Senga an All-Star, the winning streak is over, and what comes after
The Mets fall to the Padres to end their season-high six-game winning streak. Plus, the importance of what you do after the streak.
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What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️
The Mets’ six-game winning streak came to an end on Saturday, losing to the Padres 3-1 (box)
LHP David Peterson was solid, allowing three earned runs with seven strikeouts over 5.1 innings pitched
C Francisco Álvarez crushed his 17th home run of the season and his fourth in his last five games
New York’s offense was stymied in the loss, recording just three hits, scoring one run and going 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position
RHP Kodai Senga was officially named to the NL All-Star team as a replacement on Saturday
Senga is the first Mets rookie pitcher to make the All-Star team since Dwight Gooden in the 1984 season
Mets No. 8 prospect Mike Vasil appeared in the All-Star Futures Game on Saturday, allowing a walk and a strikeout in 0.1 innings pitched
Who’s Hot 🔥
Francisco Álvarez is 10-for-20 (.500) with four home runs and eight RBI over his last five games
Injury Updates 🏥
José Quintana (rib surgery) made what is expected to be his final rehab start on Saturday, allowing five runs in 4.2 innings in Triple-A Syracuse
Today’s Game 🗓
Match-up: Mets (42-47) vs. Padres (42-47)
Where: PETCO Park – San Diego, CA
Starters: RHP Max Scherzer (8-2, 4.03 ERA) vs. RHP Joe Musgrove (7-2, 3.56 ERA)
When: 4:10 PM EDT
Where to Watch: WPIX
How the Mets respond to their winning streak ending will determine their fate ✍️
Alright. So, the winning streak is over. Now what?
There has undoubtedly been a smidgen of light gleamed back into the Mets 2023 season thanks to their play over the last week. Winners of a season-high six straight games, New York had begun to show some of the promise that so many people had been expecting over the first four months of this season, as they began to slowly dig their way out of a hole that saw them at 10 games under the .500 mark.
That winning streak came to an end on Saturday night, as the club’s offense was able to muster virtually nothing (other than the outrageously hot Francisco Álvarez whose solo shot accounted for the only run of the game). Now this was to be expected – all winning streaks must end and no one was expecting the Mets to suddenly flip the juggernaut switch to the ‘on’ position after what they’d seen over the course of the season’s first 89 games. But now that it’s over, what happens after the streak will be the most important moment of this entire season.
We’ve seen this happen with many teams before: they get hot, rip off a few game winning streak and the vibes are feeling immaculate. But then, once the streak ends, they hit the skids and wind up giving back a good chunk of the games they just worked so hard to pick up in their streak. The Mets are not in a position where they can afford to give these games back.
No one can reasonably expect this team to pull a 2022 (or 2023 for that matter) Braves and virtually never lose during the second half of the season, but the Mets have also dug themselves too deep of a hole to start slacking off again and live to tell the tale.
As good as things were starting to feel after the streak, New York is still five games under the .500 mark. And while I said recently on Twitter that I wouldn’t look at the standings until they reached .500, for the purposes of this article I’ll tell you that they’re still 6.5 games out of the third Wild Card spot. They’re so far behind in the NL East standings that I won’t even bother to share that math with you.
As of Sunday morning there are 16 games remaining in Mets’ schedule before the trade deadline, and those games will determine the fate of the 2023 season. If New York falters and goes back to their losing ways from before their winning streak, or even if they put together a record that’s just a bit over .500, that is not going to be enough for ownership and this front office to buy into this team. Steve Cohen already told reporters two weeks ago that this organization was not going to ‘buy’ at the deadline if they were not in a reasonable position to do so.
If you ask me, for the Mets to get to a “reasonable” place to encourage the front office to alter their projected course and act as buyers instead of sellers, they will have to go 12-4 over their next 16 games. And while that may sound unreasonable (and it very likely is), that’s the spot this team put themselves in with their play over the first half of this season.
If the Mets were to somehow pull that off, they would find themselves at 54-51 (three games over .500) at the trade deadline and within plausible striking distance of the Phillies for the final postseason spot. If New York is not able to do so and even goes 10-6 during that stretch, still with a sub-500 record entering August, I’m still not sure that it’s enough for management to buy in. Perhaps they wouldn’t sell and would stand pat at that stage, but I have a hard time believing they’d use assets to add to the roster in any sort of meaningful way.
So that’s where we stand. The winning streak is over and there is a small, flickering glimmer of hope remaining in the Mets season. All there is left to do is to watch and see if this team can keep that hope alive, or if the trajectory ultimately remains unchanged and this remains a season that is swept into the franchise’s dustpan.
Around the League 🚩
Tigers pitchers Matt Manning, Jason Foley and Alex Lange combined to pitch the second no-hitter of the 2023 season as Detroit defeated the Blue Jays, 2-0
Reds rookie phenom Elly De La Cruz stole second, third and home in the span of three pitches in the club’s 8-5 win over the Brewers
The Rays lost their seventh straight game as they were knocked off by the Braves, 6-1
Orioles RHP Tyler Wells pitched six strong innings as Baltimore won their fourth straight game, defeating the Twins by a 6-2 score