2019 NL Wild Card: Because the rules say somebody has to win

New York Mets

77-72, 4 GB from 2nd WC

There are only two possible outcomes for the 2019 New York Mets.

Path One: they stay close enough to be in contention for the final week of the season, only to blow it against the misfit Miami Marlins and a Braves team in full-on rest-for-the-playoffs mode.

Path Two: they actually pull this thing off.

Credit the Mets for forging an identity this season behind agent-turned-evil-incarnate Brodie Van Wagenen. They’ve cornered the nobody-believes-in-us market, continually propped up expectations beyond what the rest of baseball thinks is possible for them, and they’ve done it all with an f-you we’re New York attitude.

The Robinson Cano/Edwin Diaz trade was the first overreach, spending big in dollars and prospect capital for an aging second baseman and the best closer in baseball to close games for what-we-assumed would be a losing team.

It didn’t exactly play out that way. Diaz blew up in their face, but not because he was superfluous – because he’s been a disaster.

Yet at the deadline they doubled down, trading for Marcus Stroman in a savvy bid to play both sides of the market. Their playoff odds were minuscule at the time of the deal, but a 15-1 run brought them right back into the race and reinforced the organization’s belief in themselves as a competitor.

They stuck to their identity, no matter how often we told them to bail. Some cosmic comeuppance should get the Mets not only into the Wild Card game, but through it.

Besides the Nationals, they’re probably the only team in the field with a chance to outlast the Dodgers in the ALDS. For one, they have the pitching. Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Stroman, and Zack Wheeler raise their ceiling, making them the type of team that can go on a 15-1 run. Their bullpen remains a dumpster fire, but whose isn’t?

These Mets actually believe they’re the best team in every game they play. Todd Frazier, Brandon Nimmo, Wilson Ramos, J.D. Davis, Pete Alonso: they’re a blocky group, and insufferable to anyone outside Queens, but only because they know how good they can be and don’t mind sharing. In the playoffs, the hubristic gumption these Mets have shown all year might actually play. Insecurity is the loose thread that unravels playoff runs, and the Metropolitans are not insecure.

If there’s a team foolish enough to believe they can withstand a five-round bout of back-and-forths with a juggernaut like the Dodgers, it’s the Mets.

I can see it now. They beat Max Scherzer in the one-game playoff, deGrom loses two starts in the ALDS and they still take the Dodgers in five, the Braves collapse under the pressure of heightened expectations against an inferior division foe, and Michael Conforto, deGrom, and Syndergaard start in with the soundbites about how this team is even better than the surprise pennant winner in 2015. Oh yeah, I can see this team getting swept by the Astros in the World Series.

Why do these Mets deserve the postseason? Because karma. Because they stuck to their process. Because deGrom’s 9 wins. Because polar bears. And most of all, because after the baseball world openly mocked the Mets for believing in themselves, these Mets in the playoffs is exactly what we deserve.