For The New York Mets, History Keeps Repeating Itself

The funny thing — not funny ha ha, of course, if you’re the Mets — is this month began in a fashion that suggested the Mets had emerged from the potentially nightmarish portion of their schedule and they had little to worry about in terms of June once again turning into the season-ruining month it was in the before times.

The Mets went just 14-15 in May, but the month began and ended with encouraging wins — a split-salvaging victory in the second game of a doubleheader against the Braves on May 1 and the second win in a three-game sweep of the Phillies on May 31.

In between, the Mets lost or split a series against five non-contenders — the Rockies twice as well as the Tigers, Cubs, Nationals and Reds in the pre-Elly De La Cruz days — but seemed to steady themselves with a five-game winning streak against the Rays and Guardians that included a pair of stirring, step-back-from-the-edge-of-the-abyss victories.

Rookies Mark Vientos and Francisco Alvarez hit game-tying homers against the Rays on May 17 before Pete Alonso delivered the walk-off three-run, 10th-inning shot. Two nights later, Eduardo Escobar, who’d lost his job earlier in the month to Brett Baty, swiped a base as a pinch-runner in the 10th inning and scored the tying run before former Cleveland shortstop Francisco Lindor provided the walk-off RBI single in a win over the Guardians.

May ended with the Mets four games out of first and tied for the final two NL wild card spots — not a great spot for a team with the biggest payroll in Major League Baseball history, but certainly fine enough considering the calendar and the success of division rivals Nationals, Braves and Phillies in overcoming slow starts to win the pennant in each of the three previous full seasons.

Alas, these are the Mets, for whom most encouraging signs are the universe holding the football and swearing this won’t be the time it yanks the pigskin skyward before it yanks the pigskin, leaving the Mets airborne and screaming “AAAAUGH!!!”

The only question remaining for the Mets, with five days left in a June that has been demoralizing even by their standards, is when they will finally finish crashing to the ground.

The Mets are 6-15 this month, tied for the worst record in the NL with the Nationals and better than only the Royals, who stopped trying sometime around the moment Wade Davis struck out Wilmer Flores to close out the 2015 World Series. These Mets somehow have a chance to approach the 2018 team — whose hopes, along with the long-term managerial aspirations of a not-yet-disgraced Mickey Callaway, evaporated during a 5-21 stretch — as the authors of the franchise’s worst June of the century.

It can easily be argued this is the worst June of the century after the Mets’ latest defeat suffered in confounding fashion — a 7-6 loss to the Phillies yesterday in which Jeff Brigham plunked Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner back-to-back to force in the tying and go-ahead runs in the eighth inning. It is believed to be the first time since at least 1914 — as far back as the game logs go at StatHead/Baseball-Reference — that a team has scored the tying and go-ahead runs on hit by pitches in the eighth inning or later. So there is that!

The instinct is to say the Mets can’t sink any lower than this, except it’s at least their third season-low loss of the month. The Braves came back from three consecutive three-run deficits — the last a 13-10 walk-off win in which Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz were all in the home broadcast booth, surely cackling at how history may not repeat but it sure does rhyme, as Ozzie Albies hit a 10th-inning homer that may still be traveling — in a sweep from June 6-8.

Speaking of history at least rhyming, the Mets fell to the Yankees, 7-6, in the opener of the two-game Subway Series on June 13 when Drew Smith was ejected before he could throw a pitch due to having a sticky substance on his hands. As Max Scherzer noted afterward, the sticky substance makes it less likely a pitcher will plunk a batter with a pitch. So 20-plus years after they never really got revenge on Roger Clemens and the Yankees for Clemens’ attempts to maim Mike Piazza, the Mets now have pitchers being thrown out of Yankees games for possibly doctoring baseballs that make them MORE SAFE.

At 35-42 and 8 1/2 games back of the last wild card spot, there are almost too many unthinkable elements at play for the Mets. Can the most expensive team in history be a full-fledged seller at the trade deadline? Will the Hall of Fame-bound duo of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander — expected to at least lead the Mets to the playoffs — be partially or completely broken up before the first season of their reunion is complete?

And with the Brewers — the most recent employer of free-agent-to-be-executive David Stearns and the current employer of contract year manager Craig Counsell — coming to town for the latest make-or-break series for the Mets, is Buck Showalter’s last chance to establish himself as a Hall of Fame managerial candidate going to end not with a trip to the World Series but his most ignoble dismissal ever?

Even with Showalter appearing safe for the short-term after establishing himself last season as the experienced and authoritative voice the Mets have lacked in the dugout since Bobby Valentine, the most likely scenario for 2024 was Showalter adjusting to a new superior in Stearns. The New York City native is under contract to the Brewers through this season even after stepping aside as their president of baseball operations last fall but is the most obvious candidate to emerge as the baseball boss Steve Cohen has long desired.

Yet with the Mets making mind-boggling mental error after mind-boggling mental error and Showalter’s faults from his previous stops — cautiousness to an extreme when it comes to managing his closer and a thin skin when being pressed about his decisions — reappearing, his fate for the rest of this season and beyond has grown considerably cloudier.

Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone have conditioned New Yorkers to the idea of the architects and managers of underwhelming teams surviving via some sort of tenure. But there’s no projecting how Cohen, who appears to be the George Steinbrenner of his time, will handle Showalter and general manager Billy Eppler, the latter of whom really should have been renting and not buying even before he didn’t build a bullpen this season.

As for Showalter. the Phillies made the World Series last season after firing Joe Girardi, but there’s no baseball lifer like Rob Thomson ready to slide down a seat and potentially turn around the Mets’ season.

Of course, these are the Mets, and crawling out of self-dug holes is in the collective DNA. With the six-team playoff field providing plenty of runway to underachieving teams, it should not come as a surprise if the Mets channel their 1973, 1986, 1999, 2001, 2015, 2016 and 2019 selves and charge back into contention. But that type of history repeating itself seems increasingly far off and unlikely as yet another June like so many others finally nears an end.