By: Marvin A. Azrak
A 101-win season should be recognized even if the playoffs-don’t work your way. However, coughing up a 10.5game lead, blowing every opportunity to rectify that at the end of the season, and being one-hit at home in the Wild Card game should sting all offseason. That is the story of the 2022 New York Mets. Their campaign abruptly Sunday night when they were one-hit by the San Diego Padres 6-0 in the Wild-card round. The loss left many players, coaches, and fans shell-shocked. What happened? That’s something we’re here to break down.
Here’s how the Mets collapsed.
SWEPT BY THE CUBS:
The Mets led the division by 10.5 games on June 1st and walked into September 48-31 since then. But Atlanta had gone 50-24 in that timeframe and was nipping at the heels of first place.
New York entered this September 12-14 series off a win in Miami against the Marlins to go a game back up on the Braves. Atlanta struggled against The underwhelming San Francisco Giants, dropping two of three. With the Mets facing an inferior opponent who entered town 59-82, this was an opportunity further to distance themselves from their rivals against the lowly Chicago Cubs. But Chris Bassist had his shortest start to date, lasting just 3.2 innings, giving up five runs, while Mets hitters could not come through and left 21 men on base in a 5-2loss.
With Jacob Degrom going in game two, a bounce back was in order. But the Mets ace served up a homer to Ian Happ in the second, kick starting a line of three runs in five innings, which is below average considering his lofty standards as the best hurler in the game. New York hitters though did next to nothing in the 4-1 defeat.
The finale was non-competitive, as the Cubs chased David Pederson as part of a six-run first in their 6-3 victory. The Cubs became the first team in MLB history to have 30+ fewer wins than their opponent entering a 3+ game road series and yet sweep the series, winning every game by 3+ runs. The Mets, meanwhile, saw their lead shrink, and it ultimately set up the chaos that ensued a couple of weeks later.
SWEPT IN ATLANTA:
As we approached the final weekend of the regular season, the New York Mets awoke on Friday, October 1st, in first place for the 174th day of the season. Typically, they would be like any other division winner in baseball and resting guys for the playoffs. But they didn’t have the reigning champion Braves.
It seemed as if the reigning champs were suffering from a World Series hangover at 23-27 on June 1st, staring at a 10.5-game deficit in the NL East. But after a rousing speech from manager Brian Snitker, the team ripped off 14 straight wins and never looked back, finding themselves a game back of the Mets with six games remaining in the regular season.
Their September surge had vaulted them into division contention, and now they were facing the Mets in a head-on collision for the NL East.
Entering last weekend’s series in Atlanta, the Mets led the season series 9-7. They needed one win to control their NL East destiny as they faced the basement-dwelling Nationals rounding out the calendar. Both teams sent their best out to the bumps each night, as the new format enticed the clubs to go for it all like it was a postseason tilt. New York sent Jacob Degrom, Max Scherzer, and Chris Bassist to the hill, while the Braves countered with Max Fried, MLB wins leader Kyle Wright(21), and Charlie Morton.
But the story of the series was offense as, despite the Mets racking up more hits, Atlanta put charge Into homers, notably Danny Swanson and Matt Olson, who took the Mets’ big three-yard, while Austin Riley took Degrom and Scherzer deep too. Not even MLB’s NO1 overall prospect 20 year-old Franciso Alvarez, who New York called up for this series, could put a dent in Atlanta express.
In the ninth, Kenley Jansen worked three straight days and recorded all three saves as the Braves swept the series 5-2, 4-2, 5-3, winning the season series 10-9, going 6-1 in the past seven contests with their rivals. It paid dividends, as the two would finish with 101 victories, with the Mets sweeping the Nats and Atlanta dropping two of three to the hapless Marlins. But it didn’t matter because, following Tuesday’s 2-1 win in Miami, the Braves toasted a division title. They were in first place for eight days and won the division.
The Mets, meanwhile, were in a best-of-three wild Card round battle against the San Diego Padres.
