Dodgers end Mets’ magical run with 10-5 defeat in Game 6 of NLCS

LOS ANGELES — The Mets’ magic month has come to an end.
After 20 days of wild comeback victories, champagne showers and a feeling of invincibility, the Mets fell back to earth Sunday night at Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers eliminated the Mets with a 10-5 win in Game 6 of the NLCS, taking the series 4-2 to clinch the NL pennant and advance to the World Series for the fourth time since 2017.
“It’s bittersweet,” said third baseman Mark Vientos. “I’m just happy to have met all these guys and they pushed me to do the best I possibly can. We made it [here] when a lot of people didn’t expect us to make it here. But it sucks. It’s not a it’s not a good feeling. We didn’t want to lose, we wanted to keep going…
“We wanted to win the World Series.”
The Mets were down by only a run going into the bottom of the third, but a pair of two-run homers given up by Sean Manaea and Phil Maton doomed them. Down only 2-1 when they started the inning, the Dodgers were up, 6-1, by the time it ended.
The Mets had chances to break the game open in the second and third innings with seven runners reaching base, but they stranded all seven of them. Twice they loaded the bases with two outs, but the rallies were stopped short.
The Mets went 2-for-26 with runners in scoring position in four losses against a depleted Dodgers pitching staff.
Yet in the end, it was the Mets who ran out of pitching. Nearly the entire Dodgers rotation and a few of their best relievers were all out with injuries in this series, but an exceptionally deep lineup with a patient approach proved to be too much for the Mets pitching staff. Only once did a Mets starter pitch into the sixth inning, Manaea in Game 2.
The left-hander only made it to the third inning Sunday, giving up five earned runs on six hits, walking two and striking out two.
Good luck to the Yankees in trying to contain those bats.
“Over the course of the series, they played better than us,” said first baseman Pete Alonso. “I wish them the best in the next round. But there’s so much for us to be proud of with what we’ve overcome and how we became like brothers.”
The Mets didn’t go down easily. The Dodgers used their bullpen for all nine innings and used it aggressively. Vientos hit a two-run homer off Ryan Brasier in the top of the fourth to cut the Los Angeles lead to three runs, his fifth of the postseason. After the Dodgers scored an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth, the Mets managed to push one across in the top of the seventh. They scored one again with two out in the ninth.
The 2024 team’s entire identity is their resilience and they developed quite a reputation as a group of comeback kids with dramatic, late-inning wins to clinch a playoff spot, to advance through the Wild Card round and through the NLDS.
“I wanted it for this group,” said shortstop and team leader Francisco Lindor. “Everyone feels the same way. That’s why everyone is hanging around talking and leaning on each other. At one point in the year, you’re fed up with everybody because it’s a long year, and then now nobody wants to leave, nobody wants to step around and talk.
There was no coming back this time. Not in the series and not in Game 6. Not when they had to use a rusty Kodai Senga in the bottom of the eighth. The right-hander, who took the loss in Game 1, came on in relief with the Mets down only 7-4, but gave up three earned runs.
The Mets can look at this two ways. They can look at the incredible run they made to come just two wins away from a trip to the World Series and be proud of how far they got after the rest of baseball had written them off back in May. They can look at this as a new standard set.
“It’s not easy to come through so much adversity, but we kept finding ways to get the job done,” said manager Carlos Mendoza. “Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case this series. Now we’re going home, but this should be our expectations moving forward every year. We should be playing games deep into October. Proud of the whole organization.”
But they can also look at the two teams in the World Series and wonder, why not us? They swept the Yankees in four games this season and the Dodgers are the team they’ve been trying to emulate since the Steve Cohen era began in 2021. This World Series matchup might feel like a gut punch.
Both views can be valid.
“When you look at the team and the whole organization, they’ve been doing it for a long time, year after year,” Mendoza said. “And that should be our goal — not only to be like them, but better than them.”
The Mets believed in themselves right up until the final out. That belief could make for an even more successful 2025 campaign. But it will undoubtedly make for an even tougher winter than the last.
“That was one of the coolest, most magical runs I’ve ever been a part of,” Manaea said. “I’m happy to just be a little part of this.”