3 Up, 3 Down: Mets Beat Nationals, But “Booing” Drama Steals Headlines

The Mets won a series on Sunday afternoon for the first time since sweeping these same Washington Nationals earlier this month. With Sunday’s 9-4 win, the Mets took two of three and head into an off day before a four-game set at home with the Marlins. Despite the win and huge offensive production, including two home runs, the Mets immediately found themselves in media drama after the game. For what should have been an exciting Sunday, the weekend ended on a sour note. Here’s what’s good and not so good from this past weekend with the Mets.

3 Up

Homer-Happy

After their disappointing 2-11 stretch against the Dodgers and Giants, New York resumed NL East-play with a home run party. In Friday night’s loss, Javier Báez went deep for his 25th long ball of the season. On Saturday, Kevin Pillar collected his second multi-home run game of the season with two solo shots. In the seventh inning, Michael Conforto sent a ball over the wall in center field for just his ninth dinger of 2021. This blast by Conforto gave the Mets the lead, and the score would remain the same until the last out.

In the series finale on Sunday, the bats really showed out, including another home run by Báez, which landed in the second deck in left field. Jonathan Villar also belted a home run that cleared the orange line by just a few inches. These home runs were part of a nine-run day for the Mets, who seem to be finding consistent power once again.

Starting Pitching 

The Mets’ starting pitching put together one of their overall best series in quite some time this weekend. The trio of Rich Hill, Marcus Stroman, and Tylor Megill each pitched at least five innings and allowed no more than two runs.

Hill went five innings, allowing two hits, two runs, no walks, and eight strikeouts. Stroman pitched six frames, allowing seven hits, two runs, a walk, and five K’s. Lastly, Megill went five innings, allowing just one hit (a home run to Josh Bell), two runs, three walks, and he struck out five batters.

This is a very promising progression for New York, who still don’t know if Jacob deGrom will pitch at all this season. Noah Syndergaard is also slated to return sometime in September, but we’ll see how much his COVID-19 diagnosis sets him back. If the Mets’ patched-together rotation can continue putting up numbers like these, it will surely help out a team that continues to see its offense struggle for the most part.

Bring on the Trumpets

It’s known by now that Edwin Díaz has struggled this season in non-save situations. Whether it’s getting too comfortable or simply not thriving outside of a tight lead, the closer has made far too many games closer than they should have been. His ERA in non-save situations this year is 4.79, compared to a 2.61 ERA in save situations.

But pitching in a non-save opportunity on Friday evening, he looked mostly in control. Despite allowing a double and throwing a wild pitch, Díaz managed to strike out the side, giving the Mets some hope as they headed to the bottom of the ninth.

On Saturday, Díaz worked around a hit-by-pitch with one out to get Ryan Zimmerman to ground out, followed by a called strike three on Lane Thomas to secure the victory. His season ERA now sits at 3.48, but this weekend was promising for him moving forward as the Mets need him to be elite over the season’s final month.

3 Down

Booing-Gate

In one of the most ridiculous stories in baseball this season, Met players, including Báez, publicly voiced their frustration with the team’s fans, saying that their “thumbs down” gesture is in response to the fans booing lately.

“The fans are going to get booed when we have success,” said Báez.

Following these comments, Sandy Alderson released a team statement, saying the organization does not condone the players booing the fanbase. You can read more details about this fiasco here.

Time is Ticking

Although the Mets won two games this weekend, time may be running out for this team to make any sort of magical playoff run. With the Braves also winning two games (not to mention against the Giants, who the Mets went 1-5 against recently), the Mets remain 7.5 games out of first place in the NL East. If you have hope for the Wild Card, well, things are not much better there — in fact, the situation may actually be worse. Although the Mets are *only* seven games out of the second Wild Card spot, they have several teams to leap just to get there; the Reds, Padres, Cardinals, and Phillies all are ahead of the Mets in the standings.

The Mets play their next 12 games against the Marlins and Nationals, but even with that easy schedule, it might just be too much ground to make up for the team after a historically awful August.

Jersey Retirement Delay 

So there’s actually good news here — Jerry Koosman became just the third player in franchise history to have his uniform number retired. On Saturday night, Koosman’s number 36 joined Tom Seaver‘s 41 and Mike Piazza‘s 31 plaques at the top of Citi Field. There’s no denying Koosman is an all-time Mets legend, but the issue here is just how long the Mets waited to retire Koosman’s number. He played his last game for the Mets in 1978, which was 43 years ago.

Why the team waited so long to honor Koosman remains unclear. Waiting over four decades to finally retire the uniform number of their World Series hero is not only a bad look for the organization, but it sets a bad precedent for future number retiring ceremonies. Will David Wright have to wait 30-plus years to see his iconic number 5 join the retired number trio? What about Keith Hernandez, who last played for the Mets in 1989 and is currently a beloved broadcaster for the team?

If the Mets want to make things right, they’ll honor Hernandez and Wright within the next couple of years. Soon enough, Jacob deGrom’s number 48 will likely join the group of honorees, too, and let’s hope that ceremony does not take in 2050.