It doesn’t feel like overstatement to say the Mets suddenly look like a dead-team walking.
And yet almost as unbelievable as their futility at the plate this week, these same Mets could still clinch a wild-card spot as early as Sunday.
That is, if they’re ever going to swing the bats again like the team that for so long had the best record in the majors after June 1. And at this point, surely nobody who has watched them play this week would bet on that.
But momentum in baseball can turn quickly, as these 2024 Mets have proven themselves this season.
So do they have another turnaround in them?
It doesn’t feel like it, that’s for sure, after the Mets have lost three straight crucial games without even putting up much of a fight.
Yes, after such a feel-good season this team has brought up all the old history of heartbreak that makes Mets’ fans feel their team is cursed, whether it’s ’98, ’07, ’22 or any number of other fatal finishes over the years.
It just didn’t seem possible these Mets would go in the tank with all the money on the table. They were playing too well. Oozing with confidence. Playing some of their best baseball against the better teams in both leagues.
And now this.
They’ve lost three straight, including Saturday night’s 6-0 defeat by the Brewers in Milwaukee, but it’s more the way they’ve lost that is so alarming.
They haven’t hit at all, looking like a team feeling the big-game pressure in this final week of the season.
You can say the moment has looked too big for them or you can say it more harshly: that they appear to be choking again.
It’s a dirty word in sports and not one to be used lightly but is there any other way in which to frame it? Especially with at least a few of the same key players, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, and Pete Alonso, who were on the team that failed so badly at the end of the ’22 season.
And if you didn’t think all of this was ominous enough, consider how the Atlanta Braves won their game on Saturday: with none other than Travis d’Arnaud hitting a walk-off home run to defeat the Kansas City Royals, moving them one game ahead of the Mets in the NL Wild Card standings.
How is it that the Braves always seem to find ways to win games at this time of the year? What is their secret sauce anyway and will the Mets ever find their own?
Look, there are plenty of reasons to believe the Steve Cohen/David Stearns Mets have a promising future, building an organization with a strong farm system with the intent of having a Dodgers-like sustainable winner for years to come.
In that sense this is a bonus year, in the big picture.
And yet that doesn’t soften the blow after these Mets played at such a high level for months, especially in a season in which a championship looks completely up for grabs, with nothing resembling a super team in either league.
It just wasn’t supposed to fall apart like this. Luis Severino had a so-so start in Atlanta. Sean Manaea, as close to a sure thing as any pitcher in baseball the last two months, couldn’t meet the moment Friday night in Milwaukee.
And even Jose Quintana, who was mostly very good against the Brewers on Saturday, still cost himself with two walks in the fourth inning that led to a two-run rally and a fifth-inning exit for the lefthander.
Yet obviously the story primarily has been about the lack of offense. And what has to hurt Mets’ fans the most is to see The Core, which has become something of a unflattering term as it applies to the Mets of recent years, failing miserably again.
That means Alonso, Nimmo, and Lindor, since Jeff McNeil is injured. They didn’t hit enough two years ago when the Mets were swept by the Braves to lose the division and lost two of three to the San Diego Padres in the wild-card round.
And they’re not hitting now.
Lindor has a legit excuse, playing with pain from his back injury that is significant enough to limit him to DH duties on this night. Still, after getting two singles on Friday, there was hope he was finding his MVP form, yet went 0-for-4 on Saturday with two strikeouts.
Nimmo has been quiet during these three losses, as he plays out a horrible second half that has him hitting under .200 since the All-Star Game. It’s hard to explain what has happened to him after he was getting so many clutch hits in the first half that he should have been an All-Star.
And then there’s Alonso. He was supposed to have an Aaron Judge-like walk year and force Cohen to make him a Met for life with a mega-deal. Instead he has cost himself god knows how many millions of dollars with a sub-par season that has featured few, if any, truly memorable moments.
Indeed, it feels like Alonso’s season has been defined by chasing sliders out of the strike zone, especially in clutch situations, and at this point he seems almost helpless to change the pattern.
There is still time, of course. Time for any of them. Time for these Mets to fool us all, the way they did back in June when they stopped playing like losers and somehow turned into what looked like a very good baseball team.
The D-backs are giving the Mets the opportunity to rewrite the script once more. It’s just hard, after their no-shows this week, to see how they’ll do it.