Mets magical ability to keep punching back gives them a Game 6 chance

LOS ANGELES — After the Mets’ potentially devastating 10-2 defeat in Game 4 made it three debacles in four games, and left the team from Queens on the precipice of elimination, Mets players met to size up their unenviable situation.Things looked bleak — though this team that’s all heart does bleak better than almost anyone ever has.These very Mets were told from the start that they are a team in transition.

Yet, here they are with a legit shot against the best money can build.They started the season like they’re never going to win a game, delaying rookie manager Carlos Mendoza’s first win into almost Week 2.Yet, they wind up digging out of that hole by Week 3.They fell 11 games below .500, yet became the eighth team ever to make it to the playoffs from those depths.They fell behind by multiple runs multiple times in Game No.

161 on a day they must win a game, in their personal house of horrors in Atlanta, yet pulled it out with the first biggest home run in Mets history.(Thanks Frankie!)They fell behind again by multiple runs into the ninth inning against one of the game’s best closers in a winner-take-all wild-card game, yet rescue their season on the newest biggest homer in Mets history.

(Thanks Pete!)But even in a season of bleak, down three games to one to the Ohtani Dodgers in the NLCS is a mountain you don’t want to have to scale.A lesser team might have bowed to Ohtani and Co.

But not these Mets.They met to talk it over.

And they responded with a big, 12-6 Game 5 win that nobody saw coming (if you will, a 12-6 curveball if there ever was one).“We were all on the same page collectively,” Pete Alonso said after the Mets punched back with authority in Game 5 to continue their season-long trend.“Like after [Thursday’s loss], we just had a collective conversation where it was like, hey, this is this is it,” Alonso continued.“This is who we are.

This is the situation we’re in and let’s keep continuing to lay it all out there.�...