The New York Mets are a magic act. Catch their gig and you can’t help but remark, “How did they just do that?” And like great prestidigitators, they are masters of diversion.
Look over here, they beseech, with the hilarious nonsense of Grimace, purple spikes, “OMG,” over the top eyeblack, playoff pumpkins and whatever silly totems of luck to which they bow.
“This,” says 14-year veteran J.D. Martinez, “is the craziest team I’ve ever been on. Just because of the personality.”
During the 2001 World Series, one of the cleverest banners to ever drape an upper deck fluttered from the top tier of Yankee Stadium, borrowing from Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling’s dismissal of the stadium’s mystique and aura. Mystique and aura?
“Those are dancers in a nightclub,” Schilling scoffed. Replied the banner: “Mystique and Aura. Appearing Nightly.” Touché.
It was truth in advertising. The Yankees won the middle three games at Yankee Stadium, the second and third on comebacks that bordered on the supernatural.
Saturday night, after the Mets’ latest gig concluded with another jaw-dropper—down 1–0 with six outs to go against the Philadelphia Phillies, they won NLDS Game 1 going away, 6–2—this was an actual question from a reporter to Martinez:
“Are mojo or momentum real things?”
Replied Martinez, “I mean, I think so.”
Homework assignment for Mets fans to be completed in time for NLDS Game 3 Tuesday at Citi Field: a banner that announces, “Mojo and Momentum. Appearing nightly.”
The magic, of course, is no more real than someone being sawed in half in a box. That’s the diversion. It’s not the great pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The truth of the matter is more prosaic.
While the Mets are baseball’s greatest meme factory, they divert you from the real reason they are the most dangerous team to play right now. Borrowing from their franchise forefathers, the 1986 Mets, one of the greatest rally teams in modern times, these Mets are winning with some serious old-school, put-the-ball in play, ferocious, unbowed and unyielding at-bats.
After Phillies ace Zack Wheeler dominated them for seven innings, the Mets welcomed the Philadelphia bullpen with the kind of rally that seems as antiquated as typewriters, egg cream sodas and daytime World Series games. They scored five times without an extra-base hit.
The staccato rally went like this: single, walk, single, single, sac fly, single, single, sac fly. Three Philadelphia pitchers had to throw 36 pitchers to those eight batters, including 19 with two strikes in which they never did get a third strike. Somewhere Wee Willie Keeler was smiling. The rally was a symphony of beautiful, understated movements: guys staying through the baseball with controlled, level swings.
“I feel like we just have a good team and everyone's just kind of … stubborn,” Martinez said. “Stubborn with their game plans. They’re just selling out on the game plan.”
Before the game, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns attributed the “magic” to the crafting and executing of precisely tailored plans against opposing relievers.
“Everyone has been excellent at making sure they are prepared for who and what they are going to face,” he said.
And then NLDS Game 1 happened on cue. The way the Mets play baseball, no one should be admitted for seating after the fifth inning. This is how their week has gone:
Monday: Down 7–6 to Atlanta in the ninth. Won.
Tuesday: Down 4–3 to Milwaukee in the fifth. Won.
Thursday: Down 2–0 to Milwaukee in the ninth. Won.
Saturday: Down 1–0 to Philadelphia in the eighth. Won.
It was the Mets’ 44th comeback win, more than any team this season. They have jumped teams with more four-plus-run rallies than any other team. I tried to get Brandon Nimmo to explain this Mojo and Momentum thing going on.
“I mean, I think you just get to be around people like J.D. and me and Paco [Francisco Lindor],” Nimmo says. “And when you do that and you watch people prepare for their at bats and then have success, everyone else gravitates toward what they do. So I think it's that kind of leaking over and becoming more of the norm with the guys. And then whoever comes in is like, ‘Oh, everybody else has these game plans’ and goes up there and it just kind of becomes contagious, you know? It's just something that you do.”
The Mets have been on the road for two weeks, 3,500 miles, two champagne celebrations and one hurricane. They have coalesced into a taut, unbreakable unit, the way the Texas Rangers did on a two-week trip that began at the end of the regular season and carried into two rounds of the playoffs, which ultimately led to winning the World Series by going undefeated on the road in October.
Somehow the Mets won Game 1 on a night when Wheeler was simply overpowering. He induced 30 swings and misses, the most by any pitcher in a postseason game since Gerrit Cole in the 2019 ALDS. The shadows resulting from the 4 p.m. start did make hitting treacherous for the first three innings.
“He was throwing airplanes,” Martinez said. “The balls were taking off every which way.”
Said Nimmo, “Wow. The first at bat, I could not see the ball. I could not see it out of his hand, and then like when I did catch it, it was just a dark black ball. And you're like, ‘I don't know what I’m swinging at right here.’ But then there's like an instinct in you that’s like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of here.’ So you swing.”
Wheeler was just as nasty as the light evened out.
“It’s like, ‘Good luck. We just have got to get him out of the game,’” Martinez said. “’We’ve got to find a way to get him out. Because the way he was throwing the ball, it was just incredible.”
And yet the Mets won again. Mark Vientos, seeing Philadelphia reliever Jeff Hoffman for the first time, stroked a two-strike slider for a game-tying single. Nimmo slashed an 0-and-2 fastball from Matt Strahm for an opposite field single that put New York ahead. Later, Jose Iglesias, in his most impressive hit since his “OMG” remix with Pitbull was recorded (it drops Oct. 11), slashed a single on the 10th pitch of an at-bat that began 0-and-2.
Teams are not supposed to rally like this in today’s game, especially not off relief pitching late in games. The major league batting average this season in innings seven through nine was .235—the third lowest ever in a full season. The only seasons worse: 2021and 2022. The Mets don’t care. They are too crazy to care.
“[Harrison] Bader coming in with a crazy outfit, Pete [Alonso] saying some crazy things …” Martinez said, trying to figure out why this is the craziest team of his life. “I dunno. It’s just … fun.”
After Game 2, the Mets will finally head home as the two-week Mojo and Momentum Tour returns to headquarters. They are returning a different team, albeit one that has had its packing skills as tested as their two-strike approaches.
“No, no, no, I really didn’t run out of clothes,” Nimmo said. “I was planning for this, just in case. So, this is why you have preparation, you know? I brought some suits for the playoffs just in case and to prepare for the best. And then you see what happens.
“Honestly, none of us even realized how long it’s been until we won in Milwaukee, and we were like, ‘When's the last time we've been home?’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, it'll be two weeks on Sunday.’”
The trip has been long enough and strange enough for the Mets to have forged an identity: they are a great comeback team, and they know it. “Once you do it this many times,” said hitting coach Eric Chavez, “the guys almost expect it to happen.” The Phillies had better stop the Mojo and Momentum Show during Game 2 Sunday or they might just get rolled. The Mets are dangerous until somebody dents their fortress of confidence. Game 2 just became as close to a must-win game for Philadelphia as one can become without being a true elimination game.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Mets Are Officially Comeback Kings.
