QUEENS, NY — The New York Mets control their own postseason destiny with a clear objective ahead of them: Take care of business in Atlanta against the Braves, and they can exorcise some demons while clinching their place in October.
“It’s a beautiful thing, right? The job’s not done,” outfielder Brandon Nimmo, whose go-ahead home run in the sixth inning lifted the Mets to a 2-1 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday night, said. “There’s just as much pressure on the next game as there was on this one, and you just have to trust the work that we put in and the team that has gotten us to this point, look to the guy next to you and believe in them and trust in them and know that everybody’s going to give their best effort.
“I know that. It sure makes it fun. It’s playoff baseball… This is what you play for. So you just have to enjoy the moment.”
While Mets teams of the past have sputtered this time of year, the 2024 Mets have continued to flourish, even with their team MVP, Francisco Lindor, going down with a back injury on the very same day of a demoralizing walk-off loss to those very same Phillies last weekend in Philadelphia.
In seven games without him, the Mets have gone 6-1, including taking three of four from the National League’s top team, the Philadelphia Phillies, over the weekend at Citi Field.
A perfectly-timed hot streak has New York sitting in the No. 2 Wild Card spot with a tiebreaker over the Arizona Diamondbacks, who possess an identical 87-69 record. The Braves sit two games back on the outside of the postseason picture.
If the Mets can find a way to take two of three from the Braves in their series which begins on Tuesday night, they will have a three-game lead heading into their final series of the regular season — a three-game set against the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers.
A sweep would all but eliminate their historic NL East rivals, the very same ones who chased down a 101-win Mets team in 2022 with a sweep in Atlanta during the penultimate series of the season to snatch the division from New York’s grasp.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “We have to enjoy the fact that we won this series against a really good team, but we’ll be ready… We have to continue to keep taking care of business. We need a one-game-at-a-time mentality and to do whatever we need to do to get the job done, and that’s what we’ll do.”
Following Sunday’ night’s win, Mendoza disclosed that Luis Severino will start Tuesday’s game against Spencer Swellenbach, David Peterson will get the ball on Wednesday against Braves ace Chris Sale, and Sean Manaea will close out the series on the hill against Max Fried.
“They’re a talented bunch,” Mets slugger Pete Alonso said. “They got good arms, and they’ve got guys who can pick it and swing it. So we got to do our best. We have to be locked in.”
History lends to the suggestion that the Mets will stumble into trouble during the final week of the season. It has happened too many times to recount in just a paragraph.
But, as has been said countless times throughout the last three months, these don’t feel like the same old Mets — and it would be fitting to see three pitchers who have been written off in recent years clinch what was the improbable of concepts back in early June.
A resurgent pitching staff has been supported by a lineup that has simply found a way to get it done by committee. Over their last seven games, eight different batters have recorded two or more RBI to account for the team’s 45 runs during that span.
“This is what our identity is,” Alonso said. “We fight and scratch for every pitch, every out.”
They will continue to do just that in the hopes of getting back to Citi Field to experience an even more boisterous version of Sunday night’s sellout crowd of 43,139. To do that, though, they would not only have to make the playoffs, they would have to win the best-of-three Wild Card series on the road before getting to host Game 3 of the NLDS.
“That’s the goal,” Nimmo said. “Our goal is to get back here and be playing playoff baseball in October. There’s a lot of hoops to get through in order to to do that, but there is no doubt that that is our goal. We have to take care of business and be present in the situation. otherwise, it will not happen.”
