LOS ANGELES — After the Mets’ potentially devastating 10-2 defeat in Game 4 made it three debacles in four games, and left the team from Queens on the precipice of elimination, Mets players met to size up their unenviable situation. Things looked bleak — though this team that’s all heart does bleak better than almost anyone ever has.
These very Mets were told from the start that they are a team in transition. Yet, here they are with a legit shot against the best money can build.
They started the season like they’re never going to win a game, delaying rookie manager Carlos Mendoza’s first win into almost Week 2. Yet, they wind up digging out of that hole by Week 3.
They fell 11 games below .500, yet became the eighth team ever to make it to the playoffs from those depths.
They fell behind by multiple runs multiple times in Game No. 161 on a day they must win a game, in their personal house of horrors in Atlanta, yet pulled it out with the first biggest home run in Mets history. (Thanks Frankie!)
They fell behind again by multiple runs into the ninth inning against one of the game’s best closers in a winner-take-all wild-card game, yet rescue their season on the newest biggest homer in Mets history. (Thanks Pete!)
But even in a season of bleak, down three games to one to the Ohtani Dodgers in the NLCS is a mountain you don’t want to have to scale. A lesser team might have bowed to Ohtani and Co. But not these Mets. They met to talk it over. And they responded with a big, 12-6 Game 5 win that nobody saw coming (if you will, a 12-6 curveball if there ever was one).
“We were all on the same page collectively,” Pete Alonso said after the Mets punched back with authority in Game 5 to continue their season-long trend.
“Like after [Thursday’s loss], we just had a collective conversation where it was like, hey, this is this is it,” Alonso continued. “This is who we are. This is the situation we’re in and let’s keep continuing to lay it all out there.”
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This is who we are.
That’s the tagline for this remarkable and unexpected season. This is who they are.
The Mets slugger not only provided the tone-setting, season-saving three-run home run — a ball hit 432 feet off his shoe tops, toward The Apple, as Jesse Winker noted — he summed up a year where resilience continues to obliterate reality.
They are the champions of the intangible.
This is the team of magic, lower case m. (That’s to differentiate from the Dodgers’ legendary part-owner Magic Johnson, who attended all the games at Citi Field.) Imagine that, the Dodgers superstar athletes extend even to the owners’ box. This is an opposing organization built by winners to win.
You go by the names, the Dodgers might never lose a game. The Mets surely are in a very tough spot still, going to L.A. and needing to win two straight games against a club that seemingly spent its $300 million much better.
But these Mets delight on doomsday. And these Mets do carry a couple actual advantages.
Alonso didn’t reveal what else was said amongst themselves. But this is no secret. This Dodgers of-the-moment roster, as star-studded as it gets in baseball, is seriously diminished.
Freddie Freeman is playing on one leg, and looks it. But it’s the missing pitching. Their Injured List of rotation staples and stars is a terrible tease they must traverse.
That the Dodgers somehow tied a record for consecutive scoreless innings in the postseason with 33 straight is their own L.A. miracle. With Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Gavin Stone, Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin and Bobby Miller in sick bay or slump city, and without any other choice, the Dodgers have lined up a very beatable pitching plan for Games 6 and 7.
The Dodgers will go with a bullpen game Sunday, and we saw how that worked out last time. The Dodgers have the best and best-rested bullpen going, but too bad for them their terrific trio of Evan Phillips, Michael Kopech and Blake Treinen can’t log three innings apiece. Bullpen games are last resorts, even for the cute and clever.
Meantime, the Mets send to the mound Sean Manaea, a new ace who took a page of the book of Chris Sale, who coincidentally enough is the one who finished off the Dodgers for Boston to win the 2018 World Series at Dodger Stadium.
Manaea already blew up all the knocks on him — that he couldn’t beat Philly in October (33.75 ERA coming in), that he couldn’t beat L.A. (7.09 ERA lifetime vs. them coming in) and that he generally stunk in the postseason (15 ERA coming in, yes, 15).
“Formidable opponent [Sunday],” one Dodgers person lamented, honestly.
Then in a possible deciding Game 7, L.A. go with Walker Buehler, and too bad for them this isn’t 2019 anymore.
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Yes indeed, the Mets do possess some honest-to-god edges. Of course, the magic and mojo presumably are still with them, too, if necessary.
After all, this is who they are.
