Mets' big three — Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo — drink it all in
The New York Mets celebrate after defeating the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4 of the National League baseball playoff series, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in New York. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
By now, champagne is like Gatorade to the 2024 Mets. After three clinching celebrations this October, none rowdier than Wednesday night’s Citi Field bash, the bubbly serves as a baptism, with each playoff round further legitimizing this upstart Flushing crew.
And these Mets can feel that to their core, specifically three of the longest-tenured regulars to get them to the franchise’s first NLCS since that orange-and-blue lightning bolt in 2015.
There's Wyoming product Brandon Nimmo, the Mets’ 13th overall pick in the 2011 draft, a raw high school recruit who didn’t make his major-league debut until the year after the ’16 wild-card loss to Madison Bumgarner’s Giants at Citi. Homegrown slugger Pete Alonso needed agent-turned-GM Brodie Van Wagenen to greenlight him for the ’19 Opening Day roster, blowing off service-time considerations.
And of course Francisco Lindor, imported from small-market Cleveland before the 2021 season and given a $341 million contract as the first mega-move in Steve Cohen’s vision to make the Mets a World Series champion — in his words, three to five years.
Before this October, the Mets’ promising trio — assembled under two different owners, a half-dozen GMs and five managers — had accounted for two winning regular seasons, one playoff appearance and zero postseason wins.
Even by the Mets’ dysfunctional standards, that’s been a lot to wear, but those stains now have been rinsed away. Champagne makes for a very effective detergent, and as it was streaming down Nimmo’s face Wednesday night, you could see the shine of that newly earned freedom in his wide smile.
“Winning isn’t easy, and being here is not for the faint of heart,” Nimmo said. “You have to make a lot of sacrifices and you have to do a lot of hard things in order to get to this position. I thought back to 2015, when I was sitting there watching, I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m right on the cusp and I’ll be a part of this and we’ll do this every year.’ And then it’s 2024 now, I’ve just won my first postseason series — the last one [vs. Milwaukee] — and the first NLDS here [at Citi Field]. You just realize how hard it is and how many things have to go right . . . But it’s real life. It’s happening right now.”
Because the Mets made it happen, rallying back from 11 games under .500 in early June to squeeze into the playoffs on a doubleheader split the day after the regular season ended for everyone else. And if that wasn’t Mets enough, the “traveling circus” then rumbled to Milwaukee, beating the NL Central champ Brewers in the Wild Card Series, and came within a pitch or two of sweeping the Phillies on Broad Street before returning home for Wednesday’s clincher.
Coming off the Mets’ 2022 collapse, when that 101-win team never pulled out of its September spiral and got swept by the Padres at Citi Field, there was suspicion that maybe this core was defective, or just didn’t have the competitive chemistry to someday produce a World Series run. On the surface, at least, the hard evidence could support such a claim.
But for David Stearns, the guy hired a year ago to mine gold from a leaden $340 million roster, the core he inherited proved to be more than just a serviceable engine for his retool-on-the-fly plans. Lindor turned in an MVP-worthy season before going supernova, Nimmo should have been an All-Star and Alonso has flipped the subpar walk-year narrative by becoming an October hero.
Stearns didn’t assemble this Mets core, but he has their backs, and they in turn have carried him to the brink of the World Series in his first year as president of baseball operations. Any skepticism about the core’s ability to win big games was appropriately expunged in a place called Flushing.
“I think they’ve shown that’s [expletive],” a champagne-soaked Stearns said Wednesday night. “This core has been winning games since June 1, so we can put that to bed right now.”
Stearns was referring to the Mets having MLB’s best record after Memorial Day, and now they’re the hottest team in October after Lindor’s ghost-busting homer in Atlanta clinched the final wild-card spot. How perfect was it that the Mets’ season-saving Game 3 win over the Brewers was engineered in the ninth inning by a Lindor leadoff walk, Nimmo’s timely single and Alonso’s three-run homer, his first in two weeks.
Alonso went deep again over the weekend in Philly, then got the Mets on the scoreboard first in Game 3 with another opposite-field blast off Aaron Nola. Lindor took care of the heavy lifting in Wednesday’s clincher, launching the sixth-inning grand slam that put the champagne on ice.
“There’s so many opportunities for guys to come up clutch,” Alonso said. “It’s like, we just believe so much in each other. We trust one another. We’ve come so far. Just the preparedness, the execution, the tenacity, the readiness to play the game — it’s the whole group. We operate as a unit.”
On these Mets, some have waited quite a while longer for the chances, persevering through seasons when faith and belief were in short supply. Nimmo, Lindor and Alonso represent the flagship sailing out of those bleaker days, a forgettable Mets downturn they hope is behind the franchise for good.
“It’s not easy to be here,” Lindor said. “Enjoy it, but don’t take it for granted because it doesn’t happen every year.”
That’s not lost on the Mets, who haven’t had their fill of champagne just yet.
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.
