This Week in Mets: The margins are thin for the Mets (2024)

“The air was full of rumor, fantastic and credible.”
—“In Parenthesis,” David Jones

The euphoria of Friday night already feels long ago. A devastating injury, a pair of rough home losses, and the Mets watched their momentum dissipate over the weekend. According to FanGraphs, New York’s playoff odds dipped from a season-best 59.9 percent on Friday night to 46.6 percent by Sunday night — a pretty remarkable drop in 48 hours.

The weekend series with Atlanta — imagine how differently it might have gone if not for an ill-advised squeeze attempt and an overrun fly ball — and the ever-tightening race in the National League served as a critical reminder: Every little bit matters. And that’s something the Mets must remember over the time between your reading this and 6 p.m. ET Tuesday night.

The two pennant-winners last year clinched playoff berths on the final Saturday of the regular season. Like the Diamondbacks team that succeeded them, the pennant-winning 2022 Phillies made the postseason by a single game.

And I don’t need to remind you of the many years in Mets’ franchise history when the difference between a successful season and a failure was a single regular-season game. (To wit, from 1998 to 2008, the Mets either made or missed the postseason by a single game four times, they made it by a game in 2016 and, of course, lost the division on a tiebreaker in 2022.)

That’s the context for these next two days. Rationally, you’re going to lose more trades than you win when you go for it at the deadline; the prices are their highest on talent. And what a team does at the deadline doesn’t shift its odds of winning the World Series all that much — the biggest move possible might shift it a few tenths of a percent. That was the argument that then-GM Billy Eppler made when the Mets took a conservative route in 2022 at the deadline.

But you can’t think of the deadline strictly in those terms. Rationally, the Rangers wish they hadn’t traded a young, team-controlled All-Star starter in Cole Ragans for a few months of a 3.72 ERA out of reliever Aroldis Chapman. On the other hand, Chapman helped turn a mid-September game for the Rangers against the Red Sox, allowing Texas to come back late. The win stopped a four-game losing streak, kept the Rangers tied with Seattle for the last playoff spot and started a six-game winning streak. A different outcome that night, and maybe October ends differently as well.

So it’s those larger shifts in playoff odds that matter more than the minuscule ones in World Series odds. Getting in the tournament has never mattered more, and the Mets are in as convoluted a chase as ever. They should keep that in mind these next couple of days.

The exposition

The Mets split their weekend series with Atlanta, the ecstasy of a five-game winning streak ending with a thud on Saturday and Sunday. New York is 55-50 and currently the third wild card in the National League, a half-game up on Arizona.

The Twins won two of three over the Tigers in Detroit over the weekend. Minnesota is 58-46, which is good enough for the American League’s second wild card. If the season ended today, in the postseason the Twins would play … the Yankees.

The Angels avoided a four-game home sweep by the A’s by coming back from six runs down to win Sunday. That followed on the heels of a sweep of the Mariners in Seattle. Strange week. The Halos are 46-60 and host the Rockies before the Mets come to town next weekend.

The pitching possibles

v. Minnesota

LHP Jose Quintana (5-6, 4.02 ERA) v. RHP Simeon Woods Richardson (3-1, 3.27 ERA)
LHP Sean Manaea (6-4, 3.74) v. RHP David Festa (1-1, 8.16)
RHP Luis Severino (7-3, 3.58) v. RHP Pablo López (9-7, 4.73)

at Anaheim

LHP David Peterson (5-1, 3.52) v. LHP Tyler Anderson (8-9, 2.96)
RHP Tylor Megill (2-5, 5.20) v. RHP José Soriano (6-7, 3.69)
LHP Jose Quintana v. RHP Griffin Canning (3-10, 5.04)

Injury updates

Red = 60-day IL
Orange = 15-day IL
Blue = 10-day IL

• Kodai Senga’s return lasted one night and 5 1/3 really encouraging innings. It ended with a calf strain likely to keep him out into 2025. The Mets said only that Senga would probably be out the rest of the regular season, leaving some sliver of hope he could return for the postseason, should they get there.
• Christian Scott is going to be shut down for another 10 days or so before being re-evaluated and potentially beginning a throwing program. An MRI revealed a strain of Scott’s ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow; he’ll try the rest-and-rehab approach but understood that surgery isn’t entirely off the table.
• Dedniel Núñez’s stint on the IL should be short, Carlos Mendoza said earlier this week. The Mets are being especially cautious with a reliever unaccustomed to the kind of high-leverage workload he’d been entrusted with lately.
• Starling Marte began a running progression this week. Marte’s return from a bone bruise has been slow, and it’s likely that he’ll need a minor-league rehab assignment before he comes back to the majors.
• Harrison Bader has been day-to-day with an ankle injury suffered Tuesday. He should finally be back in the starting lineup Monday against Minnesota.
• Sean Reid-Foley started a rehab assignment Sunday. He’ll have at least one more minor-league appearance.

Minor-league schedule

Triple-A: Syracuse at Columbus (Cleveland)
Double-A: Binghamton v. New Hampshire (Toronto)
High-A: Brooklyn at Aberdeen (Baltimore)
Low-A: St. Lucie at Fort Myers (Minnesota)

Last week in Mets

• The Mets traded for Jesse Winker
• The Mets traded for Ryne Stanek
• The Athletic graded the trades for Winker and for Stanek
• The injury to Senga makes it clear: The Mets need another starter
• The vibes were so much better Friday night, when the Mets moved past Atlanta
• Will and I hosted a trade deadline mailbag
• I argued the Mets should be aggressive buyers
• How does the Mets’ long-term outlook affect their present deadline planning?
• The Jake Diekman Game was like a month ago, right?

A note on the epigraph

I try to avoid using the same epigraph in multiple years, but this from the poet Jones’ underrated World War I novel always fits the week of the trade deadline.

Trivia time

In 1998, the Mets traded this relief pitcher away in early June (for Hideo Nomo) and brought him back in mid-July. They then traded him away again the following year at the trade deadline. Who was it?

(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)

(Photo of Jesse Winker: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)

Tim Britton is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the New York Mets. He has covered Major League Baseball since 2009 and the Mets since 2018. Prior to joining The Athletic, he spent seven seasons on the Red Sox beat for the Providence Journal. He has also contributed to Baseball Prospectus, NBC Sports Boston, MLB.com and Yahoo Sports. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBritton