If the Mets mentally were running on fumes Tuesday, they had good reason.
It is tough to have much energy when your jet has no gas.
The club’s flight out of South Florida on Monday night into Tuesday morning was delayed several hours, leaving Carlos Mendoza’s group little turnaround time before beginning a two-game set in The Bronx on Tuesday night.
The Mets finished off a four-game split with the Marlins at about 9:30 p.m. and boarded the team jet around midnight.
For “at least two and a half hours,” Luis Severino said, the club waited as the aircraft filled up with fuel.
The flight lifted off in the middle of the night, and the traveling party did not reach their beds until 6 or 7 a.m.
“It was terrible. I got home at 6 in the morning,” said Severino, who is not pitching in the Subway Series. “I’m not doing anything, I just feel bad for the guys that are playing.”
Among those guys is Pete Alonso, who said he reached his home around 7 after fighting some “nice rush-hour traffic” that comes when your ride home coincides with others’ ride to work.
“It happens a lot,” Alonso said of the delay. “I know it’s probably a story today because we’re playing the Yankees. … There’s really no excuses. We’re all going to be ready to go.”
Such was the general response around the Mets’ clubhouse, where players did not want to cite an excuse before facing off with their crosstown rivals.
“This game will throw random things at you — mostly on the field but sometimes off the field,” Harrison Bader said. “You never use anything to get in the way of your success.”
Perhaps in the heat of the moment, the Mets’ co-hitting coach showed some frustration as he sat on a plane that would not take off.
In an Instagram post that was sent at 1:56 a.m., Eric Chavez alerted many to the team’s situation at a time when the Yankees most likely were sleeping.
The Yankees had beaten the Rays at home in a game that finished just before 4 p.m., leaving the team with a rare free Monday night.
“Yankees at home, day game, nice dinner,” Chavez wrote. “Mets, just living our best lives on runway. Level playing field ?”
With a game Tuesday that was set to start at 7:05 p.m., the Yankees were the better-rested bunch.
The Mets accepted the slight disadvantage as an occasional reality of the sport they play.
“That’s part of what we do,” Mendoza said of the delay. “Part of the life of a baseball player, baseball team. At some point throughout the year, you will be facing things like that.”
