Mets in a much better place than the last time they faced Dodgers
Brandon Nimmo of the Mets strikes out in the ninth inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the second game of a doubleheader at Citi Field on May 28, 2024. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The last time they faced the Dodgers, the Mets were 11 games under .500. They had just lost 10 of their last 12. Jorge Lopez threw a glove.
“That was the game of the team meeting, I guess?” Carlos Mendoza said after the Mets workout Saturday. “We’ve been through a lot but the fact that after that game, that’s when the guys got together and we started turning a corner, so maybe (it was a turning point)...
“You’re going to go through struggles. We played them well in LA and then they came over here and beat us, but here we are.”
Here they both are.
The superstar-studded Dodgers defeated the Padres Friday to advance the NLCS, which will be a matchup of two teams that took very different paths to end up in the same place. With Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers began the year as the odds-on favorite to win the World Series.
The Mets began the year as an afterthought.
But 162 games leaves a lot of room for the unexpected, and the two certainly look more evenly matched now than when they last met in May. The Dodgers, though still fearsome, are playing hurt, with three of their starting pitchers - Clayton Kershaw, Gavin Stone and Tyler Glasnow - out for the season.
The Mets, meanwhile, went 67-40 after that Dodgers loss - the one that sparked the team meeting credited with changing their collective mental approach.
“It’s not a secret that they’re a really good team," Mendoza said of the Dodgers. "They have a lot of superstars, they’re deep and they faced a lot of adversity, just like us. They had a lot of injuries with their pitching staff especially and they found a way. We’re a good team and we’ll be ready to go understanding that we’re facing a pretty good team there.”
The Dodgers have hit nine homers in five postseason games, and though their depleted rotation means they’ll likely rely heavily on their bullpen, that’s been a potent weapon, too: a 2.22 ERA in 24 ⅓ innings.
It will also be a matchup of the guys expected to come in first and second in MVP voting: Ohtani and Francisco Lindor.
Kodai Senga, the Game 1 starter, very resolutely refused to be cowed by Ohtani, or the rest of the lineup for that matter.
“It’s not exclusively the Dodgers, but good hitters from around the league - if you miss, they’re going to hit you, so just try to control what I can control,” Senga said through an interpreter. Asked what it’s like in Japan now that a series will feature Ohtani, Senga and Yamamoto, Senga deadpanned, “I’m not in Japan.”
Asked how he was going to handle Ohtani, Senga kept mum: “I don’t think any pitcher will reveal how we’re going to approach a hitter at this point.”
One thing is clear, if the Mets are going to pull through this, they’re going to have to capitalize on the Dodgers biggest weakness - something the Padres almost pulled off by nearly homering them into oblivion.
“It’ll be interesting because it seems like they’ve been using that bullpen a lot with all the injuries that they’re facing with the starting rotation,” Mendoza said. “But again, they’re deep, they’re good, they’ve got a lot of good players, they’ve got a good manager and good coaches.”
McReturn. Jeff McNeil (broken wrist) is still on track to join the Mets for the NLCS. He played nine innings at second with the Arizona Fall League Friday and batted five times; he was scheduled to play right field Saturday.
“If he’s healthy, there’s a good chance he’ll be on the roster for sure, I think. We’ll go from there,” Mendoza said when asked whether McNeil would start or come off the bench.
Mendoza previously said the Mets were weighing whether to carry one fewer pitcher to make room for McNeil. Either way, it’s a good problem to have, he said.
“When Jeff gets hit and we get the results and it’s broken and he’s done for the season, (I said) hopefully we’re having this conversation" about whether he can play again if the Mets make a deep run, Mendoza said. "And here we were yesterday having those conversations. It was a good feeling. Pretty incredible.”
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Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
