Mets go from contender to cellar
NEW YORK – The turning point came on a sticky night at Shea Stadium, a couple of hours shy of September.
Pedro Martinez was on the mound with a two-run lead and an unexpected opportunity to put the New York Mets ahead in a crowded N.L. wild-card race.
Nearly 44,000 fans in the ballpark, buzzing with excitement and ready to believe. The chants echoed from the cheap seats, “Pedro! Pedro!” with every other pitch.
Some team was going to grab this final playoff spot, so why not the Mets?
They all found out pretty fast.
Martinez served up four homers to Philadelphia in an 8-2 loss, Tom Glavine got one run of support the next afternoon and the Mets began a September slide that dropped them from the postseason chase to last place in a New York minute.
“We had ourselves in a position to make a run,” Glavine said, “and it’s kind of fallen apart.”
After Martinez lost Aug. 31, the Mets dropped nine of their first 10 games this month, spoiling a season otherwise filled with promise.
They went 2-8 on a gut-wrenching road trip to Florida, Atlanta and St. Louis, getting left in the dust as the Astros, Phillies and Marlins kept winning enough to play hot potato with the wild-card lead.
And a few of the defeats were especially agonizing for players and fans alike.
There was a 5-4 loss in Florida on Sept. 3, when Kris Benson took a two-run lead into the seventh inning before running into trouble.
Rookie manager Willie Randolph made a questionable call to the bullpen, going with newcomer Shingo Takatsu to face slugger Miguel Cabrera with the bases loaded and two out. Cabrera hit a three-run double just over left fielder Cliff Floyd, Carlos Beltran made the final out with two on and New York was 3 1/2 back.
Two days later, longtime nemesis Chipper Jones hit a tiebreaking homer in the eighth to give the Braves a 4-2 victory. Martinez was outpitched by John Smoltz the following night – and the biggest heartbreaker was yet to come.
The Mets appeared poised to salvage the series finale in Atlanta before closer Braden Looper blew a ninth-inning lead. They went ahead again in the 10th, but Looper loaded the bases with none out in the bottom half.
Takatsu relieved and, incredibly, got within one tantalizing strike of escaping the jam, only to give up a game-winning single by rookie Ryan Langerhans.
It was one of the most excruciating defeats in a franchise history filled with them.
“The ultimate responsibility falls on me,” Looper said last week. “We have a lot better team this year, regardless of this streak. I don’t know why this is happening.”
By the time they left Turner Field, the Mets were five games behind wild-card leader Houston and all but out of contention.
Fitting, too, because that place has been a house of horrors for them. New York is 4-19 in the regular season at Turner Field in September and October, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, plus three losses in the 1999 N.L. Championship Series.
Things only got worse in St. Louis, where the Mets dropped three more in a row.
After missing 23 games with a broken left hand, Mike Piazza returned to the lineup Sept. 10 and homered in his first at-bat. Then he was beaned by Cardinals reliever Julian Tavarez, leaving the perturbed catcher with a concussion.
Martinez won the final game of the trip, but when the Mets finally got home they were swept by Washington. They took two of three from the Braves last weekend – too late to make a difference, of course – and are 73-76, back in last place in the N.L. East with two weeks to play.
Bad time for a brutal slump.
“The worst thing about this is we are a good team,” Floyd said. “If you had told me that we were going to go through this in September, I would have called you the biggest liar in the world. It shocked the heck out of me. I’m lost only because we are a lot better than that. I’m pretty much out of words.”
So what exactly went wrong?
Several things: Benson faded (he’s lost four straight decisions), Looper flopped (7.50 ERA in September) and everybody stopped hitting (Beltran never started).
Plus, Piazza and right fielder Mike Cameron were sidelined by injuries, which didn’t help. The Mets scored more than three runs only four times in a 19-game stretch from Aug. 25 to Sept. 14, putting too much pressure on a pitching staff that ranks third in the N.L. with a 3.74 ERA.
To be fair, many tabbed this a .500 team all along. Coming off three consecutive losing seasons, New York wasn’t necessarily expected to be a serious contender – at least not yet.
So maybe the Mets, inconsistent but resilient all year, simply masked their many weaknesses as long as they could. Maybe they were destined to falter down the stretch on the road, where they are 30-45.
Wait till next year, right?
Thing is, that’s tough to swallow when you came so close.
“We played some good teams, some good baseball at times,” Randolph said. “Just didn’t get over the hump.”