It is perhaps the most Mets thing ever to have Jacob deGrom on the mound, extending his season-ending shutout streak to 23 innings during another routinely brilliant start while his team was in the midst of being mathematically eliminated from playoff consideration.
It’s all over, folks, and was essentially over before the reigning Cy Young Award winner threw his first pitch against the Marlins in Queens, the scoreboard revealing that the Brewers — with a magic number of one to eradicate the Mets — had scored six runs in the top of the first inning in Cincinnati.
Again, it was so Metsian that it didn’t even matter when the team exploded for four runs in the first, three in the second on Pete Alonso’s 51st home run and two in the third to build a 9-0 lead en route to a 10-3 victory rendered immaterial by the Brewers’ 9-2 triumph.
Just a little too late for the Mets, only 15-15 since pushing within a game-and-half of a playoff spot on Aug. 22. Just a little too little for deGrom, on track for a second consecutive Cy Young after roaring down the stretch to finish off one of the greatest sets of back-to-back pitching seasons in New York baseball history.
And with these two seasons, through which deGrom had a WHIP of 0.949, an ERA of 2.09 and an ERA-plus of 186 entering the game, in which he allowed two hits and surrendered one walk, the Mets were 28-36 in the 31-year-old right-hander’s 64 starts.
Impossible.
“You’ve got to win your horse’s games,” Mickey Callaway, current occupant of the manager’s office, said before deGrom retired the final 14 batters he faced. “That can put you over the top. I just don’t know what it is.”
It’s the Mets.
DeGrom threw seven scoreless innings in this one, just as he did in his previous two starts, to finish with a league-leading 2.43 ERA and 0.97 WHIP. He pitched seven innings in each of his past eight starts, allowing one run or fewer in six. He is at or near the top of the heap in a multitude of statistical categories, from the arcane to the standard. He has established the standard for professionalism for the franchise.
And he is on the way to doing something Tom Seaver never did and Dwight Gooden never did and Whitey Ford never did and Ron Guidry never did, either. Or anyone who has ever pitched for a New York nine. Cy Youngs back-to-back; the award was created in 1956.
And all the while, the Mets have managed to mangle this brilliance. What? How?
“It’s really hard to put your finger on,” Callaway said. “I don’t know what to make of it, to tell you the truth. We put our best defense out there tonight to try and help him on that side of the ball and hopefully we can score some runs.”
They scored some runs. They defended crazily well. They got a victory for deGrom the night the season was officially declared lost. Of course that is what happened.
In 1971-72, Seaver had an ERA-plus of 146 while recording 8.8 Ks per nine innings and posting a combined WAR (Baseball-Reference.com version) of 15.4. No. 41 went 41-22 and the Mets 45-25 in his 70 starts. In 1978-79, Guidry had an ERA-plus of 172 while recording 7.9 Ks/9 and posting a combined WAR of 16.1. Louisiana Lightning went 43-11, with the Yankees 50-15 over his 65 starts.
In 1984-85, Gooden had an ERA-plus of 176 while recording 9.9 Ks/9 and posting a combined WAR of 17.7. The Doctor went 41-13 and the Mets 49-17 in his 66 starts in No. 16’s first two seasons in the majors. That represents the one and only set of New York pitching back-to-backs that eclipses this one.
The Mets did make the summer intriguing, going 27-9 to crash the race after bottoming out at 40-51 on July 12. But they eventually crashed and burned, dropping six straight at home to the Braves and Cubs in late August, essentially sealing their fate, always seeming to be punching up despite having the rotation of their dreams intact throughout.
DeGrom not only soldiered on, but he flourished. That is who he is and what he has done since joining the Mets in May 2014 and eclipsing titular ace Matt Harvey everywhere except on Page Six.
“I’ve seen [where pitchers] can go three starts worth of no runs and they start freaking out,” Callaway said. “The one thing about Jacob that you have to applaud him for, he has never let that affect him. And nobody has ever had this long of a drought with production, so he continues to control what he can control. And it’s amazing.”
That is why they are the Amazin’ Mets.
