IT may be too late for the Mets to do anything about the predicament they have created for themselves with the Braves – which means it is not too early to begin making assessments about their 1999 season.
In the interests of full disclosure, this column was written before Game 4 of the NLCS got underway at Shea Stadium last night.
Assuming the Mets confronted Judgment Day last night-and since they were facing John Smoltz, who had never failed to wrap up a playoff series when given the chance, that is a pretty fair assumption – it is time now to begin passing judgment on them, a process that will no doubt continue until the first pitch is thrown in the first regular-season game of the next millennium somewhere on the other side of the Pacific.
After Friday night’s 1-0 loss to the Braves in Game 3, the loss that left the Mets on the precipice of elimination, Mike Piazza was asked how he would rate the Mets season should it all end this weekend, or even early next week back in Atlanta.
Piazza thought for a while and then gave the only answer a player can give if he wants to avoid a newspaper torching and escape the wrath of the fans. “I can’t really answer that right now,” he said.
And truthfully, how can anyone definitively answer the question of whether the 1999 Mets season was a success or a failure?
Really, the answer varies, depending upon when you are asked to answer the question.
All season long, the Mets have been a thrill ride that Coney Island would have been proud to offer. Like a well-designed roller-coaster, their highs had been dizzying and their drops unexpected and terrifying.
And with each of their ups and downs, expectations rose and fell commensurately.
In spring training, after the Mets had locked Piazza and Al Leiter into long-term deals, acquired Robin Ventura and convinced Edgardo Alfonzo to move his potent bat to second base, anyone in his or her right mind had to consider a trip to the NLCS to be not only attainable, but expected.
But if you asked the same question on June 5, after the Mets had dropped a game to the Yankees to fall to 27-28, the pitching coach and two others had been fired and the manager set a 55-game deadline for his own dismissal, you could have gotten odds that the Mets would be lucky to make it through September, never mind October.
But the next day began their surge, when between June 6 and Sept. 19, they posted the best record in baseball, 65-30. Now a mere trip to the NLCS would not be enough. It was Subway Series or bust.
That, too, crumbled over the final 12 games of the season, when the Mets dropped seven in a row and needed to win the last game of the regular season on a wild pitch over the lowly Pirates just to qualify for the playoffs.
At that point, even a competitor such as Piazza was saying things like, “Everything we do from here is icing on the cake.”
But postseason play wasn’t supposed to be the icing for these Mets, it was the cake itself.
For years, they have toiled in the shadow of the varsity, also known as the Yankees, and the built-in excuse is that the Yankees were playing a different game than they were.
While the Mets were still trying to grow a baseball team the old-fashioned way, down on the farm the Yankees had invented their own method of winning pennants. They bought them, as if to say that a pennant bought is no less sweet than a pennant earned.
But gradually, the Mets have come to see things the way The Boss always has.
By this spring, the Mets and Yankees were playing precisely the same game.
In fact, the Yankees now have more home-grown products than the Mets do.
Any way you look at it, the Mets set out to buy themselves the National League East this year.
Of the Mets’ nine everyday starters, only Alfonzo and Rey Ordonez are original Mets property.
The rest were bought or traded for in the ’90s baseball equivalent of the quick fix.
Owners Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday laid out some $150 million in the off-season to make the Mets competitive not only with the Braves, but with the Yankees.
It now looks like we will never know if they caught up to the latter because they still can’t match up with the former.
All year long, they had lost to the Braves. They lost close games and they lost blowouts. Bottom line is, they lost, nine out of 12 during the regular season, three out of three in the postseason heading into last night’s game.
Yes, they improved. Winning 97 games was a nine-game improvement over 1998. And despite their late-season histrionics, there was no last-minute folderol. They got to the playoffs, even won a playoff series, beating the overrated Arizona Diamondbacks, whose outwardly impressive record was bloated from a diet of West Coast pastries.
But when it came down to getting what they paid for, the Mets found themselves a few dollars short once again.
Trying to keep up with the Yankees, the Mets still haven’t caught up to the Braves.
Maybe realignment, not money, is the answer.
Mets may finally be shopping in the same market as their intra-city rivals, but they still haven’t proven to be in the same league with their intra-division tormentors.
That can’t be a satisfactory ending for anyone connected with the Mets – not the players, the fans or the management.