Mets 2019 Season Comes Down To These 10 Games
At 77-72, the New York Mets have been officially eliminated to the National League East race, and they are 4.0 games back of the Cubs for the second Wild Card with 13 games remaining in the season. To that end, they are also three games behind the red hot Milwaukee Brewers who are making a charge for the second Wild Card.
This means the Mets next stretch of games is likely going to be their entire season. They have 10 games to get back into this race to put themselves into position to fight for that last Wild Card spot.
First up is the Colorado Rockies who are playing just terrible baseball right now. They are just 21-40 in the second half. That said, they are three games over .500, and they are just one game under .500 in September after sweeping the Padres. There is also the matter of Daniel Murphy, who has been a Mets killer and has been hot at the plate.
Still, the Rockies are 33-56 against teams over .500. As a result, the Mets can sweep them.
After the Rockies, the Cincinnati Reds are next. The Reds are better than their record indicates with a +10 run differential. Like the Rockies, they are just one game under .500 for the month, and they are five games over .500 at home. Fortunately, the Mets are going to miss Luis Castillo, but they are going to get Trevor Bauer, but that may not be such a bad thing with Bauer having a 6.39 ERA with the Reds.
Again, the Mets might be able to sweep them.
That brings the Marlins into town. These aren’t the Marlins of 2007-2008 with Dontrelle Willis, Miguel Cabrera, Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez, and Cody Ross. No, this is a very bad Marlins team who appears to be the only team in the National League who will lose 100 games this year.
The Mets second half run and impressive march from 10 games under .500 until this point started by taking two out of three from the Marlins in Miami. In August, the Mets really made things interesting by sweeping a four game set against the Marlins in Citi Field in what part of an eight game winning streak.
The Mets need to get part of the way there. Likely, they will need a 10 game winning streak to get them to 87-72 to have a real chance of getting into the postseason.
If the Mets do go 10-0 over this stretch, they will need the Cubs to go 6-4 against the Reds, Cardinals, and Pirates. Given how terrible the Pirates have played of late, that means the Mets need the Cardinals to sweep the Cubs, which is certainly possible but not entirely likely to happen.
The trickier part is the Brewers. Over their next 10 games, they have the Padres, Pirates, and Reds. Even with the Brewers being without Christian Yelich, again, the Pirates laying down is a major impediment to the Mets chances of catching either club. Fortunately, the Mets “only” need the Brewers to go 7-3 over this stretch of games to tie them.
Overall, with the Cubs and Brewers both playing the Pirates, at minimum the Mets need to go 9-1 over this stretch. Realistically speaking, that is probably not enough. They need to sweep the 10 games. If they do that, they will be likely giving themselves an opportunity to have a shot at being the second Wild Card entering the final weekend of the season.
While September series against the Braves are typically horror stories for the Mets, the Braves likely will have nothing to play for at that point and will be more interested in lining up their rotation for the NLDS. If things stand the way they are, the Mets will also be definitively sending Steven Matz to the mound.
Matz has been great in the second half, has a 1.94 ERA at Citi Field, and has limited the Braves to a .189/.255/.400 batting line against him this year. After that, if there is still hope left for the final game of the season, it’s all on Stroman to keep it alive to maybe put the whole season on Noah Syndergaard where you hope the Mets are just not stupid enough to start Wilson Ramos over Tomas Nido or Rene Rivera.
Put another way, right now, the Mets still have a puncher’s chance. Considering where they were coming into the break and their losing two out of three to the Braves, you’ll gladly take that.
It’s over daddy about to go five games out.
The pulse line is just about flat
5 games out, 12 to play, and they trail a team 100 runs better by RS/RA. It looks… unlikely.
This team was not skillfully built. Most of the players did well, all did their best (that I could tell. There was, maybe, one exception and I don’t feel what his hamstrings feel). The players deserved much, much better. Now that it’s all but over it’s easy to autopsy the season. In addition to Wags’ brutally bad offseason deals, so many games were given away due to terrible personnel decisions at the margins. The Syracuse OF was so weak that the FO had to reach outside the organization for an OFer as early as the first half of the season. The FO made a move with Stroman but by waiting until just two months were left they significantly undermined the value of what they paid a lot for.
It was also clear that Edwin Diaz didn’t have his 2018 stuff this year, but long after that was evident he continued to be shoved into highest leverage situations. The organization will quietly seek to blame the season’s failure on Diaz, but the real problem was the organization’s use of Diaz, just as the real problem with Nimmo was the organization’s insistence on playing him even when it knew his injury was serious. This led to an absence of months rather than what might have been weeks, and to pushing the likes of Aaron Altherr into a role he was entirely unsuited for while highlighting the org’s ineptitude wrt failing to create a Syracuse roster that would serve as a feeder squad for the MLB team–where what was needed was a dozen replacement level guys who would step in as needed instead of having to throw players like Altherr, Wilmer Font, and far, far worse into the breach. It was telling that one of the first players let go, Ryan O’Rourke, was one of the first acquired. Wags didn’t know what he was doing. He still doesn’t.
Tonight’s game was yet another entry in the “What was Mickey Thinking” file? The 4th inning–out, single, walk, out, single, walk, single (and now it’s 4 to 4), and Matz was left in to give up the home run. Was it really sensible to leave Matz in to face a right-handed power hitter, when he would be pulled before the start of the next inning?
We also saw that as Joe Panik of all people came up for the second time in a few days to pinch hit at a key moment in the game, that even with expanded rosters the Mets are turning to players like Panik, Guillorme, and Lowrie to pinch hit. The players did what they could this year, but were undermined at every turn. It’s a real shame.
Before addressing the PH situation, I really need to see what’s going on with Ramos.
As for the pitching, I’m not sure what Callaway could’ve done differently in this game.