LOS ANGELES — The Mets’ magic month has come to an end.
After 20 days of wild comeback victories, champagne showers and a feeling of invincibility, the Mets fell back to earth Sunday night at Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers eliminated the Mets with a 10-5 win in Game 6 of the NLCS to clinch the NL pennant and advance to the World Series for the fourth time since 2017.
The Mets were down by only a run going into the bottom of the third, but a pair of two-run homers given up by Sean Manaea and Phil Maton doomed them. Down only 2-1 when they started the inning, the Dodgers were up, 6-1, by the time it ended.
The Mets had chances to break the game open in the second and third innings with seven runners reaching base, but they stranded all seven of them. Twice they loaded the bases with two outs, but the rallies were stopped short. Jeff McNeil struck out against left-hander Anthony Banda in the third and Jesse Winker popped out to left field in the sixth.
The Mets went 2-for-26 with runners in scoring position in four losses against a depleted Dodgers pitching staff.
Yet in the end, it was the Mets who ran out of pitching. Nearly the entire Dodgers rotation and a few of their best relievers were all out with injuries in this series, but an exceptionally deep lineup with a patient approach proved to be too much for the Mets pitching staff. Only once did a Mets starter pitch into the sixth inning, Manaea in Game 2.
The left-hander only made it to the third inning Sunday, giving up five earned runs on six hits, walking two and striking out two.
Good luck to the Yankees in trying to contain those bats.
The Mets didn’t go down easily. The Dodgers used their bullpen for all nine innings and used it aggressively. Mark Vientos hit a two-run homer off Ryan Brasier in the top of the fourth to cut the Los Angeles lead to three runs, his fifth of the postseason. After the Dodgers scored an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth, the Mets managed to push one across in the top of the seventh. They scored one again with two out in the ninth.
The 2024 team’s entire identity is their resilience and they developed quite a reputation as a group of comeback kids with dramatic, late-inning wins to clinch a playoff spot, to advance through the Wild Card round and through the NLDS.
There was no coming back this time. Not in the series and not in Game 6. Not when they had to use a rusty Kodai Senga in the bottom of the eighth. The right-hander, who took the loss in Game 1, came on in relief with the Mets down only 7-4, but gave up three earned runs.
The Mets can look at this two ways. They can look at the incredible run they made to come just two wins away from a trip to the World Series and be proud of how far they got after the rest of baseball had written them off back in May. They can look at the clutch homers Vientos hit, the greatness of Francisco Lindor and the big outs that Edwin Diaz and David Peterson got and start to look forward by identifying pieces to build around them.
But they can also look at the two teams in the World Series and wonder, why not us? They swept the Yankees in four games this season and the Dodgers are the team they’ve been trying to emulate since the Steve Cohen era began in 2021. This World Series matchup might feel like a gut punch.
Both views can be valid.
The Mets believed in themselves right up until the final out. That belief could make for an even more successful 2025 campaign. But it will undoubtedly make for an even tougher winter than the last.