Mets’ Collapse Rivals The 1951 ‘Shot Heard ’Round The World’

With their 6-0 loss to the San Diego Padres on Sunday night, the New York Mets, with the largest payroll in baseball, put an exclamation point on one of the steepest collapses in the sport’s history.

On June 1, the Amazins held a 10 ½-game lead over the Atlanta Braves. For the next three months, the Braves played like they couldn’t lose. Atlanta won three head-to-head games against the Mets from September 30 to October 2, and that was it. The Mets had lost the division and the first-round bye in the playoffs that came with the crown. Forced to play in the best-of-three wild card, the Mets didn’t fare much better. They managed only one hit in Sunday’s deciding third game against the Padres, completing a season in which they won 101 games — tied for third-best in the majors — with nothing to show.

The collapse, punctuated by a September sweep by the middling Cubs, notched this Mets team a place in history.

In squandering the 10 ½-game lead, the Mets tied the 1979 Houston Astros for the third-biggest choke job in the history of the sport. The 1995 Angels were 11 games ahead of the pack before faltering. Tops on the list, of course, is the 1951 pennant race between the Dodgers and the Giants. The Dodgers, then in Brooklyn, led the National League by 13 games, only to see the New York Giants chip away all summer and tie the Dodgers at the end of the season. In the deciding playoff game, with Brooklyn ahead 4-2 in the ninth inning and almost assured of going to the World Series, Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer to win, prompting announcer Russ Hodges’ famous refrain, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”

It’s worth giving credit where credit is due. The Mets’ collapse was made possible only by a seemingly impossible run by the Braves. Atlanta went 77-33 after June 1, tied with the Dodgers for the best record in baseball. Over that same period, the Mets chugged along at a 96-win pace, according to CBS Sports.

The two teams ultimately finished with identical records, but the Mets lost the tiebreaker based on losing those three in a row in the season’s final series against the Braves, who have yet to play because they had a first-round bye in the playoffs. The 101-win Mets lost to the Padres, who won 89.

The Padres move on. The Mets go home.