Honorably Discharged

Today marks the nineteenth anniversary of Faith and Fear in Flushing, founded February 16, 2005. For the now twenty Spring Trainings that this blog has existed, we have set out annually in the sincere hope that the Met season ahead serves as prelude to a Met postseason. That’s really all you can ask of a regular season, that it becomes successful enough for more baseball once most baseball teams have to go home. In the ongoing countdown of MY FAVORITE SEASONS, FROM LEAST FAVORITE TO MOST FAVORITE, 1969-PRESENT, we have, to this point, revisited 37 seasons that have produced their share of warm Met memories…but zero Met playoffs.

This installment is the first to take us beyond the traditional finish line. Not all that far beyond it, but tangibly through the tape. Ladies and gentlemen and Mets fans of all ages, I give you, at last, a season that got us to the tournament.

18. 2016
If you have seen the movie Stripes repeatedly (and I hope you have), you might remember Sergeant Hulka primarily as the drill sergeant who gives Bill Murray grief despite Murray praising him as the platoon’s “big toe,” or perhaps as the inspiration behind the meme that urges every self-serious Internet arguer to LIGHTEN UP FRANCIS. I have seen the movie Stripes repeatedly, and when I think of Sergeant Hulka, I think of the 2016 Mets.

Specifically, I am reminded of the introductory chat Hulka has with his men when he instructs them, “You don’t say ‘sir’ to me. I’m a sergeant. I work for a living.” The 2016 Mets connection here relates to the postseason banner that troop of Mets earned by dint of their Wild Card berth. For six years, until that aspect of Citi Field decor was reimagined in 2023, the marker commemorating what elevated 2016 into rafter prominence was graphically identical to those explaining 1969, 1973, 1986 and so on. Different words, but same pantheon. Except the 2016 Mets never won a world championship, a league championship, a division championship or a postseason series as their eight postseason predecessors had. Now and then a picture of the nine banners all lined up in a row would appear online, and like clockwork, some party pooper would sniff that it was embarrassing to see 2016 being given the same treatment as the other years listed — because in the Internet age, being a Mets fan too often means finding something to complain out loud about.

To which I would think, LIGHTEN UP FRANCIS. The 2016 Mets didn’t make the rules that said if you finish with one of the two best non-first place records in your league, you get to call yourself a postseason team. They simply abided by them, falling in line just in time to turn themselves into a lean, mean fighting machine, working to live another day…if just one day. The Mets were scheduled to play 162 games in 2016, as was everybody. Ten of thirty Major League Baseball teams could build an extension to their allotment. The Mets were one of the ten to march beyond Game 162. Where they wound up was no mere Game 163, to invoke another blithe dismissal of their accomplishment. It was the playoffs, befitting a playoff team. The Mets were licensed to print postseason tickets, sell postseason merchandise and, through whatever MLB formula took precedence, open their stadium for postseason play.

I will grant it was different from winning a division en route to a pennant round or World Series, and, given that it was a one-and-done affair, with the Mets sadly falling into the Done category, it didn’t quite leave behind that lingering “Flushing in the Fall” feel an autumn existing on the edge will. Still, one night in a sanctioned battle to move on within the postseason is definitely the postseason. Twenty teams received no so-called participation commendation that year, and you can’t tear that stripe off the 2016 Mets’ uniforms. So maybe consider them something akin to a Command Sergeant Major among Mets teams, the non-commissioned officer outranking all the enlisted personnel from 1962 forward who never made the playoffs in orange and blue.

When this unit bucked for a further promotion, they received an honorable discharge from Madison Bumgarner. Yet like Murray’s platoon on graduation day after Sergeant Hulka went down with an injury, boy did they come through when the odds were against them.

Long before they left an oddly polarizing banner behind, the 2016 Mets were a legitimate breeding ground for gripes if you watched them repeatedly in the middle of their muddy five-month run that seemed to leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere by the middle of August. You could have been excused for forgetting they were what are commonly called defending league champions entering the season. It’s a handy phrase that tells you only about the year before, not the year in progress. There’s nothing to defend during the year in progress. Last year’s flag is safe and secure and flying on a pole. It’s not going to be taken away from you no matter how different the year in progress reveals itself relative to the year before. The 2016 Mets were bound to be different from the 2015 pennant-winners. The calendar ensured that conceptually, the reality of churn and attrition made it factual.

