You get these generally. They sneak up on you. They aren’t must-wins, as a result of should you’re taking part in must-win baseball video games in August, you actually don’t have a lot of a baseball season in your fingers.
So the Mets weren’t dealing with a must-win early Monday night, as they touched down in japanese Missouri on the always-popular Anaheim-to-St. Louis-to-Denver itinerary that will get most self-respecting journey brokers fired. It wasn’t a gotta-have-it sport towards the Cardinals lifting off within the late-afternoon shadows.
It was a sure-might-want-to-win.
It was a sort-of-would-really-like-to-have-it.
The very fact that they received 6-0 was good, although hardly an enormous needle-mover with 50 video games left within the schedule. It solely attracts them even at 2-2 on this 10-game, four-city journey. It solely permits them to maintain capturing par within the every day parlor sport of stick-and-move among the many six or so candidates for the Nationwide League’s three wild-card slots. It did clinch the season collection over the Cardinals if it involves that for the Mets, in order that’s good.
Nonetheless. This felt sneaky essential. The Mets simply misplaced two out of three to an Angels workforce that seemed each bit as dangerous as its report and nonetheless gave the Mets suits. They’ve all these highway video games in August. And highway journeys can develop into humorous issues — 1-3 can develop into 1-7 after which 2-8 in a rush, irrespective of that three of the video games are towards the lowly Rockies.
As we noticed over the weekend, there’s actually not an amazing workforce within the main leagues proper now, actually not one which stands out. The Marlins, who simply accomplished a yard sale on the commerce deadline, went into Atlanta and took two out of three from the Braves. The Rockies gave the Padres all they might deal with. The Cubs, left for useless in the midst of final week, took three out of 4 from the Cardinals at Wrigley this weekend.
Not way back, the Phillies and Yankees appeared on a collision course for the World Sequence with 110 wins or so apiece — until the Orioles bought in the way in which. Then the Yankees spent six weeks in an offensive coma and the Phillies spent their very own six weeks in clown-shoe hell. The Orioles began dropping each evening. The Yanks appear to have righted themselves properly and the Phillies received in Seattle on Sunday and the Orioles received the ultimate two video games in Cleveland. However whereas they’re nonetheless the three groups to beat, it’s starting to look increasingly like a wide-open October awaits for whomever the 12 playoff groups wind up being.
So this highway journey is a tough path for the Mets. And so Monday, whereas not precisely important in and of itself, was a quintessential check for a workforce nonetheless making an attempt to persuade the remainder of the league that they’re nearly as good as their final two months or so.
Mets supervisor Carlos Mendoza absolutely acted that method, shaking up his lineup. Pete Alonso, hitting a hard-to-fathom .198 with runners in scoring place, was dropped to fifth, a swap the batting order has been crying out for for weeks. Brandon Nimmo was dropped from two to 3 and J.D. Martinez from three to 4, and Tyrone Taylor was put in within the two gap and delivered the sport’s largest hit, a bases-clearing double that gave the Mets a five-run lead.
“It’s nice when it really works,” Mendoza stated, “but it surely’s baseball. Typically it’ll work and generally it doesn’t. This was good. We’ll take it sport by sport. I don’t suppose you’ll see him within the two-hole tomorrow, however that’s baseball too.”
What’s additionally nice for this workforce is when Sean Manaea cruises by seven sturdy innings; he now has allowed no runs, and has 21 strikeouts and one stroll for his final two video games and 14 innings.
“He was nasty,” Taylor stated.
Manaea was nasty and Taylor was clutch and the Mets received and have been capable of get on the aircraft for Denver figuring out that at worst they’d arrive precisely the place they’d began the day, and 2-2 on a visit that’s now 40 p.c within the books. There are nonetheless 50 video games to go. There are nonetheless these 5 different groups, and possibly one or two extra, grappling for these three playoff slots, a yr after two wild-card groups met within the World Sequence, in a baseball season when the outdated New York Lottery slogan — “you gotta be in it to win it” — has by no means appeared extra related.
You may’t win a playoff spot this early in August. However you positive can lose one. Each every so often you get considered one of these: a sure-might-want-to-win, a sort-of-would-really-like-to-have-it. Put it on the left facet of the hyphen. Get again on the aircraft. Fifty video games to go.
