NEW YORK — It was two decades ago, in a fallow period for the franchise between the end of one core and the establishment of the next young one, that Fred Wilpon summarized the Mets’ relative lack of ambition. Their goal, Wilpon said in the spring of 2004, was to play meaningful games in September.
Those ’04 Mets didn’t get there, hampered as they were by that pesky 1-16 stretch around the end of August.
For the last two months of last season and the first two months of this one, meaningful September baseball looked to be the height of ambition for these 2024 Mets. They’d traded away key pieces last summer and sat 11 games under .500 at the end of May.
Instead, the Mets reached the first week of September in the middle of a postseason chase and playing their best ball of the season. They polished off a sweep of the Red Sox on Wednesday night, 8-3, to push their winning streak to seven. They remain on the heels of Atlanta, a half-game back for the final playoff spot in the National League.
And what’s been refreshing about this past week has been the club’s refusal to pat itself on the back just for getting to this point — and a performance on the field that indicates it’s far from satisfied.
“This is where we should be. This should be normal for us,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said on Tuesday. “When we get to September, we should be in the thick of a playoff hunt.”
BOS 3
NYM 8
FinalThe Mets bookended their night with four-run innings. That’s a sweep of the reeling Red Sox and seven wins in a row.
The Mets are 76-64.
— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) September 5, 2024
“It feels good,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of seven straight wins at such a critical time. “There’s a lot of games left. There’s a lot of good teams in the race. The mindset is the same: One game at a time, one series at a time.”
On to Cincinnati, he might have said.
“I feel like every game I’ve been here has a playoff vibe to it because every game means so much to us as a team,” said Jesse Winker, whose first-inning grand slam off Tanner Houck set the tone for Wednesday’s win. “The energy in our stadium each night is unmatched.”
Mendoza spoke of the Mets’ sense of urgency, not just this week but over the past several months. In harder times like the Mets experienced in May, urgency can become a euphemism for panic. So what does it look like when properly calibrated in a pennant race?
“It’s hard to describe,” Mendoza said. “The sense of urgency starts as soon as you walk through those doors — how you prepare, how you go about your business, the attention to details, making sure the guys are pushing each other. Once the game starts, it’s playing every pitch.”
The Mets did that on Wednesday, from Francisco Lindor’s leadoff single in a four-run first to the five walks they worked in a four-run eighth to put the game away. In between, Mendoza aggressively deployed his bullpen behind Tylor Megill and ahead of Thursday’s off-day, and New York’s defense came through with several significant plays. The Mets ended three consecutive innings with double plays, and Harrison Bader’s ability to cut off a Rob Refsnyder gapper in right-center likely kept the Mets ahead in the top of the eighth.
“It was a great game in all facets,” Winker said.
The Mets need to keep playing that way. The teams ahead of them aren’t dropping seven in a row, like over in the American League. Both the Mets and Atlanta are 12-5 over their last 17 games.
“It was a really good preview for what a must-win game could be,” said Phil Maton, one of those relievers passing the baton until Edwin Díaz takes it in the ninth.
From his years with the Astros, Maton is one of the few Mets who knows what it’s like to be the last clubhouse spraying champagne. He said these Mets possess the strong clubhouse vibes the best Houston teams rode to postseason success.
“We have that right now,” he said. “Ultimately, we need to carry that all the way into October.”
(Photo of Jesse Winker: Mike Stobe / Getty Images)
