Last Friday night, the New York Mets waited out a 98-minute rain delay, overcame a three-run ninth-inning deficit against the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and then went scoreless for an unfathomable four straight extra Manfred Mann ghost runner innings in a 7-5 loss that ended at 12:56 a.m. local time.
And wizened Mets observers everywhere were pretty sure we’d just seen the Mets’ season end with it.
Except these are the new Mets — nothing at all like the old Mets, even if they share the DNA that forever makes them the most interesting, endearing and dramatic team in town.
Despite still struggling to find their way offensively, the Mets enter this afternoon’s interleague series finale against the Chicago White Sox with four straight wins since the kind of loss that used to end their season.
A 6-4 victory Tuesday snapped a 13-game stretch in which the Mets scored five or fewer runs. They’ve scored just 91 runs this month, during which the trio of Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto are hitting a combined .227 with 13 home runs and 42 RBIs. Soto, in the first season of his infamous $765 million deal, hasn’t homered in his last 70 plate appearances.
The Mets have made the games against the barely major league White Sox a little more interesting than necessary. Before fending off a series of late comeback attempts Tuesday, they earned a 2-1 win Monday thanks to eighth- and ninth-inning sacrifice flies by Soto and Lindor.
But figuring out a way to keep winning and stay comfortably ensconced in a playoff spot — the Mets are 1 1/2 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East but tied for the second-best record in the Senior Circuit and three games clear of the final wild-card spot — instead of allowing frustrating defeats to snowball, sure beats the alternative.
The Mets have lost at least 17 games in a month 16 times since 2009, the first season in which Bernie Madoff-related financial issues impacted the ability of the Wilpons to properly field a major league product.
Eleven of those miserable months happened in May, June or July — just in time to negate any promising starts and end the Mets’ playoff hopes.
Except last year, when a 7-19 May — the worst May for the Mets since 1993, when the “Worst Team Money Could Buy II” finished with 103 losses — marked a turning point for the franchise.
The Mets dropped 11 games under .500 on May 29 following a three-game sweep at the hands of the Dodgers but went a major league-leading 67-40 thereafter and made it to the NL Championship Series before falling to Los Angeles.
The stirring run to the edge of the World Series permanently changed the vibes at Citi Field, where the air is still fun and festive even as expectations for the Mets are raised. The slumping Soto is still being afforded the patience Mets fans never provided any of the team’s previous big-name acquisitions.
The new Mets made their biggest statement of all by overcoming Friday’s disappointing loss to take the series from the Dodgers. David Peterson, the type of post-hype prospect the Mets never had the patience to develop in the before times, pitched a season-high 7 2/3 innings Saturday to spare a bullpen taxed from the night before. Kodai Senga allowed a titanic leadoff homer to Shohei Ohtani and nothing else Sunday, when Alonso answered Ohtani with a two-run shot in the bottom of the first.
“I think the experiences that we had last year helps,” Peterson said Monday. “From where we started to where we ended up, I think it showed us a lot about ourselves and what we’re capable of.”
Up to and including changing the entire narrative — and course — of a franchise.
