Mets can't afford to lose to lesser teams during race toward playoffs
Mets outfielder Cedric Mullins walks back to the dugout after making the last out on Saturday in a loss to the Marlins at Citi Field. Credit: Ed Murray
The Mets spent the first three days of this week coming up big in the big moments. The NL East-leading Phillies came to Citi Field with a seven-game lead and the Mets demolished them, sweeping the three games by an aggregate 25-8 score.
And they followed it up by coming up small twice in the first three games of their four-game series against the Marlins, including an 11-8 loss on Saturday at Citi Field.
These are losses against the kind of opponent they need to beat to keep any hope of catching Philadelphia or, at the very least, ascending from their current spot as the third NL wild card into the top wild-card spot to avoid opening the postseason with a best-of-three series on the road.
Sure, the Mets went into the game with a 96.5% probability for making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. Although they trail the Phillies by six games (after their win over Atlanta), they hold a five-game lead over the Reds for the final wild-card spot.
But in the course of losing these two games, the positive momentum from the start of the week — and from Friday’s victorious debut by call-up Jonah Tong — has dissipated. More troubling is that in the two losses, the Mets have displayed some flaws that could hamstring their effort to climb and prove fatal in a short playoff series.
“We put ourselves in this situation,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of giving back some of the gains they made in the series against Philadelphia. “This series, offensively we’ve done a really, really good job. We haven’t been able to shut down their offense . . . and we haven’t played clean baseball.”
The Mets had David Peterson on the mound Saturday, the presumptive Game 1 starter for a postseason series. He was charged with eight runs in two innings-plus and couldn’t retire any of the five Marlins he faced in the third.
The starting pitching, which kept the Mets afloat while the offense sputtered through the first half of the season, has been inconsistent.
Right now the two call-ups, Nolan McLean and Tong, might be the guys in the rotation who are pitching the best. But would one of them be the move to start a playoff series?
“We haven’t been able to put together consistent starts,” Mendoza said. “[Peterson] has been very consistent for us and he had a tough one today. But I believe in Sean Manaea and I believe in Kodai Senga. Clay [Holmes] has been very consistent for us.
“I trust those guys, that they’ll step up. We’re going to get into this [last] month where every game is important and we want to count on them.”
The Mets made physical and mental errors in the field in the two losses to the Marlins. There were three fielding errors in Thursday’s loss. Leftfielder Brandon Nimmo took a bad route on Joey Wiemer’s drive in the first inning and it went over his head for a two-run double to cap a five-run rally Saturday.
After the Mets’ now-crackling offense got them back to an 8-8 tie Saturday — on Juan Soto’s 34th and 35th home runs, Francisco Lindor’s 26th and Mark Vientos’ eighth in 13 games — the relief pitching couldn’t keep Miami down.
Tyler Rogers gave up two hits and a run in the seventh as the Marlins went ahead for good and closer Edwin Diaz surrendered a pair of runs in the ninth.
The Mets are 45-26 at Citi Field and 28-37 on the road. A club wants every advantage in the playoffs, and the Mets’ biggest one is playing games in Queens.
To get the postseason position that will benefit the Mets most, they have to beat the less competitive teams.
Against the NL teams currently positioned to make the postseason — the Dodgers, Padres, Brewers, Cubs and Phillies — the Mets are 15-13. Six of those wins are against Philadelphia at Citi Field.
Offensively, the Mets have become a tour de force in August. Still among the five worst-hitting teams in the NL in the middle of July, they are the best-hitting team in the league this month, tops in the National League in batting average, home runs and OPS. The lineup production expected finally has emerged.
And it has provided great cover for all of the flaws that seem to keep popping up and have been prevalent in this series with Miami. But the postseason has a way of making small flaws seem big. And some of these are not small.
As for the dissipating momentum in the back half of the week, Soto said it’s on them to get it back.
“I think we’re in a good spot,” he said. “We definitely have a tough stretch right now, [16] games in a row isn’t easy. So it’s definitely going to be up and down through these [16] games and we’ve just got to take it like a man and keep moving forward.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
