The Mets Are Dangerously Close To Making The Wrong Kind Of History

The final regular season homestand of last year began with exciting uncertainty for the Mets, whose furious comeback from a miserable start left them in the thick of the race for the last NL wild card spot with 13 games to play.

The potential outcomes spanned the spectrum from heartache to euphoria — no more games at Citi Field or summertime magic carrying over into October — but they were coated with a layer of belief that no matter how the Mets fared, the result of the 2024 season radiate positivity about who those Mets were as well as the club’s short- and long-term future.

The final regular season homestand this year carries the same template, and none of last year’s ingredients.

The Mets open a nine-game homestand tonight against the Rangers and Jacob deGrom (oh no) with a 1 1/2-game lead over the Giants and Reds in the race for the final NL wild card berth with 15 games to play. That’s technically a better position than heading into last year’s final homestand, when the Mets were tied with the Diamondbacks for the last spot.

Except, of course, this path to the edge of a postseason berth has been much more laborious than last year, when the Mets bottomed out at 24-35 and five games out of the last wild card spot on June 2. These Mets had the best record in baseball at 45-24 through June 12, when they were six games clear of the last wild card, the Padres, and 8 1/2 games ahead of the seventh-place Brewers.

But they are just 31-47 since then, the fourth-worst record in baseball ahead of a trio of teams — the Rockies, Nationals and Twins — who by all accounts should be in danger of relegation to Triple-A.

The Mets arrive home in the throes of a six-game losing streak that included a four-game sweep at the hands of the Phillies, who outscored their rivals 27-10 and trailed for just five innings — all Thursday night, when the Mets scored four runs in the first inning before Jesus Luzardo and Jhoan Duran retired the final 25 batters in order.

Fox announcer Joe Davis declared in the middle innings Thursday that a loss would have to be rock bottom for the Mets. But these are the Mets, for whom there is never a rock bottom (or, to be fair, a ceiling on their occasional dizzying highs).

The once-inconceivable — missing the playoffs entirely with a collapse that not only dwarfs the 2007-08 stumbles as the worst in team history but emerges as one of the worst in baseball history — is now an ever-realistic possibility.

In the wild card era, only two teams — the 2002 Red Sox and 2003 Mariners — have missed the playoffs after winning at least 45 of their first 69 games, and both those teams finished with 93 wins when only one wild card was awarded.

Since divisional play began, no team that won at least 45 of its first 69 games has finished worse than sixth in its league (the 1977 Cubs, who went 81-81, were tied for sixth with the Astros). So missing the ever-expanding playoffs would indeed be an all-time embarrassment, as well as the most convincing evidence yet that the Mets have gone from appearing to turn a corner as an organization to needing a full-scale renovation in 12 months.

The worst-case scenarios feel particularly vivid as the Mets head into a funhouse mirrors weekend. After deGrom pitches tonight, the Alumni Classic is slated for Saturday, when multiple players from the 2007-08 teams are scheduled to take the field in a game in which Willie Randolph and Jerry Manuel will serve as managers.

DeGrom’s out-of-nowhere success story proves how impossible it is to forecast pitching prospects or rely on them, but the Mets have no choice but to try and save their season this weekend by throwing three straight rookie pitchers — Jonah Tong, Brandon Sproat and Nolan McLean. Even Jason Isringhausen, Bill Pulsipher and Paul Wilson, the members of Generation K, never made starts in three consecutive games.

Again, these are the Mets and this is baseball, where fortunes can turn on a single pitch. But with one homestand left, the uncertainty is anything but exciting for the Mets, who are perilously close to penning another chapter in franchise history that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.