Multiple Grimaces, including the genuine one, plus Mr. and Mrs. Met, Candelita, Frank the Tank and other assorted Mets-themed celebrities are living it up in Queens these days, luxuriating in baseball’s best story and, for now, maybe its best team, too. The Mets are hot, maybe just hot enough to keep this blue and orange celebration alive.
There’s a party going on in Flushing, and the way things are going, it may last awhile. They may not yet be the hot ticket among the Big Apple glitterati (though superfan Frank is super popular today), but they are undeniably the hot team, the team that puts on the best show and, at least lately, the team that prevails.
In this season of unparalleled parity, a rare year with no 100-game winner, where the Dodgers pitching looks decimated, the Yankees started October in underwhelming fashion and the Phillies seem less than themselves since the All-Star break, the Mets possess the most precious thing in sports. And that is a real chance.
Two years running, the No. 6 seed in the National League has somehow played its way into the World Series. A couple years ago it was this Phillies team, who had the misfortune to face the Astros, who were tough and clutch, and didn’t need to cheat, it turned out. Then last year it was the Diamondbacks, who ran into a team even hotter than them, a Texas Rangers squad that didn’t lose one game on the road. They, too, entered as a wild card, but rode the hot bats of Corey Seager and Adolis Garcia to their first-ever World Series title.
That Rangers team won only 90 games, the Diamondbacks 84. There’s no reason the Mets, winners of 89 games, can’t go that way now. That possibility seemed nutty even to me when I wrote on May 18 that they should make the playoffs. I was just figuring they were in the top 40 percent of teams, not that they could actually challenge the Yankees, Orioles, Dodgers or Phillies. I was just using common sense, which is out the window come October, it seems.
We certainly are a long way from the beginning of the season, back when the Mets started 0-5 and stumbled to 22-33, back when folks were wondering if Francisco Lindor was worth his $341 million contract (he may be worth it just for this year alone!), back when Jorge Lopez was firing his glove into the crowd and the Mets were looking like clear deadline sellers.
The Mets, not just their B-and-C-list celebs, are having fun now. There are ever-present “OMG” signs, the lucky little pumpkin that star slugger Pete Alonso seems to treat like a pet and more.
“We’ve got a lot going on. But we’ve got to keep the main thing the main thing, which is to go out and play baseball,” manager Carlos Mendoza said.
Things change in a hurry in baseball, and in this case, everything changed for the better. Mendoza, a revelation of a manager, made the key change, moving Lindor to leadoff, where he quickly turned into a legit MVP candidate (before Shohei Ohtani showed he’s superhuman, anyway). Mark Vientos replaced Brett Baty at third base, and showed he’s every bit as good as he thought, maybe even better.
Jose Iglesias (stage name Candelita) came up, hit like Luis Arraez, solidified an excellent infield and shed a tough clubhouse reputation, thanks to his ubiquitous “OMG” song, upbeat demeanor and clutch hits. The Mets, a team with a technical $341 million payroll (that includes the Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and James McCann mistakes), got themselves quite a bargain in Iggy at $1.5 million.
This team has a special thing going. Never before has any team played four straight postseason games where the club trailing into the eighth inning won the game, Sarah Langs reported. The Mets did that. Their 13 runs in the eighth and ninth innings through six playoff games is the second most ever, behind the 1936 Yankees, who had 16.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Mets’ playoff run:
- Was this the end of Pete Alonso’s Mets tenure?
- Vaccaro: This has to become the new standard for Mets
- Gutsy Mets lived on the edge too long
- Mets run out of playoff magic as Dodgers send them packing in crushing fashion
The Phillies look like world-beaters on paper, and on the field, and they were inarguably better for a majority of the regular season, too. But the Mets have magic, mojo or momentum now, whether they want to admit it or not. I asked Vientos and Brandon Nimmo if they believe in those things. Vientos said no, but Nimmo copped to momentum being real.
It’s not about luck, it’s about a hot team getting hotter at the right time. Something special’s going on when you keep winning games after trailing late while facing the game’s better closers. They throttled star Braves closer Raisel Iglesias, obliterated star Brewers closer Devin Williams and made the Phillies bullpen — one of the better ones in the game — look worse than their own.
Oh, and at least one A-list celeb showed up in Queens, Keith’s good friend Jerry Seinfeld, an honest-to-goodness fan who must see the Mets are doing the opposite of what’s historically expected of them. No reason to air any grievances now; this is an October that’s most definitely not about nothing.
