For The Mets, New Postseason Clothes Are A Reminder Of What They’ve Done—And Still Have To Do

Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso make enough money to buy any sort of clothes they want. But the sight of new postseason-specific gear at their lockers turned the day before the wild card series into the adult version of Christmas Day for the Mets stars and their teammates.

“When you get something new and cool, it feels good,” Lindor said Thursday afternoon, a little more than 24 hours before the Mets were slated to host the Padres in the opener of a best-of-three NL wild card series. “You work all season and you show up to the stadium and you have a hoodie like that, you have a hat with a new patch jersey with a new patch, new jersey — it feels good.”

“For me, I’ve never had that,” said Alonso, sitting next to Lindor at a podium in the Shannon Forde media room at Citi Field. “Yeah, this is a normal Mets hoodie. But it has ‘postseason’ on it. To be able to earn that patch that says ‘postseason’ or whatever have you, earning that patch on your hat, that’s sick.”

The words by Lindor and Alonso are equally endearing and accurate — but so were the words spoken by Buck Showalter prior to a game against the Rockies on Aug. 26, back when the Mets held a two-game lead over the Braves in the NL East and seemed likely to begin the playoffs in a Division Series instead of in the more urgent surroundings of the wild card series.

“I do remember in ’95, the only thing we had to show for the wild card after it was over was a hat with an ace and a jack — wild card,” Showalter said, referring to his first playoff experience with the Yankees in a five-game loss to the Mariners in the AL Division Series. “It was a really bad hat. I’ve got it in an old plastic bag.”

“But it was a reminder to me that, OK, you got in, but what’d you get out of it? A hat. I think I’ve got a picture of it somewhere. Really bad hat. But they hand them out.”

Showalter paused before his voice dropped ever so slightly.

“I hope we don’t get one this year,” he said.

Wearing the postseason swag this week instead of next doesn’t mean the Mets’ regular season was a failure. Lindor and Alonso are correct in that the achievement of reaching the playoffs should be celebrated, especially by the Mets, who are playing beyond game no. 162 for the first time since 2016 and went 101-61 in a season that should provide the foundation for sustained success under second-year owner Steve Cohen.

“Regardless of the outcome of the regular season, we should be really damn proud of what we accomplished,” Alonso said.

But it’s also accurate to believe the Mets, who were in first place for 175 days, could have done even more — namely, edge out the Braves, who took over the division by sweeping the Mets in Atlanta last weekend when just one win by the Mets would have earned them the tiebreaker.

Falling into the wild card dropped the Mets into the same side of the bracket as the behemoth Dodgers and made the playoff path far more treacherous in what might be their best short-term chance to win the World Series in the opening days of the Cohen era as well as Showalter’s best chance to rewrite his legacy as the guy who can only take a team so far before someone else manages it to the World Series.

While there are no longer any worries about the Mets being able to afford the act of building and sustaining a contender, there’s plenty of uncertainty regarding just how the next couple rosters will be constructed, especially within the pitching staff.

Max Scherzer is a pretty good guy to have penciled in as next season’s no. 1 in a worst-case scenario. But he’s 38 and was limited to 145 1/3 innings this season — his fewest, by far, over a full season since his rookie year in 2008 — due to a pair of left oblique injuries. Taijuan Walker will be a free agent, Chris Bassitt can be a free agent and the best pitcher of all, Jacob deGrom, has said multiple times he’ll opt out. Can even Cohen afford to have two pitchers making $45 million a year?

And can even Cohen afford to pay Edwin Diaz — who transformed himself from the modern-day Armando Benitez to the most dominant and battle-tested closer in New York since Mariano Rivera — $20 million a year to close? Three more relievers — Seth Lugo, Trevor May and Adam Ottavino — are due to become free agents, along with leadoff hitter Brandon Nimmo. That’s a lot of questions, even for an owner with a lot of money.

All these topics will be dealt with as soon as the Mets’ season ends. And if it concludes before the World Series, the focus will be not on what they achieved over the course of the long regular season but what they didn’t achieve and how it might have cost them a chance at a championship.

“The game’s not always fair — kind of the cards you know when you decide to do this as a player and you’re in that arena,” Showalter said Monday. “You’re out there for whatever ridicule or whatever they want to call it is. You put yourself out there everyday.

“You try to stay positive. There’s some good things ahead — some good times ahead, potentially.”

And if not, Showalter knows exactly where the swag everyone was so happy to wear Thursday will permanently reside.