No Good Answer, Obviously

As a connoisseur of postgame media scrums, I recognize a no-win question when I hear it. No-win questions are asked after brutal losses that carry almost definitive consequences. It almost doesn’t matter how the question is answered. The question just has to be asked.

The no-win question that was asked of Carlos Mendoza following the Mets’ mostly self-inflicted 6-2 loss to the Marlins on Friday night in Miami (though, to be the fair, the Fish did some inflicting, too), regarded the mistakes the Mets made, not only in the preceding innings but for weeks on end and how they have gone uncorrected. Carlos Mendoza prefaced his answer with, “That’s a good question, obviously.”

Unless Mendoza had an actual solution and an explanation for why it wasn’t implemented, there is no good answer…obviously. Then again, the question wasn’t asked to garner a rating of how good the inquiry was.

Mendoza continued:

“It’s on me, it’s on all of us. We continue to make the same mistakes, and it’s costing us games.”

Obviousness won that round, but what do you want from a skipper sinking with his ship? The manager is official spokesman for his team’s shortcomings. To Mendoza’s credit, he doesn’t always try to put a happy face on them. There are no happy faces where the 2025 Mets nearing their end are concerned. There is nothing to be happy about. Maybe for a minute, but just wait until the next minute. To paraphrase Felix Unger’s promise when he served as Oscar Madison’s announcer when Oscar hosted a sports call-in show, the team with the frown is coming around to drag you down to the ground.

As these Mets occasionally do, they got our hopes up early, or at least didn’t dash them for a while. They were coming off a solid win in Chicago that followed a crushing loss that followed an exhilarating win that followed two kicks to the midsection that followed a couple of romps that we might have thought negated whatever had been going wrong before. This is a pattern we should be used to by now. The Mets fell to four games over .500 on September 12. On September 26, Friday night, the Mets dipped again to four games over .500. They were famously 21 games over .500 in this very same season. Perhaps we should be impressed that they’ve stopped plummeting and are now merely bouncing around.

Francisco Lindor led off the game by homering against former Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara. Two pitches in, we’re up, 1-0. You want to take this as momentum. Lindor being Lindor in the final days of a season is a wonderful thing, we learned during last season’s final days. We’ve seen reminders of it during this season’s final days. The reigning MVP runner-up reaches 31 home runs, besting a recently great pitcher in the process, as the Mets shoo away the best the Marlins have to offer. If we take care of Alcantara on Friday night, we have no reason to fear whoever they throw at us on Saturday and Sunday. Hell, if the Brewers cooperate, maybe we’ll clinch by Saturday night. Then Juan Soto singles and steals, because if Juan Soto is on first, he can’t stand still. He wants into the 40/40 club. He’s at 43/37 as of the first inning and will up his membership bid to 43/38 by the third inning. As long as he doesn’t get thrown out pursuing his individual goal or take the bat out of somebody’s hands while doing so, the extra ninety feet are usually welcome. Two batters later, Pete Alonso doubles Soto home, collecting his 124th RBI for his efforts.

Are you seeing these numbers? Lindor, Soto, and Alonso are posting what they’re supposed to be posting. If superstar statistics electrified the lineup from the first inning to the ninth, Mendoza would be lobbed questions like, “How about those three guys?” That wasn’t the talk of the scrum.

Brandon Sproat went to work, and it was working out great from the first through the fourth. No hits allowed until the fourth. No serious Marlin threats at all. Nolan McLean gave the Mets what was needed Thursday night at Wrigley for a reasonable period of time, now Sproat seemed to be doing the same. Jonah Tong not so much on Wednesday, but two-thirds of Generation MST3K keeping us in orbit is better than none. The Mets looked poised to score some more off Alcantara in the second and third, but a little bad luck was hit into here, and an opportunity was not made the most of there, and going to the bottom of the fifth, the score remained Mets 2 Marlins 0.

In the bottom of the fifth, nothing good happened, except it ended. The season may have ended, too, but that will require hindsight. Give it a day or two. We will know soon enough.

Sproat was hit hard.
Alonso did not make a makeable play.
Gregory Soto was hit hard.
Gregory Soto did not pay enough attention to what was happening on the basepaths.
Ronny Mauricio did not pay attention in general.

I could go into details, but by the time six runs scored to transform a game a Mets fan could see as a continuation of progress into a game that confirmed every Mets fan doubt, details were almost beside the point. Except that the bullpen had to be called on earlier than desired, per usual (meaning we’ll ask another kid, Dylan Ross, to come up and save a portion of our bacon ASAP), and, oh, that part about Mauricio materialized because Brett Baty felt something in his side and had to exit the game and possibly the season, whatever is left of it.

Alcantara found his groove and the Mets didn’t disturb it. He pitched into the eighth without giving up another run. I guess he’s still great. The Mets mounted their final challenge once Sandy departed, loading the bases without a hit, until it came down to closer Tyler Phillips versus pinch-hitter Mark Vientos. Phillips seems to be workshopping a John Rocker or at least Brad “The Animal” Lesley persona; the dude slaps his face on his way in from the pen. If he’s not afraid to inflict punishment on his own visage, you think quelling Vientos is gonna be a problem for him?

It wasn’t. Mark struck out, and, one inning later, it was over. The game, for sure. The brief retention of the third Wild Card would be done when the Reds’ 3-1 lead in Milwaukee went final. (The Diamondbacks lost in San Diego and got themselves altogether eliminated.) Met hopes of making the postseason hang in the immediate balance. We have to win today to stay alive. If we lose, we need Cincy to lose to ensure Sunday isn’t mere bookkeeping. A school of thought suggests that making these intricate calculations are simply motions a fan goes through en route to reaching a glaringly apparent conclusion, and that the team such a fan roots for is going to make these motions and calculations academic by finding a way to bow to the Marlins at least once in these final two days.

This school of thought may not be the school in which we wish to enroll, but I’m pretty sure I hear a bus rumbling down the street to pick us up for the winter semester.