As 2016 crept further from 2015, the 2016 Mets bore less and less resemblance to the team that lit up the previous summer, both in terms of performance and composition. If I may invoke another film close to my heart, they were a team full of Wolfmen, as in Scott “Wolfman” Pell, the bassist for hire who was brought in at the last minute to replace the AWOL T.B. Player (a.k.a. the bass player) as those lovable one-hit Wonders prepared to appear on The Hollywood Television Showcase in That Thing You Do!. Wolfman could handle their tune, junior, and that was all you needed to know about him. The group was one-quarter different in the hours leading up to their playing before their largest audience ever, but if you liked the Wonders five minutes ago, their manager Mr. White figured, you’ll like them just fine now.

Meet your new catcher, René Rivera.
Meet your new first baseman, James Loney.
Meet your new second baseman, Neil Walker.
Meet your next new second baseman, T.J. Rivera.
Meet your new shortstop, Asdrubal Cabrera.
Meet your old shortstop who’s your new third baseman, Jose Reyes.
Meet your new trade deadline acquisition, Jay Bruce.
Remeet your old trade acquisition, Yoenis Cespedes. His leg is probably bothering him.

Fortunately, Cespedes, who we thought might have been a rental in 2015, reupped for all of 2016 and persevered through what appeared to be six months of aches and pains. And good old Curtis Granderson was a mainstay, even if you suddenly found him in center to make room for Bruce in right, where Bruce wasn’t remotely the revelation Cespedes in left had been a year earlier, but every little bit helped. The rotation that pitched us to the World Series the prior October required lots of help. Matt Harvey was out. Jacob deGrom was out. Steven Matz was out. Noah Syndergaard and Bartolo Colon were it, until two rookies, Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman, came along. There were others who made starts, but there was literally no Fifth Starter.

From this stew that included dashes of effervescent callup Brandon Nimmo, neglected second-year man Michael Conforto, utility dudes Matt Reynolds, Ty Kelly and Alejandro De Aza and a handful of holdovers either recovering from injuries or finding themselves, Terry Collins ladled out a team that couldn’t quite bring itself to fall out of playoff contention despite doing its best to make other plans once the leaves turned brown. After getting blown out, 8-1, in San Francisco on August 19, the 2016 Mets sat two games under .500 and 5½ games south of the nearest available Wild Card slot, a veritable crowd of contenders elbowing them out of the picture.

Then the 2016 Mets became a reasonable facsimile of the 1973 Mets. They took the next two from the Giants, with Cespedes homering three times, which was both a nice reminder of what Peerless Yo from near Manzanillo (Cuba, that is) could do by way of carrying a contender, and a timely turnaround considering San Fran was one of the umpteen teams ahead of the Mets in the playoff scramble. The road trip moved on to St. Louis, where the Mets took another two out of three from another Wild Card rival. The pitchers who registered New York’s wins were Gsellman, in his first career appearance, and Lugo, in his second career start. We barely knew who these guys were, but they’d just gotten us over .500 to stay.

After winning four of five from the Giants and Cardinals, the schedule turned marshmallow soft, but don’t tell the Mets that. For too much of 2016, the Mets were an opponent others might have looked forward to feasting on. Now it was our turn to get out the forks and knives and start carving up the second division — with humility. That may have been our secret karmic weapon.

You come into a season raising a flag and you may think you’re entitled to look down on other teams, particularly teams that have caused you grief in the past. “You think you’re better than me?” the Phillies and Braves and most everybody else could have asked the defending champs, and I would have answered, on behalf of the Mets, yes, we won the pennant last year. That attitude never takes us far. So, in my mind, we took on the fluffy portion of the schedule with respect for our also-ran opponents, and we did that thing we did. None of that “I am Spartacus!” crap. Booking our gigs, playing our best, removing our shades when we left the stage.

Home for two of three from the rebuilding Phillies.

Three of four from the reviled Marlins, who we’d actually trailed in the standings (but not anymore).

Two of three as we stepped up in class to play the first-place Nationals.

A three-game sweep of the addled Reds in Cincinnati.

Two of three in our final trip to house of horrors emeritus Turner Field, where the Braves had already packed it in en route to their suburban paradise.

Only one of three at Nationals Park, but the one was a thriller, picked off when T.J. Rivera chose the tenth inning to whack his first major league homer (and one of the losses was of the 1-0 variety, which even the ’73 Mets had to withstand down their stretch).

Back to Citi Field for a three-game sweep of the Twins when they were at their lowest; Curtis Granderson waved a magic wand twice in extra innings in the middle game, homering to tie the score in the eleventh, and homering to win the damn thing in the twelfth.

