It’s the time of year when someone asks you how you are, and you tell them the Mets have been rained out not only today but tomorrow, and they have to get out of Atlanta, which is about to be hit by a hurricane, which you care about in the abstract as a human being, but all you’re really thinking about is it was known the hurricane was coming, and neither the Braves nor MLB activated any kind of contingency rescheduling or relocating, thus once the Mets get to Milwaukee, assuming they get to Milwaukee, they will still have three games against the NL Central champion Brewers who swept them at the very beginning of this season, and then they have to fly back to (hopefully intact) Atlanta to play a Monday afternoon doubleheader to decide everything, unless some combination of wins and losses among the Mets, the Braves, and the Diamondbacks over the weekend makes the doubleheader moot in terms of playoff qualification, though playoff seeding is a whole other packet of seeds, in which case the commissioner gets involved, assuming someone wakes him, and you’ve got to think about the pitching you’d have to use and how much effort is worth exerting in advance of a trip to maybe San Diego or back to Milwaukee, and that’s already assuming too much, because…
I mean, fine. I’m fine. How are you?
Who are we kidding? This is how we are. This transcends fine. This also brings to mind Marsellus Wallace’s response to boxer Butch in the denouement to the pawn shop scene in Pulp Fiction when asked if he is OK: “Naw, man. I’m pretty fuckin’ far from OK.” Ultimately, however, this is how we want to be when it’s this time of year.
We left New York with a two-game lead on Sunday night, and it’s Thursday afternoon, and we have a one-game lead, but it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple in the final week of September when leads and deficits regarding something everybody wants are this slim. If your team isn’t involved, it’s fun to sit back and observe the chaos. Fifty-two weeks ago, the Mets and Marlins played to the essence of inconclusiveness — the Marlins took a lead over the Mets in the top of the ninth right before the rains drenched Citi Field — and it remained unknown for days on end whether the Marlins, in a playoff race (no, really), would have to wing their way back to New York to finish a game that meant nothing of consequence to the Mets, who were about to fire their manager and had all but packed it in, anyway. No skin off our nose as fans whatever happened. Let the if-necessary chaos commence! It wasn’t and it didn’t, but generally if you have nothing to root for, you tend to root for whatever’s most interesting.
This season’s last lap is interesting enough. Holding off the Braves is challenge enough without inserting meteorology and Milwaukee into the middle of our series with them. Then again, if ever a team on a roll looked like it could use a quick reset after a single game, it might have been the Mets following Tuesday night’s loss to the Braves, when the Mets lived down to every fear we lug around in our backpack of anxieties. It was just one game versus the hundred or so that have seen them rise from the dead and to within a couple of steps of the postseason, but it happened where it happened, and that gets everybody antsy with a capital “A” presented in a font that’s given us nightmares since the capital of Georgia was Chipper City.
Ancient history, of course, but go tell that to your backpack of anxieties. Better yet, as George Clooney advised in Up in the Air, set that backpack on fire. It ain’t 1999 or 2022 — swell seasons except for the Atlanta angle — if we don’t want it to be. My historical precedent of choice this final week has to be 1973. Also ancient history, but when we remember everything, we oughta remember everything. The connective tissue is multiple rainouts messing with a pennant race and a rejiggered schedule extended out to the Monday after was supposed to be all she wrote on Sunday. The first-place Mets hung around soggy Chicago through an off day Thursday and postponements Friday and Saturday and didn’t make it to Wrigley to play until they were saddled with back-to-back doubleheaders. They split one on Sunday and, with their magic number down to one, took the opener on Monday, compelling “wet grounds” to be declared for the nightcap. Chaos was on the verge of reigning then, too — Pittsburgh was playing and losing its own makeup contest to the Padres at Three Rivers that Monday — but everything was deemed official once the Mets won the 161st game of their season. The similarity to 2024 is nobody saw the Mets coming in the summer of 1973, either. The difference, beyond the existence of Wild Cards, is when the Mets finished the regular season on a Monday fifty-one years ago, their first playoff game would be the following Saturday. A reasonably rested Tom Seaver beat the Cubs on October 1 and then faced the Reds on October 6.
