Rival Busters

Morning Dose: Thursday, September 5

☀️ Good Morning:

The NFL season kicks off tonight and the Mets are still relevant.

When I was a kid, growing up in a train-stop town between New York and Boston, returning to school in the Fall meant turning the sports calendar to football and hockey. The baseball season that had started the previous grade was usually left behind with it, along with spring crushes and overstuffed trapper keepers. 

At least that’s how it was for Mets fans.

My friends, naturally Yankees and Red Sox devotees, had a different childhood. Those were the days when Boston fans believed they were tortured, but in reality, even before all the championships, they were still a fortunate group, like their Yankee counterparts. The Fall brought disappointment as much as it brought excitement and drama, even if it didn’t end exactly how they always wanted it. Early Autumn memories were colored by Aaron Boone’s home run, and later reversing the curse.

This is what competitive baseball in September brings. It attaches itself to a new sky, cooler weather and changing routines. It brings a different noise to the ballpark, jackets, a stinging cheer from cold hands pressed together. It overlaps with football and hockey. It’s the 2024 season telling us it’s not done with us yet.

Tell me what’s better than watching the eighth inning last night with Phil Maton clinging to a one-run lead, the fans standing at Citi Field replacing the pitch clock to provide the game’s tempo.

The Mets have won seven in a row. They remain one of the best teams in baseball since Memorial Day. And they have beaten up on their local rivals. What a time to be alive!

☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!

---

Box Score | Full Standings

✌️ Turning Two!

The Mets have done a lot of things right over the last three months, culminating in a seven-game winning streak. We’ve talked about the starting pitching, the offense, and the latest push by the bullpen. We can’t overlook the defense, and how the pitching staff and infield has come together to escape jams of late.

Last night, calling on length from their bullpen, Alex Young, Huascar Brazobán and Danny Young provided it, each escaping jams with inning-ending double plays.

In the fifth:

In the sixth:

And again in the seventh:

This is no accident: what each of those relievers share in common is the ability to induce ground balls — they produced seven in three innings from the Red Sox. Whether it’s Alex Young or Danny Young’s sinker, or Brazobán’s changeup, they know how to put the ball on the ground, and have done so at an elite level.

As SNY noted on their telecast, the last time the Mets had three different pitchers end three consecutive innings on double plays was in 1966!

🔷 The defense didn’t stop there. When they weren’t turning two, they were keeping the Sox from turning singles into doubles. Brandon Nimmo made a nice play to do so early in the game, and then Harrison Bader made a great play on a quick first step to cut off a ball in the right-center gap in the eighth inning.

Instead of a two-out double, putting the tying run in scoring position, Rob Refsnyder was held to a single.

---

😅 A great relief

Carlos Mendoza keeps pressing the right buttons. Managing like it was a playoff game, the rookie skipper played the match-ups with a quick hook on starter Tylor Megill and asked for 15 outs from a bullpen that has been flawless since Edwin Díaz gave up home runs in back-to-back games last week.

Facing a Red Sox lineup stacked with lefties, he neutralized it using two Young pitchers, quite literally, deploying Alex Young in the fifth to match-up with Jarren Duran and Rafeal Devers, and Danny Young in the seventh and eighth to force Alex Cora to use a pinch-hitter for Nick Sogard and to match-up a second time with Duran and Devers.

In between the lefty match-ups, he called upon Huascar Brazobán, before handing the ball to Phil Maton, who has become a revelation in the bullpen, and Edwin Díaz to close it out.

Between the heroics of the relievers who didn’t start the season the Mets’ roster, don’t overlook the uptick in velocity we saw from Díaz, whose fastball was up 1.1 mph on average, hitting 100 mph on three pitches after doing so only twice prior to last night.

---

🍎 Running towards history

On June 2, after blowing another ninth-inning lead, the Mets found themselves 24-35, that is 11 games below .500 and 16.5 games out of first place. After an underwhelming offseason, some key injuries and underperformance by several core players, it was easy to believe the season was essentially over before summer had officially arrived.

Then everything changed. The Mets have joined the Astros in epic turnarounds that have lifted them from 11 games below .500 to 11 games over .500 (now 12), only the third time multiple teams have made such a turnaround in the same season in MLB history, per OptaStats.

To get here, the Mets went 51-29 over an 80-game stretch, putting them square in the wild-card hunt.

80 games is nothing to laugh about. That is playing half the season as one of baseball’s best teams.

It got me thinking:

• How often have the Mets put together a stretch like this?

• What happened to those teams who have done so?

There have been 12 Mets teams who have played at an .638 or better clip over an 80-game span, including this year’s squad:

• 1986 Mets (58-22) - Won 108 games, World Series Champ

• 1985 Mets (55-25) - Won 98 games

• 1999 Mets (54-26) - Won 97 games, Lost NLCS

• 1969 Mets (53-27) - Won 100 games, World Series Champ

• 2022 Mets (52-28) - Won 101 games, Lost NLWC

• 1990 Mets (52-28) - Won 91 games

• 2024 Mets (51-29) - ???

