MILWAUKEE -- Mets owner Steve Cohen, by the definition of what the hedge-fund billionaire calls his “day job,” is in the prediction business. Judging by his $20 billion fortune, he’s apparently quite good at it. So when Cohen says his Mets are capable of playing deep into October, as he did after Carlos Mendoza & Co.
punched their wild-card ticket with Monday’s win for the ages in Atlanta, maybe his confidence is not merely bravado from his team’s richest fan. “This team can do it,” Cohen said. “They believe in themselves.
Listen, anything’s possible.” The Mets certainly backed up their owner’s words -- again -- by returning to Milwaukee 48 hours after their departure and stunning the NL Central champ Brewers, 8-4, in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. Luis Severino, in true Mets-ian fashion, rebounded from a near-fatal first inning to deliver six strong and his teammates rallied back from a 2-0 deficit (sound familiar) to ice it with a five-run fifth.
Jesse Winker triggered the team’s second comeback in as many days with a tying two-run triple in the second inning, but it was J.D. Martinez’s two-run single in the fifth that sparked the deciding onslaught -- and brought boos raining down from the crowd of 40,022 at American Family Field.
When I asked Mendoza before Game 1 about his team abruptly switching from playoff-chase mode to a legit World Series pursuit, he smiled. “Why change?” Mendoza said. “We've been doing it the whole year .
.. We know .