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In the Bergen Record, the sunny Bob Klapisch writes…
“The ballpark was filled with an awful,
end-of-the-season vibe, as if everyone realized the Mets were no longer breathing. Who still believes in them now, after another loss and another step toward the fastest collapse in baseball history?”
…well, i believe, bob…but, i know you know it’ll take a lot more than a clever headline to break me…so, there’s one fan for you…i just hope i’m not alone…
…by the way, i actually reject this idea of a ‘collapse,’ which is to say that teams build up some sort of structure that can be knocked down, i.e., [pennant race] is [building]…and that does the beauty of the baseball season a total injustice…for what it’s worth, i never refer to the Yankees losing to the Red Sox in 2004 as a ‘collapse’ either, but i know i know i’m alone in that…
…to me, the season is more horizontal, left to right, 162 games, all equal, no one game is more meaningful than the rest…you play each game on the day it is scheduled and whomever wins more will advance to the post-season…on what day you win, be in April 1 or Sepetmber 30, technically, is meaningless…all that matters is that you win more after 162…if the Phillies lose more games this weekend than the Mets, will we talk of them ‘collapsing,’ because they played like garbage in April, despite playing well through most of September…no, of course we won’t…yet, technically, it’s the same thing…ultimately, the Phillies will have lost more games, it doesn’t matter when and how, all that matters is that they lost more games…
…plus, looking at it this way, it allows me to smile a bit more and be positive, have fun, and enjoy the ridiculousness of this white-hot focus on the last three regular-season games, something that is quite rare for us fans…enjoy it…let the media have their headlines, back pages and rhetoric…don’t look back, don’t look forward, just look at today…this game…because, it’s really all that matters…
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Wow… want to talk about rationalizing?
If you want to believe it’s not a collapse, that’s okay… but the Mets will have had the second highest playoff probability percentage of all time to have missed the playoffs if this doesn’t turn around.
And, really, anyone seeing any evidence that this will turn around?
Pedro going 7 games with 2 ER?
Last night’s pen, 0 ER?
Two nights ago, El Duque, Heilman, and Shoenenweis, 0ER?
7 innings sorry
After the Sox lost game 3 by a score of 19-8 and went down 3-0, where was the evidence they’d win the next 4?
Why all the doom and gloom you guys? The regular season ended yesterday and the Mets clinched a spot in the playoffs. The only difference is that seven NL teams clinched a spot this year instead of the usual four. The first round starts tonight! Be happy! Let’s Go Mets!
SELL OUT SHEA! SELL OUT SHEA! Spread the Word!
Well it’s either a sign or total presumption but I just got an e-mail from the Mets that as a 12 noon Monday, I’m eligible for NLCS tickets.
did you get the “sorry” email last night?
my first sons name is going to be randolph.
I feel bad for you son.
Well, there is a thing called momentum and that word “collapse” is commonly used in this context, yes. Here’s an interesting thought which goes along with the notion that all games are equal – What if it had been the Yanks who were going through their “nosedive” (there’s another vertical word) now and not in June – in other words, what if all those June losses were happening now. I haven’t checked the math on this, but I guess they would have had to come from the depths of it back up, like we will now, if we want to go further. Yes, every game counts the same and that’s why I have continually gotten miffed when I see Willie sometimes declare it “garbage time” too early when let’s say, they have already won the first two games and are 3 or 4 runs behind in the 6th and he needs to rest some guys. In a long season that is necessary, I guess, but sort of declaring “it’s not our day” in some of these has come back to bite us in the ass and now, we could sure have used some of those wins that a little more fight could have maybe gotten.
One of the beauties of baseball is the fact that so much of it is mental/psychological. It is not like football where you can work out more, build more muscles, hit harder, run faster — i.e. effect the outcome of games via effort and focus.
The flip side of that beauty though is the fact that NY is the media capital of the world and we take our baseball very seriously here. With all the scrutiny and pressure, it sometimes causes adverse effects on the players we so lovingly root for.