• 2008 Mets (51-29) - Won 89 games

• 2006 Mets (51-29) - Won 97 games, Lost NLCS

• 2000 Mets (51-29) - Won 94 games, Lost WS

• 1997 Mets (51-29) - Won 88 games

• 1988 Mets (51-29) - Won 100 games, Lost NLCS

Of course, you find the ‘86 and ‘69 Mets. You find the three teams that lost in the NLCS (1988, 1999, 2006). Each of the clubs on this list won at least 88 games. Several would have benefited under the current playoff format.

For the 2024 Mets, they need to go 12-10 to finish with 88 wins, a very real possibility. Whether that is enough to overcome the Braves, we will find out.

But it’s interesting to place this year’s group alongside the seasons noted above. It might not have always felt like this team belongs, but history suggests that Mets teams that play as well as Carlos Mendoza’s group over an 80-game span tend to be one of the final clubs standing in the end.

---

🎧 Mets Fix Podcast

Make sure you’re subscribed to the Mets Fix Podcast on your favorite platform (Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud).

---

🏁 QUICK START: Everything that made Mets fans hate Jesse Winker is reason to love him now. His first-inning grand slam set the tone on Wednesday. He is slashing .306/.341/.471 with three homers and 13 RBI as a Met. He does it with a flare that’s annoying when you’re on the other side, but energetic for his own clubhouse.

“As a player, your whole life, you want to be a part of clubhouses and teams like this. Everyone a part of this team, it's unbelievable people,” Winker said after the game, via SNY.

---

🤞 HOPEFUL: The Mets are feeling “increasing optimism” that Kodai Senga will return this year, according to Andy Martino. The right-hander is eligible to be activated from the injured list on September 25, giving him a small runway to return before the end of the regular season. But if he’s healthy, he could turn into an Ace in the Hole in the bullpen.

👍 GOOD TO GO: Paul Blackburn felt good after his last rehab start and is expected to rejoin the rotation in Toronto. That will create a roster decision that will likely see Tylor Megill sent back down, although he is open to pitching out of the bullpen.

• Megill: “I’ve pitched in the bullpen, started, it’s nothing new to me,” he said. “If that’s what they want me to do, so be it. I want to help this team win. If that’s what I need to do, that’s what I’ll do.”

👋 LEAVING: Assistant GM Ian Levin announced he will be leaving the organization after the 2024 season. Levin joins Elizabeth Benn (Director of Major League Operations) as high-ranking executives set to leave after this season. Levin has been with the organization since 2005, when he began his tenure as a media relations intern.

🎩 TALENTED: The Mets ranked ninth on Kiley McDaniel’s annual rankings of MLB teams by core talent. “The Mets have had breakouts both in the majors -- Vientos and Scott -- and throughout the minors -- highlighted by Sproat -- and should have most of their top prospects in the majors by next season.”

🚜 DOWN ON THE FARM:

• Shintaro Fujinami (remember him?) has been unhittable olately, throwing nine scoreless innings over his last six appearances, striking out 13 and allowing only one hit and two walks.

• Drew Gilbert keeps hitting home runs. Last night he hit his sixth in his last 13 games.

---

🗓️ UP NEXT: When you’re playing like the Mets, you don’t want an off day, but they deserve one after playing through a long road trip and returning home to immediately host the Red Sox.

The Amazins will try to continue their winning streak on Friday against the Reds.

---

📸 WILD CARD SNAPSHOT: Everyone atop the wild-card standings held serve last night. The Cubs are hanging on by a thread with an difficult stretch ahead against the Yankees and Dodgers.

As of this morning, the Mets have the third hardest remaining schedule in baseball with series against Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta. They need to keep the good times rolling in the coming days against Cinci and Toronto.

---

🕷️ Find headlines for all of your favorite teams at SportSpyder, the number one source for sports news links.

---

◾️ The Giants and third baseman Matt Chapman agreed on a six-year, $151 million contract extension.

◾️ Shota Imanaga, Nate Pearson and Porter Hodge combined to throw the Cubs’ first no-hitter at Wrigley Field since 1972.

◾️ The White Sox won a game! That’s news enough. They snapped a 12-game losing streak with an 8–1 victory over the Orioles on Wednesday.

---

🔗 Mets are employing winning formula of a playoff team, by Joel Sherman, NY Post: “The fans at Citi Field are falling hard for the first Mets team of David Stearns and Mendoza. A club that is getting better and doing what a good team, especially at this time of year, has to do by capitalizing on struggling competition. The Mets did that by following a win in Arizona with consecutive sweeps of Chicago and Boston. They have done this with relentless competence. That might not be sexy. It has been winning, nevertheless.”

🔗 Meaningful September baseball? That’s not enough for the streaking, unsatisfied Mets, by Tim Britton, The Athletic ($): “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.”

Thanks for reading! Follow us on X for regular updates until our next newsletter.

And please check out our newsletters about the Knicks and Isles, too.