New York Mets fans have been clamoring to 'let the kids play' for weeks now. Last night, in dramatic fashion, everything came to a head: Mark Vientos and Francisco Alvarez made Mets' magic happen.
Down 2-0 in the bottom of the seventh inning, they were lookin' like the 'same old Mets.' A season that was already spiraling out of control was only getting worse. The unstoppable Tampa Bay Rays were putting the New York Mets' bats to sleep.
Then, Mark Vientos came to the plate.
With the game hanging in the balance, Vientos delivered in the most dramatic way possible, with a two-run, game-tying blast over the center field wall.
Citi Field went wild. Let the kids play! They continued to say.
Somehow, the drama didn't stop there. After a bit of a bullpen collapse, the Mets found themselves down to their very last out in the ninth, down 5-2.
Up strolls Francisco Alvarez.
One out away from another excruciating loss, the Mets' young catcher wasn't about to go down quietly. Instead, he crushed an incredible game-tying, 426-foot, three-run homer to send Citi Field into an absolute frenzy. This was the single biggest hit of the Mets' embattled 2023 season.
But if you've been watching baseball at all this season, then you know these Rays simply don't stop. They are absolutely relentless. They just keep coming at you with constant momentum. Their league-leading 122-run differential proves just that.
In typical Rays' fashion, they jumped ahead 7-5 in the 10th. The Mets' backs were against the wall, once again.
But on this particular night, something was just different. Mets fans felt like, somehow, they could still pull this one off.
And they were proven right when Pete Alonso stepped into the box. With two runners on, Alonso demolished Pete Fairbanks' fastball for an ultra-dramatic, game-winning, three-run, walk-off jack. All of 'the' moments of the Mets' season happened in this game.
An absolutely wild and needed victory, indeed.
What did the Mets' dramatic win say about how they need to handle their roster going forward?
At the risk of stating the obvious… let the kids play!
The Mets have a lot of non-organizational dead weight in guys like Tommy Pham, Daniel Vogelbach, Eduardo Escobar and maybe even Mark Canha.
There's no reason why Vientos, Alvarez, Brett Baty and Ronny Mauricio shouldn't play every single day. The Mets can continue to play their core pieces — Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil and Francisco Lindor — while simultaneously developing their young talent at the big league level.
They really have the opportunity to have the best of both worlds. Steve Cohen, Billy Eppler and Buck Showalter just need to stop hesitating. The time is now. The talent is there.
The New York Mets can still make the World Series if they play the right players the rest of the way out.
