Column: Yankees and Mets find themselves in surprising playoff chase
WASHINGTON — It wasn’t supposed to be this kind of eleventh hour for the Mets and Yankees — certainly not in April, when the Bombers were in last place and already showing signs of aging. And the Mets? Less than a month ago they were 5½ games out of the wild-card race and hearing the ticket buyers’ countdown to Terry Collins’ firing.
But so much has changed for both teams. With the playoffs just around the corner, the Mets and Yankees are now poised to make a run through October. It’s been exactly 10 years since they simultaneously played in a postseason series — it feels like 100. The only obstacle to this magic carpet ride is the final 16 games (17 for the Yankees). Hang on, this stretch could be a doozy.
It’s true, of course, that Wednesday wasn’t a particularly good day on either side of the equation. The Mets got shut out by the Nationals, 1-0, and the Yankees were blanked by the great Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers, 2-0. Still, the Mets didn’t lose ground in the wild-card race, as both the Cardinals and Giants were defeated. The second wild-card berth is still theirs.
The Yankees have a harder climb, two games behind for the second wild card with the Blue Jays and Tigers ahead of them. But starting Thursday, with four games against the first-place Red Sox, the Bombers could conceivably blast their way upward through the standings.
That’s September’s gift to the Bombers: With the lineup loaded with emerging stars like Gary Sanchez, they’ll exclusively face AL East rivals the rest of the way, which is why manager Joe Girardi is fond of saying, “the race is right in front of us.”
The Mets, by comparison, are downright blessed. Despite losing two of three to the formidable Nationals, they’ve been handed the softest possible path to the postseason. They’ll face only sub-.500 teams the rest of the way, which makes Collins’ troops a heavy favorite to be playing Oct. 5, the date of the wild-card shootout.
It can’t be overstated how long the odds were against both New York teams in 2016, although for different reasons. The Mets slogged out of spring training still woozy from winning the pennant for the first time since 2000. Getting to the World Series was like some beautiful dream in Flushing, although it didn’t take long for reality for intrude.
One by one, the Mets’ starting rotation succumbed to injury, bringing down four of the franchise’s top five power arms. And even now, despite a recent run, their only uninjured starting pitcher is 43-year-old Bartolo Colon. He’s not only the Mets’ oldest hurler, he’s also the most poorly conditioned. Larger than life? Possibly. Larger than his uniform? Absolutely.
But whatever Colon lacks in muscle tone, he makes up for in finesse, precision and an amazing ability to frustrate hitters with his dancing two-seam fastball. Together, Colon and Noah Syndergaard, the 24-year-old ace, have kept the Mets breathing while Stephen Matz and Jacob deGrom have recovered from arm problems.
In their place, the Mets have gotten surprising contributions from Class-AAA call-ups Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman. Neither was targeted for greatness, at least not at the outset. Lugo, a 26-year-old rookie, was selected by the Mets in the 34th-round of the 2011 draft. Gsellman, 23, was a 13th-round pick.
Together, however, they’ve combined for six wins and a 2.64 ERA. Collins wasn’t exaggerating when he said, “those two guys have stepped up for us when we needed them the most. They’ve made a difference.”
Lugo and Gsellman, who had a no-decision in Wednesday’s loss to Washington, will eventually be replaced by Matz and deGrom. Both are nearly ready to return to the rotation. But Collins is right: The performance of the no-name starters may have saved the Mets’ season.
The Yankees, meanwhile, have orchestrated a crazy surge of their own — one that caught even their own higher-ups off-guard. General manager Brian Cashman said, “we certainly weren’t expecting to make the playoffs” after veterans Carlos Beltran, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman were all traded by the July 31 non-waiver deadline.
August and September were supposed to be a pressure-free, low-buzz audition for the rookies — the first time since the early 1990s the Yankees would be a late-season afterthought. Even with a $200 million payroll, no one was expecting results until 2017 or even 2018.
But it was Joe Girardi who kept raising the possibility of a pennant race after all. “These kids are pretty talented,” the manager said. “And remember, they’ve had success in the minor leagues; they’re used to winning. They’ve come up here expecting to do the same thing.”
Girardi’s words have become a prophecy. Just last week the Bombers ran off a seven-game winning streak that prompted one major league executive to say, “watch out for the Yankees. A young team that believes in itself can be awfully dangerous.”
Sanchez, in particular, is destroying nearly everything in sight. Despite going 0-for-4 on Wednesday, the rookie catcher is still batting .321 with 14 home runs in just 140 at-bats. That’s a Hall of Fame ratio, and although that pace obviously can’t be sustained, Sanchez nevertheless represents all that’s good — and exciting — about the race’s surprise team.
“With the team we have now, we have a chance,” Girardi said the other day. “I like this group. And the big thing is, they feel good about themselves.”
We’ll know a lot more in the next few weeks, if not this weekend. But this much is already certain: The Mets and Yankees are both on a sprint we never saw coming. Lucky us.
Bob Klapisch writes for The Bergen County Record, part of the Paste BN NETWORK.
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