First of all, sorry again to those of you who were reading my blog regularly and missed it (if there are any of you out there). I'm actually working on another project right now as well. For those of you who are into fantasy sports, check out www.FantasyPhenoms.com. I've been writing weekly fantasy football columns previewing and recapping each NFL game from a fantasy perspective, and I may be writing other various articles for both fantasy football and fantasy baseball. Fantasy Phenoms is a really great resource for fantasy advice and insights, especially for baseball, where we have provide some really in-depth sabermetric analysis. A lot of the articles are free to access but some require a membership. If you're interesting in a membership (very cheap), shoot me an email (mdeutschman@gmail.com) and I'll give you my promo code.
Anyway, it's been a little over a week since, for the second straight season, the Mets fell short of the post-season by one game, after blowing a healthy lead in the NL East with 17 games to go. So much has been said, and there is so much yet to say, about the dismal end to this season, so I’m going to divide my reflection and my analysis of the state of the Mets into six parts: 1) The Collapse, 2) The Core, 3) The Skipper, 4) The Maestro, 5) The Brass, 6) The Future.
In The Aftermath of the Collapse - Part One: The Collapse
It was a long and arduous season. After 145 games the Mets appeared to have exorcised the demons of the 2007 collapse. They held a 3.5-game lead on the Phillies in the NL East, and looked like a much stronger and more resilient team than the one that had squandered a seven-game lead in the division at the same point a year ago. But the next 17 games didn’t go quite as planned—in fact they very closely resembled the final 17 games of 2007, and the results were identical. WFAN radio talk show host Tony Paige’s mantra, “I’ve seen this movie before,” pretty much summed up those last 17 games of the season.
You didn’t need to watch all of those last 17 games, or even the first 145 games to get a sense of the Mets’ season. In fact, you could have hidden under a rock until the final three games at Shea Stadium, and still felt the weight of the entire roller coaster season that unfolded from April through September. The Friday, September 26 loss to the Marlins was a microcosm of the first portion of the Mets’ season. Until their 10-game winning streak in early July the Mets couldn’t get out of their own way, and were highlighted by short stints from the starting staff, ineffective relief pitching, shoddy defense and the inability to come through with clutch hits. In that Friday night game, which was as close to a must-win game as the Mets could possibly get, the Mets only got six innings out of Mike Pelfrey, saw their bullpen give up three runs in the final three innings, hit into three double plays, and left nine runners on base. The 6-1 defeat was crushing, as it left New York one game behind the fledgling Brewers for the Wild Card, and helped clinch the NL East for the Phillies.
But Saturday was a different story, just like the middle portion of the Mets’ season. Once Jerry Manuel took over as manager (or more accurately, once Carlos Delgado remembered how to hit and Fernando Tatis forgot it wasn’t 1999), the Mets began playing much looser, and started overcoming adversity to win games despite a terrible bullpen and sub-par performance in the clutch—rather than losing because of those things. Saturday the 27th was no different: the offense still only pushed two runs across, and as far as the bullpen woes went, Johan Santana took matters into his own hands. Carlos Delgado hit a sacrifice fly in the first inning to give the Mets a 1-0 lead, and that’s all they would need on that day. They tacked on another run in the fourth, but it didn’t matter—Johan Santana was on a mission. All the questions, doubts, misgivings, and uncertainties that surrounded Santana’s exorbitant contract were sent by the wayside after that start, a complete game three-hitter in the biggest game of the season, and the biggest game of Santana’s Mets career. This game conjured memories of John Maine’s performance in the second-to-last game of 2007, when he allowed just one hit and struck out 14 Marlins through 7.2 innings of a 13-0 Mets win in the same exact must-win scenario. But as Tony Paige had said, we’d seen this movie before. We just hoped this time it would end differently.
The last Sunday of 2008 sure was different than Tom Glavine’s atrocious performance to close out 2007, but it provided the same predictable, yet disappointing outcome, nonetheless. And because of that, September 29th’s game directly mirrored those final 17 games of the season. Oliver Perez pitched well enough to win through 5.1 innings, and Carlos Beltran provided a huge game-tying two-run homer in the sixth, but the bullpen didn’t hold up its end of the bargain. Scott Schoenweis and Luis Ayala gave up back-to-back home runs in the eighth, and the offense couldn’t fashion a comeback. The Mets fell one win short of the playoffs, just like last year.
SNY broadcaster Keith Hernandez put it best, saying the feeling was like "getting blindsided and kicked in the stomach." Now, I'm not exactly sure how you can get kicked in the stomach from the blind side, but you know what he meant. Devastation, disappointment, shock, sadness, disbelief--none of those feelings really describe the exact emotion that hit you when Ryan Church's fly ball sank into the centerfielder's glove, much like Mike Piazza's fly ball that ended the 2000 World Series. It was like saving up for months to buy a brand new pair of shoes, but finding out the model you wanted has been discontinued. Or like planning a trip to the beach weeks ahead of time, and then waking up on the day you’re supposed to go, and it’s pouring outside. Or like waking up in the middle of the night thinking you can go back to sleep for a few more hours, but then looking at the clock and realizing it’s only five minutes before your alarm is set to go off. It was a feeling of having the air sucked out of your lungs for a second. That’s what the Mets did to their fans on that fateful Sunday afternoon, for the second year in a row.
*Statistical information and gamelogs derived from www.Baseball-Reference.com and www.mlb.com.
