A win and they're in (sort of)

Well, here we go again. Isn't it funny how history repeats itself? (Let's hope not exactly)

Although the Phillies clinched their second consecutive division title today, Johan Santana came up HUGE on three days' rest and the Brewers laid an egg, so we go into tomorrow needing only a win to prolong the season to at least Monday. If the Mets and the Brewers both win tomorrow, the last regular season game at Shea will be a one-game playoff for the wild card, on Monday night. If the Mets win and the Brewers lose, we've got an NLDS date with the Cubbies. If the Brewers win and the Mets lose, we're screwed. And if both teams lose - well that's just downright embarrassing.

The road to this point might have been slightly different, but it's scary how similar this last weekend of the season is so far to last year's. The Mets, trying to save face, playing the Marlins at home, and losing an ugly game on Friday night. Saturday brings an electrifying win - last year for the sheer gravity of the blowout and the brawl, this year for Santana's dramatically affirming performance; affirming, that is, as in Johan being worth every little bit in personnel and money that we paid for him.

Last year the Phillies lost on Saturday and we went into Sunday in the exact same position - a win forces no less than a one-game playoff. This year the battle is for the wild card, who will probably end up being the sacrificial lamb in the Cubs' eventual road to an unfortunate and quirky defeat in the NLCS. Oh well. Stranger things have happened.

But here's hoping that one way or another, the last game of the season, at Shea, against the Marlins, will be different in '08 than it was '07. Hopefully Oliver Perez won't reprise the role of Tom Glavine. If he can generate a quote from Jerry Manuel remotely along the lines of what Manuel said after the game today, we should be in good shape:

"How many did he pitch? How many did he throw?" said Jerry, grinning. "Wow, wow, wow, wow. I think if I had to describe that one, I would say that was gangsta. That was real gangsta."

Gangsta indeed. I don't know about anyone else but I'm pumped for tomorrow. It all comes down to this.


(Image courtesy espn.com)

It's a pennant race

Carlos Beltran's game-winning hit helped the Mets rebound from Wednesday night

3 games. Tied in the wild card. 1 game back in the division.

Last night's win was electrifying - one of those faith-restoring victories that made me excited for the coming weekend. If the Mets go on to make the playoffs, Ryan Church's game-tying slide in the 8th will be remembered as one of those bizarre plays that alters the course of a season at just the right time. Dude was dead to rights, and he found a way to slip into home plate under Koyie Hill's glove after somehow avoiding the lunging Cubs catcher while tip-toeing around the home plate dirt.

So can we pull it off? At the very least, we're going into a decisive weekend with momentum, as opposed to despair.

And I like that Johan - as opposed to Tom Glavine - will be pitching a potentially decisive last game of the season. Of course, we have to get there first. Fasten your seatbelts.


(Image courtesy newsday.com)

You only get so many chances

If the Mets go on to miss the playoffs, tonight's game will turn out to be the perfect metaphor for exactly why. You only get so many chances.

I tuned in during the bottom of the seventh inning, with the Mets down 6-5 after Oliver Perez gave a 5-1 lead back to the Cubs. With Jerry Manuel taking a gamble, the light-hitting Ramon Martinez dropped his first hit as a Met into a perfect spot in the right field gap for a leadoff double. Jose Reyes put down an average bunt, but Ronny Cedeno mishandled the throw covering first, and the Mets had runners on first and third with nobody out.

You almost can't even get too worked up about this inning. Daniel Murphy lined out, doubling Jose Reyes off first - unlucky. David Wright's flare to left went a little too far, settling in Alfonso Soriano's glove for the final out. Nothing you can do about supreme misfortune, although I contend Reyes should have been running there, to prevent exactly such a situation.

Mets bullpen holds the Cubs, we go to the eighth inning. Carlos Delgado leads off with a double. Carlos Beltran comes through with a flare into center - this one drops and it looks like Delgado might be able to score, until Luis Aguayo, most likely self-conscious and perpetually casting doubt on himself for all the other terrible decisions he's made in the third base coach's box, makes another one, holding Delgado. Still, the Mets have first and third with nobody out - again.

Ryan Church strikes out. First and third with one out. Ramon Castro comes to the plate - Beltran steals to take out the double play option with the slow-footed Castro up at bat. But Castro ends up grounding out anyway, the runners hold, two outs. Endy Chavez pinch hits for the pitcher's spot and is intentionally walked to bring up Ramon Martinez again. Luckily, Martinez works out a walk, and the Mets don't totally waste the threat. 6-6. Jose Reyes is up with a chance to give the Mets a lead...but grounds out to end the inning. 6-6.

The bullpen holds again in the ninth, giving the Mets another chance to pull it out, and then victory looks certain when Daniel Murphy leads off with a triple. Wright, Delgado, Beltran coming out. On 3-2, with Keith Hernandez insisting that a strike ends the game (in the form of a Wright hit), Wright chases a pitch out of the zone. One out. Delgado and Beltran are walked, but that means the bases are loaded for my man Ryan Church. Church hits a sharp ground ball, but the Cubs get the force at the plate. Two outs. Ramon Castro, looking less-than-confident, swings through strike three to send it into extras.

So pretty much, despite putting a man on third with nobody out in each of the last three innings, the Mets scored a total of one run. On a bases loaded walk. It was like a bad re-enactment of Groundhog Day. And if you've read the recap, you know what happened in extra innings tonight. You only get so many chances, but the Cubs finally took advantage of theirs and put the game away with a three run rally in the top of the tenth. The fans left - I honestly don't blame anyone who did - and the Mets went silently in the bottom half.