For example, time and time again, Wagner folds in the clutch. Blown saves in September are NOT the same as blown saves in April. Homeruns in the 1st and 3rd inning are NOT the same as HR’s in the 7th and later. Denying these facts is just denial.
Players that perform in the highest of pressure situations and games, THOSE are the players we embrace and love. Players that wear their emotions on their sleeves and RISE to the occasion, THESE are our heroes.
We get caught up in assessing character to these attributes. Beltran is “soft”. Lo Duca is “gritty”. Etc etc. The fact of the matter is they are probably both decent guys. But we aren’t going for beers or to a movie with them. We are hinging our hopes and dreams on their success on the field.
These next three days are going to say alot about this team. If it turns our that our core do not possess the intangibles to perform in NY pressure, then we must acknowledge it and move on, rather than expecting them to change.
Reyes/Wright – show us you are the cornerstones of our franchise. Maine/Perez show us you can be in our rotation for hte next five years.
Come on, LET’S DO THIS.
AWESOME post. Spot on with everything
Horizontal is right, that’s why everyone calls it a marathon…we got a decent start, and we’ve been leading most of the way, but we’re in the final mile and the pack has caught up. We’ll see what we have left.
Mets win the division
Except one thing …. Willie Randolph has repeatedly referred to September as when the most important games of the season occurred. Listening to Moises Alou yesterday, he echoed similar remarks — he said he was very proud to be having his batting streak at the end of the year, because it is such an important time.
Matt and everyone else can believe it’s a horizontal season, but the man in charge — Willie Randolph — has presented it as a vertical one since April.
dude, I’m just trying to stay positive.
wow – arguing semantics. that is another new low for the season.
here is some real good news: it won’t be the worst collapse (or horizontal left to right failure or whatever you want to call it) in MLB history. that would be the 1995 angels. According to BP we had at our peak a 500-1 chance of not making the playoffs but the angels were like 3000-1. we would be #2 tho. you can get the link to the BP article thru deadspin.
95 can be mostly blamed on one Randy Johnson. Just like 1988 can be blamed on one Orel Hershiser… Hard to account for an otherwise average pitcher turning into the best pitcher of all time for a month, or even a week.
The Mets collapse is more of thier own doing than having any one pitcher do it to them. Although Adam Eaton would make a nice scapegoat if we end up needing one…
i dont remember much about that season but according to the article the 95 angels went on two 9 game losing streaks and both the M’s and the Yankees. i think a little more than randy johnson was involved for baseball biggest playoff ‘collpase’ in history.
and i lied, the story isnt in deadspin, sorry
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6764
yea, my recollection had him beating them down the stretch and in the playin game. But that wasnt the case, he beat the Rangers twice, who were also in contention. And Johnson did go 5-0 from August 25th on and was 17-2 that year.
I couldn’t agree more about this whole “collapse” thing and how “historic” it would be. The Yankees have sole possession of the worst collapse. Anyways, no matter what happens this weekend, at least we will find out what this team is made of. It will also indicate what this team will look like in the next few years because if this team does not show the gut to fight through now, upper management will know they this incarnation of the Mets will not have what it take in the future. Changes will have to be made. Let’s hope Ollie and Maine don’t let it come down to that.
Even if we turn it around this weekend and win it all, changes are coming. That’s what’s gotta be devastating to this team – they believe they were built to win NOW, not next year, and certainly not 2-5 years from now. With the ages and declining abilities of so many players, this team will necessitate big changes, soon, regardless of how the rest of this season goes. I mean, where’s the competitive staying power in a roster that includes so many over-35 year-olds? Delgado, Lo Duca, Alou, Green, Glavine, Pedro, Wagner, Duque, Valentin, Easley…. This is (on average) a very old team that played very well last year, came into this year with a sense of entitlement, and is not built ot be stronger next year than it was this year. And we see, at least to date, what this year has brought us. So we build on Wright, Reyes, Beltran, Maine, and Perez, and maybe Pelfrey, Humber, Milledge, and Gomez. Those are decent building blocks, but except for Wright and Beltran they’re not anchors, and we have no anchor at all for the rotation, or the bullpen. Changes are coming.
