All 105 Mets Postseason Games Ranked

[G-Fafif]

Faith and Fear in Flushing proudly presents an update to its 2020 feature that endeavored to rank EVERY Mets postseason game ever played. At the time of its initial publication, the Mets had participated in nine postseasons and 89 games therein. Five years later, those totals have risen to eleven and 105, respectively. Below we examine every fall festival in which the Mets have partaken and seek to contextualize every Wild Card (1), Wild Card Series (6), League Division Series (20), League Championship Series (49), and World Series (29) game the Mets have played, daring to put them in order, No. 105 to No. 1.

The motivation for such an exercise, as spelled out in 2020 — with numbers revised to reflect current totals:

The Mets have played 105 postseason games, winning 59 and losing 46. When each was played, each was the biggest game of all time to us. That’s how the postseason is when our team is involved. But when we pull back, years and decades following 105 final pitches, not all throb with the same meaning we attached to them as they alighted and unfolded in 1969, 1973, 1986, 1988, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2015, 2016, 2022, and 2024. Some we talk about constantly when we talk about the Mets. Some we think about probably every day since they happened. Some we attribute all kinds of enduring mishegas to even if they were only one game. Some thrust us forward. Some stopped us cold. Some dictated much of what came next. Some are memorialized and revered. Some, somehow, were plowed under by the games and seasons that came next. Each, in one way or another, informs who we are as Mets fans and how we consider the Mets when we consider the Mets…which is what people like us do with as little pause possible.

There’s no statistical formula to this, just loads of paying attention and 105 episodes of revisitation. These rankings are rendered in good faith, sans fear. It’s not a My Favorites list, regardless of the subjectivity inherent. It’s not a Best Games list, exactly, though aesthetics certainly influenced the contemplation. It’s not a wholly YAY METS list, either. Each of the 105 postseason games the Mets have played tells a story to us as Mets fans and to all as baseball fans: the impressions they left, the legends they created, the myths they made, the resonance that resounds, the history that lives on. These are 105 games that explain us and define us, for better and for worse.

The 46 Met losses, unfortunate as it is that they exist, are intermingled here with the 59 Met wins. No harm to any Mets fan’s psyche is intended by being brutally inclusive. Our self-perception, as well as that the world at large has developed of our ballclub, is based largely on these October/November successes and the not-quite-successes. To play in postseason implies success to begin with. Failure may not be an option, but it’s also not the right word to describe any team that gets as far as these nine Met teams did. Still, sometimes history turned on the games that got away. Or at least seemed as if it did.

 

The full feature is here.

[Edgy MD]

Terrific reading. Thanks for sharing, FaFiF.

 

The sixteen games that have transpired since the list’s original incarnation have been plugged in where deemed appropriate, naturally affecting the earlier rankings, but none of the games that predate this updating have otherwise exchanged places.

 

I honestly was preparing myself for some reassessments.

[Edgy MD]

Also, it seems it did not take a whole lot of mental strain to figure out how to slot the games from that Dodger series in there.

[MFS62]

From pure baseballness, the 1986 playoff game against Houston is #1 to me. It had everything and was a nail biter from start to finish- all 16 innings of it.

From a Metliness standpoint, the Championship clinching games and game six against Boston in 1986 were the most satisfying.

Great job.

Later

[Gwreck]

I greatly enjoyed this in its initial form and now again as updated. Nice job G-FAFIF.

I do find myself agreeing frequently but also vehemently disagreeing at times too (such are the nature of rankings, I suppose). Little surprise to see several of the 2024 NLCS losses at the bottom, but I cannot figure out what is going on with the 2022 games. Especially that third one, that had just an awful performance all around, from the players to team management to the fans. I can’t fathom it being anywhere but the very bottom.

I also think the 2015 NLCS rankings seem backwards. Games 1 and 2 were where the excitement was and the series was won. Pennants are great but game 4 was basically anticlimactic versus the defeats of Arietta and Lester at Citi.

[G-Fafif]

I greatly enjoyed this in its initial form and now again as updated. Nice job G-FAFIF.

I do find myself agreeing frequently but also vehemently disagreeing at times too (such are the nature of rankings, I suppose). Little surprise to see several of the 2024 NLCS losses at the bottom, but I cannot figure out what is going on with the 2022 games. Especially that third one, that had just an awful performance all around, from the players to team management to the fans. I can’t fathom it being anywhere but the very bottom.

I also think the 2015 NLCS rankings seem backwards. Games 1 and 2 were where the excitement was and the series was won. Pennants are great but game 4 was basically anticlimactic versus the defeats of Arietta and Lester at Citi.

 

I appreciate your reading and taking it to heart.

The Joe Musgrove Game, identifiable as it is (if for the wrong reasons), rose up the rankings for its infamy. Three years later, the business with the ear may be the only widely memorable element of that series from a Met perspective.

The most recent Dodger series laid more non-competitive eggs than any postseason series the Mets have ever played. Given that the story coming out of 2024 was “wow, it was great we were in it” versus “can you believe we lost the NLCS?” — incredibly little wound-licking in real time — I really had nowhere to put them than at the bottom. One stomping would be noteworthy. Getting stomped three times in the first four games en route to a six-game loss sapped the juice out of the lot of them. Had I not written each of them individually directly after each game, I probably would have scrunched them together in one quickie paragraph.