With no Mets baseball to discuss, let’s take a look back at how the Mets were doing on this date in their NL championship year of 2015.
On August 23, 2015, the Mets defeated the Rockies 5-1 in Colorado to complete a three-game sweep, maintaining their lead in the NL East at five games. Logan Verrett pitched eight innings of one-run ball to notch the win, allowing four hits and striking out eight.
This was the pinnacle moment of Verrett’s career, who spent parts of three seasons in the major leagues, with a career record of 6-10 and an ERA of 4.62 to go with a FIP of 5.17. As a member of the Mets in 2015 and 2016, Verrett was 4-9 with a 4.56 ERA and a 5.05 FIP.
In this game, the Mets were the beneficiaries of some strange scoring, as two runs scored on wild pitches by Rockies’ starter David Hale with Anthony Recker at-bat in the top of the second inning. Later in the game, Recker would drive in a run with a single, scoring Wilmer Flores, who had driven in Daniel Murphy earlier in the inning. Murphy drove in Curtis Granderson with the Mets’ first run in the top of the first.
In the opening game of the series on August 21, Yoenis Cespedes – a Met for three weeks at the time – had one heck of a night. He had five hits in six at-bats, with three of those hits being home runs. Cespedes drove in seven runs on the night, and had 15 total bases. Sean Gilmartin recorded the win in relief of Bartolo Colon. The Mets needed five pitchers to hold on to a 14-9 victory.
In the middle game of the series, the Mets won by (what are the odds?) the same score of 14-9. The Mets used a far more balanced approach in this game, getting two RBIs each from Juan Lagares, Curtis Granderson, Juan Uribe, Travis d’Arnaud and Ruben Tejada. Jon Niese started and got the win, going 5.1 innings, allowing seven runs on 11 hits, striking out three and walking two. Four Mets relievers combined to hold the lead for the win.
The series was particularly important in the run to the division title, because it showed the enormous presence Cespedes had in the lineup. He carried the team to victory on his back in the first game. He would go on to have a big series in Philadelphia immediately after the Colorado series, then have huge hits in the series in Washington that began on September 7.
In the series against the Phillies that began on August 24, David Wright made his return from the injured list after missing more than four months. His return was made epic by his moon shot in his first at-bat.
By the time the Mets returned home to play the Red Sox on August 28, their lead had grown to 6.5 games over the Nationals, and it was clear that the Mets had something special in the works.
When the 2020 season resumes for the Mets, we can only hope that the remaining games hold a fraction of the excitement generated by their 2015 charge to a division championship.
