Nothing comes easy for any team when they're jockeying for positioning in a stacked Wild Card race. The New York Mets know that their competition for the third and final Wild Card spot won't be letting up and will be putting the pressure on them until the end of Game 162. Over the past few weeks, their closest competitor has been changing, with the San Francisco Giants emerging yet tailing off and then the Arizona Diamondbacks just hanging tough.
However, the team the Mets have to be very scared of is the Cincinnati Reds. Following New York's 3-2 loss to the Washington Nationals and the Reds' 1-0 win over the playoff-bound Chicago Cubs on Sunday, the Mets have now fallen out of the Wild Card picture, with the Reds overtaking them despite having the same record (80-76) by virtue of owning the tiebreaker (the Reds won the season series over them, 4-2).
The pressure is mounting for the free-spending Mets, the team that brought in Juan Soto from free agency on a record-setting 15-year, $765 million contract. All shortstop Francisco Lindor could do is just implore his team to do what they can to avoid what would be a disaster, especially when they have no one to blame but themselves for being in this spot.
“It comes down to winning. We've put ourselves in this position, so we've got to find a way to get out of it. And that comes down to winning. We just got to win ballgames,” Lindor said, per Colin Martin of SNY.
That sounds simple enough. But winning hasn't come easy for the Mets in the month of September. They've gone 7-12 on the calendar month and they've lost two straight games, both of which came against the moribund, last place in the NL East Nationals.
The Mets will be ending the series on the road, with a three-game series each against the Chicago Cubs and Miami Marlins. That would add an extra layer of difficulty to their goal of making it to the playoffs.
Mets relinquish their playoff spot, Wild Card races heat up all over MLB
The Mets aren't the only team on the verge of a major collapse. Out in the AL Central, the Cleveland Guardians are just one game behind the Detroit Tigers for the division lead with an upcoming three-game series between the two starting on Monday.
If the Mets end up missing out on the playoffs, they better hope that the Tigers do as well. Misery loves company after all.
