Mets season ends with familiar disappointment

New York Mets manager Buck Showalter, left, watches play from the dugout as Eduardo Escobar (10) prepares to bat against the San Diego Padres during the eighth inning of Game 3 of a National League wild-card baseball playoff series, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022, in New York. AP Photo/John Minchillo

By Jacob Kaye

A New York Mets season that often dripped with magic and hinted at the possibility of a championship came to an early and lifeless conclusion over the weekend, leaving fans with the dull ache of disappointment all too familiar to the Flushing faithful.

The Queens team’s 101-win season ended abruptly on Sunday after a hapless loss to the San Diego Padres in the best-of-three wild-card round of Major League Baseball’s playoffs.

Though they played their brand of baseball in game two on Saturday, drawing walks, stringing together hits and commanding the mound, those Mets were mostly absent when it mattered most this weekend.

Friday’s 7-1 loss quickly pushed the Mets into play-or-go-home mode, and showed that the off-season signing of Max Scherzer – a signing that hinted at the dawn of a new age for Mets ownership – was not all that it cracked up to be. The 38-year-old Scherzer gave up 7 runs in what amounted to the worst playoff performance of his likely Hall of Fame career.

And while Friday’s loss was painful, the Mets at least threatened to score runs throughout the game, and even managed to push one across in the fifth inning. On Sunday, the Flushing team reached base on a hit only once, setting a Major League record for the fewest hits for a team facing elimination.

The disappointment set in early.

Citi Field was loud and charged with a nervous energy at first pitch Sunday evening. Coming off a strong win the night before, hope for a trip to the Division Series was very much still alive. Chris Bassitt, the starter for the evening, had come up big in several games throughout the season and had established himself as a strong number three pitcher in a rotation bolstered, at least for a portion of the season, by two aces.

But in the second inning, Bassitt, who had control issues all night, gave up a two-run single to Austin Nola, bringing in the first runs of the night. Perhaps knowing that the team to score first won in both games one and two, fans at Citi Field began contemplating the idea that they’d be without baseball for the next six months.

As the game progressed, the cheers in the stadium grew quieter and quieter. The few times Bassitt had two strikes on a Padres hitter in the middle of the game, fans refused to stand and cheer.

Pete Alonso’s no-out single in the fifth brought some life to the crowd. But the Mets followed it up with three quick outs that seemed to truly squash any hope that the Mets would play beyond the evening.

The Queens team failed to record another hit and, in the end, failed to meet the expectations of championship-quality success, perhaps unfairly bestowed upon them by fans, ownership and themselves.

There is a joy felt by Mets fans at the conclusion of nearly every season. A joy tied to feelings of relief. A knowledge that, for at least a few months, you won’t be going to bed asking yourself why you’ve spent the past three hours watching your beloved Mets get schlacked by a 50-win team. You could have gone to the park, you tell yourself, you could have read a funny book.

But there was real joy this year. Joy tied to gritty winning and fun baseball. Every few weeks the 2022 New York Mets did something amazin’. There were come-from-behind wins that suggested a great destiny was on the horizon. They made outstanding plays in the field and generally looked competent when in motion. The best hitter in the Major Leagues this year was in the Mets lineup. They threw a no-hitter, a fricken no-hitter.

But the disappointment is the same. Leave it to the Queens club to make a 101-win season feel like a complete and utter disaster.

Throughout the year, the chatter surrounding the 2022 New York Mets centered around the idea that this team – these Mets – were different from all other Mets teams. In the end they proved just the opposite.

Their lack of aggression at the trade deadline, poor play in September, their winless series against the Atlanta Braves resulting in a loss of their long-dwindling division lead – these Mets were as classic a Mets team as any before them.

Baseball in Queens has again come to a disappointing end.