Mets, Dodgers remain on separate paths 3 ½ years later
LOS ANGELES — It is among the tendencies of the game that a person must find himself back in the place that could never be again. The gravity of the moment changes. Perhaps it is no less important. The witnesses seem more desperate or less real or simply inconsequential. The music has changed. It always changes.
So, he is in his 30’s now and wealthy enough and even has a grown-up haircut, but he earned something here once. He saved a season one October. Now another one needs saving, in May. That process is relentless, that thing where once or twice is not enough, so long as there can be a next time.
It’s just baseball, just a game, right up until it’s your name on it. Maybe he pulls and drags and urges and sometimes it works and others he’s not better. None of them are.
One time Jacob deGrom and the New York Mets were here and didn’t have it all figured out but came close. They were good right up until the time they weren’t.
And if it can feel like a curse, all this proving until the game just doesn’t need them anymore, until it just becomes too hard, then it’s also a hell of an opportunity too. What better than to stand for as straight as he can for as long as he can and see what comes of that?
Jacob deGrom pitched at Dodger Stadium on Monday night. This time, like one of those other times, he was opposed by Clayton Kershaw. And, well, it all goes by like it’s been hit on the screws and the wind’s blowing out. Noah Syndergaard, who’d proven himself before too, will pitch Wednesday night. Matt Harvey is in Anaheim. He’s injured and searching and has a 7.50 ERA, after that summer in Cincinnati with a 4.50 ERA. The manager of the Mets may or may not be in trouble. It sort of depends on the day anymore. Which no one would think unusual for the Mets.
Shepherded then by a 66-year-old manager, a floppy-haired ace, a quirky and cerebral second baseman and the certainty that their fortunes had finally and forever turned, the Mets cleared out of here 3 ½ years ago and persisted on a path that would take them to the World Series.
The Mets had figured it out. Imagine that. They were young in the proper places, healed in others, steered by their iconic if deteriorating captain, and would pitch, really pitch, for years to come. Those were the glory days. Well, weeks.
The Dodgers, alternatively, might have been considered a wreck, which was both fine by the Mets and of no more concern to them than the Champagne pond they’d left behind at Dodger Stadium. Those were problems for someone else, for an offseason that for them hadn’t yet arrived.
Six days later, the Mets were great again. They toasted themselves in Chicago. The conviction that followed their first National League East title in nine years (and second in 27 seasons), that hardened over five trying games in the division series, breathed fire upon a four-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs.
And that was it. Unless the second-place finish, the wild card game, and the one-and-done in the following October qualify, which surely they don’t, that’s about where we left that version of the Mets. The version in which they were wholly capable, delightfully promising, evidently competent, even a bit lucky.
So, 3 ½ years of hardball wilderness isn’t so bad, not as far as the Mets go. The game isn’t easy, teams cycle in and out, windows open and close, pitchers break, trends die, everyone grows old. Mistakes are made. Gambles go unrewarded. The Mets do manage to accessorize their personal wildernesses with style, though, don’t they? Nice use of color and creativity and emotion. Front offices roll over into something entirely, well, creative. A new manager comes along, and if he were gone tomorrow hardly anyone would fight it.
So maybe it’s not quite so glaring until they walk again into Dodger Stadium, this time those 3 ½ years later, and for part of this week, their recent past is held up against the team they finished off in that long-gone October series. And how the two would take divergent paths from there. And how destiny seemed to get the two confused. The Dodgers haven’t won a World Series either. They also do not come so dangerously close to irrelevant.
In three postseasons since the division series nosedive against the Mets, the Dodgers have advanced as far as the National League championship series once and the World Series twice. They are imperfect. They cannot stick the landing. They also are a good ways into their seventh consecutive division title. And while each season since has ended with the same blank stares, the Dodgers became the team to beat in the National League and continue as such. The Mets did not. They did, however, help institute a rule in the name of Chase Utley.
In the years since Jacob deGrom survived six innings without his best stuff or command, since Terry Collins summoned not a reliever for the seventh inning with a one-run lead but Noah Syndergaard, since Jeurys Familia pitched the eighth and the ninth innings, all to close out the Dodgers in Game 5 and initiate the era of the Mets that wasn’t, the Dodgers have won three division titles, the Mets none. The Dodgers have a record of 322-218, a .596 winning percentage. The Mets: 260-278, for .483. The Dodgers are 23-19 in the postseason. The Mets are 5-5, all five wins and four of the losses later that very same October.
The reason is, the Dodgers’ players have been better. It’s sort of how this works. But it also speaks to, from a place just behind the Mets, the Dodgers -- Andrew Friedman and, before this season, Farhan Zaidi with him -- have done a better job identifying, acquiring and developing better players. Sandy Alderson, who assisted in the building and maintenance of that club and paced Dodger Stadium on that October night in 2015, is a senior adviser for the Oakland A’s. Paul DePodesta, his assistant, works for the Cleveland Browns. Terry Collins is a television analyst.
In those 3 ½ seasons since the Mets and Dodgers fought for those five games, the Mets’ best position player (per Fangraphs) is Michael Conforto. His WAR is 10.3. Second-best is Yoenis Cespedes, who has played in 119 of a possible 377 games since agreeing to a four-year, $110-million contract, and won’t play again until April 2020, if then. His WAR is 6.3. The Dodgers have three players -- Justin Turner, Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger -- at better than 10 wins, two others better than 8.
From the 2016 season forward, the Dodgers have the highest offensive WAR in the National League, have hit the most home runs, have the lowest ERA and, by a lot, the highest payroll.
The Mets, well, they don’t.
What the Mets do have is plenty of this season left, a division that hasn’t run off quite yet and a ballgame to play. Jacob deGrom threw 105 pitches across five innings. The Dodgers scored twice off him en route to a 9-5 win. He was OK. Just OK. Like, for that matter, Kershaw.
The Mets and Dodgers parted ways some time back. Then, as in Monday night, the air turned cool and the mountains went purple. Then, it seemed something had been settled. Now, they remain on their separate courses.
At least the music has changed.
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