The Mets are making moves that matter...

Between a big statement win against Philly and the call up of Jonah Tong, it's starting to get exciting again in Queens

Image courtesy of the New York Mets

What’s up with the Mets? ⚾️

• The Mets beat the Phillies in a back-and-forth thriller, 6-5 at Citi Field on Tuesday (box)

• LHP Sean Manaea looked much more like his 2024 self, allowing just two runs while striking out eight Phillies over 4.2 innings

• 1B Pete Alonso had a huge day at the plate, going 4-for-5 with a two-RBI double and a run scored

• LF Brandon Nimmo won the game with a bases-loaded RBI single off new Phillies closer Jhoan Duran

• LHP Gregory Soto, RHP Huascar Brazoban, and RHP Tyler Rogers were solid out of the bullpen, but RHP Ryan Helsley struggled again, allowing a game-tying home run to Harrison Bader in the eighth inning

• RHP Edwin Díaz secured the final five outs of the game and was awarded the win

• The Mets went 5-for-10 with RISP, continuing a recent streak of situational success

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Roster Moves 📰

• Signed OF Sam Biller to a Minor League contract

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The Just Mets Podcast 🎙️

Listen to this week’s Just Mets Podcast as Rich MacLeod is joined by super fan and YouTuber Tyler Ward, host of the WardyNYM show. They react to the Mets disappointing road trip and the road ahead as they look to make a dent in the race to win the NL East…

Listen and subscribe now!

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Playoff Race 🏁

With another win over Philadelphia, the Mets are now within five games of the NL East lead:

In the NL Wild Card race, the Reds lost their second straight game as well, putting them 3.5 games behind the Mets for the final wild card spot:

The Mets now have a 94.5% chance to make the 2025 playoffs, per FanGraphs:

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Who’s Hot? 🥵

• Francisco Lindor is fully out of his slump, hitting .400/.473/.662 with four homers and seven stolen bases in his last 15 games

• Starling Marte is on a six-game hit streak and has had at least one hit in all but one of his last 10 games

• Mark Vientos extended his current hit streak to nine games; he has 14 RBI in that span

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Stats of the Day 📊

• The Mets are hitting .393 with RISP in their last five games

• The Mets have scored 139 runs in the month of August; it’s their highest-scoring month of the season. They’ve scored over 30 more runs in August than they did in July

• The Mets have beaten the Phillies in nine consecutive games at Citi Field including Game 3 and Game 4 of the 2024 NLDS - It is the second-longest home winning streak against the Phillies and one shy of tying the franchise record of 10 from June 20, 1984 - August 13, 1985

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Play of the Game ⭐️

Though it was ultimately Nimmo who put the kids to bed, it was Edwin Diaz who made their bed for them.

Coming into the game following Helsley’s game-tying homer to Bader, Diaz faced five batters, striking out the first four and holding them all hitless. His inning-opening strikeout of Kyle Schwarber was particularly impressive, as Diaz sat him down on back-to-back heaters in the middle of the zone after nearly surrendering a homer in the same spot on the very first pitch of the inning.

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Down on the Farm 🌾

• SS Luisangel Acuna (Triple-A): 2-for-4, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K

• RHP R.J. Gordon (No. 25 prospect, Double-A): 5.0 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 8 K

• C Chris Suero (No. 15 prospect, Double-A): 2-for-3, 1 2B, 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K

• 3B Jacob Reimer (No. 6 prospect, Double-A): 3-for-5, 2 R, 2 RBI, 1 K

• LF D’Andre Smith (Double-A): 3-for-5, 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 K

BOX SCORES

Single-A STL | High-A BRK | Double-A BNG | Triple-A SYR

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Today’s Game 🗓️

Match-up: Mets (71-61) vs Phillies (76-56)

Where: Citi Field - Flushing, NY

Starters: RHP Nolan McLean (2-0, 1.46 ERA) vs. RHP Taijuan Walker (4-6, 3.44 ERA)

When: 7:10 PM EDT

Where to Watch: SNY

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Times, they are a-changin’…for real this time ✍️

AP Photo

“We’ve earned our record.”

That was David Stearns’s response to Jon Heyman on Tuesday’s episode of The Show podcast when asked if the front office views this season as a disappointment. Stearns acknowledged that, for as often as they’ve played like the best team in baseball, they’ve also been unbalanced and inconsistent — tell us something we don’t know.

Obviously, the most glaring example of consistent inconsistency on this roster can be found in the pitching staff. Yes, the offense has been outright anemic at times, inexcusably so. But whether it’s a starter barely lasting four innings or a bullpen group that’s having a collective bad week, the pitching extremes have sunk the team just as frequently as the bats — see the staff’s fifth-worst 22 blown saves!

