Nice little win for Mets, but it's still a lost weekend
Luis Guillorme #13 of the New York Mets celebrates his tenth inning game winning base hit against the Los Angeles Dodgers with his teammates at Citi Field on Sunday, July 16, 2023. Credit: Jim McIsaac
It’s tough to write a baseball team’s obituary in mid-July. As bad as these Mets have been — in nearly every facet, as Justin Verlander described after Friday’s abysmal loss to open the second half — there still are 69 games left.
Enter the Mets’ clubhouse, look around at the names on the lockers, and a visitor could be convinced of a storybook rebound. Aren’t these the very same players (minus Edwin Diaz) whom people envisioned as a World Series favorite in February?
That’s what owner Steve Cohen tried to sell us on in the week leading up to the All-Star break, and general manager Billy Eppler had little choice but to echo those sentiments Friday when the Mets returned from their mini-vacation. This was the group Eppler put together, after all, and they did win six of their last eight games to finish the first half.
But with two weeks left before the Aug. 1 trade deadline, now comes the truly excruciating part for the Mets: potentially admitting they’re all complicit in the most expensive flop in baseball history, a spectacular $377 million failure.
“You kind of honor some of the things that happened recently,” Eppler said before the Dodgers series began. “But you look at the season as a whole, and the track record, and what the projections were. Then you look to see if those projections have been updated.”
Well, the Mets did provide an update this weekend, capped by Sunday’s rain-delayed walk-off 2-1 victory over the Dodgers, courtesy of Luis Guillorme’s RBI double in the 10th inning. And here it is: Without totally dismissing these next 2 1⁄2 months as meaningless quite yet, what they did against the Dodgers — in the big picture — just isn’t going to be good enough.
Bottom line, the Mets have to play nearly perfect baseball in the second half to even sniff serious playoff contention, and that means winning at better than a .600 clip, or taking two of three in just about every series. Doing the exact reversal of that against the Dodgers, at home, didn’t immediately sink their wild-card chances, but you can see the torpedo closing fast on the radar.
Even with the giddy on-field celebration, the mobbing of Guillorme and the resilience shown after the newly acquired Trevor Gott coughed up a 1-0 lead during his puzzling appearance in the eighth, this counted for only one W that barely dented the brick wall the Mets already have built between themselves and a playoff berth. They trail Arizona by 8 1⁄2 games for the last spot and have five teams to jump.
“We just need to play well as a team, day in and day out,” said Max Scherzer, whose seven scoreless innings helped the Mets improve to 12-1 when a starter goes at least seven innings this season. “You try to look up at the standings and it looks insurmountable. But just take it one game at a time, one day at a time, come in here and just win. Play team baseball and hopefully it just snowballs and we find a hot streak.”
An eternal optimist might point to Saturday’s nine-strikeout performance by Kodai Senga, who’s quickly ascending to staff ace, and Scherzer finding his Cy Young Award form again. That certainly was a big upgrade from the last time we saw Scherzer, who got smoked for two homers by Manny Machado in the first-half finale.
It’s worth noting that Scherzer had the benefit of six days’ rest — a luxury that won’t happen the rest of the way — and that his status for Sunday was up in the air for a bit when he returned to Citi Field with a stiff neck. Afterward, he dismissed both things as non-issues, saying his arm feels great. But how long will it be before the next ache or pain creeps up with the soon-to-be 39-year-old?
Credit Scherzer for piloting the Mets through Sunday in ways that Verlander couldn’t in the series opener. But the Mets can’t replicate Sunday’s formula on a regular basis, not with basically one functioning offensive player in Brandon Nimmo, whose homer Saturday was the Mets’ solitary run in the first two games.
Perhaps the biggest red flag continues to be Pete Alonso, who went 0-for-4 and is hitting .143 since May 30, a stretch of 31 games, with six homers, 15 RBIs and a .595 OPS. If Alonso doesn’t snap out of his ever-deepening funk, the Mets’ slim chances of a playoff push (13.5% according to FanGraphs) disappear to zero.
“Every time we win, I hope it’s a starting point of some consistently good baseball,” manager Buck Showalter said.
Thing is, it never seems to be for these Mets. And though they’re not dead yet, this weekend didn’t really do much to change anyone’s mind.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
