began to fathom another team could actually win fewer and/or lose more than 120 games. The 1962 Mets haven’t played since 1962. It’s about time they passed somebody in some standings.
The 2024 Mets have more pressing aspirations and tangible potentialities. Last Wednesday, which feels like five months rather than five days ago, the Mets of the current year blew a lead and game in horrific fashion and fell four lengths behind their perennial bête noire the Braves. Several August leads and games had been blown in horrific fashion, and the result was our Wild Card chances receding in size in Atlanta’s rearview mirror. The only thing we might have had going for us was the Braves were about to visit first-place Philadelphia, while once we finished licking our Arizona wounds, we had that spa weekend reserved on the South Side of Chicago. Despite the name on the front of the joint, three games at the Sox’ place held no guarantees. Relying on ourselves to start winning while our bête noire somehow starts losing hadn’t worked particularly well through the years, but there’s always a first time, we might have told ourselves.
If we did, we were on to something. We beat the Diamondbacks on Thursday to rekindle [1] our hopes (despite the Diamondbacks all but extinguishing [2] our hopes the night before) and the Phillies — who I believe we hate more viscerally than we do the Braves but with not nearly as much depth — began doing us an extended solid. Checking in at Guaranteed Rate Spa didn’t hurt, either.
As the deeply detested Braves commenced the process of losing three of four to the viscerally loathed Phillies, the Mets relaxed and went about sweeping the one series a fan would say absolutely needed to be swept to be considered an adequate showing. Other than in a three-out-with-three-to-play type situation, you can’t pout and stamp your feet with a straight face if your team doesn’t sweep a three-game set. Yet had the Mets dropped the third game of their series with the White Sox after taking the first two, pouting and stamping would have constituted socially acceptable behavior.
The scoreboard indicates it could have happened. Mets 2 White Sox 0 ultimately did the trick [3], though the gap between our first and second runs ran uncomfortably long. Perhaps there was no way Chicago’s contemporary Hitless Wonders were ever going to produce anything but zeros, but we couldn’t be sure. As was, Francisco Lindor’s homer to lead off the fourth wove all the cushion Sean Manaea [4] would require. Manaea, to that point, was matching everything Garrett Crochet was throwing in terms of result if not flair. Each starting pitcher retired his first nine batters. Crochet struck out the first seven Mets he faced, three shy of tying Tom Seaver’s consecutive K’s record, normally the one standard in this world I deem immune to records being made to be broken — I’m still sore [5] it was tied in 2021 — but as September dawned and I was making September deals in my head, I decided I could cope with Garrett Crochet being this September’s Steve Carlton [6]. You set a record, we conjure a win. Plus the karma of rooting for a team that wasn’t the Braves or Phillies (or Yankees) to go 39-123 or worse probably earned me a statistical love tap where it could hurt most.
Then Luis Torrens made fair contact with one out in the third; and Lindor did his characteristic thing in the fourth; and Crochet took a powder at his organization’s future-thinking behest; and Manaea kept being splendid for seven innings. His bid for perfection fell away, but he was more than adequate to the task at hand. The White Sox didn’t push a runner into scoring position until the seventh. The ninety feet from third to home remained their bridge too far once Sean shook off the only threat they manufactured all day.
Reed Garrett, who makes us nervous, threw an eventless bottom of the eighth. Pablo Reyes [7], who was new to us, took first base with two out in the top of the ninth after J.D. Martinez walked. Starling Marte rose from the annals of past achievement [8] to deliver a ringing double to center, and pinch-runner Pablo took off, leading me to discover “C’MON REYES!” is one of those things you never forget how to yell at your television. This Reyes scored his first Met run, leaving him only 884 behind Jose for Reyes franchise leadership (Argenis Reyes totaled 13 runs during his 2008-2009 stay; 2023 pitcher Denyi Reyes ran smack into the adoption of the universal DH and was never invited to test his speed on the basepaths).
A two-run ninth-inning lead entrusted to Edwin Diaz was once upon a time insurmountable for Met opponents. Has that time returned? Sugar’s rushed back to dominance all of a sudden, fastballs setting up sliders and batters finding only air for their efforts. If you were worried he’d revert to the Diaz of the previous Wednesday, he wasn’t and didn’t. Edwin struck out the side swinging, completing the Mets’ spa weekend with an “aaahhh, that felt Amazin’…do we really have to leave?
Alas, they did. A Braves loss to the Phillies on Sunday night (in eleven innings, no less) made the reality of facing the rest of the schedule enticing rather than a chore. Recriminations over August leads and games blown in horrific fashion now belong to our fickle friend the summer wind. One game out of a postseason berth with twenty-five to play. One month of meaningful games [9] in September even Fred Wilpon wouldn’t feel compelled to explain. Meteorological summer is over. Metropolitan autumn brims with the possibility a fan lives for.
This really does feel Amazin’.