To keep us humble, a three-game sweep at home at the hands of the Braves, which was really at the hands of their center fielder Ender Inciarte absolutely robbing Cespedes of a dramatic walkoff home run over Citi Field’s center field wall in the series finale, a kick in the stomach that landed like a huffy love tap because, by then, we had forged a three-way tie among us, the Cards and the Jints for the two Wild Card spots. You can haunt us, Braves, but you can’t kill us.

Besides, we had the Game of the Year awaiting us the very next night to commence a four-game series versus Philly: 11 innings, 27 Mets and 263 minutes of angsty action, culminating in Asdrubal Cabrera blasting a three-run homer that the do-it-all shortstop — he was so humble, he helpfully removed his teammates’ batting helmets after they rounded the bases — so knew was gone upon contact, that he raised his arms in exuberance before Gary Cohen could utter the first of the two OUTTA HEREs the dinger rated. Asdrubal was preceded in the clutch by old man Reyes, whose two-run homer in the ninth tied matters at six, and sturdy Cespedes, who drove in a tying run in the fifth and a temporary go-ahead run in the seventh. To win, 9-8, the Mets needed all 27 men Collins used, but it was Cabrera, Reyes and Cespedes who were putting their firma especial, or special signature, on this dash toward October.

The Mets beat the Phillies the next night; lost to them the night thereafter (10-8 after falling behind, 10-0); and set a franchise record for largest margin of shutout victory, stomping Philly in the home finale, 17-0. Had the Mets thought about cultivating hubris, humility awaited them in Miami, where the Marlins were in mourning for their ace pitcher, Jose Fernandez, who had died over the weekend in a boating accident. The Mets would be the Marlins’ first opponents since the tragedy. Colon gave up a leadoff home run to Dee Gordon, who hadn’t homered all season. The Marlins, all of them wearing FERNANDEZ 16 on their backs, won and then laid their jerseys on the mound in tribute to their fallen comrade. I would have much preferred the Mets winning any game in the midst of a race for a playoff berth, but some nights, other forces prevail and you have to briefly bow your head and roll with it.

Five games remained. The Mets controlled their own destiny in the prosaic sense. They beat Miami twice, then the Phillies in their series opener at Citizens Bank Park. If they won on Saturday, October 1, they’d clinch not only the Wild Card that appeared almost beyond comprehension six weeks earlier, they’d nail down home field for the game that would determine if they’d be more than one-and-done.

The good news: Colon pitched five solid innings, Loney belted a two-run homer, bullpen stalwarts Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia threw a pair of shutdown frames, Conforto in left came through with a sliding snatch of Aaron Altherr’s sinking liner with two out in the ninth, and for the second consecutive season, the New York Mets had made it to the playoffs, going 27-12 when it couldn’t have counted more.

The less good news: The Mets were done after one in the round where everything counts. Syndergaard (7 IP, 2 H, 3 BB, 10 SO, 0 R) was outlasted by Bumgarner (9 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 6 SO, 0 R). Home field advantage was no advantage versus MadBum, who’d always been maddeningly untouchable at Citi Field. Familia’s 51 saves established a single-season Met record that may remain out of reach for all future closers in the era of load management, but with the score tied at nothing-nothing in the ninth, Conor Gillaspie didn’t care what Jeurys saved previously. The journeyman infielder whose major league career wouldn’t last beyond the following August socked a three-run shot in the ninth that broke the tense scorelessness that until that moment felt like it would never be resolved. Three Mets who made so much noise to get the team this far — Cespedes, Granderson (who crashed into the fence to swipe a double from Brandon Belt and preserve the 0-0 deadlock in the sixth) and T.J. Rivera — each went down quietly. The same Giants who fell twice to the Mets in San Francisco when we began hearing the faintest echoes of You Gotta Believe prevailed, 3-0. Hard not to be humble when Madison Bumgarner is on the mound in October.

A less than stellar postscript to a fabulous last chapter. We captured the flag-like object that was within our grasp. Any further advancement would have been gravy. I still seethe at the thought of Gillaspie, but the 2016 Mets earned the marker that proclaimed they gave us a banner year. No need to show further ID, Sarge. Officers Club privileges are hereby extended into perpetuity.

PREVIOUS ‘MY FAVORITE SEASONS’ INSTALLMENTS
Nos. 55-44: Lousy Seasons, Redeeming Features
Nos. 43-34: Lookin’ for the Lights (That Silver Lining)
Nos. 33-23: In the Middling Years
Nos. 22-21: Affection in Anonymity
No. 20: No Shirt, Sherlock
No. 19: Not So Heavy Next Time

A new episode of National League Town is up for your Spring Training listening.