NEW YORK — A couple of days ago, the New York Mets talked among themselves about how the appearance of pressure has changed over their season.
A few months ago, things got so bad that even pressure didn’t stick around. It was gone, as veteran designated hitter J.D. Martinez told his teammates during a well-documented meeting in late May. After that meeting, Martinez said his message was, “The pressure is on everyone else right now. If we lose, we lose — they already think we are the worst in baseball. So let’s go out there (and) do what we do.”
The Mets did just that. They vaulted into playoff contention after playing with an improved blend of joy and focus. Instead of shipping players away, the front office rewarded the roster with some supplementation. So pressure returned to test them.
With the pressure back on in the form of a playoff pursuit, the Mets (62-59) have stumbled. Two weeks into August, they have lost 8 of 13 games, including five of their last six.
The scene at Citi Field worsened on Thursday during a slog of a 7-6 loss to the Athletics. The Mets dropped the three-game series to Oakland (52-70), an improved club in the second half, yet one that nonetheless resides in the bottom of the American League West standings.
A’s 7, Mets 6: The Mets dropped the series to Oakland. They blew a 5-0 lead. They allowed 11 walks (a season high). It was the longest nine-inning game of the season (3:45). New York is 62-59.
— Will Sammon (@WillSammon) August 15, 2024
For the Mets, there are 41 games left. They trail the Atlanta Braves by two games for the final wild-card spot. After falling in the longest nine-inning regular-season game since the introduction of the pitch clock (three hours, 45 minutes), the Mets are tasked with preventing this kind of loss from lingering. It may not be easy.
New York blew a 5-0 lead. It allowed a season-high 11 walks. At several points, the jeers from the crowd after a Mets pitcher threw a strike rivaled the noise from fans celebrating one of third baseman Mark Vientos’ two home runs.
The reaction seemed appropriate. It’s been written numerous times in 2024, and it’s true: The Mets will go as far as their lineup takes them. Also, that’s how they were built; the rotation was never going to be the club’s strength. But it’s tough for even a strong lineup to bail out performances like Thursday’s (or Monday’s, for that matter, when starter Paul Blackburn allowed seven runs in four innings). That’s creating a form of unnecessary pressure.
“It’s hard to win a baseball game when you give up, what, 11, 12 walks, a hit by pitch,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “That’s hard to do. We gotta go back and make some adjustments quickly here so we can stop that.”
Only the Chicago White Sox pitching staff has a higher walk rate (10.3 percent) than the Mets (10 percent). Some of the Mets pitchers get by on working the edges. There’s a fine line with such an approach. When one of those pitchers is on, that means limiting hard contact. When one of them is off? It leads to misses and walks. Starter Jose Quintana was off on Thursday. After the Mets gave him the 5-0 lead, he allowed a grand slam on a hanging breaking ball to outfielder JJ Bleday in the fourth inning. Quintana lasted just four innings. He allowed four runs, seven hits and four walks. Each of the six pitchers the Mets used on Thursday issued at least one walk.
Oakland, capitalizing on the Mets’ erratic command on the mound, scored another run in the fifth inning and two more in the sixth inning. The Mets never scored after Vientos’ solo home run in the fourth.
“Today was not a good day,” Mendoza said. “We saw it from the beginning.”
How does it not carry over into tomorrow when the Mets open a three-game series with the Miami Marlins?
Around the time the Mets talked with each other about pressure, Vientos said he told star shortstop Francisco Lindor that the rough skid was a somewhat inevitable stretch during a long season that they have to overcome.
“I feel like we have been going really well the last couple of months. It’s not realistic that we’re just going to ride that wave all the way to the end of the season,” Vientos said. “I feel like we just have to keep getting our wins here and there, and then we are going to have a hot streak pretty soon to finish off the season.”
Martinez said his message to the group about pressure reflected the mindset he prescribed for everyone a few months ago.
“We got here by playing with no pressure, we were supposed to lose and let’s just go have fun,” Martinez said. “Things snowballed, and all of a sudden we got to this point where we make a couple of trades, we’re in it. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a little more pressure.
“It’s just one of those things where, we talked about it, just that who-cares mentality, and if we win, we win, and if we lose, we lose, what does it matter is what got us here. That’s what we got to ride out to the end of the season.
“This is a great team, great clubhouse. Everyone is together. There’s no big personalities. No big egos. It’s a fun group. I think everyone received it well.”
With their playoff odds hovering around 20 percent, according to FanGraphs, now is the time to show it.
(Photo of Jose Quintana after JJ Bleday’s grand slam: Brad Penner / USA Today)
