NEW YORK -- In the aftermath of the Mets’ walk-off, 10-inning, 5-2 win over the Rangers on Sunday, it was difficult not to draw parallels with last October.
Late in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series, the Mets appeared beaten. Their offseason seemed primed to begin without much further delay. Then Pete Alonso shocked the Brewers with a go-ahead, three-run homer, and the Mets rode that momentum all the way to within two games of the World Series.
Sunday’s victory at Citi Field may not have been quite so momentous, but given the context, it seemed nearly as big. In the midst of an eight-game losing streak, after blowing yet another late lead, the Mets desperately, desperately needed a win.
Alonso provided it. Batting in the bottom of the 10th, he drove a Luis Curvelo fastball over the right-field fence, then tossed his helmet skyward, spiked his batting gloves to the grass and joined the party at home plate. It was the franchise-record fifth career walk-off homer for Alonso, snapping a tie with five other players, most notably Mike Piazza.
“That win felt like a deep breath,” said reliever Ryne Stanek, who pitched a scoreless top of the 10th to become the pitcher of record.
The victory was New York’s first since Sept. 5, giving the Mets a 1 1/2-game edge over the Giants for the final NL Wild Card spot. The Mets hold the tiebreaker over San Francisco but not over the Reds, who lurk 2 1/2 games back. The D-backs jumped the Reds with their win over the Twins on Sunday and remain two games back of the Mets. A tiebreaker with Arizona will depend on intradivision record at the end of the season.
With 12 games to play, all that playoff math very much works in the Mets’ favor.
It has always worked in their favor, provided they actually managed to win a few games here and there. Yet a two-week stretch of poor pitching performances, untimely hitting, baserunning blunders, defensive mistakes and questionable managerial decisions made it seem like the Mets weren’t capable of that. Just about anything that could go wrong, did go wrong for the Mets over the first half of September.
Then Alonso stepped to the plate and gave the Mets their exhale.
“Oh, sick,” was how he described the moment.
“We need them all at this point,” Alonso added. “No matter whether it’s today, tomorrow or however many games we have left, we need as many games as we can. We’ve just got to do the best we can to stack ‘em.”
Banking wins is something the Mets did notably well early this season, when they raced out to Major League Baseball’s best record through June 12. It’s something they’ve done less efficiently since that time, posting a worse record than all but two teams.
All along, players harped on the amount of talent in the clubhouse, insisting that everyone was working hard, doing the right things. None of that seemed to translate into victories. Even Sunday, after Nolan McLean gave the Mets six scoreless innings, manager Carlos Mendoza chose to remove McLean as part of the team’s desire to protect the rookie’s right arm. The bullpen responded with another blown lead almost immediately, when Reed Garrett served up a two-run single to Joc Pederson in the seventh.
This time though, the Mets held their ground. After Tyler Rogers pitched a perfect eighth inning, Edwin Díaz and Stanek each stranded a runner on third base with less than two outs. That set up Alonso’s walk-off.
“He’s powerful,” Mendoza said. “All he’s got to do is just tough it pretty much in those situations, and the ball’s going to go.”
“For us,” Alonso said, “there was never a doubt the entire day.”
It was not entirely dissimilar to the homer Alonso hit off Devin Williams in Wild Card Series Game 3, arresting the Mets’ downward momentum and giving them a chance to breathe again. To be clear, these Mets still have work to do. Twelve games remain. But they’re back in control of their own playoff destiny, after briefly letting it slip out of their hands earlier in the weekend.
What’s more, the Mets just proved to themselves that they are not cursed. They can win games. They can overcome the bad things that have happened.
“Winning that one right there feels like it will quell some of the outside noise -- the noise that’s not coming from in here,” Stanek said. “I feel like we have a really good group that’s mature, that’s veteran, that’s not going to take the noise and magnify it. But if winning today -- if that can kind of drown out some of that noise anyway, it’s always a good thing.”