MIAMI — Pete Alonso stood, lips slightly parted, and dropped his arms in disbelief. Alonso stared into left field, where Javier Sanoja had just made a running snare of his 115.9 mph liner, the hardest-hit ball by a Met this year. In another world, in another season, that line drive could have changed everything. In this Mets reality, it changed not a thing.
Instead, Alonso’s liner encapsulated one of the most puzzling, frustrating seasons in franchise history. On June 12, the Mets held the best record in baseball, a full 21 games over .500. They had stretched their NL East lead to 5 1/2 games with an 8 1/2-game margin for error in the fledgling playoff race.
Three and a half months later, their season ended without a postseason berth. In a win-or-go-home game, the Mets lost to the Marlins, their decades-long tormentors, 4-0, at loanDepot park. Over their final 93 games, the Mets went 38-55, producing a better record than only four teams: the bottom-feeding White Sox, Nationals, Twins and Rockies. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only two teams in Major League history — the 1905 Indians and 1977 Cubs — finished with worse records after climbing at least 21 games over .500.
In the end, the pitching problems that had haunted the Mets since the early days of summer became their undoing. In a must-win game, manager Carlos Mendoza drew up an aggressive plan, knowing he had 11 pitchers available to use. But things went haywire in the fourth, after Brooks Raley allowed a one-out single. Mendoza responded by summoning Ryne Stanek, who began the afternoon with a 5.01 ERA. Stanek promptly served up RBI doubles to two of the three batters he faced, before Tyler Rogers entered and permitted two more runs to score.
The four-run inning occurred almost simultaneously with a lead-changing rally in Milwaukee, where the Reds lost to the Brewers. That didn’t wind up mattering. To qualify for the postseason, the Mets needed a win combined with a Reds loss. Any other outcome would send them home.
Now, the question becomes where the Mets go from here. All-Stars Alonso and Edwin Díaz can both opt out of their contracts and become free agents after the World Series. The rest of the Mets’ offensive core of Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo is under team control for at least the next half-decade. More uncertainty surrounds the pitching staff, even with rookies Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat and Jonah Tong prepared to help stabilize it for years to come.