In a few weeks, in the final dropkick to summer, we'll turn our clocks back an hour and darkness will descend on our days more and more quickly.
The Mets are on a different path. They've set their clocks back to 2015 in an effort to keep summer as long as possible and brighten up the days and nights of October baseball. It's something to see.
“I played really well,” Carlos Mendoza said Tuesday after an 8-4 come-from-behind victory over the Brewers at American Family Field. That day, it seemed like the entire Wisconsin family was gathered in the building and making a lot of noise at top volume. “We were ready for this.”
These Mets are already channeling those Mets in some ways. In 2015, the Mets just couldn't stay up for weeks at a time, just like they did this time. There was a flurry of personnel changes at and around both trade deadlines.
And once the roster was complete, it felt like a different hero – remember Kirk Nieuwenhaus? Remember Wilmer Flores? Remember Kelly Johnson? Remember Addison Reed? — fell from the sky every day until September. That team may have had an easier time making the playoffs than this team, but in the end they only won one more game than this team.
The Mets' best performance in 2015 was in the playoffs.
And over the past two days, it feels like the Mets have been doing their best job in 24 years. Starting with Game 1 in Atlanta on Monday afternoon, which, let's be honest, was a play-in game, if not a playoff game — and ending with Tuesday night's lid-opening game in Milwaukee. They looked exactly the same as ever. From June 1st.
They looked like the best team in baseball.
They looked as confident as their humble sport would allow, but then again, baseball is very mysterious. A few days ago, in this very same ballpark, the Mets looked like a bunch of scared teenagers in the movie “Friday the 13th,” all waiting for Jason Voorhees to strike.
now?
“He's fired up,” Jesse Winker said. “That's what playing the game is for. It's bigger than yourself. It's bigger than all of us.”
It was Winker who threw the first punch against the Mets in October. Winker: After a long slump and troubled past, he was added to the lineup to make some hacks against his former teammates. Winker hit .199 last year as a Brewer, so he won't be treated like Fonzarelli when he returns here. As a Met, he batted .071 in 52 at-bats in September.
Unsurprisingly, he wiped out a 2-0 deficit in the second inning with a two-run triple and scored the go-ahead run on Mark Vientos' sac fly. Unsurprisingly, it was Jose Iglesias who gave the Mets back four points. That's because old Mets friend Reece Hoskins, after attempting to steal a base, refused to be hit by the first base bag and dove ahead of late-cover pitcher Joel Peamps.
Naturally, it was Vientos and J.D. Martinez (another September Mist with a .109 batting average) who hit the game-opening two-run hit as a pinch hitter for Winker, and of course, the nine-run hit. The bats were Jose Butt and Ryne Stanek. -Up, nine down to end the game.
Winker/Vientos/Iglesias/Martinez/Butt/Stanek: None of them came close to the Mets' consciousness when they huddled for pitchers and catchers in Port St. Lucie last February. By October 1st, they were emerging folk heroes and all were touched by the blessings of 2015 and 2024.
“I was really nervous,” Vientos said, but if that's the case, he's emerging as a dynamic mid-season call-up like Michael Conforto nine years ago, so it's hard to judge. is difficult.
And then there's Mendoza, who pitched TC on Tuesday. So every button he pushed worked perfectly, and it was the kind of Let It Ride roll for 15 years that Terry Collins enjoyed, at least until the end. Turn signal starts. Subbing Martinez. Sebby's arm was sending another signal when it showed dedication in Luis Severino's heart.
“If we play our game, good things will happen,” Mendoza said.
They played Tuesday at American Family Park, where in less than a week the Brewers not only beat them, but bullied them, at least until Sunday against the JV team. It was hard to believe that less than a week later, the Brewers were 5-0 against the Mets on a year when both teams were really trying.
Unless you remember the Cubs going 7-0 against the Mets in the 2015 regular season and then going 0-4 in the NL CS. The Mets haven't quite copied the script, but they still have another game to play. But the atmosphere is certainly there. Turn the clock back to 2015. Lo and behold, the Royals won on Tuesday as well.
