Phillip Humber
As a New York Mets fan, you thought it couldn’t get worse than 2007. Seven in 17. Tom Glavine not devastated after allowing seven runs in 0.2 innings.
That was a horror show we all watched unfold, but at least we could see it coming. There were starts in the final week of the season from David Williams and Phillip Humber. Billy Wagner was battling back spasms, and Aaron Heilman was gassed.
There were many issues with that team, and they were not remotely built to win the World Series. That makes that team vastly different than the 2022 Mets, a team which will also live in Mets infamy.
Make no mistake. The 2022 Mets collapse and choke was far worse than the 2007 Mets. The aftermath may only punctuate that.
On June 1, the Mets led the National League East by 10.5 games. This the third largest blown division lead in Major League history. It is the largest blown lead over a full 162 game season since the inception of division play. Notably. it is only the second such collapse since the inception of the Wild Card.
From a Mets perspective, this was made all the worse by their September. Remember, they had the easiest closing schedule in baseball with a three game lead.
The Mets were 2-6 against the Washington Nationals, Chicago Cubs, and Miami Marlins at home before the Atlanta Braves series. Really, the NL East never should have been at play when the Mets traveled to Atlanta.
Despite the Mets having their rotation aligned, they were swept by the Braves. This wasn’t Williams or Pelfrey faltering. It was Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Chris Bassitt faltering with each pitching worse than the last.
Yes, Starling Marte was injured, and he was a very good player and emotional leader all year. That said, the Mets should not have needed him to beat the worst teams in baseball. Again, this is far more about the Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Miami Marlins stretch than it was about the Braves series, a series that never should have mattered.
The Mets controlled the division and their own destiny. They completely and utterly failed doing it in historic fashion. As a result, they were the Wild Card and not a division winner.
In the Wild Card series, the Mets only showed up for the second game. It’s a harsh but fair criticism. Note, this isn’t saying they didn’t want to win. Of course, they wanted to win. They were desperate to win . It’s odd to say for a 101 win team, but they didn’t have what it took to win.
Like the Braves series, Scherzer and Bassitt were bad. For his part, deGrom was good but human. It is very clear by now Scherzer’s oblique and deGrom’s blister compromised them. Bassitt was just one fumes after pitching a career high in innings. However, it is more than that.
There’s plenty of blame to go around here. That includes Buck Showalter, who made a series of baffling decisions in the Braves series and the postseason. It’s Billy Eppler who failed at the trade deadline and who failed to call up his prospects in Mark Vientos and Francisco Álvarez who were just not given sufficient opportunity to get acclimated to the majors before being thrown into a pennant race.
What remains is the first 100+ win team to make the LDS since the inception of the series. It is the largest blown division lead in a full 162 game season since the inception of division play. It is a team which managed just one hit in an elimination game, the fewest a team has ever had.
The Mets entered the postseason with the best home winning percentage in the postseason. They lost two out of three getting outscored 16-8. They scored a total of one run in their two losses. ONE RUN.
This was a complete collapse from a team we all expected to be a true World Series contender. It failed because it couldn’t beat bad teams. It failed for so many reasons. In the end, this was a historic collapse in its own right, and yes, it was absolutely worse than 2007 because this team should have won the World Series.
Eight years ago, the Mets were falling apart at the seams. We saw the team trying to restrict Pedro Martinez’s innings. They had no choice but to use Phillip Humber. Five years later, he would go on and throw a perfect game, but on that September night, he was terrible. The Mets lost the game. They would miss the playoffs that year too.
Logan Verrett pitched under similar, but not the same, circumstances. The Mets ûdetermined there was an innings limit problem and they skipped Matt Harvey‘s start. Verrett was terrific. He went eight innings allowing one run on four hits with eight strikeouts. He gave a worn out bullpen a rest. Surprisingly, Hansel Robles shut the door in the ninth securing the 5-1 win.
The Mets scored all five runs in the first three innings. Most notably, the Mets scored two runs in the second inning that set baseball back about a 100 years. Wilmer Flores [standing ovation] was hit by a pitch, and then Michael Conforto singled. With Flores going first to third, Carlos Gonzalez made a throwing error. The ball didn’t get far away enough for Flores to score, but it permitted Conforto to go to second. I still can’t believe what happened next.
With every Mets fan hoping Anthony Recker would luck into an RBI, David Hale made sure Recker wouldn’t be a factor. On back-to-back pitches, he threw a wild pitch allowing Flores and Conforto to score. I was dumbfounded. After the baseball we saw this weekend, so was Keith Hernandez. He was actively calling for no more expansion because the plays and players he saw this weekend was terrible.
He wasn’t wrong. I’m glad the Mets are out of Colorado, and I’m glad they got the sweep. This weekend was like making sausage. You enjoyed the results, but you didn’t necessarily enjoy watching how it got done.
There’s a lot more baseball left. I plan on enjoying the remaining games during a pennant race.