Miracle Mets still trying to solve their Shohei Ohtani enigma
The Mets are showing heart, guts and resilience in abundance throughout their magical and fun October run.
All that is wonderful. But it looks today like they are no match for one Shohei Ohtani — whose combination of skills is very possibly unmatched in baseball history — or frankly, the Ohtani Dodgers.
Ohtani was alleged here and other places to be in a slump when this National League Championship Series started. But if he was ever truly struggling, that’s quite clearly over now.
Baseball’s 50-50 man looks too good for the Mets, and everyone else. Truly, he’s very likely better than anyone who’s tried playing this game since Alexander Cartwright or Abner Doubleday or whomever started all this. Next year, he could do 50-50-20 (50 homers, 50 steals, 20 wins), and no one would be shocked.
Ohtani’s limited to hitting for now, and that’s enough. He’s hitting homers that look like a “golf ball” (teammate Tommy Edman’s assessment) to parts of Citi Field not often visited. Those momentary Emmanuel Clase/Mariano Rivera comparisons, always silly, thankfully ended now. But the Ohtani/Babe Ruth pairing remains apt.
“It’s almost like a 14-year-old playing with 10-year-olds,” J.D. Martinez said. “The ballpark just seems too small for him. He generates so much power, hits the ball so hard — it’s a deadly combination.”
After putting a bow on the Dodgers’ Game 3 win with a bomb over the right-field foul pole, he set a bad tone by opening Game 4 with a scorcher of home run — 117.8 mph — under the Citi Field bridge in right-center field, leading to a 10-2 Dodgers victory that put them in commanding position in this mega-market NLCS matchup.
If the Mets find themselves in a rather unenviable position, at least it’s a familiar one. This team, all heart, needs a comeback to end all comebacks.
“We’re going to do our best to add to the story and make some more magic,” Brandon Nimmo said.
No one should consider these Mets officially dead until the coroner confirms, of course. This is a team that has risen like few others. From the 0-5 to start the season and a 22-33 mark in late May, they rose. Time and again, they rose through this late September/October run that has energized all the boroughs.
These Mets are comeback specialists, and they need to engineer their biggest and best one yet against the best competition they have faced. It’s an organization filled with superstars, from the players (Ohtani scored four runs and Mookie Betts had four hits and four RBIs Thursday night) to their part-owner (Magic Johnson) to their legendary pitcher/fan (Sandy Koufax), the last two Hall of Famers among attendees over the past couple of days.
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The Dodgers outscored the Mets, 27-2, in the three wins and look almost unstoppable. Betts hit one out, and the combo with Ohtani is the NL version of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. Plus, Max Muncy set a record by getting on base 12 straight times before he was finally retired.
“I feel like they’re rolling right now and it’s going to take a big-time momentum shift to stop them,” said Martinez, who didn’t rule it out.
“We’ve got a shot,” he added. “Teams have come back from down three to one. It has happened.”
Who can possibly predict Mets games these days? They were supposed to be home long ago.
They showed decent life against Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed the biggest pitching contract in MLB history this winter after rejecting a similar Mets offer. Maybe the Mets would have gone higher, but they knew they were beaten by the time the Dodgers matched their $325M bid and added a $50M signing bonus.
But while the jury’s out on that deal, Ohtani, the highest paid player in baseball history, is also the biggest bargain. And as with Yamamoto, there’s nothing for the Mets to regret there, either. The Mets understood from the start Ohtani had no interest in New York (that’s what he flat told the Yankees seven years ago on his tour of teams), and he very likely wasn’t leaving LA, whether that be to stay in Los Angeles of Anaheim or to head to the real LA.
The Mets had no chance there. And if they weren’t the comeback champions, we’d think they have no chance here in this NLCS, too.
They do finally seem ripe to turn into a pumpkin (and not the one Pete Alonso’s been carrying around). If they hadn’t pulled off multiple magical comebacks already these past few weeks, there’d be no hope at all. They need to win three straight against the league’s best team with the one bullpen that’s working properly this postseason.
Things are looking dire, but they do have the edge with their rotation, better health (all-time tough guy Freddie Freeman had to sit out Game 4 with his bum ankle) and their recent happy history.
They are going to have to figure out a way to solve Ohtani, however. The Mets have a big heart and some very nice All-Star-caliber players. But this is a guy who comps to Ruth, and a guy who is playing like Ruth in October now.
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