The New York Mets are familiar with making comebacks. They saved their best comeback for the last day of the regular season.
They came back from being down 3-0 in the eighth inning and 7-6 in the ninth to secure a playoff spot with Francisco Lindor’s two-run homer, winning 8-7 against the Atlanta Braves in the first game of a makeup doubleheader on Monday.
This was fitting for a team that started 0-5 and seemed far from playoff material when they were 11 games under .500 in late May.
“Everybody had us out, even before the year started, and here we are, man,” said rookie manager Carlos Mendoza.
The Mets lost the second game 3-0, but it didn’t matter. Pete Alonso and the Mets had already secured their 11th postseason appearance, advancing to a best-of-three NL Wild Card Series that begins Tuesday in Milwaukee.
“We’re a franchise that hasn’t had enough of these moments,” said first-year president of baseball operations David Stearns during the celebration in the clubhouse after the games. “We’ve got more work to do. I don’t think anyone in here is satisfied with just one celebration.”
Lindor, who returned on Friday from a back injury that kept him out since September 15, delivered the big hit by sending a ball into the Braves bullpen off Pierce Johnson.
“In slow motion it felt like,” Lindor said. “Emotion. Emotion. It felt like I got the pitch that I wanted. And you never know if the ball is going to go out or not but I feel like I got it 100%. We’re one step closer. Now we’ve got to finish it. Finish, finish, finish.”
When asked what he was thinking while running the bases, Lindor replied, “My back hurts. I’m tired. I know how good Atlanta is.”
Before this game, New York had lost 77 consecutive games when trailing by three runs in the eighth inning or later since May 17, 2023.
“I’ve never seen a game like that. It was just a total rollercoaster,” owner Steve Cohen said. “I had tears in my eyes when we went ahead and then I was in shock when we fell behind. And then Francisco, just a big-boy moment, rises to the occasion. I mean, he must have dreamt of that as a kid.”
This game reminded fans of 1973 when the Mets also secured a playoff spot on the day after the regular season was supposed to end. Back then, they beat the Chicago Cubs 6-4 to win the NL East title.
“These are special moments. You’ve got to enjoy these moments,” said Stearns, who grew up as a Mets fan in New York City. “This is the standard of where we should be.”
This year, a 10-3 loss to the Dodgers on May 29 completed a three-game sweep by Los Angeles at Citi Field, where the Mets were outscored 18-5.
New York fell to 22-33 in its first season under Mendoza and was six games behind the last wild-card spot, needing to catch up to seven teams.
Lindor called a players-only meeting. As the players explained, they talked about some issues in the clubhouse that day and promised to focus on positivity, good preparation, and a team-first approach to help each other and win games.
“We just opened the floor and talked about ways we can turn it around,” outfielder Brandon Nimmo said. “Just felt like a boiling-over point.”
Since then, with Lindor leading the way, they have the best record in the majors at 67-40, outscoring opponents 541-433.
“It’s been an uphill fight,” Lindor said. “We put ourselves in a big hole and we kept climbing and kept climbing. We kept our shoulders above water. After the All-Star break, you know, we never believed that we were drowning.”
One of New York’s biggest concerns heading into the Wild Card Series is the availability of star closer Edwin Díaz, who bounced back from a blown save to earn the win in the doubleheader opener. The right-hander has thrown 66 pitches over the past two days.
But the Mets haven’t let anything stop them all season.
“Nobody thought back in April outside of this clubhouse that we were going to make the playoffs, that we had any shot,” Nimmo said.
“We were able to go out and go through really, really tough times and find ourselves on the other side and pull ourselves up and really rally together and have each other’s backs and be able to culminate in this.”
Since Cohen bought the team before the 2021 season, the Mets have been the biggest spenders in baseball. They won 101 games in 2022 and made the playoffs, but lost a three-game Wild Card Series at home to San Diego.
Last year, the Mets fell to 75-87, despite having a record payroll of $319.5 million and paying a record $100.8 million luxury tax.
This year, they started as the top spender again with a projected $321 million, which included $70 million in payments to other teams for traded players Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and James McCann. Their projected luxury tax was $83 million.
After the win in the doubleheader opener, Cohen posted on X: “Have you ever seen a game like that? I am so proud of this team. Met fans, go out and celebrate.” “This was such a massive group effort,” Alonso said. “We earned it.”
