Mets' pivotal road trip opens with big win vs. Wild Card rival

SAN DIEGO -- For the past two months or so, the Mets have almost exclusively played teams that could exert relatively little influence on their season. Every game counts the same on paper, or so the cliche goes. But with the exception of a late July series against the Braves, the Mets have spent their days facing either American League clubs or those near the bottom of the National League standings.

In that sense, the rest of the season began in earnest Thursday night at Petco Park, where the Mets played the first of seven consecutive road games against the Padres and Diamondbacks -- two of the three teams they trail in the NL Wild Card race. If the Mets have designs on engineering another run up the standings, perhaps now might be the ideal time?

“Yeah,” manager Carlos Mendoza said when asked about the gravity of this stretch. “We know.”

One game into such a consequential week of schedule, the Mets are meeting the challenge. Their 8-3 win over San Diego on Thursday kept them within 1 1/2 games of the Braves for the final Wild Card slot and pulled them within 4 1/2 games of the Padres, who sit second in the hunt behind the Diamondbacks.

“Today, winning the first game, that’s huge for us,” starting pitcher Luis Severino said. “Hopefully, we can continue to do that. We’ve got a good team. We showed today that we have a good team.”

Fresh off his first shutout in six years, Severino held the Padres scoreless into the fifth inning and allowed just one run on the night, thanks in part to a slick double-play turn that Jose Iglesias started with the bases loaded and no outs in the fifth. Severino pitched the entire time with a lead after Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos hit consecutive doubles to open the game, and the Mets added plenty from there -- two more off Dylan Cease on a pair of one-out hits, a passed ball and a Jeff McNeil RBI single in the fourth, then a five-spot off reliever Logan Gillaspie in the ninth.

The latter rally allowed the Mets to put the game mostly on ice before the Padres could begin mounting one of their trademark ninth-inning comebacks.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Mendoza said. “You’ve got to find a way.”

The Mets have done so only inconsistently this season, though as Vientos noted, “When we play great teams like this, we tend to engage and be a little bit more locked in.” That seemed to be the case from the start of the game, as the Mets proved aggressive against Cease while becoming the only team to beat him twice this year.

On this night, they could thank McNeil, who finished 3-for-4 with a run scored and an RBI, and Vientos, who drove home three runs.

“If we take that [approach] with every team,” Vientos added, “we’re going to be in a good spot toward the end of the season.”

Certainly, the Mets can make things easier on themselves with a strong run through San Diego and Phoenix, the first two stops on a 10-game, three-city road trip that ends on the South Side of Chicago. The Mets can’t earn a playoff spot on this road trip alone, but a team that’s lingered around .500 for much of the season can certainly position itself well for a push in September.

“Every game matters,” Iglesias said.

More than that, this current stretch against the cream of the NL West should prepare the Mets well for their final gauntlet of the season: 13 of their final 16 games will come against the Phillies, Braves and Brewers, all of whom they trail in the NL standings.

If the Mets aren’t able to make up some ground against the Padres and Diamondbacks this month, that Sept. 24-26 series against the Braves could prove most consequential of all. But if they can continue to find success before then, the Mets could perhaps even create some margin for error in the Wild Card race.

“Listen, we know where we’re at,” Mendoza said. “We know the importance of every game. We know the teams we’re playing. But that doesn’t change the way we go about our business, the way we prepare, and the way we want to go out and compete.”