It’s a collapse. I agree about each game being equally important in the final outcome but adjustments are made throughout the season. If you lose more at the start you identify the problems and fix them – whatever that means – replacing players, coaches, attitude adjustment, etc. Presumably if a team gets through to the middle of September in a good position you’ve assessed your strengths and weaknesses and know where you stand. The Mets have showed glaring signs of weakness since June yet they’ve managed up to this point to keep their heads above water. There were plenty of blowouts, obvious problems with the pen and frequent offensive anemia since then. They’ve made the assessment that whatever those problems they were transient and they could overcome them. Maybe they can. Depending on the final outcome this could all blow over – or it could be real ugly.
Bottom line is Mets have chosen another particularly bad point to play unfathomably bad baseball. It is almost impossible to believe that this group can come out and play good baseball for three days at this point. They just aren’t made up for it. Last year, there was a new hero every night, at least that is the way it seemed, this year, there is a new goat every night, sometimes its a herd. But who is actually going to sit here and believe that with the Mets up a run in the ninth and Dan Uggla or some other no name Marlin comes to the plate, Billy “Big Game” Wagner will be able to close the door. Not me. And getting to the ninth with a lead almost seems foreign at this point.
Actually Matt, it’s both horizontal (games) and vertical (wins) where the goal is to be at the top when you’re at the end. You should look at it as a graph. And if I’m looking at that graph correctly, although collapse might be too strong of a word, “stagnant” seems to fit.
Someone should tell the mets to shave their heads…. worked once before….
LETS GO METS!!!!!
I don’t agree at all. Yes every game in the middle of the season is as important as the next (as long as you’re out of division), but the Mets blew plenty of games this summer that should have been won. The thing is, its September, and baseball is all about momentum. The Mets have zero momentum. And more importantly they have zero heart. We have been losing games because of mental mistakes, laziness, and poor pitching. This team may make it, but who cares at this point. We’re just going to blow it in the divisional series. I probably watch about 150 games a year and I can honestly say this has been the least fun I’ve had watching the Mets in some time. I’ve seen this coming since the middle of the summer and I’ve been saying it since the middle of the summer. They’re a hard team to like and they’re a hard team to watch. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m numb, I couldn’t believe how little that loss hurt me last night, I just don’t seem to care anymore.
My God. Debating whether this debacle fits the definition of “collapse” is so absurd it’s comical.
Or should we now debate whether this is really a “debacle”?
We can debate whether this has been a debacle after Sunday’s game.
Are you seriously objecting to the metaphor? Should we not call it “choking” because there’s no “swallowing”?
Besides, notice how in the title it’s called a “pennant race”? Guess what, as you approach the finish line, if you “collapse” because you overexerted yourself earlier, someone else wins. Or will you now object to a “pennant race”?
It’s a common metaphor. Everyone knows what it means in context, and, sorry to say, this is it. Whether you choose to use the metaphor or not, the Mets lost a lead really, really quickly — historically fast. Whether they’re no longer at the front of the line or top of the ladder is of no moment. You can’t pretend that you can shuffle the wins and losses and come up with a final number. The games are played in a context. When you have a lead and it goes away, it’s not just a roll of the dice, it’s a psychological meltdown. I’ll put aside the issue of the manager’s role in steeling his team to avoid this sort of thing, or whether he has any power to do so, at all. That’s been talked to death.
Rationalizing it or wishing it away is not the right approach for the players. They need to see it as a punch in the jaw. They turn tail and run, or they counterpunch. Wright realized this.
i vote for the head shaving… and for someone to shave off willie’s moustache.
SQUEEZE WILLIE… PLEASE!
I agree, I thought they did this a few days ago, when I saw someone with a shaved head(LoDuca or Wright, I cant remember). They need to do shave their heads, all of them!
semantics…who cares about the stupid analogies or comparisons or anything lets stop p***y footing around the issue here, lets face it if they dont win tonight and the phillies win this season is as good as over and we will be the biggest choke artists at least in my lifetime (born in 85)…the yankees loss to the red sox isnt as bad as this and ill give you two reasons why
1.) the yankees only lost 4 games for their “collapse”….we have lost 10 games with a 4 game losing streak and a 5 game losing streak mixed in there.
