Playoff Race, Who’d a Thunk It!!
It is late September and the New York Mets are in a playoff race. We can no longer call it a pennant race because they cannot win the division as that is all but sewn up by the Philadelphia Phillies, but hopefully the Mets can stop them from celebrating on the Citi Field turf.
Let me say that one more time. The New York Mets are in a playoff race. I say this multiple times because nobody thought something like this was going to happen this year. Hopefully with Steve Cohen’s money and David Stearns’ executive prowess they will make the Mets a perennial playoff contender but us Mets fans have not seen the playoffs a ton in our lives.
Let me rewind to last season. The Mets came into last season with a lot of expectations. They had Max Scherzer and signed Justin Verlander in the offseason and Mets fans were excited with what was to come. The injuries started early and the team never got on any sort of run or built any consistency. In the end they decided to dismantle a portion and traded away Scherzer and Verlander. They were smart in that they used Cohen’s money to eat a lot of the contract of the two and received a bunch of high-profile prospects in return. They also traded platoon outfielder Tommy Pham who said this one of the worst clubhouses he has ever been a part of and that there was no closeness between the players. Scherzer also came out and stuck a knife in Mets fans hearts by saying he had been told the Mets would be taking a break year and basically barely compete in 2024. Scherzer was told this to waive his no trade clause and he made it public.
Now come back to this year and coming into the 2024 Mets fans had this in the back of their minds and seeing what they had done in the offseason it started to seem true. The season started and they start 0-5 and even SNY broadcaster seemed like he was starting to throw in the towel. We went through April and then May and the Mets were eleven games under .500 on June 1st. Their star players were not playing well. Francisco Lindor was batting around or just below .200 and so were Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil. Since then, they have been one of the hottest teams in baseball and Francisco Lindor has become an MVP candidate but unfortunately will not win it due to the insane season Shohei Ohtani is having but that is a discussion for another day.
In that time the team picked it up and started winning, the starting pitching consisting of guys signed in the offseason Sean Manaea and Luis Severino as well as Jose Quintana, David Peterson and Tylor Megill, the latter two had basically been written off by Mets fans have pitched lights out and the offense picked it up as well but did still hit some lulls again.
Also, at that time the Mets were nine games behind the Atlanta Braves and 4.5 games behind the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs for the final wild card spot. Right now, the Mets are in the second wild card spot, tied with the Arizona Diamondbacks (the Mets own the tiebreaker over the Diamondbacks) and three games behind the San Diego Padres (the Mets also own the tiebreaker over them as well) as of this writing.
With all of this said, this team has fought back and shown the fans the fight we did not think they had earlier in the season. Now they went into a weekend series with the Phillies and took three of four games against their hated rivals, especially not allowing them to clinch the division in Citi Field. They will face the Braves for three games who are two games behind them and both teams setting their rotations for what feels like could be an epic series. This series will more than likely decide who gets that final wild card spot, Tuesday to Thursday. The last series of the season in Milwaukee could mean a lot but we will see what shakes out in Atlanta first.
All in all, this has turned into a fantastic season for the Mets, even after things looked very bleak after the first week of the season and then again after the first two months. What’s in store for this team, we will only see but who’d a thunk they would even be in this position after the 2023 season and the way 2024 started.