As I've written many times in this space, we've grown accustomed this year (since Jerry Manuel took over) to the Mets somehow finding a way to respond to these gut-wrenching, "you can't lose that game" type of losses. But if the Mets couldn't find a way to win this game, they might as well be SOL.

You're only handed a victory on so many silver platters. The Phillies lost - this game would have tied us up in the loss column. The Brewers won, so this was a must-win for the wild card chase, although with the way we've played the Cubs' b-squad this week, if we do win the wild card and have to face them in the NLDS, we're out of the playoffs in three. Mark my words.

The point, though, is that for all the resiliency, for all the excitement and the tenacity this team has shown at times, you've still got to put it away. What happened to the Mets? One month ago, they would have pulled this one out.

This isn't a repeat of last year. No, last year's team was complacent and lazy - that's not what's befallen the '08 Mets. It's something far different - something that cuts beyond Jerry Manuel, beyond Omar Minaya, and falls squarely on the shoulders of everyone in the Mets locker room right now, from Jose Reyes to David Wright. This year's story, if it continues to play out as such, is one of possession and loss. Something within the Mets - calling it fire, or desire, or killer instinct doesn't quite do it justice, but something - something gave them an ability to find wins in difficult places, to play .600 ball over the summer and make themselves relevant. They were tough. Gritty. But that's all gone now. Whatever that something is, they had while they were storming back over the summer, and now they've lost it. When it came time to cash in tonight, this team looked totally afraid and inept. That's something that Jerry Manuel can't change. The bottom line is: if the Mets want to make it to the playoffs this season, this whole team better grow a pair, and fast.

If we fail to make it happen in these next four days, I'll be at a loss for how to respond. How do you even care about upgrading a roster that, despite its shortcomings, was still good enough to make the postseason? Any future move the Mets make, any success they have from April to August, will bear the cross of two consecutive September crap-outs. A new manager won't fix that. Minaya's four-year extension has nothing to do with it. It's something the players have to deal with on their own, exorcise by themselves, the sooner the better. Just ask the Cubbies. Which reminds me: are we really about to have our season ruined by the team that hasn't won the World Series since 1908?!? Lord have mercy.

I'd love to believe, and the Mets have pulled bigger ones out of their you-know-where before, but I just don't see it happening this season. You only get so many chances, and right now, we suck.


(Image courtesy nydailynews.com)

"Preachers Preach"

That's what Jerry Manuel says, in reference to the team meeting he presided over last night before another unfortunate loss, marking another unfortunate chapter in another September swoon, setting off a round of premature obituaries from the ESPN talking heads, conjuring up doomsday images of another year that looks like it might end up being lost, all due to a late-season inability to beat the Washington Nationals.



“We just touched base on where we are, and try to get back in the direction we were headed, remind them of the good baseball we played and the good baseball we’ll need to play," said Manuel. "Preachers preach, and I just wanted to let them know where I am.”

If there's one thing that's currently tempering my feelings of despair at the thought of another September collapse, it's my hope that Jerry Manuel really is a much better Manager than Willie Randolph. Sure, the Mets have done a total 180 under his leadership this season, but there's one point we've all been making since April: the only thing that can settle us Mets fans at this point is a trip to the playoffs, to make up for what was lost a year ago. Until Manuel gets us there, all of the July and August excitement that got us back into the race is meaningless.

If Manuel is indeed a preacher, with the capacity to will his team go out and get it done on the field, now is the time to show it. Throughout the summer his calm but actually effective, assertive-when-it-needs-to-be leadership has paid dividends for the Mets. I can't imagine that Manuel hasn't had a certain amount to do with this team overcoming one unfortunate circumstance after another this year, and now it's time for the Mets to snap out of a second straight solemn September and get it together for 12 more games. Then it's a new season.

The bullpen woes are getting awfully frustrating, sure. But the Mets have blown an unprecedented amount of unblowable games this summer, and they were 3 1/2 up until the start of the weekend. As it stands, the visibly flawed and now Fernando Tatis-less New York Mets are one half game out of first place, locked in the tightest of possible pennant races.

This is what September is made for, and this year the Mets aren't frantically looking in the rearview, unable to prevent their car from going off a cliff. This year they actually know what second place looks and feels like. Remember that last season the Phillies didn't take over first place until there were just two games left. This year, there are 12 for the Mets to mount one last turnaround.

I still believe that this year's Mets team is fundamentally different. Consistency is far less important, seemingly, than resiliency. Remember that 1-5 road trip at the beginning of August? They looked pretty bad then too. But this team seems to have an indomitable capacity to look terrible, and then somehow get it back together. The amount of screw-ups that the '08 team has endured and come back from should inspire them to find something within themselves that allows them to endure and prevail in the face of one more. And it's not as if the Phillies aren't also flawed.

The bottom line is that this could still break either way. But I have faith that the Mets can pull if off; this season there shouldn't be any sense of "boredom" because they think they're too good. They know they need to step it up, now. The sense that they'll have to if they want to win another division title seems much more acute than last year, and they also know that one final charge to the post season will scream "this is a new year!" and shut everyone up once and for all. Then we can all relax and enjoy an October baseball schedule that will include only one New York team, not named the Yankees.

So yes, I believe. Ya Gotta. I can only hope the Mets, this year, will justify that faith.


(Image courtesy cbslocal.com)