When I talk about extremes, I mean it. Look at these splits:

• Mets Pitchers in Wins: 1.94 ERA, 65 R (62 ER), 22 HR, 264 K-93 BB, 1.08 WHIP

• Mets Pitchers in Losses: 8.31 ERA, 190 R (153 ER), 31 HR, 161 K-101 BB, 2.05 WHIP

To be fair, similar volatility can be found in the lineup:

• Mets Hitters in Wins: .286/.358/.516, 125 HR, 422 RBI, .315 BABIP

• Mets Hitters in Losses: .201/.286/.314, 51 HR, 169 RBI, .244 BABIP

However, Mets hitters strike out in wins just as often as they do in losses, and relative to the rest of the league in wins/losses, their team sOPS+ is positive and within striking distance of one another:

• Mets sOPS+ in Wins: 108

• Mets sOPS+ in Losses: 102

"sOPS+" stands for 'Split OPS+', which compares a team’s OPS+ in a given split to the league average OPS+ in that same split. The Mets' numbers of 108 and 102 in wins and losses, respectively, are typical of other teams in the league, which is why I primarily blame the pitching staff for the depth of this season's valleys.

This tells me that their offense has, overall, functioned relatively typically throughout the season when compared to the rest of the league.

And for all the jokes we’ve made this season about the pitching and the offense’s inability to sync up, it’s being proven true in the data. Look at how Mets hitters performed in July next to their pitching staff:

• Mets Hitters in July: team woBA .291, wRC+ 92

• Mets Pitchers in July: 3.99 ERA, 4.61 FIP

Now, let’s look at those groups’ performance in August:

• Mets Hitters in Aug: .364 wOBA, 137 wRC+

• Mets Pitchers in Aug: 5.01 ERA, 4.02 FIP

Yeesh…this team has been really out of sync.

Thankfully, it appears the pendulum is finally starting to swing back the good guys’ way. Following the incredibly successful promotion of Minor League maestro Nolan McLean, the Mets announced yesterday that their other highly-touted pitching prospect Jonah Tong would be joining the team in Queens to start Friday’s game against Miami.

Imagn Images

Mets fans shouldn’t need much introduction to this guy by now. Much like Nolan McLean, there’s quite a bit to like Tong: his stuff is absolutely nasty, and based on spin rate and movement data, it should play nearly as well on arrival at the big league level as McLean’s did. Granted, Tong isn’t equipped with two 3000 RPM pitches, but his outrageous K/BB rate and ridiculous movement profile give the Mets yet another dangerous weapon to play with.

However, I’m not going to inundate you with stats today. Instead, I want to talk about something else: something that’s intangible, but can absolutely be felt…momentum.

No, there’s no empirical data out there that proves that momentum is measurable or predictive of impending success…in fact, quite the opposite. In this excellent piece for FanGraphs last year, author Ben Clemons studied tens of thousands of games’ worth of data to try to determine if a game-tying rally in the bottom half of an inning is predictive of a win.

The short answer is ‘no.’

Though I still recommend you read the article, Clemons breaks it down plenty concisely in his conclusion:

“...If you look at what the players have actually done on the field, in major league games in the 21st century, you’ll find that the momentum of a game has essentially no effect on what happens from there on out.”

Okay, fine, there’s no mathematical proof for momentum as it relates to win value or predictability; the same can (sadly) be said for measurable ‘Clutch’. However, this is one of those moments where I’m more willing to lean on the intangible than the data.

I was publicly hopeful when McLean got called up that it would spark a team-wide turnaround…and just look at what’s happening with this team since his debut:

• Mark Vientos is hitting .382/.436/.941 with five homers, four doubles, and 14 RBI in nine games;

• McLean is 2-0 with a sub-1.50 ERA and 15 strikeouts in 12.1 innings of work;

• Tyrone Taylor is slashing .444/.545/.556 in six games back after 10 days on the bench

How can I help but feed into the idea that the rookies might, in fact, save the season?

We’ve seen this before: the Mets were 35-62 when David Wright debuted in 2004 — they went 36-29 the rest of the way. And the Captain himself was also recently publicly hopeful about the youth inspiring a turnaround in the locker room…

Call me crazy, delusional, blissfully hopeful, a Kool-Aid consumer, whatever. Provided Tong’s debut on Friday goes even half as well as McLean’s, I’ll have that much more faith that what we’re seeing is real.

Still not convinced? How’s this — since McLean’s debut on 8/16, the Mets rank:

• 1st in MLB in team average: .316

• 1st in OPS: .939

• 1st in wRC+: 164

• 1st in Position Player WAR: 4.1

• 4th in homers: 17

• 4th in FIP: 3.80

• 5th in Pitching WAR: 1.6

Seems like a pretty compelling case to me.

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Around the League 🚩

• Clayton Kershaw allowed a run over six innings as the Dodgers doubled up the Reds 6-3 in LA

• Riley Greene hit the longest homer in Tigers Statcast-era history with a 471-foot blast to dead center at Sutter Health in a 7-6 extra innings loss to the A’s

• Justin Verlander passed Walter Johnson on the all-time strikeout list in the Giants 5-2 win over the Cubs

• Giancarlo Stanton continued his current hot streak, driving in all five of the Yankees’ runs in their 5-1 win over Washington