A microcosm of the season, last night made us all believe.
One of the drums that gets beaten around sports is about how certain games become microcosms of entire seasons or franchise experiences. It’s an overplayed narrative, but sometimes it is apt.
Last night was one of those times.
The Mets entered game four of the National League Division Series up 2-1 over the Phillies, a team that, on paper, was the more talented group of players. The Phillies’ two top hitters, Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, have owned the Mets not just this year, but for years. Their ace, Zack Wheeler, was spurned by a foolish Mets front office after he, justifiably, wanted to be paid like the superstar he is. They won 95 games, handily winning the division, and looking like a lock to make their third straight National League championship series.
Enter the Mets. A team that told its departing stars at the 2023 trade deadline that they weren’t looking to be competitive in 2024. A team that lost out on all the major free agents in the offseason. A team that plugged holes with reclamation projects, prospects for whom the bloom was off the rose, and the same tried and true stars that had never quite been able to put together a deep playoff run. A team that, somehow, has been the best in baseball for four months but were still considered serious underdogs in the Division Series.
Last night’s microcosm of the season begins with the Mets having lots of opportunities to score early, and wasting them all. This Mets team, through the beginning of June, seemed to be unable to get out of their own way, whether they were bogged down by injury or slump.
What helped pull the Mets through the fallow times and begin their turnaround was their starting pitching, down an ace, but not out. Last night, Jose Quintana represented the Mets’ starting pitching for the whole season. A name that wasn’t expected to produce much kept the team in the game, giving up just one run that, with a slicker third baseman, might not have been a run at all.
After Quintana did his part, Reed Garrett, once an afterthought of a bullpen piece, relieved him, again highlighting the unexpected contributions to this team. Garrett was, at one point, not just the Mets’ best reliever, but one of the best relief pitchers in the National League. He’s come back down to Earth, but with his two strikeouts in the top of the sixth, Garrett made the fans remember his dominant June.
Despite the aforementioned unexpected contributors being paramount to the Mets’ success, this year will always be the year of Francisco Lindor. And, again, this game played that out. Much like Lindor having a rough first six weeks of the season, Lindor struck out in his first two plate appearances against Ranger Suárez. A double down the third base line came next, and showed that Lindor wasn’t totally lost, and that hit somewhat changed the tenor of the game.
But then the man who should be MVP showed up. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth, Lindor ripped a 99 mile per hour fastball from the hand of Carlos Estévez over the wall in center field to give the Mets the 4-1 lead that would wind up sticking.
And, much like he did all season, Lindor made every Mets fan believe. When that ball cleared the wall, Citi Field got louder than it may have ever been before, and Mets fans across the world jumped up from their couches, pumping their fists, singing “O.M.G.” and thinking that maybe, just maybe, this team could actually do it.
The season’s story continued, as David Peterson, a prospect that has struggled considerably in big league playing time, pitched two and a third innings of scoreless ball, neutralizing the big bats by getting strikeouts and ground balls. Of all of the sentences that could be written about this game, “As expected, Peterson was stellar out of the bullpen in a NLDS clincher” might be the one that would seem least believable to a Mets fan on June 2nd.
And, much like how the last week of the season saw games postponed by a hurricane, Lindor go down to an initially benign back injury, and the team forced to play two games a day after the rest of baseball’s season came to a close, the Mets faced a rocky top of the ninth. Edwin Díaz, the mercurial closer who hasn’t been his sharpest all season, walked the first two batters of the inning, bringing the tying run to the plate with no outs.
But this team responded in the same way they did for the first game of the doubleheader in Atlanta on September 30th: they gutted it out. Díaz struck out Kody Clemens, got Brandon Marsh to weakly fly out to center field, and struck out Schwarber to send the team to their ninth NLCS in team history.
The baseball season is long, and at times it can feel futile, hopeless, and downright exhausting. There are years, hell, decades even, that can feel like a slog. I’ve been a Mets fan long enough to remember talk radio and back pages slamming Bobby Bonilla for being a relative bust in his first stint on the team, only to be inundated every July 1st for the last 20 years with articles and tweets from folks who don’t understand why deferred payments are not a big deal and, sometimes, a really good idea.
I got shit on my college campus from Yankee fans who thought themselves superior when the Mets lost the Subway Series. In my parents’ living room, I watched an Adam Wainwright curveball break my heart in October 2006 – a lead to a broken glass when I threw my hat across the room (sorry, Mom). I had my 2015 ruined by looking at my phone to see Adam Rubin tweet “OH NO” four seconds before the TV broadcast showed the Mets blow Game 1 of the World Series because I was so impossibly online. From my couch, I watched the 2022 Mets unable to win a single game in Atlanta over the last weekend of the season, losing the division in the process.
I’ve heard them called the Muts, the Mess, LOL Mets. Hell, I’ve called them those names myself. I’ve never stopped being a fan, but there were days, weeks, months, years, when I lost my faith in the team.
But last night, in the flesh, I got to see Francisco Lindor hit a grand slam and hug my friend and scream alongside 40,000 other Mets fans. I got to see José Iglesias hold up the OMG sign on the pitching mound and salute the fans. I got to see Brandon Nimmo crying on the field, overwhelmed by the joy – the joy – of being a New York Met. This was unfathomable a few months ago, but here we are.
No matter what happens from here on out – and don’t get me wrong, I want a World Series victory – last night confirmed a feeling I’ve had for the past month or so: this is my favorite Mets team of my lifetime. Sure, 2015 will always have a special place in my heart, 2006 was the team that made me believe the hardest, and although I was only four in 1986, you can’t discount the monumental impact that team continues to have on Mets baseball.
But this team. THIS TEAM.
Last night was the 2024 season in a nut shell. And it was the best night of my life as a Mets fan. Sunday night in Southern California, let’s crack that nut and do it again.
LFGM