WILD CARD GAME 1:
A battle of aces in Max Scherzer and Yu Darvish, but only one showed up. YU continued his mastery of the Mets with seven innings of one-run ball as San Diego took the opener 7-1 at Citi Field.
Max Scherzer picked quite an evening for the worst postseason start of his career, serving up four homers and accumulating seven runs in 4.2 innings, eliciting vicious disdain from the sellout Citi Field crowd. Juriackson Profar led things off with a single and scored two batters later; Josh Bell sent one out of the yard for a 2-0 Padres lead. In the third, Trent Grisham, a .184 hitter in the regular season, took Max deep and was 3-0. The fifth inning saw Profar blow the ballgame wide open by tucking a three-run bomb around the right field foul pole before Manny Machado put Scherzer and the Mets out of their misery with a line drive bomb to make it 7-zip.
On the bright side, I noted the Mets bullpen kept the Pads at bay the rest of the way. San Diego was one of the worst power teams in the regular season, so to see guys like Josh Bell(2run HR in first), Trent Grisham(solo shot in second), and Juriackson Profar(3run HR in 5th) go yard surprised me. Not so much Manny Machado, who ended Max’s night two batters later to make it 7-0. Eduardo Escobar went deep for the lone New York run on a night where they left men on base in the first two innings and never recovered from there.
GAME 2:
Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso hit go-ahead solo shots, and MLB batting champ Jeff McNeil’s two-run double broke the game open in a 45-minute, four-run seventh as the Mets defeated the Padres 7-3 to force a decisive Wild Card series tilt on Sunday. The relentless New York lineup wore out Blake Snell, who only lasted 3.1 innings, despite only surrendering two runs, one of which came on a first-inning Linfor bomb. Mets ace Jacob Degrom, making what could be his final start as a Met, used the raucous crowd to help him grind out six innings of two-run ball, though Trent Grisham did take him yard in the third. Alonso walloped his first playoff HR in the fifth to give the Mets a 3-2 lead before McNeil’s two-run double in the seventh put the game out of reach. Edwin Diaz trumpeted out of the bullpen for the seventh and eighth, preserving the cushion. Still, Adam Ottavino ran into trouble in the ninth, losing command and walking in a run. However, Seth Lugo retired Manny Machado to end it.
GAME 3:
The Mets offense went completely dormant at the worst time; Chris Bassist squandered his redeemers chance, and manager Buck Showalter failed in his attempt to catch Padres starter Joe Musgrove of potentially using illegal substances during his seven-inning, single-hit masterpiece, polished off by Robert Suarez and Josh Hader as San Diego sent the Mets into
The cold Winter with a 6-0 beatdown at Citi Field, one that will linger around the ballpark until next Spring. Bassist worked a quick first inning but struggled to get out of the second and allowed a two-run single that put the Padres ahead for good. In the fourth, Trent Grisham delivered once more with an RBI single for a 3-0 San Diego lead, and that would be all for Bassist. Manny Machado made it 4-0 in the sixth with an RBI knock against David Pederson, and it was more than enough for Musgrove, who was dominant all night long. He was so good that Buck Showalter stopped the game and tried to convince the umpires that Musgrove potentially had an illegal substance on his ear and was using it to better grip the ball. Still, the umps ruled after a physical check he wasn’t, and he remained in the game, his velocity climbing higher and higher with each pitch.
Pete Alonso had the last hit of the Mets season, a single in the fourth, and didn’t move after that.
When Juan Soto lined a two-out single in the eighth, putting the game out of reach, reality set upon Citi Field that despite 101 wins, this team would have nothing to show for it. All everyone will remember is a team that not only fell short of bringing a championship or a playoff series win, for that matter, to Queens but one that suffered an Amazin collapse.
UPDATE: To make matters worse, the Padres have defeated the 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLDS, and are on their way to the National league championship series against the Philadelphia Phillies, who ousted the reigning champion Braves in four games. The Mets went 15-4 against Philly this regular season, yet here we are deep into October and the latter are still playing while the other is home. This was an outright missed opportunity and there’s no sugar coding it. Baseball can be unpredictable at times, which is a lesson to to everyone … Ya gotta believe!