Maybe This Time

C’mon, Francisco. C’mon, Jose. C’mon, Mark. C’mon, the whole bunch of you, one through nine. It was no use. I called to them through the TV with encouragement by first name or nickname and, save for a single in the first and a double in the fifth, the personal touch was of no use. Nor was the Met lineup. It was useless against…how many Brewers pitchers? Six? Milwaukee used six pitchers, the essence of a team tuning up and staying sharp for the playoffs, a half-dozen different arms getting their work in, and the Mets managed two hits and didn’t put anybody on base between that double in the fifth and a walk in the ninth.

C’mon, Brandon. C’mon, Pete. C’mon, Starling. I didn’t think I had to seek each individual Met’s attention to convince the batting order’s components of the gravity of the situation facing them and, by extension, us. “Gravity of the situation” sounds rather geopolitical for our pastoral pastime, but c’mon f’reals. Two playoff spots. Three teams. Ours is one of them — and one of the two allegedly in control of its/our own destiny. The standings and tiebreakers say so. There is no elite. Just take your place in the driver’s seat. Win a game and things will start to be fine. They didn’t listen Tuesday. They didn’t listen Friday. They didn’t listen Saturday, and thus has resulted the world’s longest rain-interrupted three-game losing streak.

Francisco Lindor can’t pick up a ground ball without squeezing one of those flexible grabber sticks, the kind we got my mother when she couldn’t move well enough to get out of bed. Francisco Alvarez contracted back spasms between second base and third. Jose Iglesias, who gave us this summer’s dance floor smash, has been spotted limping. On the night the contemporary White Sox can be said to have “surpassed” the Original Mets, creaky DH J.D. Martinez extended his hitless streak to 0-for-35, worsting the longtime club record Don Zimmer set in 1962 when he went 0-for-34 before getting a hit and then traded to Cincinnati. Rey Ordoñez holds the franchise ohfer record with an 0-for-37 in 1997. Unlike J.D., he carried a glove and used it to great effect. I don’t mean to pick on any given stiff or slumping Met, however. Twenty-eight Joe Hardys are reverting to twenty-eight Joe Boyds right before our eyes. Yet, somehow, this team is still said to have its hands firmly on the wheel.

C’mon, Luis. C’mon, Harrison. C’mon, Luisangel. C’mon, Tyrone, who I could swear always comes through off the bench. C’mon Alvy, now that you’ve been deemed fit to pinch-hit. Pick up your feet. You got to move to the trick of the beat. More sniffing out opportunities. Less eliciting tears. You’re facing the Brewers in their already-clinched majesty, the nothing-to-play-for Brewers, other than spite and, maybe, galaxy-brained playoff planning. If Milwaukee can keep beating the Mets, then perhaps they can arrange to have the Mets stick around Milwaukee for a couple of more beatings in the Wild Card round. The joke could be on the Brewers, though. Should the Diamondbacks ever find their footing, the Mets might not be available to anybody, let alone Ramon De Jesus’s beloved Brew Crew, for additional beatings after Monday.

Yeesh, the most likely prize — should we snap out of our monumental malaise — is another set of ballgames at the Wisconsin ballpark where the Mets have won one series in the past ten years. A decade ago, Brandon Nimmo was ascending to Binghamton and Luisangel Acuña was presumably the best shortstop in his middle school. The invocation of years past contains limited application. But recent history suggests Milwaukee does seem like a less than ideal locale to seek Met wins.

Too bad. It’s where we are. There and Atlanta on Monday afternoon, possibly, but never mind contingency makeup doubleheaders in other horror houses. Focus on the game in front of you, whoever’s in the lineup Sunday. And focus on getting out the batter at the plate, David. I’ve attempted to urge along the starting pitchers and their reliever successors with the same one-to-one attention I’ve devoted to our offense these last three games. But have Sevy or Sean or Q (I’m on a first-initial basis with Quintana) listened? Not well. No starter has handed so much as a tie to a reliever since last Sunday night’s spine-tingling victory over Philadelphia, which I’m pretty sure happened a month ago. Some relief outings have gone better than others since we left Citi Field. None of them has been particularly impactful.

To all of the aforementioned Mets and your teammates, ya gotta remember whatever you did to get us here. I don’t mean slipping further into a hole here, but with a fingernail’s grasp of an honest-to-god playoff berth on the final scheduled day of 2024 here. I gave up on you countless times in April and May and, if we’re telling truths, beyond. You proved me wrong over and over. I grew determined to stick with you. I brushed off Tuesday at Truist as just one game when those tweeting around me were certain it was the second coming of 2022’s sputter to the finish line. No, no, I told myself and anybody who would listen. This team isn’t that team. This team isn’t the team that harpooned hope two months into the current campaign, either. This team is the team that rose from its own demise to thrill and delight us and pass every wanna-be Wild Card contender until it got close enough to one of the playoff spots that it could confidently place it in the Bagging Area at the CVS self-checkout. I scanned my Extra Care card. I followed the instructions on the PIN pad. I have no idea why I keep being told to wait for assistance.

Help came from the San Diego Padres Saturday night. We’d already lost, 6-0. Travis d’Arnaud and the Atlanta Braves had already…whaddaya think they did? If not for the Padres pasting a five-spot on the board in the top of the ninth at Chase Field, and Arizona producing exactly as many as hits as the Mets did, things would feel a lot worse heading into the final Sunday. They already feel abysmal.

Forget our feelings. Look at the standings. The Padres are in. The Braves are poised. The Diamondbacks’ winning percentage is .5465838. The Mets’ is .5471698. Arizona has one game left. We and Atlanta have one game apiece today and, in theory, two games against each other tomorrow. We defeated the Diamondbacks on August 29 to take the season series from them, which not only sparked a nine-game winning streak and set the stage for a (until very recently) superb September, but ensured no tiebreakers would fall in the Phoenicians’ favor. Yet the Snakes can still sneak past us if they remember how to win and we don’t.

So let’s remember how to win and then do that and then keep doing that for however long we have Mets baseball in 2024. OMG, after 159 games, I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you fellas.