Major League Baseball planned for exactly one off day between the end of this regular season and the beginning of this postseason. The Mets and Braves project to be busy Monday. Or not. Clinchings. Eliminations. Seedings. Weekend unknowns. We’ll see. We’ll sweat some of it, probably shouldn’t stress over some of the rest of it, including the time squeeze. In ’99, the Mets finished up with Pittsburgh at Shea on a Sunday afternoon, had no idea what Monday held when they jetted to Cincinnati on a hunch Sunday night (the Reds wound up winning their rain-delayed finale late), won a suddenly necessary play-in game Monday night, sprayed champagne, then flew off to Arizona to begin their first-ever NLDS by withstanding Randy Johnson and winning Game One Tuesday night. It can be done. The 1999 Mets had three Western road trips spanning mid-August to mid-September. They were travel-hardened. So are the 2024 Mets, who you’ll recall spent this August touching down in and taking off from cities all over the continent. They bonded on their June trip to London and came out better for it. I’m not worried about a kooky schedule getting the best of them.
I don’t worry about Milwaukee getting the best of them. That’s a good team, and Miller Park/Whatever It’s Called Now has been a low-key deathtrap for them when little is on the line, but we did clinch our ’22 berth there. I don’t put any stock in “the Brewers will have nothing to play for” in terms of playoff positioning, because that rarely seems to matter; the Mets will have something to play for, and it’s up to them to play well. I don’t even worry about the mythic curse Atlanta and neighboring Cobb County have on the Mets. We swallowed our one dose of bad mojo Tuesday and now, as a result of the rains, we are cleansed. The Mets have flown safely to Wisconsin. They will play. They will compete. I can’t definitively say they will win, but I’m not yammering on with nervous energy as a symptom of not thinking they will. And if they have to return to Atlanta, weather permitting, I anticipate an adrenaline rush like no other.
Yes, that’s how I am.
I tossed something in the last post about how I expect the Braves to have to play a doubleheader vs KC Saturday, then have a doubleheader vs us Monday and then, if they get through all that into the WC, have to play Tuesday with, max, two days’ rest for any of their starters. Our problems are small by comparison.
As for the message here – we’re playing games that matter September 27-30 and THAT’S PRETTY FRIGGIN’ GREAT!!!
The way it was, the Mets could have beat the Braves for historic redemption but then suffered the anticlimax of fumbling away the wildcard in Milwaukee. That possibility is now off the table. Now the trip to Milwaukee is build-up to a season-ending (maybe, likely) winner-take-all doubleheader in Atlanta. That’s the way to win historic redemption and the wildcard.
If at least one game on Monday turns out to be necessary, as seems likely, they’ll have a Lindor who got two more days to heal; Blackburn might be available again; and who knows, maybe they even pull Kodai Senga out of a hat …
“…they have to get out of Atlanta”
As Wed and Thu were cancelled in advance of the storm, wouldn’t they have left Atlanta well before the storm actually hit?
It started raining there yesterday (ahead of Helene). They didn’t fly out until this morning.
The Mets went to Atlanta needing to win 2 of 3 to clinch a wildcard over the Braves outright. Losing game 1 like the Mets have lost so many pivotal games to the Braves, with the 2022 sweep being a fresh raw memory, was very discouraging. But as bad as the game 1 loss was, the series win formula is still intact.
The extra days off and Brewers series gives Lindor max time and reps to get ready for the Braves double-header, if Lindor is able to play.
As long as the Mets bounce back again from Tuesday’s loss to beat the Brewers this weekend, it’s possible the Mets can secure a wildcard before Monday if Padres-Diamondbacks and/or Royals-Braves play out right.
But if elimination is on the line going into Monday in any of a number of permutations, then we’re back to the Mets winning 2 of 3 in Atlanta, which is how we started the week.
