a 3-2 win.<\/a><\/p>\nThe loss was the eighth straight for the Mets \u2014 their longest skid since 2018. It continued a precipitous fall for New York (76-73), which was a big league-best 45-24 through June 12 but is now only a half-game ahead of San Francisco for the final National League playoff berth, with Cincinnati and Arizona close behind, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here to achieve our ultimate goal,\u201d manager Carlos Mendoza said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get going here fast. That\u2019s the bottom line. We\u2019ve got to get the job done, period. It\u2019s been too long.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the wild-card era (since 1994), only two teams have been 45-24 or better through 69 games and failed to qualify for the postseason. The 2002 Boston Red Sox and 2003 Seattle Mariners both won 93 games, yet missed out when only one wild card per league advanced to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have everything we need to go all the way,\u201d said Soto, who signed a $765 million contract with the Mets less than two months after they made the NL Championship Series last year. \u201cThe only thing is we just keep losing games. I don\u2019t know what else to do right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soto has been one of the few bright spots over the last eight games, a span in which he\u2019s hitting .313 with three homers, five RBIs and four stolen bases. He is the fourth player in team history to post a 30\/30 season and the fifth to hit 40 homers.<\/p>\n
Soto, Barry Bonds (1996, 1997) and Jeff Bagwell (1997, 1999) are the only major leaguers with 40 homers, 30 steals and 100 walks in a season.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally impressive, but we have bigger things in front of us that we\u2019ve got to go out and get,\u201d Soto said.<\/p>\n
The Mets have spoken often over the last several weeks about their experience climbing out of holes. New York got off to a 24-35 start last year but had the best record in baseball the rest of the way before making the playoffs on the final day of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of baseball left. Two more weeks \u2014 things can happen in two more weeks,\u201d D\u00edaz said. \u201cWe can turn it around. We\u2019ve done that in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Juan Soto joined some rarefied air Saturday by becoming the third player in major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,97008,4034,5156,54372,32129,97007,1829,591,6784,64736,6778,1025,1026,1830,5162,85,3370,2367,22992,80833],"class_list":["post-142544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barry-bonds","tag-baseball","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-carlos-mendoza","tag-edwin-diaz","tag-jeff-bagwell","tag-juan-soto","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-mets","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-rangers","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-wyatt-langford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}