That could be the reason why their fans will die. Mets fans have never been prodded to tell the world how bad it is to be a fan. They will definitely have the weapons now.
Baseball post-mortems are not good. The NBA has dominated the summer season for drama and excitement, but that doesn't mean the Hot Stove can't still be had in the winter. Good players have to wait until spring training starts to get signed because the owners are colluding on salaries. The discussion of what to do in baseball's off-season gets passionate and heated.
For those teams that lost in the playoffs, it will be more so. The teams don't win three-game series very often. It will be worse for the Mets, who finished with the same record as the Braves, and lost what still amounts to a coin flip. If you had asked the Mets front office if they would take 101 wins before the season to win the NL East, they would have rushed to the exit.
Losing two of three doesn't give an answer to what the team was missing. The Mets didn't lose because they didn't make a big trade at the deadline. Willson Contreras might win one more game for them in the last two months of the season, but 101 wins is still a good total. You can't build a team to win in October if you don't do well. The Dodgers, with the most money and the best front office, have only managed the whole thing in a season that will never happen again. The Astros only succeeded in managing the whole thing once. This is the best way to build a team.
A manager who knows how the game changes might be able to build a team that can stretch to six outs, a starter that can wheel back from the pen quickly if needed, and a relief corps that can stretch to six outs if necessary. Even that may be enough. A team that didn't hit a lot of homers over the course of six months suddenly hits a lot of them. A Braves'Reliever that was only good to good in the regular season suddenly finds three guys who turn into the lovechild of two famous people. There is no planning for that, and there is no taking credit for that because a GM knows it will happen all the time. They only have the ability to put the pieces in place and hope for the best. The whole thing is a multi-billion dollar game of electric football, where most of the movements are meaningless.
The Mets need to hit for more power. They scored the sixth most runs. They hit two less homers than the Padres, so you can decide if that matters or not. It probably doesn't matter that Max and Chris weren't very good over the last three days. Is the Mets going to sideline them both in October? They might both throw three shut outs on the way to bringing a parade to Queens, but nothing will change.
That won't satisfy the baying hordes, and there's no one who bays louder than a New York fan that didn't get what they wanted. They and those who speak for them will scrutinize every detail of the team to see where it could have been better. There must be something to explain.
It isn't. People who grew up with a more fair playoff system complain that it all seems random now. It is difficult to comprehend the fact that MLB doesn't have playoffs so much as a "split", where 18 teams are culled and the remaining 12 play a game with different standards and rules. It doesn't matter what happened before.
The sixth seed would play the fifth seed and the winner would play the fourth seed in the Division Series. If we have divisions it should mean something to win them. The other two wild-card teams would get an advantage, but the Mets would be better protected. Even though they are getting a week break, players will not take it.
Baseball is just the way it is now. 12 teams participate in a tournament that you can't really build a team for after you play the 162. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but it doesn't mean much.
It's more frustrating. Our winter will be soundtracked by the unmistakable caterwauling of a guy in a Doc Gooden jersey.
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