NEW YORK The New York Mets discussed among themselves a few days ago how the look of pressure has evolved during the course of their season.Things got so awful a few months ago that not even pressure could stay. In a well-recorded meeting in late May, veteran designated hitter J.D. Martinez informed his teammates that it was gone. Martinez stated his takeaway from the encounter was,“The pressure is on everyone else right now. If we lose, we lose — they already think we are the worst in baseball. So let’s go out there (and) do what we do.”
The Mets carried that out. They played with a better balance of enthusiasm and concentration, and they shot into playoff contention. The front office rewarded the roster with some supplementation rather than shipping players out. Pressure to test them then resumed.
The Mets (62-59) have faltered now that they are under pressure to make the playoffs. They have dropped eight out of thirteen games, including five of their previous six, as of two weeks into August.
As the Athletics defeated the Mariners 7–6, the situation at Citi Field grew more direful on Thursday. Oakland, a team that improved in the second part of the season but still sits at the bottom of the American League West standings, defeated the Mets 52–70 in their three-game series.
A's 7, Mets 6: The Mets dropped the series to Oakland. They blew a 5-0 lead. They allowed 11 walks (a season high). It was the longest nine-inning game of the season (3:45). New York is 62-59.
— Will Sammon (@WillSammon) August 15, 2024
There are 41 games remaining for the Mets. For the final wild-card slot, they are two games behind the Atlanta Braves. The Mets must avoid letting this kind of defeat continue after losing in the longest nine-inning regular-season game (three hours, 45 minutes) since the pitch clock was introduced. It might not be simple.
5 to 0. New York wasted the lead. A season-high 11 walks were permitted. There were times when the crowd’s jeers following a strikeout by a Mets pitcher were louder than the supporters cheering on one of Mark Vientos’ two home runs at third baseman.
The response appeared fitting. The Mets will go as far as their lineup takes them is a statement that has been made many times in 2024 and for good reason. Furthermore, that is how they were designed; the club’s strength was never going to be its rotation. However, it is difficult for even a potent offense to overcome outings like the one on Thursday (or Monday, when starter Paul Blackburn gave up seven runs in four innings). That is putting undue strain on things.
“It’s hard to win a baseball game when you give up, what, 11, 12 walks, a hit by pitch,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “That’s hard to do. We gotta go back and make some adjustments quickly here so we can stop that.”
The only pitching staff with a greater walk rate than the Mets (10 percent) is the Chicago White Sox (10.3%). Pitchers that are on the Mets can survive by working the edges. A fine line exists when using this strategy. That means lessening hard contact when one of those pitchers is in the game. when one is not feeling well? It results in walks and misses. Jose Quintana, the starter, was off Thursday. In the fourth inning, after the Mets had given him a 5-0 lead, he gave up a grand slam to outfielder JJ Bleday on a hanging breaking ball. Quintana was only able to go four innings. Four walks, seven hits, and four runs were allowed by him. The Mets used six pitchers on Thursday, and each one gave up at least one walk.
Oakland added two more runs in the sixth inning and another in the fifth, taking advantage of the Mets’ inconsistent control on the mound. After Vientos’s solo home run in the fourth, the Mets were never able to score.
“Today was not a good day,” Mendoza said. “We saw it from the beginning.”
How can it not continue tomorrow when the Mets play the Miami Marlins in the first game of a three-game series?
Around the time the Mets were discussing pressure, according to Vientos, he reminded star shortstop Francisco Lindor that the team needed to get past their bad patch, which is part of a long season.
“I feel like we have been going really well the last couple of months. It’s not realistic that we’re just going to ride that wave all the way to the end of the season,” Vientos said. “I feel like we just have to keep getting our wins here and there, and then we are going to have a hot streak pretty soon to finish off the season.”
Martinez claimed that his advice to the group on pressure was consistent with the way he had advised everyone to think a few months prior.
“We got here by playing with no pressure, we were supposed to lose and let’s just go have fun,” Martinez said. “Things snowballed, and all of a sudden we got to this point where we make a couple of trades, we’re in it. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a little more pressure.
“It’s just one of those things where, we talked about it, just that who-cares mentality, and if we win, we win, and if we lose, we lose, what does it matter is what got us here. That’s what we got to ride out to the end of the season.
“This is a great team, great clubhouse. Everyone is together. There’s no big personalities. No big egos. It’s a fun group. I think everyone received it well.”
Now is the opportunity to demonstrate it, with their postseason chances currently sitting at about 20 percent, according to FanGraphs.
(Photo of Jose Quintana after JJ Bleday’s grand slam: Brad Penner / USA Today)
