QUEENS, NY — New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns has grown weary of the notion that his team’s core of Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, and Brandon Nimmo cannot win the big game when it matters — especially because they have done just that over the last two weeks.
Yet after outlasting the Milwaukee Brewers in the Wild Card Series and taking the Philadelphia Phillies down in five games in the NLDS, the Mets enter Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday night as underdogs against the juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers.
“I think they showed that’s bulls—t,” Stearns said following the Mets’ thrilling Game 4 NLDS win over Philadelphia at Citi Field. “This core has been winning games since June 1, so we could put that to bed right now.”
The Mets overcame a miserable start — they were 11 games under .500 on June 2 — to sneak into the postseason by being the best team in baseball for the better part of the last four months.
Lindor played at a near-MVP-like clip that should see him finish No. 2 in the award’s voting behind Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani, who posted the first 50/50 season in MLB history.
Alonso, who had a down regular season by his standards, has three home runs in seven postseason games, including a three-run round-tripper in the top of the ninth inning in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series to overturn a 2-0 deficit and book the Mets’ spot in the NLDS.
Nimmo drove in three and scored four runs in four NLDS games against the Phillies — the longest-tenured Met finally getting to the NLCS after making his MLB debut one year after New York won the pennant in 2015.
“We just won two postseason series against two really good teams, and we got the first clinch at Citi Field,” Nimmo said. “That’s something that’s really special because until you do something, there’s always a faux pas around it. That makes it even harder to do. And we just did it, we just broke that barrier. So year, I think it’s complete bullcrap too.”
