How many wins will the Mets need to get to the playoffs?
The Mets won their third game in a row, are 72-64 on the year and have 26 left as they enter September
What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️
The Mets defeated the White Sox by a score of 5-3 on Saturday night in Chicago (box)
LHP José Quintana started the for the Mets, and while he had to navigate nine baserunners, he only allowed one earned run over five innings with six strikeouts
Pete Alonso and Jesse Winker hit back-to-back home runs as part of a three-run first inning for the Mets
Winker also drove in a run on a single in the third inning as part of a 3-for-3 night at the dish
Huascar Brazoban, Ryne Stanek, Phil Maton, and José Buttó combined to allow just one run in four innings of relief of Quintana
The Mets are now a season-high eight games over .500, they went 16-13 in August, and 23-18 since the All-Star Game
Playoff Race 🏁
With their win over the White Sox on Saturday, the Mets were able to land some significant punches in their quest for a playoff berth.
With the Diamondbacks, Padres and Braves all losing, the Mets are now just two games behind the Braves for the final wild card spot, and four games behind both the Diamondbacks and Padres for the top two wild card spots.
However, the Cubs are red hot and have pulled to within four games of the third wild card.
There are 26 games remaining.
Per FanGraphs, the Mets have a 27.2% chance of making the postseason.
New York has the 14th hardest schedule in MLB the rest of the way.
Tiebreakers:
vs. ATL: 5-5
vs. ARI: 4-3 (finished)
vs. SD: 5-2 (finished)
vs. SF: 2-4 (finished)
vs. CHC: 4-3 (finished)
vs. STL 4-2 (finished)
September call-ups ✈️
The Mets will be calling up INF Pablo Reyes and LHP Alex Young from Triple-A Syracuse to fill the two expanded active roster spots today.
Who’s Hot 🔥
Francisco Lindor went 1-for-4 with a walk on Saturday, extending his hitting streak to 11 straight games and his on-base streak to 29 consecutive games. He is hitting .323/.368/.557 with nine doubles, a triple, six home runs and 16 RBI with 40 hits and 22 runs scored during that 29-game span
Jesse Winker has eight hits in his last three games, two of which are doubles and one home run. Since joining the Mets, Winker is hitting .343/.364/.493 with five doubles, two home runs and nine RBI with 25 hits and 10 runs scored in 26 games, 20 starts
Pete Alonso! 💪
With his home run last night, Pete Alonso has hit 30 or more home runs in all five of the 162-game seasons he’s played in his career. He has hit 222 home runs, the second-most in MLB behind only Aaron Judge since 2019. His 574 RBI are the most in MLB during that span.
Down on the Farm 🌾
INF Luisangel Acuña (#12 prospect, Triple-A): 3-for-5, 3B, RBI
INF Ryan Clifford (#4 prospect, Double-A): 4-for-5, 2B, RBI
OF Nick Morabito (#19 prospect, High-A): 2-for-4, HR, 2 RBI, R
INF Corey Collins (Low-A): 2-for-4, HR, 3 RBI
BOX SCORES
Single-A STL | High-A BRK | Double-A BNG | Triple-A SYR
Today’s Game 🗓
Match-up: Mets (72-64) vs. White Sox (31-106)
Where: Guaranteed Rate Field - Chicago, IL
Starters: LHP Sean Manaea (10-5, 3.51 ERA) vs. LHP Garrett Crochet (6-9, 3.64 ERA)
When: 2:10 PM EDT
Where to Watch: SNY
How many wins will the Mets need to get into the playoffs? ✍️
Two games out, 26 games to go for the Mets. And generally, a league average schedule the rest of the way.
So, why not the Mets?
A few days ago, it wasn’t looking good, or at least the optimism was fading. Edwin Díaz had blown two winnable games out of three for the Mets, and they lost ground in the wild card race as a result. But they’ve gained two of those games back since this weekend thanks to the club taking care of business against the White Sox and the Phillies winning last night against the Braves.
So, the Mets are back in business now, at least in a position where they can be hopeful they can overcome the Braves and sneak in.
Who knows? Maybe they can get a bit closer to San Diego and Arizona, both of which they own the tiebreaker on and they’d only have to tie either of them to beat them out or get home field advantage in a playoff series.
There’s still a long way to go before we can even consider that, of course. The Mets have a lot of work to do despite being only two games out of a playoff spot, and the clock is ticking, of course with diminishing margins for error here.
First things first, the Mets need to take care of the rest of their business in Chicago this weekend and sweep this series. I am not going to pretend there’s anything exciting about what’s going on with the Mets in Chicago - they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing so far with two business-like wins over a team that is increasingly likely to finish with the worst record in the modern era and easily surpassing the 1962 Mets 40-120 record.
If the Mets are going to do this in 2024, I figure they’re going to need 89 wins to get in at this point. If they get to 89 and don’t make it to the playoffs with this roster, I’ll tip my cap to those that do.
In order to get to 89, the Mets are going to have to go 17-9 the rest of the way, which may seem difficult considering they have three with the Braves, three with the Brewers and seven with the Phillies in the home stretch.
But while the Mets are just 38-39 against teams over .500 this season, I think much of that was built in before May 30 and they’ve been a ton better against the elite in the league since. They just went 6-4 against Baltimore, San Diego and Arizona and it should most definitely have been 8-2 if not for the blown games last Sunday and Tuesday.
They otherwise played very well against those teams, as well as the Yankees against which they went 4-0 this season.
Again, they own the tiebreakers against Arizona and San Diego, and indication of how they might match up against both of those teams in 2024.
My point is, as we all know, this is a much different team than that before May 30. They are 50-31 since that date, they’ve hit the fifth most home runs, have the third highest slugging percentage, the sixth highest batting average (I know, you pretend to not care about that one!), and the second highest wRC+ during that span.
They have the offense to contend with the elite. And their pitching as a whole has been a lot better too.
Is there enough of a calendar left for them to get over the hump? That is probably a bigger question than anything else right now.
Around the League 🚩
The Cubs stayed red hot, winning their fifth game in a row with a 5-3 win over the Nationals to pull within four games on the third wild card
The Padres were clanked by the Rays 11-4 in St. Petersburg - José Caballero drove in four runs for Tampa Bay
Zack Wheeler and the Phillies shutout the Braves 3-0 at CBP to even their series in Philadelphia
The Dodgers scored two in the ninth to edge the Diamondbacks 8-6 and extend their lead in the NL West to six games
Big wheels keep on turnin, NY Mets keep on burnin. Rolling, rolling, rolling to the playoffs!
True, they are not the May team. Nor are they the June/July team. Overall record still looks like mediocrity due to hot/cold extended streaks = .500, give or take a few. They can change that narrative down the stretch. That means defying coming back to their baseline. At least it’s possible, even if my analysis says otherwise