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A Bright Future for Mets, if Not Guaranteed
Jacob deGrom who went  six innings in Game 5 for the win, his second of the series, is part of the Mets’ stockpile of young arms.Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — The future can always seem perfect, filled with pennants and parades. A roster has so many young and talented players, bound to get even better, with so many years ahead. For the Mets, this feels like the start of something.

Yet what if this is it? The Miracle Mets of 1969 never won another World Series. The swashbuckling champions of 1986 never won another pennant. The Mets of Mike Piazza, and later Jose Reyes, never quite scaled the mountain.So enjoy this. Savor it. The Mets earned a spot in the National League Championship Series on Thursday when three steely pitchers, meticulously developed in the farm system, cut down the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2. The Chicago Cubs are up next, at Citi Field on Saturday.The Dodgers had their veteran aces, Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. They had three games at Dodger Stadium. They had a critical call go their way, wrongly, in Game 2. And still the Mets won. “It’s incredibly hard,” said the Mets’ captain, David Wright. “You’re talking about the Dodgers having home-field advantage, with Kershaw and Greinke going four times in a best-of-five series. That’s about as challenging as it gets. That’s an incredible feat, and we should be proud of that.” Continue reading the main storyThe Mets may well return to this stage many times. Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Jeurys Familia, who teamed up to throttle the Dodgers for the last eight innings Thursday, should have staying power, along with Matt Harvey and Steven Matz.But the Cubs feel the same way about their own young stars. So do the St. Louis Cardinals, the Pittsburgh Pirates and other rivals. Winning is never easy. When you have the chance, seize it.   “They say it’s about the journey,” General Manager Sandy Alderson said after the players doused him in Champagne. “When you get to this point — which is only an intermediate step — you reflect on the journey. We haven’t gotten there yet. Things are only fun and memorable in retrospect, and that’s true of this series now.”The series will not be memorable for the Dodgers, again. For all of the money and talent that has floated through Dodger Stadium, they have not won a pennant in 27 years. This was their ninth unfulfilled trip to the playoffs since then, and on Thursday, they were undone by innovations that would have seemed foreign in 1988.The replay review system reversed a call on the very first play of the game, allowing Curtis Granderson to be safe at first. Granderson might have been out easily had the Dodgers used a traditional infield alignment. But playing in an exaggerated shift, they could not get him in time.In the fourth, again with a shift on, Daniel Murphy alertly took an extra base on a walk, moving up to third when the Dodgers left the bag uncovered. He scored on a sacrifice fly, and his homer in the sixth may have been the last run Zack Greinke allowed as a Dodger.Every team faces off-season changes, even the Dodgers, who must grapple with Greinke’s free agency, assuming he opts out of his contract. The Mets could lose Murphy, Yoenis Cespedes and Tyler Clippard, among others. They will not return as the same team.“There is always that thought,” Manager Terry Collins said before Game 5. “Obviously, we know we’ve got some guys that could go after free agency. But this game, and I truly believe this, it’s about having good starting pitching. If we get good starting pitching, it’s going nowhere. That right there, that point — the future is pretty bright still.”Yet expecting a long run of playoff chances is dubious. This was supposed to be year four of the Washington Nationals’ reign atop the N.L. East, but the pitching-rich Nationals have won just two division titles and no playoff series. More than ever, the rules are tilted toward the worst teams, who get the most money to spend on amateur talent. Only the most poorly run teams stay down very long; the sharp front offices of the Cubs and the Houston Astros have built strong young teams that rose quicker than even they thought. That said, this Mets season has been a delicate dance, managing the workloads of dynamic, surgically repaired young arms while asking them to pitch more innings, in more stressful situations, than ever.Collins was concerned for their psyches, too, explaining his concerns about possibly using Syndergaard in relief before Game 5.“If he goes in and walks two guys, it could be a bad deal,” Collins said before the game. “The one thing that I continue to try to build on is, when these guys walk off the field each and every night, they still got confidence. I don’t want this kid to all of a sudden say, ‘Well, I blew the championship game at 22 years old.’ ” Collins, 66, is more than the Mets’ leader; he is their protector. Sometimes, the objectives of those roles do line up. In the third inning, with one out and runners on the corners after a double and a walk, Collins came to the mound to talk with deGrom. He left him in. Collins showed faith in his teetering pitcher, and from that point on deGrom retired 10 of 12 hitters and allowed no more runs. He made most of his pitches from the stretch, with his team losing or tied and facing elimination — and got the game to Syndergaard (who had warmed up four times) with a lead in the seventh. Syndergaard finished the seventh by solving the one batter who flummoxed deGrom, Justin Turner. He did it with a fastball at 98 miles per hour, then 99, then 100 — and then a curveball at 82 m.p.h. Syndergaard earned his fist pump as he left the mound.The Dodgers, by then, had wasted their chances — in this game and, perhaps, in their time with two aces, Kershaw and Greinke, atop their rotation. The Mets’ pitchers cannot match the trophies or the paychecks of the Dodgers’ duo. But now they will play for a chance at something more precious: a World Series ring.

Read more http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/640350/s/4ab74b84/sc/13/l/0L0Snytimes0N0C20A150C10A0C160Csports0Cbaseball0Ca0Ebright0Efuture0Efor0Emets0Eif0Enot0Eguaranteed0Bhtml0Dpartner0Frss0Gemc0Frss/story01.htm


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