By defeating Philadelphia on Saturday at Citi Field, the Mets elevated their win total to 86 while keeping their loss total at 69. Those are numbers a Mets fan likes to stare at as a playoff pursuit approaches its final turn. Invoking the two world championships in franchise history as a useful omen in the present carries a little extra power — à la Francisco Alvarez [1] and Luisangel Acuña [2] going deep off Ranger Suarez in the second inning — when the record of 86-69 is arrived at via victory. Twice before, a Mets team could claim 86-69, but got there after losing Game 155. Turned out falling to 86-69, as the 86-68 1998 Mets [3] and 86-68 2008 Mets [4] did, didn’t augur well for seasons on the brink.
By downing the Phils [5], 6-3, the 2024 Mets climbed to their set of magic numbers and continued to legitimize the idea that this year has a chance to be remembered in the same enchanted terms as 1969 and 1986. Is that getting too far ahead of ourselves when we’re only two games in front of the last Wild Card contender behind us with seven to play, three of them in Atlanta, where Met dreams in other hopeful late Septembers have gone to die or at least get badly battered? All my standard-issue omenizing and superstitioning aside, I don’t think so. What are we here for if not to keep rooting the Mets on? I can’t imagine this version of the Mets being done a week from today, and I refuse to imagine this version of the Mets simply tiptoeing in and out of October. Reality, as always, will tell the tale. Right now, the Mets are shaping reality to their needs quite nicely.
Listen, I’m a one-and-oh man. Go one-and-oh in our next one. That’s all I ever ask. A little boost from the out-of-town scoreboard is appreciated, but that lead of two games over the Braves allows for useful tunnel vision. We win, we’re good.
We won on Saturday. It was great. I’m tempted to call it a typical 2024 Mets win, though it feels as if wins in 2024 have thus far come in 86 different varieties. Given the time of the season and the caliber of the competition, this one might have been the most complete. The starting pitching of Sean Manaea [6] was superb for seven innings before departing in the eighth. The closing of Edwin Diaz [7] was on point for four essential outs. On defense, Brandon Nimmo [8] reeled in a potentially troublesome [9] Bryce Harper fly ball in the top of the seventh a half-step from the 358 sign in left. Nimmo was a two-way player, too, delivering the go-ahead-for-good RBI in the bottom of the inning and setting up always necessary insurance by stealing second before coming around to score on Alvarez’s second mighty blow of the game, a two-run double to put the Mets up, 6-2. The Phillies inched back — Potentially Troublesome should be stitched into their City Connect logo — but the Mets proved better all around, as they’ve been doing for so long against so many.
It might be time to trust the wins the Mets are putting in the books, posting in the standings, and injecting into our bloodstream. We’ve been too quick to trust losses as leading indicators. When the Mets don’t hit, there they are, being the Mets. They’ll never hit again. When the bullpen doesn’t shut down a rally, whaddaya expect? It’s the Met bullpen. Manaea, Diaz, Nimmo, and Alvarez have all stumbled through portions of 2024 to enough of an extent that we convinced ourselves their immediate failures defined them and their fortunes where this season was concerned. Same for almost every Met who swung and missed or turned around to watch a pitch sail over a fence once too often. Even as the wins began to outnumber the losses (we surpassed .500 to stay at 46-45), the losses leapt up and bit us right in the optimism. You Gotta Believe was a curio best observed wherever Citi Field hid the Mets Museum. You had to brace for something to eventually go wrong.
Yet here we are, with one Met after another picking up his teammates as needed, and the whole OMG bunch of them succeeding at a clip rendering invalid every playoff probability previously proffered. Mostly the team has just kept winning, as if that’s exactly what a capable bunch sets out to do every single day. The calendar declares it is officially autumn in New York, and you gotta love the ring of hearing it said the Mets of ’24 are 86 and 69.