New York Post, Tuesday, August 13, 2019nypost.com44
P
ETE Alonso is right, of course.
He wasn’t being brash the other
night, caught up in the giddy rush
of a winning streak. He wasn’t speak-
ing merely with the unknowing enthu-
siasm of youth (although, sure, maybe
there was a dash of naïveté in his
words; no capital crime in that).
This was after one of the games on
the electric seven-game homestand
the Mets just completed, a 6-1 blur that
was an unmitigated joyride right to the
end, when the Mets were three runs
down in the ninth inning and the peo-
ple still refused to evacuate Citi Field
until the very end because they had all
started to wear their belief like those
impossibly gaudy Hawaiian shirts the
Mets had given away Saturday night.
Alonso was asked a
simple question,
about how well the
Mets were playing.
He gave a simple
answer that also
seemed to raise the
antennae of every-
one else who have
noticed what the
Mets have done these past few weeks,
friend and foe alike.
“It’s been awesome,” Alonso said. “I
think we have a chance to really do
something great. We’ve got some re-
ally tough games ahead of us, but let’s
say we keep this up and win all six, or
win five out of six, that’s going to put
us not just in wild-card talks, [but will
give us a] chance to win the division.
We’ve got a really awesome chance to
do something really special and make
a hell of a run towards the end. We’re
just going to keep playing ball and see
what happens.”
The first reaction, of course: Take a
deep breath, kid. First things first.
Keep playing good baseball. Keep win-
ning series — keep winning two out of
three. The Braves are still out there on
the other side of the mountain; keep
your ambitions modest and your goalsreasonable. Worry about the wild card
first, last and foremost.
But then you take a step back, you
see what the Mets have done lately,
and figure: Why not?
Why not keep dreaming? Why not
keep your sights set on the holy grail?
Why not think that first place is still a
worthy goal?
The Mets begin a series in Atlanta
on Tuesday night that even a week ago
seemed like it would feature two
teams riding very different tracks. The
Braves have been comfortably in con-
trol of the NL East for two months,
they’ve been the class of the division
for two years, and if the Mets have
suddenly started to figure out ways to
merely sneak into the postseason, the
Braves have been
similarly plotting a
pathway toward top-
pling the Dodgers at
the very pinnacle of
the National League.
Even now, some
eight games separate
the teams, a substan-
tial amount for what
is now the middle of August. Mets fans
with sharp eyes, of course, will notice
the difference in the loss column is
seven — and if those clear-eyed fans
also have reliable memories, they
know just how quickly a seven-game
loss-column lead can evaporate
(sometimes in as few as 17 games).
The Braves are catchable. Tuesday is
the first of nine games between the
clubs from now until the end of Sep-
tember. The arithmetic may well be on
the Braves’ side but it also doesn’t
eliminate the Mets. Not yet.
“You’ve got to slay the giant, so to
speak,” Alonso, the Mets’ slugging
rookie first baseman, said. “You’ve got
to go through these tough teams in or-
der to get to the playoffs and when you
get to the playoffs, it’s just going to be
that much harder. We just need to
keep grinding it out and I feel like ifwe keep playing the way we are, keep
hitting well, our defense has been
awesome, our pitching has been lights
out. I think that’s going to be a really
tough combo for our opponents to
handle. We just need to keep rolling.”
They do. That part is non-negotia-
ble. Perhaps they can get away playing
at less than the .938 clip they were
playing at in the 16 games before Sun-
day, but .667 — two out of every three,
which across the season’s final 44
games equates to 29-15, which would
get them to 90 wins — ought to be a
reasonable goal. Ninety will almost
certainly be enough to win a wild
card, and utilize the wild card as what
it’s supposed to be — a safety net. If
you get to 90 and finish three games
behind the Braves but still in the
money, that’s a reasonable consolation
prize.
But if they really do approximate now
what they’ve been the last 28 games
when they’ve actually won three of ev-
ery four? That would
be cooking with gas.
Is that reasonable?
Starting Tuesday, we’ll
know for sure. The
Mets, carried lately by
their own starting
pitching, will face
Max Fried, Dallas
Keuchel and Julio Te-
heran, one of their
great nemeses, so
they’ll be jumping
with both feet into the
deep end of the lake.
If they make it to
Kansas City by the
weekend two games
closer to 90, they’ll
surely take it.
If they get there
still feeling, together,
the way Pete Alonso
verbalized it?
All the better.
[email protected]Mike VaccaroMike Vaccaro
Amazin’s long road to playoffs looks bumpier
By BRIAN LEWISThe chatter around the
Mets has been their sched-
ule: From the release of next
year’s slate to how soft their
recent run has been.
Now it’s going to be how
tough their stretch run is.
Starting Tuesday with a
three-game road set at Na-
tional League East-leading
Atlanta.
“Yeah, for sure. I’ve al-ready been thinking about
it,” said Zack Wheeler, who
will get the ball Tuesday
against Max Fried. “You lose
[Sunday], we need to pick
the momentum right back
up and get that first win in
Atlanta and get right back af-
ter it, set the tone. Set the
tone with them.”
The Mets had been a
white-hot 13-1 coming into
this past weekend’s series
against Washington, buttheir streak had been down-
played in some quarters be-
cause it came against soft
competition. But the Mets
are pointing to their series
win over the Nationals as
proof they can beat good
teams. They’ll get an even
better one in Atlanta.
“It was big, because we
were running off all these
games and winning them
and everybody was kind of
saying you were playingagainst easy teams, blah,
blah, blah. Those are the
games you’re supposed to
win,” Wheeler said. “So you
can’t blame us for winning
them. You’re supposed to
win those games.
“If you do, it’s a plus. If you
don’t, then you look even
worse. Playing those easier
teams then coming upagainst, like, the Nationals,
you knew it was going to be
a tough test. But we pulled it
out, we grinded, played good
baseball for the most part.”
The Mets’ remaining slate
includes: At the Braves, at
the Royals, versus the Indi-
ans, Braves, Cubs, at the
Phillies, at the Nationals, the
Phillies, Diamondbacks,Dodgers, at the Rockies, at
the Reds, the Marlins before
closing against the Braves
again.
Their opponents’ .508
winning percentage repre-
sents a far tougher road than
the Braves (.499) or Nation-
als (.498) have to face.➤The Mets can already
have an eye toward next
year with the schedule re-
lease on Monday.[email protected]GO FOR IT! Pete
Alonso and the Mets
are still eight games
behind Freddie
Freeman and the
Braves in the NL
East, but it makes
sense for them to
dream big and shoot
for the division title,
writes The Post’s
Mike Vaccaro.
Paul J. Bereswill; APMets & Yankees schedules / Page 35