After a wild set of Games 162 on Sunday across North America, the New York Mets are out of Major League Baseball\u2019s playoffs, and the Cincinnati Reds are in. This season, the Reds won four of their six games in head-to-head competition to send the Mets packing despite having identical 83-79 records.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just straight-up disappointing,\u201d Mets slugging first baseman Pete Alonso said in the clubhouse after a 4-0 loss to the Marlins at Miami.<\/p>\n
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Like the Mets, the Reds lost Sunday, 4-2, at Milwaukee. Even so, the Reds earned the prize of facing the defending World Series Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-game NL Wild Card Series starting Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Polar Bear also told reporters he would opt out of the second year of his contract worth $24 million and take another shot at free agency after hitting 38 homers and leading the team with 126 RBIs.<\/p>\n
The tie-breaking format giveth and taketh away. Last year, the Mets benefited from it, qualifying on the final day of the season when they and the Atlanta Braves had the better head-to-head records against the Arizona Diamondbacks, who were eliminated.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m still smarting from that,\u201d D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said at Petco Park where the D-backs were swamped by the playoff-bound San Diego Padres, 12-4. This year, Arizona was eliminated with two games to go.<\/p>\n
In the American League, the New York Yankees will renew their long rivalry against the Boston Red Sox in a best-of-three Wild Card Series beginning Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium. They finished atop the East with an AL-best 94-68 record, tied with the Toronto Blue Jays, who won the division by virtue of bettering the Yankees in the season series, 8-5.<\/p>\n
If the Yankees defeat Boston, the Blue Jays will be awaiting in an AL Division Series beginning Saturday in Toronto.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AL East is maybe the best division in baseball,\u201d Yanks starter Luis Gil told writers in the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium after defeating the Baltimore Orioles, 3-2.<\/p>\n
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The Jays beat the Rays, 13-4, at Toronto to win the division title.<\/p>\n
The Cleveland Guardians completed their comeback from 15.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers on July 8, winning the AL Central by a game when they defeated Texas, 9-8, at Progressive Field on Sunday and Detroit lost at Boston, 4-3. The Tigers and Guardians will continue their battle in the other AL Wild Card Series, beginning Tuesday in Cleveland.<\/p>\n
Out west, Cal Raleigh didn\u2019t hit a home run this weekend, but finished his breakout season with 60, setting the record for a catcher and for a switch-hitter, and coming two shy of Aaron Judge\u2019s AL-record of 62 set three years ago. The AL West-winning Mariners were swept by the Dodgers.<\/p>\n
Judge finished atop MLB in batting average (.331), OPS (1.144), OPS+ (212) and WAR (9.7), among other categories. Raleigh and Judge are the two favorites to win AL MVP, and the debate continues to rage. The vote of two writers in every AL city is due by game-time Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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Clayton Kershaw finished his 18-year MLB regular-season career Sunday with 5 1\/3 innings of four-hit, no-run ball, including one walk and seven strikeouts. He came back in May after multiple offseason surgeries to record an 11-2 record and a 3.36 ERA.<\/p>\n
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Sunday was a fitting close of another chapter in Kershaw\u2019s career. He totaled 222 wins, a .698 winning percentage, a 2.54 ERA and 3,045 strikeouts during his years in MLB. His message to Dodger teammates was utilize every opportunity, like the chance to repeat as World Series winners for the first time since the Yanks won three in a row from 1998-2000.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Kershaw said] take advantage of [every opportunity],\u201d Roberts said. \u201cAnd I think those guys really bonded when Clayton mentioned how special this team was.\u201d<\/p>\n
The remaining NL series offers the Padres vs. the Chicago Cubs in Wrigley Field. It may be ancient history, but the last time these two teams met in the postseason was 1984 when the Padres overcame two opening losses at Wrigley to win the last of the best-of-five NL Championship Series in San Diego.<\/p>\n
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As dramatic as Cleveland\u2019s comeback was, so was\u00a0the Mets\u2019 collapse.<\/a>\u00a0They had the best record in baseball of 45-24 on June 12 and went 38-55 the rest of the way. This happened despite the team having the second-highest payroll in baseball of $340.6 million and signing Juan Soto to a 13-year, $765 million contract this past winter.<\/p>\n Comparatively, the NL Central-winning Milwaukee Brewers and their Central foe Reds both made it with payrolls of $142.2 million and $140.9 million. Milwaukee had the\u00a0best record in baseball<\/a>\u00a0at 97-65.<\/p>\n For that matter, the Tigers and Guardians in the AL Central spent $170.1 million and $121.4 million respectively.<\/p>\n The Mets, in the nation\u2019s largest market, won the offseason but choked during the regular season.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a team that was not only built to play in October, but to play deep in October,\u201d Mets manager Carlos Mendoza told the media on Sunday. \u201cCall it sad, frustrating. I mean, you name it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mendoza now finds himself on the bubble along with Arizona manager Lovullo and Bob Melvin of the San Francisco Giants, whose clubs were eliminated despite high payrolls and even higher expectations. Even though Lovullo is under contract, he said on Sunday he hasn\u2019t been told by Arizona management if he\u2019ll be back in 2026. Mendoza knows the score.<\/p>\n \u201cAll year I\u2019d been saying, \u2018We have the talent, we have the talent,\u2019 but we\u2019re going home,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cI take responsibility. I\u2019m the manager. It starts with me. I\u2019ve got to take a long look here. How I need to get better. That was the message to the whole team as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Sportico.com<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Sign up for Sportico’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a wild set of Games 162 on Sunday across North America, the New York Mets are out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[106,22,46,47,5,48,3297,24,50,1147,51,1560,53,2196,134,57,19,2328,2304,620,778,843,59,4,2305,2303,61,62,74,297,137,18,66,1567,638,70,9386],"class_list":{"0":"post-350374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-aaron-judge","9":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks","10":"tag-atlanta-braves","11":"tag-baltimore-orioles","12":"tag-baseball","13":"tag-boston-red-sox","14":"tag-cal-raleigh","15":"tag-chicago-cubs","16":"tag-cincinnati-reds","17":"tag-clayton-kershaw","18":"tag-cleveland-guardians","19":"tag-dave-roberts","20":"tag-detroit-tigers","21":"tag-dodger-stadium","22":"tag-juan-soto","23":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","24":"tag-major-league-baseball","25":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","26":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","27":"tag-mariners","28":"tag-miami","29":"tag-milwaukee","30":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","31":"tag-mlb","32":"tag-mlb-playoffs","33":"tag-mlb-postseason","34":"tag-new-york-mets","35":"tag-new-york-yankees","36":"tag-pete-alonso","37":"tag-rays","38":"tag-san-diego","39":"tag-san-diego-padres","40":"tag-san-francisco-giants","41":"tag-texas","42":"tag-torey-lovullo","43":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","44":"tag-wild-card-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}