2.) the red sox were nasty, pedro, schilling, lowe, that lineup was RIDICULOUS….we have been losing to the nats and marlins and now cardinals you could take the best players from all those teams and they still are probably worse than the red sox were that year.
while we did win the series against the marlins the 1 loss was pathetic
Totally disagree, Matt.
You claim that the “pennant race” is not akin to “building” a structure. However, the baseball season is almost exactly like building a structure. You play throughout the summer winning games (hopefully) with the idea that after some number of wins you will be far enough ahead of the second place team that with x-number of games left it will be mathematically impossible for that team to catch you (i.e. the “magic number).
Two weeks ago this team was very close to building that structure so high that the Phillies would not be able to catch them, no matter how well they played. With all the losses the Mets have piled up, that structure–or lead or whatever you want to call it–has “collapsed” to the point where these final three games actually matter, whereas if the team had simply won a few games, this series would mean nothing.
Not calling this a collapse is –as a friend here in Georgia says– “putting perfume on the pig.”
Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, trapezoidal whatever….you blow a 7 game lead and lose 7 in a row at home to bottom feeders…make way btoo many errors of omission and commission…and have a completely undependable bullpen…you have collapsed. There is no dancing around that reality.
But reality is we can still win this by playing up to our talent level the next three days. The wild card is still a possibility as well. I am as disgusted and depressed as anyone else but I ain’t quittin’ yet. Hope the team feels that way, too but you almost wonder if they do.they look lethargic and beaten.
I’m with you Matt!!!
Let’s Go Mets!!!!!!!!
is mlb.com still selling mets 2007 championship shirts? they could become a collectors item
You are absolutely right. It is not vertical but horizontal and games in April and May are just as important as September. But if anyone was looking at this team during those months, they should have realized that the team had flaws that were bound to surface as the season went along. After going 33-17 they are under .500 and the team has faltered because the same flaws are now coming back to haunt us almsot every night. You don’t need a degree to realize that the starting pitching is old and unreliable and the bullpen is just not good. We were not able to replace Bradford, Oliver, Mota (on Juice), and Heilman and Feliciano have not been as consistant with the latter tiring after having to pitch every night. Although getting Pedro has been a great boost but he too added to the bullpen woes. Why, I ask, did we not see this and get reinforcements in July? Castillo was nice but that is not what we needed. We needed arms. Even mediocre because mediocre right now is better than what we have. Why did we not see this? I thought we would get our hearts broken in October because of it but the baseball gods are punishing us in September.
We have been drafted to go to a war that unfortunately we did not think we would be in. But it is now our duty to unite and fight this war until the finish. You, decide when your on the battlefield whether you got the guts to stand with the other brave ones or retreat due to your weaknesses. Like those that manned up, got out of those boats and stormed on to the beach at Normandy, the bullets were indiscriminately firing at them, like all the media is firing at us. They saw what could be their moment of death. But the strong made it to shore, survived and won that battle and eventually as we all know, won that war. It is now that time, we are on those boats and we are in the sights of the enemy. Just like those soldiers, we now must believe we will survive and win. Now more than ever, Ya gotta believe!!!!
Stop using the war analogy, its disrespectful to those who have been in an actual war. Rooting for a team is not fighting a war, and making the comparison makes you sound ignorant.
I guess you don’t understand the word analogy. We don’t need weak, easily offended fans like you. Grow some testicles…
Trust me, I have more than you will ever have.
like the war analogy. Right now, they are like the platoon that got cut off and is cornered by the enemy. Their big choice is to come out fighting with everything they have (go down in a blaze of glory if needed), or they can huddle together and whimper goodbye!
Ugh. You know inside that all Yankee fans like Klapisch are rooting for the Mets to complete the slide so that the Yankees’ 2004 collapse to the Red Sox will somehow feel less terrible.
Sorry, but I think the 2004 Yankees will still be Chokers for the Ages for a long long time. I can;’t see how anything will equal that collapse.