BOSTON — The games always seem to take longer in “America’s Most Beloved Ballpark,” (their catchphrase, not mine), and this one definitely was. It lasted 21 hours over two days. Nothing comes easy for the 2023 Mets, but they survived the torrential rain on Friday night and outlasted the red-hot Red Sox on Saturday afternoon to win the first game of a makeshift, marathon doubleheader.
We know the baseball season is famously long, too, which could be a blessing or a curse for your team from Queens. The Mets appear to finally be getting their act together. But is there time? Or will it prove to be too much time spent as a surprise also-ran?
This competition between teams on the bubble (will they buy or sell?) could easily tell the tale. You might call it a matchup of the mediocre. But it also may give the Mets a chance at a miracle if they can get out of Fenway Park with a couple of wins.
“We’re not giving up. We’re never giving up,” Mark Canha said after the 5-4 victory brought the Mets to 46-51. “We’re just going to fight every day.”
No, these Mets aren’t quite dead yet. They may need the help of one of the world-class medical centers here, but they still have the hint of a pulse.
Sure, their chances remain slim to get back to the postseason. Ninety-seven games into the season, they are still under .500, too many games out to mention and still no semblance of the team that somehow won 101 games last year before evaporating late.
But every once in a while they show signs to make you believe there’s a chance. The Mets flexed the kind of muscle seen too infrequently this season on Friday, clobbering two homers on Day 1 of the twin bill to spearhead a comeback win — one each by the beloved Brandon Nimmo and the not-as-beloved Daniel Vogelbach.
Then on Saturday, the beleaguered bullpen threw 5 ²/₃ innings of one-run ball against one of the better lineups going. Now, that was a pleasant surprise.
Maybe, just maybe, they have another Mets miracle in them. There certainly was a nice spirit in the crowd that was a mass gathering of Yankees haters. After the “let’s go Mets,” chants were drowned out, there was a rare spirit of cooperation among the fans that stuck it out for the second day. Followers of both teams joined together with a profane chant about the team both sides love to hate. They all yelled “Yankees suck” — and they probably wouldn’t get a major argument from the 27-time world champions at the moment.
The Mets haven’t been so hot, either, to be fair. But perhaps if they show this sort of fight — they erased an early 3-0 lead against a newly contending team — they can turn themselves into a threat.
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Boston’s bunch has played so well lately that they have switched from almost certain sellers to likely buyers as we move within 10 games of the trade deadline. They may be unwittingly providing the kind of inspiration the Mets need to avoid a dread sale.
“It always comes down to that last week. We have a veteran group here who knows how it works,” Canha said. “We know how important these last few games are, for sure.”
As we’ve noted in this space a few times already, there’s no sense for the Mets to sell since they lack the kind of players that make a sale worthwhile. The only way they could bring back top-100 type prospects is if they offered to pay most or all of the contracts of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, in effect buying a prospect or two. That seems unseemly.
But mostly, it doesn’t seem necessary. Scherzer (the Game 2 pitcher Saturday) and Verlander remain reasons 1 and 1A the Mets can still get back in this. Scherzer has his patented slider back, and he has been dealing. Verlander went eight innings his last time out. It was like the good ol’ days.
“The talent on that club is more than enough to make a run,” one NL scout said.
The Mets will obviously need a few things to go much better to have a real chance. But who’s to say they can’t? Did anyone expect Pete Alonso to be hitting .207 more than halfway into the season? Did anyone foresee Jeff McNeil losing an MLB-high 78 points off his batting average?
For all the hand-wringing about the Mets’ vaunted rotation, their issue lately has been hitting, let’s not kid ourselves. The averages, up and down the lineup, range from poor to putrid. Rookie Francisco Alvarez may be the only one in there regularly who’s overachieving (or maybe he is just this good, we don’t know yet).
Meanwhile, the overachieving Red Sox have a couple of guys hitting over .300, which is like the new .350 (of course, the embarrassingly generous official scoring here can’t hurt those averages). Anyway, the Red Sox are showing the Mets what’s possible.
And it should be possible. Really, it should.
