The magic of the New York Mets ran out in the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. But for fans, this was one of the best series in the books for the Mets. Through the season, there were so many ways that the Mets proved the league wrong, so many characters and so many memorable, cinematic game moments. The Mets have not been competitive in the MLB playoffs since 2015 when they made it all the way to the World Series to face the Kansas City Royals. So this year’s postseason runs had all fans from young to old on the edge of their seats.
To start off the season, the Opening Day roster was not notably improved from last season’s team who didn’t even make the playoffs. All of the moves that David Stearn’s new front office made were mostly set for the team in the future, and not exactly to win in 2024. The team signed starting pitchers like Sean Manaea and Luis Severino on low-commitment deals that would have made those types of guys easy to trade at the deadline if the Mets season were not performing to be a potential playoff team. It was set up so that the Mets would not have a sky-rocketed payroll but also have a chance to be competitive. At the time of the trade deadline in mid-July, the Mets seemed like a team who could compete for a Wild Card spot, so they were buyers at the deadline and did exactly that.
The Mets were competing for the last Wild Card spots until the very last day of the regular season, they received the sixth and final bid of the 2024 MLB postseason after a doubleheader split with the Atlanta Braves. After starting the season with a 0-5 record lead to an excruciating first two months of the season. The Mets were 11 games under .500 at the end of May and quickly became the team that ended up as the winningest team from the start of June. A little bit of sports magic is what the Mets considered their turnaround to be credited to. June 12th was the day that the known McDonalds purple mascot, Grimace, threw out the first pitch at Citi Field. From that day on, the Mets just kept winning, for months, all the way to October. All of this started making sense for the Mets and everything started to piece together game after game. Francisco Lindor was the MVP of the Mets, the guy that everyone looked at to take the Mets to new and winning heights. The younger guys on the team like Mark Vientos and Francisco Alvarez found their sparks as major league players and continued to make an impact on the field. The offseason moves for the starting pitching were effective and the bullpen carried their weight, even if it wasn’t always easy.
The whole idea of ‘some things that are supposed to happen, actually happen and some things that aren’t meant to be, aren’t’ kind of explains this year’s Mets’ team. But that’s how baseball is, some teams who maybe shouldn’t be in playoff position, have every single thing go right for them and suddenly they are the best team, or it is the complete opposite. Another one of the Mets’ team staples was the saying “OMG.” This came from the Mets’ second basemen, Jose Iglesias who released a single called “Candelita” during the season. The single became a sensation on Latin music charts and practically the Mets’ new theme song. The song would play after every home run that the Mets hit at Citi Field and the players would run through the dugout to take a photo with the infamous ‘OMG’ sign every time. In late June, after the Mets’ win over the Houston Astros, Iglesias performed the song live in front of all Mets fans at Citi Field and the whole team was there to sing along. That’s when the Mets truly saw their team chemistry come to life and build the team camaraderie that carried them into postseason play.
As the month of September went on, the Mets became a team that everyone just had to start accepting were good and a contending team, because of the ways that they were winning games. They were winning in increasingly wild and uncanny ways, by repeating various extremities and heroic plays that you feel are only in the movies. The magic of this team was felt by Mets fans and the entire league. Then, Mets’ first baseman, Pete Alonso brought in the ‘playoff pumpkin’ that traveled with the team from their games in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Philly and Los Angeles. It was just another one of the Mets’ lucky charms that continued to grow their postseason magic. Speaking of Alonso, he became the guy that the Mets had imagined him to be since he was a prospect in the Mets’ farm systems. Being the guy to step up to the plate and launch homeruns to keep New York winning and advancing in the playoffs, was another one of the main factors that kept the team alive.
Unfortunately for the Mets, their magic ran out in Los Angeles against the Dodgers in the NLCS, but they did not go down without a fight. No one would have thought that the New York Mets, who had a disappointing 22-33 record on May 29th after a loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers at home, would make it all the way to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. It took every ounce of the team’s energy to make it to the playoffs, winning a game in a double header on the last game of the season on the road against their division rival of the Braves, to the magic of every single postseason game, all the way until the last pitch. The New York Mets will be back.