Baseball’s regular season is inching closer to its final crescendo and the playoff races are in full throttle.
The never-say-die Rangers and Guardians have made things interesting in the American League, while the Mets’ collapse has opened the door for the likes of the Diamondbacks, Reds and Giants to dream of October baseball. Will New York hold on for the third wild-card spot? Can the Mariners win the club’s first division title since 2001? And will Brewers manager Pat Murphy take home some hardware for the second consecutive year?
We’ll answer those questions and more in another edition of Fact or Fiction.
The Mets will still make the playoffs despite their September skid
Things have been dire for the Amazin’s as of late. The Mets, once owners of the best record in baseball on June 12, must have broken a few mirrors or stumbled upon a black cat on Friday, June 13. Since that day, the Mets’ pitching—both starters and the bullpen—has taken a turn for the worse and the Juan Soto-led lineup has been inconsistent en route to baseball’s fourth-worst record. Heck, Mets fans can be forgiven if they began to think the team would never win a game again, as they had a nine-game losing streak before a Pete Alonso walk-off home run mercifully brought an end to the painful skid Sunday.
And yet, after all this losing, consternation and hand-wringing, the Mets are in the driver’s seat for a playoff spot. FanGraphs likes their chances—86.4% odds to make the postseason after they beat the Padres on Tuesday—and so do I. That’s because there’s still a lot to like about the Mets.
The lineup is slowly starting to wake up. Soto, the $765 million man, has been swinging a hot bat thus far in September and is on pace to hit the third-most homers in Mets history, trailing only two Alonso seasons. Speaking of Alonso, he’s homered in each of his last two games to snap a 10-game homerless streak. And Francisco Lindor went yard Tuesday to continue a five-game hitting streak. New York needs more than just those three, of course, but having the top of its order produce like it’s being paid to will go a long way towards the club making the postseason.
And as for the much-maligned starters, the Mets may have found the club’s new ace in No. 3 prospect Nolan McLean, as well as two more promising young arms in Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat, the former of whom has struggled with his command in two starts since a promising debut. But with McLean, an innings-eater in David Peterson and the solid Clay Holmes, the bones of a potential playoff-caliber rotation are there. Should Kodai Senga, who excelled in his first Triple-A start after his demotion, find his form, there’s a glimmer of hope surrounding the Mets’ rotation.
If there’s one thing that could still sink these Mets, it’s the bullpen, in which the so-called circle of trust has dwindled to closer Edwin Diaz, Tyler Rogers and Brooks Raley. But call it a hunch, intuition or whatever you want to call it: I’m a believer that the Mets’ superior talent to the Diamondbacks, Reds and Giants will win out in the end. Mets reliever Ryne Stanek said Sunday’s walk-off win felt like a “deep breath” for the Mets. Perhaps the club will look back at that deep breath as the turning point.
Verdict: Fact