I’m glad you mentioned the ’73 makeup doubleheader in Chicago, because I haven’t heard anyone else bring it up. That’s two similarities to note from that magical season (the “Ball on the Wall” being the other), which led to an amazin’ playoff run. And after everything we’ve dealt with over these last few days, that’s a very encouraging sign indeed! “OMG” may not be as memorable a rally cry as “Ya Gotta Believe!”, but it’ll have to do. I’m sure Tug would’ve approved.
We started the week looking forward to the Mets winning 2 in Atlanta to clinch over the Braves outright. After the very discouraging loss on Tuesday, due to the rainouts, the formula is still intact: win 2 in Atlanta.
The amazing thing is that, in case of the worst case, the Braves sweep the Royals, the Mets get swept by the Brewers, and the Diamondbacks don’t all but eliminate themselves against the Padres, the Mets would still go back to Atlanta to win 2 to clinch a wildcard: season record tie and Mets win the tie-breaker, like 2022 but the other way.
The Mets still control their own destiny, and historic redemption versus the Braves is still on the table.
“…the Mets won their 161st game.”
Wow, and I thought 101 was great two years ago!
Tom C and Greg, When I heard about the makeup Doubleheader, I immediately thought about 1973 and was going to write it up. But then I forgot.
This just tells me one thing:
“eric1973, say Goodbye to America.”
Ha! Slightly edited for clarity.
Ah, could have left it.
Only me and Dick Cavett would have ever noticed, much less pointed it out. :)
the suddenly gloomy (but we seriously needed rain) skies and the sudden, but temporary cessation of baseball that matters has made the daily rhythm of playoff-like baseball seem like ages ago!
and yes, pehaps this discontinuity, and the
nourishing power of the rains will be the re-set needed to get all of this season’s magic back on track.
right now it just feels gloomy.
we’re due for sun tomorrow, baseball after work, and hopefully a great weekend of baseball, and help from our (former and perhsps future) foes.
may the stress resume;0]
Yeah, it’s weird. We were totally focused and keyed up on the Braves series. Stakes and narrative set. We were there, and it’s all been jumbled up on us. Of course that means it’s been jumbled up for the Braves too. Mets 1 up on the Braves but Braves 1 up for the tiebreaker with 3 more games to race until the (maybe, likely) winner-take-all double header.
Just more extraordinary material for Greg and Jason’s Mets lore.
we hit a sort of wormhole.
may that be a another offering from the baseball gods .
we know the braves would have liked to ride that night forward
would be a good time for a laugher or two
to get loose!
and fun
On the other hand, beating Sale the next night would have been a typical 2024 Mets bounce-back.
As usual, Greg nails the mood.
The rain, the angst, the uncertainty, brings me back to the last weekend of 2008 when storms were bearing down on NY (we are SO getting a different result this year!) and Jason observed thusly:
“And so. We have survived. Survived to confront, yet again, who we are. It’s daunting, no question. We’ve got no bullpen, we don’t know who the hell will start Saturday, we don’t know if we’ll even get to play Friday. Or Saturday. Or even Sunday. Our enemies include Marlins, Phillies, Brewers, wind, rain, 2007 and ourselves. But what the hell. We’ve come this far, haven’t we?”
Indeed we have.
Well, you know what Casey said about the three things a team can do in a ballgame: They can win, or they can lose, or it can rain. So the Mets did two of those things convincingly in Atlanta: boy, did they lose, and boy, did it rain. So now they’re due to do a whole lot of Casey’s other option. Maybe the ol’ Professor could have a word with Someone, wherever he is now.
And the answer to the question is: we’re doing great. I definitely prefer the angst of meaningful games in late September to numbly playing out the string with the Rafael Ortegas and Jack Reinheimers of the world.
MILW clinched home field and KC still has not clinched WC.
So Mets playing a team with nothing on the line, and ATL playing a team with something to play for.
I am satisfied with both situations, though not sure why, since they are in opposition to each other. But I really want to clinch before playing ATL.
Mets have best record in MLB since JUN01, so technically, we are the better team against whomever we are playing at the moment.