Thursday night I came home from Game Four of the National League Championship Series resigned to the 2024 Mets season being imminently over. Friday morning I awoke thinking only that there’d be a baseball game come late afternoon and that the Mets would be playing in it, and between the regular season and the postseason, the Mets had won ballgames 95 times this year, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe they might win another. I didn’t stress about it. I didn’t worry over the odds of coming back from down three-one. I didn’t shrink at the specter of Ohtani and Betts and Muncy (oh my). I just knew the Mets would be playin’ some ball, and that the Mets have some pretty good ballplayers, and, well…play ball!
So the Mets did. They played the hell out of ball in Game Five, hitting balls particularly hard and in a timely fashion, while their pitchers stopped throwing quite so many balls. It all added up to a glorious chorus of “Stayin’ Alive,” which you could hear in the echoes of “My Girl,” which was actually performed live by the Temptations pregame. “My Girl” was for Francisco Lindor, who doesn’t come to bat without the song’s first verse echoing through Citi Field. “Stayin’ Alive” was the mission.
Mission accomplished. For Game Five, that is. The temptation is to look beyond the Mets’ 12-6 throttling of the Dodgers — is it possible for a score to simultaneously not indicate how close and not close a game was? — and think about what it will take to win the next two contests and therefore the pennant. Tamp down that temptation. The next mission is Game Six and Game Six solely. Peer too far ahead and you’re standing on shaky ground.
But we ain’t too proud to beg for a whole lot more of what kept us alive in Game Five.
Pete Alonso, in his third final-ever game as a Met at Citi Field, changed the tenor of this NLCS in one mighty swing, golfing a Jack Flaherty pitch to the western edge of the 7 Line Army seats, where the night before, I can personally attest, it grew chilly and hopeless. Francisco digs the Temps. Pete raises the temperature. Two Mets had been on when Alonso attacked, meaning the Met lead was 3-0. The message to Dave Roberts, regarding his starting pitcher who stymied us in Game One, was (and I’m borrowing this Karl Ehrhardt-worthy line from author Michael Elias) Flaherty will get you nowhere.
Go back, Jack, and do it again, the Mets lineup had to be thinking. The second inning saw a leadoff double from Francisco Alvarez wasted, except for the notion that Alvy was suddenly off the schneid, but the third crumbled Dodger pitching in Sensurround. Flaherty walked his first two batters, proving that it’s not only Mets pitchers who do that. Starling Marte, very much living up to his first name’s first syllable, doubled both runners home, and it was off to the Met races. With two outs, there was an Alvy single, a Lindor triple, a Brandon Nimmo base hit, and an 8-1 Met lead lighting up the Citi scoreboard. Yeah, the Dodgers had snuck a run up there off recurring lifesaver David Peterson in the second, but who was worried about the Dodgers when the Mets were ahead, 8-1?
Everybody, obviously. Have you seen these Dodgers? I saw them with my own eyes in Game Four and I considered looking away. Geez, they’re dangerous. For two nights, they were Murderer’s Row taking batting practice in-game, and the Mets might as well have been the 1927 Pirates calling it a day, per legend, before a single pitch was thrown in competition. Except we know the 2024 Mets are not a give-up crew. Maybe they wouldn’t be a champion crew, but they weren’t going to go down without a fight.
Nor would the Dodgers. They indeed got to Peterson enough to rattle Carlos Mendoza’s nerves sufficiently to call on Reed Garrett to protect what was now an 8-2 lead in the fourth. But then Jesse Winker added an RBI triple to the one Lindor hit the inning before (because triples are just that easily come by), and good ol’ Mets fan favorite Jesse got driven in by the blessedly active Jeff McNeil. Winker and McNeil replaced J.D. Martinez and Jose Iglesias in Mendoza’s lineup once Mendy remembered Jeff and Jesse are his guys, too. Gotta love an adaptable skipper.
Garrett now had an eight-run lead to safeguard, until it was a five-run lead, courtesy of Andy Pages’s second home run of the game. Pages was L.A.’s nine-hitter. If their last batter can swat two home runs, I’d hate to see who they have batting first.
Oh right, Ohtani. Mendoza knew that and brought in Ryne Stanek to strike out Shohei to end the fifth. Excellent plan.
Stanek, more or less the Mets’ primary setup man, stayed into the sixth, which started nervously with a Mookie Betts homer, but then settled down via three quick outs and not a single base on balls. Peterson had walked four and Garrett one, but the bullpen was now out of the carousel business. It made a world of difference. From a throat-clearing advantage of 10-6, McNeil contributed his second sac fly of the day to provide an extra firm cushion, and, in the eighth, Marte’s fourth hit brought home the Mets’ twelfth run. By then, Edwin Diaz was in the midst of succeeding Stanek’s two-and-a-third of scoreless ball with two superbly effective frames of his own, and, yes, the Mets were alive. Certainly not dead yet.
Big change from the night before when I felt compelled to wake my wife around one in the morning and debrief her on the somber scene at Citi. Yes, it was fun for many reasons, and I was delighted to get the call from Jason to join him in the center field orange grove — and thanks to not-my-first-rodeo layering, I didn’t even shiver very much — but yeesh. The joint was half-empty when it was over, and who could blame the Mets fans who didn’t want to push midnight just to take in every last inch of a 10-2 debacle that had pushed us to the brink of elimination? At least their departure made the diehard trudge to the subway a breeze.
Anyway, that, along with every trip to the edge of every 2024 abyss, feels distant in the wake of Game Five, a Game Five that now precedes a very necessary Game Six. The way the Mets do the things they do might eventually end us. But they also keep us going.
No strikeouts. Doubt it means more than only striking out 3-4 times but it does have a nice ring to it. Loved that Alonso’s HR came on a perfectly acceptable Flaherty pitch – if it were game 1 when Mets batters swung helplessly over it.
Not done. Dodgers still not definitively the better team. And it’s Manaea vs the Bullpen. There’s a club band name in there somewhere. There’s also a promising pitching matchup. LGM.
One game at a time is an important point — if they can just win game 6, they force a game 7 where anything’s possible. Which Mets team will show up, though? Last night proved there are two separate Mets teams, that have very little relation to each other.
“Flaherty will get you nowhere,” nice.
I wonder if the warmer temps of the earlier start time helped. If the better weather did help, the early evening start times in LA could make a difference.
To make the idea of coming back from 3-1 down less daunting, I tell myself that if the series had reached the same 2-3 record via L-W-L-W-L, it would feel like a close back and forth rather than climbing a mountain.
Not for the 1st time this year, the Mets offense flipped overnight from utterly futile to hitting clinic. The 2024 Mets defy rational analytical fandom. The most consistent characteristic of this team is they suffer losses as bad as any we’ve witnessed as Mets fans–that look like familiar lolMets season killers–and they just keep bouncing back, punching hard. They flip the switch within games. It’s an irrational ride that feels like going down 3-1 actually matches the 2024 Mets win formula more than going up 3-1 would have.
The Dodgers’ relentless offense plus the Mets starters’ short outings plus the leaky shrinking bullpen is an anxious combination. I don’t see how the Mets are going to get through games 6 and 7 without using starters in relief, particularly Senga.