Despite Wild Card Game Loss, Mets Season Not a Disappointment

New York Mets relief pitcher Jeurys Familia (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Bummer. The New York Mets season has come to an end after a 3-0 loss to the Giants at Citi Field on Wednesday night.

The loss stings right now, but it is a miracle that this team even made the playoffs. On August 19, the Mets were 60-62, 5.5 games out of the second Wild Card spot, 7.5 games out of the first Wild Card spot, and were in third place in the N.L East behind the Nationals and Marlins. With all of the injuries the team suffered this year, it would have been easy to mail in the season.

Since August 19, the Mets finished the season with a 27-13 record, the best record in baseball in that span. The Mets had just three starters in their lineup last night that were on their N.L Championship team from last year. Those players are Noah Syndergaard, Curtis Granderson, and Yoenis Cespedes. The rest of the lineup? Rene Rivera didn’t have a job in April, James Loney was in AAA when the year began, T.J. Rivera wasn’t even drafted out of college, Jose Reyes was in the middle of a domestic violence incident and he was just looking for a shot, Jay Bruce wasn’t even a contributor to the offense until the final week of the season, and Asdrubal Cabrera was signed in the offseason.

Not only did they have the depleted offense, but Matt Harvey missed most of the season, Steven Matz was on and off the D.L for a lot of the season, Jacob deGrom missed the final month of the season, and Zack Wheeler never came back from Tommy John surgery like he was expected to. The most consistent pitcher they had was 43-year old Bartolo Colon.

This was a team that was relying on guys no one had ever heard of and yet they still made the playoffs. Love him or hate him, you have to give Terry Collins a ton of credit for keeping the locker room together and getting them to play hard every day.

Also give credit to Madison Bumgarner for throwing a heck of a game last night. He has now thrown two complete game shutouts in the one-game playoff and both of them were on the road. He is arguably the best postseason pitcher of all time. Noah Syndergaard pitched extremely well also giving the Mets seven shutout innings and striking out ten. It was everything baseball fans hoped it would be. A good old-fashioned pitcher’s duel. And did you see that catch Granderson made? It brought back memories of Endy Chavez.

Jeurys Familia is going to get a lot of heat for giving up the three run homer in the ninth. But the reality is that the Mets would not have even sniffed the playoffs without him this year.

It’s a shame the season had to end after 163 short games. But the fact that the season went to that 163^rd game is incredible.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Mets navigate the offseason and how they try to lure Cespedes back to New York. But that’s an article for another day.

Enjoy the rest of the playoffs Mets fans. For the second year in a row, it was a great year.