Laura Albanese: Bobby Valentine, Lee Mazzilli soak in Mets' Hall of Fame moment, talk about current team
Lee Mazzilli and Bobby Valentine react together after their Mets Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Lee Mazzilli didn’t think it was going to happen for them.
This memory might ring a bell: The Mets, who faced a two-run deficit against the Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, were on the brink of elimination and down to their final out.
“It was a team that was very confident and never felt they could lose until Game 6,” Mazzilli said Saturday ahead of his Mets’ Hall of Fame induction along with Bobby Valentine. “There’s no one [there] who said we could come back.”
But of course, baseball had other plans. The ball got by Buckner, and 40 years later, Mazzilli is still being honored for being on one of the two teams that managed to bring a championship to Flushing.
The victory was yet another reminder that predictions don’t mean much of anything in this sport. Before this season started, these Mets were odds-on favorites to make the postseason, if not a true threat to win it all. But then games were played and here were Mazzilli and Valentine, stewards of some of this franchise’s greatest triumphs, being asked if there is any hope left.
The answers weren’t hugely encouraging.
Mazzilli noted that he is excited about Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing and said “there’s something to grasp onto [with] these young guys,” but he added of the team in general: “You pitch, you win. You don’t pitch, you don’t win.”
Valentine, ever theatrical, waited a short beat before chiming in.
“Sounds like run prevention.”
You can’t be 100% certain, but given that the Mets are eight games under .500, it sure seemed as if Valentine was taking a shot at David Stearns’ (very) vocal commitment to run prevention — one that frankly hasn’t worked out the way he wanted.
According to FanGraphs, they’re the 20th-worst defensive team in baseball, their 3.89 staff ERA is 12th, and the offense is second to last, based on weighted runs created plus.
But — and there’s always a but — all that matters is what happens next. The Mets’ 6-1 win over the Marlins on Saturday was their third in a row. At this point, reclaiming this season appears unlikely but not completely impossible.
For all their follies, this team has shown a penchant for the unexpected, including five walk-off wins this season. The Mets have played an MLB-high 11 extra-inning games, which means they’re not being completely blown out of the water.
Benge has been a bright spot, as has Christian Scott, who finally earned his first career win Saturday, allowing one run and five hits with two walks and eight strikeouts in five innings.
“We saw signs of it in 2024,” Carlos Mendoza said of Scott. “If we can get that version, which I’m pretty confident we will, that’s another factor for us to turn this thing around.”
It’s a blueprint, which is the only shot the Mets have of . . . well . . . having a shot.
“Hope is not a plan,” said Valentine, who knows a thing or two about teams who were able to wade out of despair.
“I think there is a chance,” he added — while making it pretty clear that it will be enormously difficult.
“Anything can happen,” he said. “Remember, this is a tougher place to come back. It’s just distracting . . . They used to say, ‘Oh, the boys called a clubhouse meeting’ or [talked about] the fight on the field, or the manager getting thrown out, or the rainout when you’re losing by 10 runs — that, all of a sudden, something happens and people start focusing on playing again instead of focusing on the losses and [pressing] for the next win again. But here, it’s always about the loss and the next win, and that has to be controlled.”
Let’s try to parse what Valentine was saying. First off, he’s certainly correct that the Mets technically have hope. Record-wise, they’re not far removed from the 2024 team that made it to the NLCS, and Valentine even name-checked last year’s Guardians, who withstood a 10-game losing streak before sneaking into the playoffs.
And then there’s the rest. To truly have a shot, this team has to be laser-focused — not necessarily on the wins and losses but rather the micro-actions that make up a baseball game. Forget the forest and concentrate on the trees. When bad things happen, flush them. When good things happen, let yourself be convinced that you’re the team of destiny.
Based on Valentine’s words, this Mets team isn’t there yet — burdened, as they are, by both outsized expectation and overwhelming early failure.
But the old Mets skipper knows that this sport is as mental as it is physical, and if they can’t change their roster or their injuries or erase the sting of their early 12-game losing streak, they can at least attempt to control how they view the whole thing.
“You try to get them to believe, even though they only know if the belief is correct at the end,” Valentine said. “It’s about believing and getting people to believe, and the more that you have something, someone to believe in, it’s easy to share belief and let people understand that’s what’s needed. It’s not hope and it’s not a guarantee. But it’s something.”
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
