ATLANTA — In the final two innings of this season's 2,428th major league game, a Russian novel broke out. A hero and a goat, a goat who becomes a hero, and enough plot twists and themes to fill six seasons of a streaming series.
Ultimately, it took the Mets' most important regular-season victory in history to finally overcome the fear in this city — a fear that President of Baseball Operations David Stearns acknowledged needed to be watered down. It took perhaps the biggest home run in franchise history to set the record.
All of these things made this season a success for the Mets. Of course they want more. No Met hasn't talked about this journey as if it's over, but in order to face the Brewers in Tuesday's wild-card series in less than 24 hours, he'll have to go through 18 innings, be emotional, and drink champagne. I have to drink a cigar and get on another plane.
But the Mets found themselves at 0-5, going from a steep decline in May that felt like the Mets of old to reaching highs and lows multiple times within about 50 minutes until Monday afternoon's eighth inning. Ta. The talent and audacity to warrant being in Milwaukee for baseball in October.
The Mets defeated the Braves 8-7 in the penultimate game of the regular season. But “won” is the wrong verb to describe what happened over three hours in the first game of a doubleheader. This twin bill has been embroiled in Russian fiction ever since, embroiled in controversy over its origins. And with that coming the day after the regular season was scheduled to end, the Mets were left with a scenario where one win would get them in, and two losses would bring them pain.
“I could write a book,” Carlos Mendoza said of that day.
The Mets survived being overwhelmed by a new Mets killer in Spencer Schwellenbach, who wore the Braves. Schwellenbach feels like someone Chipper Jones and John Smoltz conjured up in a lab to make life miserable for the Mets for a decade or so. They won in a city that has served as a torture chamber for the past quarter-century as the Braves have moved from stadium to stadium. And they bounced back from the final two innings of what seemed like a wildly volatile season with 10 Red Bulls.
“I don't know if I can think of it, but [regular-season win in team history] Both ups and downs, or something that outweighs this in terms of what it means to do this. [in Atlanta]” said Stearns, who grew up a Mets fan. “It was important for us to do this here. And frankly, who did it in the end? For Francisco to do it the way it did, that's the way it should be.”
All it took was for the Mets to put up one huge, high-pressure at-bat after another and score six runs in the top of the eighth inning. And Lindor's home run in the ninth inning was the best in history against Todd Pratt that eliminated the Diamondbacks from the playoffs, against Ray Knight in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series, and against Mike Piazza after 9/11. It was something that could get the Mets into a discussion about the biggest home run. There are a few others. A home run that Brandon Nimmo called “the exclamation point on Francisco's season.”
Lindor was at the peak of perhaps the best season in the history of a Mets individual position player despite his back problems, and the Mets were in a situation where they had to play Game 162, where the winner would be determined by just two outs. This drama got even more exciting. Even if we win in the finale, anything is possible in the playoffs.
And it wasn't over even after Lindor lifted his team with a Kirk Gibson Wright moment. Edwin Diaz endured a fiasco in the 8th inning when he failed to cover first base, allowing four runs and giving Atlanta a 7-6 lead. Diaz had been told by pitching coach Jeremy Hefner that he would be out of the game, but when Lindor hit his home run, he told Mendoza, “No way, I'm not coming back.” He made the save. He didn't try to blow his salvation. So Diaz, who threw 26 pitches Sunday, will need 40 more pitches (tying a career high) on Monday to secure the Mets' 89th victory.
“This team has given me a lot and trusted me,” Diaz said. “I didn't want to be the one who made mistakes. I want to fight for this team.”
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post
Please understand what I mean here. A loss, among other things, would force Lindor to play 18 innings on Monday and force Luis Severino to start the nightcap, further depleting the bullpen. So even if they win Game 2, the Mets will be depleted and will need a bullpen game to open the playoffs on Tuesday. In other words, the opening game was almost a playoff game for both teams.
And the Mets won. It was the biggest win in regular season history in a city that Stearns knew had historically been a “terrible place” for the organization. The Mets' season doesn't end here. Nemo says it has been reborn as an “incredible roller coaster.”
“We believe, we believe,” Lindor said. “We said from day one that we had a team that was going to do something special.”
