SAN DIEGO — The Mets and the San Diego Padres were supposed to be two baseball behemoths this year. They spent the money their billionaire owners deemed necessary to win and assembled star-studded rosters.
Yet halfway through the season, the two teams that squared off in the NL Wild Card series last fall have identical 41-46 records and are second-to-last in their respective divisions. This wasn’t what either of these teams expected when they started the season.
But the Mets arrived in San Diego this weekend with reasons for optimism after a three-game sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks that extended their winning streak to five games, which matched their season-high mark.
“I’m just happy for the players,” said manager Buck Showalter. “They beat themselves up a lot. But we’re trying to end the break on a good note. Now we’ve got to move on against a really good pitcher tomorrow.”
Francisco Lindor and Francisco Alvarez have been extra-hot at the plate, with Lindor coming off his first career five-hit game and Alvarez carrying a three-game home-run streak into San Diego.
But maybe the most important aspect is that the starting pitching has started performing more along the lines of how they have been expected to perform. Kodai Senga and Carlos Carrasco both went eight innings in the second two games of the series to give the bullpen a rest coming into this final series before the All-Star break. This weekend at Petco Park, the Mets will pitch right-hander Justin Verlander, left-hander David Peterson and right-hander Max Scherzer, all of whom are coming off strong performances in their last starts.
The Mets have continued to stress that being even-keeled would help them break through this season, but maybe what it took was being angry after a 7-19 month.
“Sometimes it’s OK to go the other way,” Showalter said. “We’re not a bunch of robots. They have emotions and sometimes they care almost too much. We’re in a pretty good flow there but it revolves around the starting pitching.”
The pitching staff has posted a 2.00 ERA during the five-game span, the third-best mark in baseball this month, and held opponents to just a .185 average. The Mets are the only team in the league without a loss in July.
They’ll face right-hander Yu Darvish, left-hander Blake Snell and right-hander Joe Musgrove, who Mets fans remember from the infamous ear incident during the playoffs season. Snell is coming off an outstanding month, having gone 3-1 with a 0.87 ERA in five starts and being named the league’s Pitcher of the Month for June.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Showalter said.
Of course, since it’s the Mets they can’t end the first half of their season without controversy. Alvarez’s home run celebration Wednesday night was seen as being a little over the top. Infield coach Joey Cora told him to tone it down and Thursday night he was plunked by a fastball by Arizona reliever Jose Ruiz, prompting the benches to clear.
The Mets did not think it was intentional, though they do understand that reacting to a game-tying home run by tossing a bat and running back around the bases while flexing might incense some.
But following the win, the Mets watched the highlights from the last two games on MLB Network in the clubhouse. The consensus from a veteran clubhouse was that the rookie catcher wasn’t trying to show anyone up, he was simply playing the game with the type of emotion and personality that has become his signature.
“You can always count on the theatrics from him,” outfielder Mark Canha said Wednesday night. “It’s just fun to watch him and the joy he plays the game with.”
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