This past weekend was not a particularly good one for Mets fans. The team dropped two games to the Philadelphia Phillies, and, oh yeah, their best relief pitcher’s arm fell off. More disappointing than the loss of closer Billy Wagner is that the Mets had an opportunity to show some mettle and push Philadelphia four, five, or six games behind them in the standings. Instead, the Phillies left town just two games out of first place, and with a degree of confidence that they are the better of the two teams.
If you’re wondering whether or not I’m drinking the Luis Ayala cool-aid, the answer is: Absolutely not. I don’t trust Ayala to finish games for the Mets more than I trust my dick not to stop working after I’ve consumed a bottle of bourbon (ah dick jokes — my most favorite Journalism 101 “easy out”). It’s just that, with all the mounting evidence that closers are completely irrelevant in the sport of baseball, why should I worry? When the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in 2001 they had Byung-Hyun Kim as their closer. In 2003, the Marlins had Ugueth Urbina as their closer, but it was Josh Beckett who single-handedly won them the world series. In 2004, when the Boston Red Sox were making their historical run, they had Keith Foulke closing games for them. Analysts claimed that no team could win a championship with a soft-tossing closer. Guess what? The Red Sox won. In 2005, the Chicago White Sox had a rookie closer named Bobby Jenks on their roster. He saved two games and blew one in the world series, but the White Sox had implausibly good starting pitching during that four-game sweep, so Jenks really wasn’t all that crucial to the team’s championship. In 2006, during their complete fluke of a championship season, the Saint Louis Cardinals featured another rookie, Adam Wainwright, as closer. Wainwright was only finishing games for the Cardinals because Jason Isringhausen underwent season-ending surgery during the last month of the season. If you don’t believe me or my completely subjective analysis of the last six world series’ winners, why not read Tom Verducci’s article for Sports Illustrated about the problem with closers.
So, I ask you: Why shouldn’t the Mets win with Luis Ayala? With 19 games remaining, the Mets are ahead of the Phillies by 1.5 games in the standings. They have six games left against the Nationals and the Braves, two teams with nothing to play for that have winning percentages under .430. They have four games against the Cubs, which could be a great warm-up for a post-season series. To end the season, they have 3 games against the Marlins, a team that would love nothing more than to play spoiler, but against whom the Mets have a 9-6 record this season. The Phillies have five games left against the Marlins, four against Milwaukee (hopefully this series will cancel out the Mets/Cubs series), six against Atlanta, and three against Washington. Both teams have it relatively easy down the stretch, but the Phillies have a losing record against the Marlins this season, so I’m hoping this proves to be the difference over the next two-and-a-half weeks.
It doesn’t hurt that CoolStandings.com, a website that simulates the remainder of the regular season one million times every day has the Mets with a 75% chance of playing into October and the Phillies with a 42.5% chance of continuing into the postseason. It’s not like I believe in computer simulations or anything — one random element or variable could completely ruin either teams’ chances of making the playoffs — but its nice to see that, at this very moment, the possibility of the Mets playing for a World Series championship is worth investing time and energy (and blog posts).
And, if the Mets collapse and miss the playoffs for the second year in a row, at least I’ll be able to laugh at Yankees fans for sucking complete shit all season.
Tags:
