How 1988 actually went.
The Mets returned to the top with 100 wins. Darryl Strawberry had his best season, Kevin McReynolds drove in runs with quiet consistency, and David Cone went 20–3. The pitching staff was deep, the lineup dangerous, and New York beat Los Angeles in ten of 11 regular-season meetings. Everything pointed toward another World Series trip.
The NLCS refused to follow the regular-season script. The Mets let late leads escape, Mike Scioscia hit a game-changing home run off Gooden in Game 4, and Orel Hershiser repeatedly shut down the lineup. Cone answered a public controversy by winning Game 6, sending the series back to Los Angeles for a deciding game.
Hershiser dominated Game 7, and a 100-win season ended with a shutout. Because the Mets never returned to this height, 1988 became the great missed chance of the era. The roster was still loaded and had clearly been one of baseball’s best teams. One difficult week against an opponent it had controlled all year kept that excellence from receiving another pennant.
Ten regular-season wins over the Dodgers meant nothing once Hershiser owned October.