These things happen sometimes. They happen all the time. They’re not must-win games, because playing must-win baseball games in August is just something that, frankly, you don’t have the luxury of a baseball season.
So it wasn’t that the Mets were facing a must-win game early Monday evening as they arrived in eastern Missouri on the ever-popular Anaheim-to-St. Louis-to-Denver itinerary that would get most self-respecting travel agents fired. It wasn’t a must-win game against the Cardinals taking off in the late-afternoon shadows.
It was definitely a game we wanted to win.
It was something I really wanted.
A 6-0 win was nice, but it won’t make a ton of difference with the remaining 50-game schedule. A 2-2 tie on a four-city, 10-game trip would be all it takes to stay par in the dogged daily battle between the half-dozen or so contenders vying for the National League’s three wild-card slots. For the Mets, it was nice, because it gave them a chance to clinch the season series against the Cardinals.
And yet this seemed quietly important. The Mets just lost two of three games to the Angels, who look as bad as their record and still tormented them. They have a lot of road time coming up in August. Road trips can be weird. A 1-3 record can quickly become a 1-7 record, then a 2-8 record, even if those three games are against the lowly Rockies.
As we saw last weekend, there are no great teams in the major leagues right now, and no teams that really stand out. Fresh off a yard sale at the trade deadline, the Marlins rolled into Atlanta and took two of three games off the Braves. The Rockies were untouchable by the Padres. The Cubs, who were in dire straits midway through last week, took three of four games off the Cardinals at Wrigley this weekend.
Not long ago, the Phillies and Yankees looked like they were on course to meet in the World Series with 110 wins each, unless the Orioles got in the way. Then the Yankees had six weeks of stagnation on offense, and the Phillies had six weeks of clown shoe hell. The Orioles started losing every night. The Yankees seemed to bounce back nicely, with the Phillies winning in Seattle on Sunday and the Orioles winning their final two games in Cleveland. But while the Phillies and Yankees are still the three teams to beat, October is shaping up to be a close race for whoever makes the playoffs with the 12 teams that make it.
So this road trip is going to be a tough one for the Mets. Monday, while not essential, was a real test for a team trying to convince the rest of the league that they’re as good as they’ve been for the past two months or so.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza revamped the lineup and did just that. Pete Alonso, who was batting an incredible .198 with runs in the scoring position, was demoted to the lineup’s coveted spot at No. 5. Brandon Nimmo was moved from No. 2 to No. 3 and J.D. Martinez from No. 3 to No. 4, and Tyrone Taylor was moved to No. 2 and hit the biggest hit of the game, a grand slam double that gave the Mets a five-run lead.
“It’s great if it works out,” Mendoza said, “but that’s baseball. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. This was good. We’re going to take it game by game. I don’t think we’re going to see him batting at second base tomorrow, but that’s baseball.”
Another great thing for this team is that Sean Manaea has pitched seven strong innings, and he is now scoreless with 21 strikeouts and one walk in 14 innings over his last two games.
“He was mean,” Taylor said.
Manaea was nasty, Taylor pitched dependably, and the Mets won and got on a plane to Denver. At worst, they’ll end up exactly where they started that day, 2-2 on a road trip that’s now 40 percent complete. There are still 50 games to go. Five teams, and maybe one or two more, are still vying for the three playoff spots, a year after two wild-card teams met in the World Series, a baseball season when the old New York Lottery slogan, “You’ve got to be in to win,” sounded so meaningful.
We’re not going to win the playoffs at this point in August. But we’re definitely going to lose. Sometimes it’s like, “Maybe we definitely want to win,” or “We just want to win.” Write that on the left side of the hyphen. Get back on the plane. 50 more games.
