"For Want of a Nail..."

So today was the last day of the SS Mets, and to be fair, the ship did not go down without a fight.  The Metsies won—for a change, behind de Grom, who finished with 23 straight scoreless innings—and had their season ended only when Milwaukee won again.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox pounded Texas again, with Bogaerts, Martinez, and especially Devers all running up more gaudy numbers on what could have been an MVP season for any one of them—as one of our Leaders, Peerless or Dauntless, pointed out—had their team only won anything.

The Sox, of course, had some major bad luck—awwwwwww!—in that a couple of their vaunted starters got hurt, while a couple more melted down.

Still, Boston might have made a serious run...with any kind of bullpen.

The Mets, for their part, might have made a real run at everything, had they only bothered to build a pen.  NYM has gone 43-24 since hitting a season-low, 40-51 record on July 12th.  Their fielding improved exponentially, they went out an got another, effective starter, they developed a solid core of hitters, and they even had a decent bench by the end.

The only thing missing?  A bullpen.  Their new GM seemed to think that Einar Diaz was enough.  It wasn't—as one strong reliever can never be these days.

Had they made it, the Mets might have become a real threat simply by stuffing another starter or two into the pen.  But they didn't make it, their hot streak carrying them only from 10th to 6th in the NL.

Much as the Yankees are going to ultimately fall short this year, it will at least be due to the lack of a pretty difficult commodity to develop or obtain:  a first-class starting pitcher.

Picking up a passel of relievers?  It shouldn't have been that hard.