The fun part of baseball season at Citi Field came to an end Thursday night, as the Mets thumped the Nationals, 10-0, to improve to 20-1 over the past two nights and 11-2 in their 13 games this year against their former division strugglers.
The team scored nine runs in the fourth inning, the crowd of 34,196 (and one purple creature) dancing in the aisles and yelling at peak volume, and they held former failure Jose Quintana to seven more scoreless innings, with his odds of consecutive scoreless innings now at 22²/₃.
They also got two more hits and a second consecutive home run from Luis Ángel Acuña, who is shaping up to be the greatest of all time (small sample division).It wasn't a perfect day, with three teams winning: the Braves, Diamondbacks and Padres, but there were few complaints once the scoreboard started spinning like a pinball machine.
Now, the bell lap.
The final 10 games of the season will be against two playoff teams (Philadelphia and Milwaukee) flanked by another team (Atlanta) looking to beat the Mets for the 30th straight year. The college schedule begins Thursday night with four home games against the Phillies.
Brandon Nimmo is one of them. At the end of his interview with SNY's Steve Gelbs, after a string of frustrating at-bats since the All-Star break, Nimmo smashed a three-run homer and offered a corny refrain that was exactly what you'd expect given the challenges ahead.
“I'm ready,” he said with his usual smile. “This is going to be playoff baseball!”
There were still a lot of fans milling around the Garden. They were excited. One fan wearing a leather lunge in front of the press box yelled, “OMG, LGM!”
And then Nimmo turned it into a tent revival: He turned away from Gelbs, faced the stands and did his best Billy Sunday voice.
“Mets fans, fill this place up!”
This place needs to be hyped on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday!
We need your help! Everybody come here! This place needs to be full!
This is playoff baseball! This is what you want!
Let's go! Let's go Mets!
Now, in some ways it's a bit disappointing that the Mets' $162 million outfielder felt compelled to plead with Mets fans to flood the zone this weekend after modest crowds of just over 46,000 combined for the first two games this week.
And while swapping the Nationals for the Phillies and the fact that the Mets are in control of their own fate will probably increase that number in the coming days, it's also telling that a guy making $162 million was so engrossed in the moment that he thought to bring it up.
Nimmo, despite his extended wilderness tour on the offensive side of things, is having a blast and wants to share it. His teammates are having a blast. The starting pitchers are acting like the cool kids at school in the dugout every night, celebrating one great start after another and wanting to share it. The veteran pitchers are ecstatic for Acuña. And everyone seems obsessed with Jose Iglesias. He seems to make five plays every day, offensively and defensively, that are somewhere between useful and divine.[moke].
All of this has happened without Francisco Lindor for the past three days.
“We haven't done anything yet,” manager Carlos Mendoza emphasized again Wednesday night. I understand why he says that, and what he says is true on the surface. But it's not entirely true. What the Mets have done is given their fans time over the next 10 days. They've given the city a chance to ponder New York, New York, in the same postseason for the sixth time since 1956.
It was fun for everyone to be here.
The college baseball season is finally here. Now, with the Phillies, Braves and Brewers on the line, the Mets will have to face both recent history and their fans' biggest fears to make it through. The Phillies love to be mean to the Mets in late September, and the Brewers might find themselves playing for free next weekend or with a bye week on the line.
And the Braves?
They're bruised and battered and beaten, they've lost some awful games this month, but until proven otherwise, they have a right to believe that if they looked the Mets in the eye, they'd flinch.
It's up to the Mets to deny it. The Mets have been better than all of those teams since June 1. They've been better than everyone these last three weeks. That should mean something. And it will mean something. The moment they surprised the Braves. The moment they narrowly edged past the Phillies and Brewers. The moment they clinched a playoff spot.
That's when the real fun begins.
