There is a scene in Kill Bill where Uma Thurman’s character is asked, “You didn’t really think it was going to be this easy, did you?” to which she replies, “You know, for a second I did, I kind of did.”
When I think of the New York Mets’ season, I always think of this movie, and this scene in particular. Both the Mets and Thurman’s “bride” are on the brink of death early on – the Mets due to their own slow start to the season and the bride due to a brutal assassination attempt by her former colleagues. Halfway through, the script flipped: The Mets were having their best month in baseball, and the bride was well on her way to revenge.
But it’s never that simple – not in a Quentin Tarantino movie and certainly not for the Mets. Deep down, Mets fans know that, even if we sometimes forget it, like when the team briefly held the National League’s first wild card spot about three weeks ago.
Since then, things have been unraveling, and although the Bride in the scene described above had to fend off the Crazy 88’s to achieve her ultimate goal, the Mets only needed to beat the Angels, Rockies and A’s to keep their spot in the now highly competitive NL playoff race. The Mets being the Mets, that has proven to be a difficult task, as they only managed a 4-5 record against those three weak teams, and a crushing three-game win over the Mariners to boot.
Other teams in the National League have taken the opportunity to move past the Mets, most notably the Padres and the reigning NL champion Diamondbacks, who have all been in top form in recent weeks. The Mets have even fallen two games behind the listless Braves, who are still in the race despite losing the reigning NL MVP and NL Cy Young favorite months ago.
We know it won’t be easy for the Mets to get back into the playoffs this year, because it’s never easy for the Mets, but if they want to have any chance of making the postseason, these three players will have to step up to the plate for the final stretch.
It pains me to say this, but Francisco Alvarez hasn’t done much to help the Mets in over a month.
The Mets as a team have had a significant power outage in recent weeks after smashing the ball in July and late June. Such a decline was inevitable, as they would never have been able to sustain a 5+ run per game pace. Some players who exceeded expectations, like Jose Iglesias, have come back down to earth, but the Mets need their stars to get this thing over the finish line.
That means Alvarez, already a core part of this team at 22, will have to rediscover the swing that put him in the record books last year on par with the likes of Johnny Bench. Alvarez has hit just one home run in his last 32 games, and has been outperformed by reliever Luis Torrens, who is on his third team this year.
Alvarez’s OPS has barely been above .560 since early July, an abysmal number that relegates him to eighth or ninth in the batting order most days. Worse, he’s scored just seven runs during that span, even as the consistently excellent Francisco Lindor has finished a spot or two behind him.
Pete Alonso has shown signs of awakening recently with a four-hit game against the A’s and a two-home run game against the Rockies. Mark Vientos has continued to clean up and even Jeff McNeil has woken up, but this lineup can only reach its full potential if Alvarez behaves like the best young catcher in baseball. He needs to find his swing before it’s too late.
