LOS ANGELES — The Ohtani Dodgers have history, positivity and celebrity going for them, and that’s a lot. But that Mets mojo, well, it’s something else.
The Mets can’t match this exulted, accomplished Dodgers band for star power or Q rating, but they are proving to be New York tough, and ultimately, that may be enough.
No one but no one expected the Mets to survive this far into October. But what they have going for them can’t be evaluated via analytics.
The metric for it hasn’t been invented yet.
And it doesn’t appear on a stat sheet, either.
The Mets are comeback artists. And like few teams before them, they possess an unusual ability to take a punch.
The Dodgers landed a shot to the kisser in Game 1, and the Mets, unbowed and unfazed, hit back when they needed to, taking the National League Championship Series back home deadlocked at a game apiece after their 7-3 victory before another sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium.
The Mets built an early six-run lead on yet another grand slam (this one by October darling Mark Vientos) and hung on in this one. Embattled closer Edwin Diaz got the final four outs through the heart of the Dodgers order, the last three on strikeouts of Mookie Betts, Teoscar Hernandez and Freddie Freeman with two on.
It was a new way to do it for this game club that apparently likes to play from behind.
It was mostly the Mets. But the Dodgers, as celeb-heavy as they come, do have some issues.
Momentum, they say, is only as good as the next day’s starter. And unfortunately for L.A., they were plum out of those.
With their $300 million-plus payroll but an almost unprecedented ability to get hurt and stay hurt, the Dodgers lasted only until Game 2 of this NLCS before they needed what’s become known as a “bullpen game,” which requires a reliance on up to nine relievers and constant praying. The Dodgers had little choice.
The problem for L.A. is the Mets are death on relievers, as star closers Raisel Iglesias, Devin Williams and Carlos Estevez, late September and October victims all, could tell you.
The Dodgers do have a shutdown pen, but that’s good for late in games, not a whole game. They were supposed to be a juggernaut after spending a billion dollars this winter (with more than half deferred — their accountants are as talented as their players). But the problem is nearly half their team is on the injured list.
Specifically, they have a veritable “Who’s Who” of starting pitchers either injured and out (Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Gavin Stone, Dustin May), not quite ready to return (Tony Gonsolin) or unusable due to inexplicably poor performance (Bobby Miller). So they had no choice but to utilize a collection of relievers to try to bury the Mets. The result was ugly for the home team.
Vientos, whose favorite month continues to be October, inspired chants of “Let’s Go Mets,” from the small but vocal contingent behind the Mets first-base dugout with the slam that quieted the locals. Vientos’ drive to right-center field off the second of many pitchers the Dodgers tried (Landon Knack) came after the Dodgers intentionally walked Mets MVP Francisco Lindor, who started the game by homering himself to start a near must-win game for the Mets.
(Lindor won the battle of the superstars in Game 2 with a second hit and the walk compared to Ohtani’s 0-for-3, two-walk day.)
So now, even after losing the first game 9-0, the Mets return to Queens with the home-field edge and some momentum of their own. Forget the Dodgers’ bigger names, consider the Dodgers pitching mess and also the Mets’ real resilience and believe the Mets now hold a small but unexpected advantage in this series.
It’s obvious why Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called this “my most challenging year,” as they need to improvise on the fly, thanks to an unprecedented 10 pitchers on their 40-man roster being stationed on the injured list. And it’s hard to figure how the Dodgers won’t need a second bullpen game if this series returns to L.A.
Better still, the Mets pulled themselves out of the one-day doldrums by returning to their mostly outstanding October form. The Mets are generally playing with amazing urgency in this series, but you have to wonder if their leisurely pace in getting here, which didn’t leave room for a workout day at Dodger Stadium, hurt them in Game 1.
Of course, the Mets are allowed one clunker in this fantastic journey through the toughest locales of the National League. Since late September, they’ve experienced Atlanta twice, Milwaukee twice, Philly, L.A. and one hurricane named Helene. They’ve endured it all, and survived.
And now they have the momentum for their return trip to New York, and for a change, the Dodgers need to travel, too. In a quirk, they’ve spent the entirety of the month in Southern California to date.
No one figured the Mets would be here. And now that they are, they continue to make it as interesting as could be. It’s been an amazing ride already. Who’s to say they can’t keep it going?