IT’S GAME ON
Stakes couldn’t be higher for Mets and Nationals
WE WERE sitting in the home dugout, watching the Mets workout on their main field in the final week of spring training and bouncing from subject to subject when I brought up the talent and depth of the NL’s best teams, including the Mets and Nationals.
I mentioned to general manager Sandy Alderson that the Nationals had kind of dropped a calling card on the Mets of their excellence the previous day with arguably their three best players starring — two homers each from Bryce Harper and Trea Turner plus five shutout innings from Max Scherzer in a 6-0 Washington victory.
Suddenly, there was intensity in both Alderson’s visage and voice, as he quickly noted that the Mets had used their sixth or seventh starter, Seth Lugo, in the game and that half of their positional starters were in Jupiter playing the Marlins in a split-squad
contest.
Even in the f inal week of March — in a game that would not count — Alderson was unwilling to give an inch on Nationals-Mets. Which, by the way, is just perfect.
You will get arguments from supporters of the Cardinals and Giants, and perhaps Pirates. But if you ask personnel men and scouts — or if you just want to even ask me — four teams stand above the NL: the Cubs, Dodgers, Mets and Nationals because of projected excellence in every phase and depth. Obviously, the game is not played on paper and that is one reason we love sports — it does not come with an actual script. But paper is where you start at this time of year to try to envision the season ahead. And should it play out to expectation, then you have the Dodgers as the dominant team in the NL West, the Cubs as the dominant team in the NL Central, but both the Mets and Nationals vying in the NL East.
That is why I believe one of the highlights of this season will be the 19 Nationals-Mets games. So much will be at stake between finishing first and second.
“They won [the East] last year and we have our eyes on them,” Mets assistant GM John Ricco said. “Those games against them are hugely important, and I hope they do play out where there is a lot riding on them because that would be great for baseball to develop this type of rivalry. We run a business too, and the business drives everything we do and we saw the value of what Yankees-Red Sox and CardinalsCubs has meant and how great it has been for baseball.”
The Nationals and Mets have alternated the NL East crown the last three years with the Mets winning in 2015. But that enabled them to avoid a oneand- done wild- card game, which led to an NL pennant. Last year, the Mets were at the mercy of how fickle that game is — Noah Syndergaard t hrew s even s h ut o ut innings and the Giants still won behind Madison Bumgarner’s four-hit shutout. Ne i l Walker was in uniform in the Mets dugout for the wild-card game, but inactive after back surgery. He played in the three previous NL wildcard games as a Pirate, winning in 2013, but losing in 2014 (when Bumgarner threw another four-hit shutout) and 2015 (when Jake Arrieta threw a five-hit shutout).
“Trust me, I have seen how valuable it is to win the division,” Walker said. “Not that we are taking anyone else in the NL East lightly, but we know the Nationals are the reigning division champs, and to win the division we ultimately will have to go through them.”
David Wright used the same terminology in saying the NL East went through Washington, and noting how during his career the rivalry to win the division was handed from the Braves to the Phillies and now games against the Nationals.
The Marlins, Braves and Phillies all attempted to upgrade in the offseason and Miami, in particular, wants to try to disrupt the power dynamic atop the division. But it would be a significant upset if the Mets and Nationals did not finish 1-2 in some order for a fourth straight year. Bovada had the Nationals as 5-7 favorites to win the NL East and the Mets at 8-5, and no third-place projection in any of the six divisions were as long as the Marlins’ 12-1.
Which circles us back to just how vital those 19 Mets- Nati on a l s games portend to be. The Mets hold a scheduling edge with 10 home games rather than nine and with the last series between the clubs coming at Citi Field from Sept. 22-24 — the third-tolast series of the season.
“The t hing about t he Nationals is they are the standard against which we measure ourselves, just like we are the standard by which they measure themselves against,” Alderson said. “I do think it is important to play well against them — and it is not j ust about the 19 games, it is about meeting a standard.”
The Mets did not meet that standard last year, going 7-12 against the Nationals. They were 11-8 against Wa sh i n g t o n in 2015, notably going 6-0 from July 31 to Sept. 9 to go from second in the NL East to complete c o mmand . Wilmer Flores won the first of those games with a 12th-inning walk-off homer a few days after being in tears before learning that his trade to Milwaukee for Carlos Gomez had been rescinded because Gomez did not pass the Mets’ physical review. Instead, the Mets obtained Yoenis Cespedes.
“If we win the World Series [in 2015], those six games would be part of Mets lore for 50 years,” Alderson said. “The difference between winning and not winning the division the last two years has been our games [against the Nationals]. They are a reminder of how well we have to play across the board to be the best because we play them so much.”