At some point in the months ahead, perhaps that six-game loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS last October will be remembered as a coming-of-age moment for the Mets.
That is, they clearly weren’t good enough at the time but off their impressive series win this weekend at Citi Field it appears these Mets have taken important strides in matching up with baseball’s glamour team.
For starters, don’t dismiss the grit they showed, bouncing back from that agonizing 13-inning defeat on Friday night to win the final two games at Citi Field, including Sunday night’s 3-1 win behind Kodai Senga.
“Why you gotta bring that back up?” Tyrone Taylor said, only half-kiddingly when a reporter asked what it said about his team. “But, yeah, we’re pumped about it.”
If you were looking for him to expound on that answer, well, he didn’t. It’s not Taylor’s style. When he was asked how he pulled off his spectacular throw, with all his momentum going to his left, that nailed Mookie Betts at the plate in the first inning, his reaction was basically, “I thought (Luis) Torrens made a nice tag.”
I point that out because Taylor’s modest description of the play was emblematic of the Mets’ reaction to winning the series from the big, bad Dodgers.
Nobody was beating their chest, put it that way. As manager Carlos Mendoza said more than once this weekend, “We know we’re good too.”
Fair enough. Still, what’s significant is the way the Mets bounced back, doing it mostly with pitching against one of the most imposing lineups in the game.
To that end Mendoza said his team did learn a valuable lesson from that NLCS that they apparently took to heart.“We attacked,” the manager said of the way the Mets pitched, holding the Dodgers to a total of three runs in the final two games. “We saw it in the playoffs last year. We gave them free passes and it cost us.
“We did a better job of attacking this time and we got results.”
On Saturday night David Peterson struck out Shohei Ohtani three times and pitched into the eighth inning in a game when the Mets’ bullpen was exhausted, but if there was a moment that best defined the attack mentality Mendoza referenced, it was the third inning on Sunday night.
Ohtani had ambushed Senga for a monster home run in the first inning, a moment that had to sting for the Mets’ ace against his fellow countryman. Yet, in the third Senga did indeed attack Ohtani, striking him out on three pitches, a 91-mph cutter, an 83-mph ghost fork, and then a 96-mph fastball above the strike zone that Ohtani chased for the K.
It was a statement of sorts by Senga that he was up to the task, despite the fact that Mendoza said of him, “he didn’t have his good forkball tonight but he found a way. That tells you how good he is.”
Senga didn’t seem to entirely agree about the ghost fork. He indicated that he believed the Dodgers were going to the plate looking for his forkball, and he had to adjust.
“That’s very Dodger-like,” he said. “They’re a clever team. They have a bunch of clever hitters.”
At least partly as a result, Senga had to work awfully hard and was constantly in deep counts, throwing 91 pitches to get through five innings, and 101 in 5 1/3 when Mendoza pulled him for Ryne Stanek.
Four walks and five hits made for a lot of traffic on the bases, but once again he was at his best when pitching out of jams.“He made some huge pitches,” said Mendoza. “That’s who he is.”
That and 3 2/3 near-perfect innings from the bullpen, on a night when Edwin Diaz wasn’t available after pitching Friday and Saturday, locked up the Dodgers’ big bats for the second straight night.
It’s significant because, once again, it was evidence that the Mets aren’t leading MLB in team ERA (2.81) with smoke and mirrors. Just as they did to the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs, two other powerful offenses, their pitching proved to be for real.
And it was needed because the Mets still can’t seem to get the bats going in a big way. It was a good sign that Pete Alonso broke out of his career-long home run drought with a two-run shot in the first inning, but otherwise it was another quiet night offensively.
Instead, it came down to the little things, if you will. Taylor’s throw in the first inning may well have changed everything, preventing the Dodgers from taking a 2-0 lead after Ohtani’s home run, an error by Mark Vientos, and a double by Freddie Freeman.
There was also Juan Soto’s hustle, notable after what happened in Boston last week, as he beat out a hard ground ball after a bobble by Max Muncy with two outs in the bottom of the first, allowing Alonso to get a turn and hit his home run.
There was also a gorgeous double play in the sixth inning that featured Brett Baty, playing second base, handling a tough hop and backhanding a flip perfectly to Francisco Lindor coming full speed across the bag and making the throw.
Soto even chimed in with a nice running catch at the fence to rob Michael Conforto of an extra-base hit in the seventh inning.
All of it making a case that these Mets could be a more well-rounded team than the one that lost to the Dodgers last October, especially with a healthy Senga on the mound.
It’s a long way to another postseason matchup with LA, of course, but if this weekend proved anything, it was that Mendoza was right to keep making his point whenever anybody wanted to wax poetic about the Dodgers:
Yes, these Mets are pretty good too.
