NEW YORK -- For as much as the Mets have struggled, for as much as they have turned the act of making the playoffs into a tenuous proposition, there’s still a notion around the league that no one wants to play them in October.
That may seem counterintuitive for a team like the Mets, who entered Monday’s play desperately clinging to the final National League Wild Card spot after losing eight of their previous nine games. Yet this is still one of the most expensive rosters ever constructed. It’s still a club featuring several veteran superstars in their primes, as well as one of the most intriguing rookie pitcher groups in the sport.
“We were the best team in baseball for a while early in the year,” second baseman Jeff McNeil said. “Why can’t we do that again?”
This is still the type of club that can bludgeon opponents when everything is clicking, as it was Tuesday throughout an 8-3 win over the Padres. The Mets scored five runs in the first inning at Citi Field and received homers from Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso in the second, keying a rout they very much needed.
The victory ensured that the Mets’ Wild Card lead would remain at 1 1/2 games over the next-closest team. With 11 games left, the Diamondbacks, Giants and Reds all continue to chase them. It’s not what the Mets anticipated upon jumping out to Major League Baseball’s top record from Opening Day through June 12, but it’s also not a bad place to be.
“I think when you’re sitting where we were in mid-June, we would not have expected to be in this spot -- there’s no question about that,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said before the game. “And we’ll have time to evaluate, diagnose and do all that stuff. For right now, my focus is from here forward, what can we do to win as many games as possible. And that’s in the regular season and the postseason.”
For Stearns, that means proceeding with a playoff mentality over the final fortnight of the regular season. To that end, the Mets began condensing their rotation on Tuesday, using Clay Holmes and Sean Manaea in tandem against the Padres. Holmes pitched the first four innings, allowing two homers but nothing more. Manaea threw the final five, holding San Diego to one run to earn the win.
“Whatever it takes, we’re willing to do,” Holmes said. “It may take some creativity. It may take some things that don’t seem normal, I guess. This is not something new, the piggybacking thing. But I think the bottom line is we all want to win.”
It helped that the Mets were able to knock Padres starter Michael King out of the game in the fourth inning, homering four times against one of the league’s better pitchers and tagging him for eight total runs -- the most King had ever allowed in a Major League game. In addition to Lindor and Alonso, Brett Baty and Cedric Mullins went deep. Six of the first seven batters to face King rapped out hits, including McNeil, who hit a crucial two-run double to electrify Citi Field.
The night was instructive for anyone thinking of giving up on the Mets. Doubtless, this is an imperfect roster. The rotation issues the Mets have shown this year could wind up being a fatal flaw. And yet they still entered Monday’s play with a 6.3 percent chance to win the World Series, according to FanGraphs projections -- better than the Padres, who sported a five-game lead on them in the Wild Card standings, and better than multiple other clubs with higher odds of making the playoffs.
That’s because assuming the Mets do earn a postseason berth, they boast the type of high-end hitters to cause trouble for any team. Their pitching staff also has the potential to play up in October. Using Holmes and Manaea in short spurts, for example, could prove more fruitful than asking them for length. Deploying ace rookie Nolan McLean once every four games instead of once every six should prove beneficial.
The Mets have to get to October first -- that much is true. But they’re once again showing signs that they could cause havoc if they do.
“A lot of people have said we have so much talent in this room, and yeah, that’s true,” Baty said. “We have so much talent. But we also have really hardworking guys. When we’re all at our best, we’re all just grinding and together. And when we get to October, that could be scary.”