It doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say the Mets suddenly look like a walking dead team.
And yet, almost as unbelievable as their futility at the plate this week, these same Mets were able to clinch a wild-card spot on Sunday.
That is, if they ever again swing the bats like the team that had the best record in the Majors for so long after June 1. And at this point, certainly no one who saw them play this week would bet on that. .
But the momentum in baseball could quickly turn, as these 2024 Mets have proven themselves this season.
So do they still have a turnaround in them?
It doesn’t feel like it, that’s for sure, after the Mets lost three crucial games in a row without even putting up much of a fight.
Yep, after such a feel-good season, this team has brought up the whole old history of heartbreak that has left Mets fans feeling like their team is cursed, whether it’s ’98, ’07, ’22 or any number of other fatal finishes over time. year.
It just didn’t seem possible that these Mets would go into the tank with all the money on the table. They played too well. Full of confidence. They are playing their best baseball against the better teams in both leagues.
And now this.
They’ve lost three in a row, including Saturday night’s 6-0 loss to the Brewers in Milwaukee, but it’s the manner in which they lost that’s so alarming.
They haven’t batted at all and look like a team feeling the pressure of the big games in this final week of the season.
You can say that the moment seems too big for them, or you can say it louder: that it seems like they are suffocating again.
It’s a dirty word in sports and not one to be used lightly, but is there another way to put it? Especially with at least a few of the same leads, Francisco Lindor, Brandon NimmoAnd Pete Alonsowho were part of the team that failed so badly at the end of the ’22 season.
And if all this wasn’t ominous enough for you, consider how the Atlanta Braves won their game on Saturday: with none other than Travis d’Arnaud hitting a walk-off home run to beat the Kansas City Royals, putting them one game ahead of the Mets in the NL Wild Card standings.
Why is it that the Braves always seem to find ways to win games this time of year? What exactly is their secret sauce and will the Mets ever find their own?
Look, there are plenty of reasons to believe Steve Cohen/David Sterns Mets has a promising future and is building an organization with a strong farming system with the intention of having a Dodgers-like sustainable winner in the coming years.
In that sense, this is a bonus year in the grand scheme of things.
And yet that doesn’t soften the blow after these Mets have played at such a high level for months, especially in a season where a championship is entirely up for grabs and where neither league has anything resembling a super team.
It just wasn’t meant to fall apart like this. Luis Severino had a mediocre start in Atlanta. Sean Manaeawho was as confident as any baseball pitcher the past two months, couldn’t make it to the second Friday night in Milwaukee.
And even Jose Quintanawho was mostly very good against the Brewers on Saturday, still cost himself with two walks in the fourth inning that led to a two-run rally and a fifth-inning exit for the lefthander.
Yet the story was clearly mainly about the lack of offense. And what has to hurt Mets fans the most is that The Core, which has become an unflattering term as it applies to the Mets of recent years, is once again failing miserably.
Since then that has meant Alonso, Nimmo and Lindor Jeff McNeil is injured. Two years ago, they didn’t hit enough when the Mets were defeated by the Braves, dropping the division and losing two of three to the San Diego Padres in the wild-card round.
And they don’t hit now.
Lindor has a legitimate excuse: He’s playing with pain from his back injury significant enough to limit him to DH duties tonight. Still, after hitting two hits on Friday, there was hope he would find his MVP form, but on Saturday he went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.
Nimmo was quiet during those three losses, while playing a terrible second half in which he has hit under .200 since the All-Star Game. It’s hard to explain what happened to him after he took so many clutch hits in the first half that he should have been an All-Star.
And then there is Alonso. He would be one Aaron Judge-like walk year and force Cohen to make him a Met for life with a mega deal. Instead, he cost himself god knows how many millions of dollars with a sub-par season that had few, if any, truly memorable moments.
Indeed, it feels like Alonso’s season has been defined by chasing sliders out of the offensive zone, especially in clutch situations, and at this point he seems almost helpless to change the pattern.
Of course there is still time. Time for one of them. It’s time for these Mets to fool us all like they did back in June when they stopped playing like losers and somehow turned into what looked like a really good baseball team.
The D-backs give the Mets a chance to rewrite the script once again. It’s just hard, after their no-shows this week, to see how they’ll do.
