Sandy finally makes mark
ATLANTA — The final moment of the Mets’ rebuilding phase arrived at 10:07 on Saturday night, when Jeurys Familia blew a high fastball by Nick Swisher. That sealed the team’s 81st win, and ended its string of losing seasons at six.
The achievement has been inevitable for more than a month, so the organization greeted it with a yawn.
“It might have (meant something) at one time,” Sandy Alderson said. “I don’t really think it does now, based on our expectations.”
This 6-4 victory over the Braves was a perfect representation of what Alderson has built, showcasing a deep and versatile roster. Noah Syndergaard dominated for seven innings. Yoenis Cespedes blasted yet another home run. Kelly Johnson singled in the winner in the ninth.
This came after another milestone on Friday, when the Alderson/Collins Mets finally bested Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel’s 79-83 final year with the team (the Mets’ win totals from 2011-14 were 77, 74, 74, 79).
After four years spent cutting, building and waiting, Alderson is wisely seizing on a winning moment, and proving that he can do as well in win-now mode as when trading veterans for prospects. In less than two months, the GM has transformed his team, beginning with the July call-up of Michael Conforto and acquisitions of Johnson and Juan Uribe.
He was not nearly done there, acquiring setup man Tyler Clippard, and the absurdly helpful Cespedes. When August games revealed the need for another late-inning reliever, Alderson plucked Addison Reed from Arizona, and might have found a crucial seventhinning solution.
“We didn’t have the pieces,” Collins said of the first-half version of his team. “And then Sandy went out and got us the two pieces that were huge (Uribe and Johnson). That was a big impact, just having those guys. And then making the Cespedes deal just put it over the top…(Alderson) has done his part, and we salute (it).”
With Minaya’s final win total eclipsed at last, we can revisit the loaded topic of a Mets “revival.” That word generated much debate in March, before the publication of author Steve Kettman’s provocatively titled Alderson bio “Baseball Maverick: How Sandy Alderson Revolutionized Baseball and Revived the Mets.”
How, we asked then, can Alderson be credited with a revival when he hasn’t even achieved the win total that got his predecessor fired?
Well, here’s the view from 81 wins: That title is still disrespectful to Minaya, who himself revived the Mets. Minaya not only reached the NLCS in his second year, and made the Mets relevant again in New York, but left Alderson with Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Familia, and so many other key contributors.
In other words, the Mets were not in need of revival, at the end of Minaya’s tenure. But independent of that buzzword, we can now say that Alderson has done excellent work in assembling a dynamic team — some of it during the slow grind of four rebuilding years, and much of it in a frenzy, over the past seven weeks.
The big-picture discussion is interesting in framing the recent history of the franchise — but it is irrelevant in the clubhouse, an attitude that underscores the team’s ability to remain in the moment.
Neither Collins nor David Wright was even aware that the Mets had clinched their best season of the Alderson era.
“Oh yeah?” the manager said on Saturday, looking up from his desk, reading glasses on the tip of his nose. “Huh.”
Wright shrugged at his locker a few minutes later, while pulling on his uniform.
The captain then thought for a moment, and added, “It’s good to do it pretty early in September, too.”
Indeed, the Mets will blow by 81 wins, gunning for 90plus, and as many as they can collect in October. Two significant nights passed without notice, because this spellbinding summer has brought a new set of dreams.