The Mets were on the verge of their worst loss of the season, an eighth-inning giveaway to the Washington Nationals that would have stretched the losing streak to five games with the first-place Atlanta Braves coming to town.
Instead, there was Buck Showalter in the interview room about 15 minutes later, telling reporters: “That’s as good a win as we’ve had all year.”
Everyone knew what he meant. Good wasn’t really the right word, not after his team had blown a 7-3 lead in the eighth inning when his lefty specialist, Brooks Raley, gave up a grand slam to the lefty-hitting No. 9 hitter, CJ Abramsby hanging a slider in an 0-1 count.
And let’s not forget the three hit-by-pitches or the error by Francisco Lindor that led to the Raley gopher ball.
So…
Good, no.
Pocket gutsy, absolutely. The 9-8 final score said it all after the Mets responded immediately with their own two-run rally.
Or as Showalter re-phrased it a few minutes later: “The players just refused to lose.”
In truth, it’s hard to do that in baseball. Had the Mets refused to lose some key games at home to inferior teams like these same Nationals or the Chicago Cubs last September, they likely wouldn’t have been in position to be overtaken for the NL East title by the Braves in the last week of the season.
But certainly over the majority of last season, and so far early in this one, these Mets have demonstrated an ability to impose their will on opponents enough to make the case they’ve got the fortitude to win when it counts.
That they didn’t do it last October, however, certainly brings out the magnifying glass earlier than normal in 2023.
And, in truth, it’s hard to know quite what to make of these Mets just yet. A week ago they were playing some outstanding baseball against the Los Angeles Dodgers and then the San Francisco Giants, looking like the best version of the 2022 team in a lot of ways.
And then a four-game losing streak seemed to pop out of nowhere, mostly due to a lack of offense that brought back memories of some of those awful losses to bad teams last September.
On Tuesday and Wednesday they scored a total of one run in losses to these same Nationals, for goodness sake. That speaks to a lack of intensity, west-coast trip hangover or not.
So it would have been ultra-embarrassing to get swept, especially after it seemed they were coasting to an easy win on a night when Joey Lucchesi gave them another solid start.
Then, with the fans at Citi Field booing them all the way to the dugout after that ugly top of the eighth, Starling Marte led off the bottom of the inning by lining a single to center, and then immediately changed the complexion of the inning by stealing second.
“A lot of guys wouldn’t have gone there,” Showalter said, and he was right. If Marte had gotten thrown out there, the Mets’ dugout would have sagged collectively.
Instead, because he was on second, Lindor’s fly ball to center became a productive out, deep enough for Marte to tag up and move to third.
Which also meant that all Pete Alonso had to do was deliver a fly ball, not try to hit the ball out of the ballpark. Alonso probably was feeling enough pressure anyway, as it’s becoming all too clear so far how much this offense depends on him.
When he was hot and hitting 10 home runs to lead the league as of last week, the Mets were clicking offensively and scoring runs. Then he stopped hitting because, again, well, hitting is hard, and the Mets went flat.
By the time he came to the plate in the sixth inning on Thursday night, in fact, Alonso was suddenly mired in an 0-for-19 slump, but then a ground ball to shortstop found a hole because the infield was playing in with Lindor on third base, and, who knows, maybe that was just enough confidence to make a difference when he came to bat in the eighth.
In any case, he looked confident against Mason Thompson, laying off two 95-mph sinkers, one just inside, one just below the strike zone, to get ahead in the count. And when Thompson threw another 95-mph two-seamer above the knees, Alonso delivered a great piece of situational hitting, driving the ball to right-center for a double rather than overswinging and trying to pull the pitch.
That quickly tied the game and then Jeff McNeil worked his magic: a six-pitch at-bat that saw him foul off a tough 2-2 sinker before getting one up in the zone that he barreled up, as he said, and drove deep and off the wall in right-center for a triple and the game-winning RBI.
“It shows a lot about this team to get knocked down there and come back in the bottom of the eighth,” McNeil said. “That was big. It took some big-time at-bats and it shows the kind of baseball we’re used to playing.”
Then he smiled and said, “Hopefully this gives us some momentum for the series against the Braves.”
No, the Mets haven’t forgotten how badly it ended in Atlanta last year. And who knows, the no-show games against the Nationals this week may have had something to do with them looking forward to this first crack against the Braves this season.
It won’t mean a lot in the grand scheme of things, as last year proved, but for starters it could say something about whether David Peterson can be counted on this year.
And, perhaps more importantly, the Mets are going to show up Friday night feeling like they’re ready for whatever the Braves throw at them.
That’s what one gutsy rally and a few big-time at-bats, to use McNeil’s description, did for the Mets on Thursday night.
Maybe Buck was right, at least in this sense: maybe his best players truly refused to lose.