51s conclude season with win over Salt Lake Bees

As the 51s season neared its start, manager Wally Backman was confident and clear in his expectations in his team’s ability to win.

Despite the fact that the New York Mets had graduated some of the top young arms in baseball from their farm system, pitching coach Frank Viola laid praise on the remaining arms, saying they would give the 51s a chance every night. Meanwhile, Backman called the bullpen the best he had had in four years in Las Vegas.

As the season hit its close on Monday, the 51s ended their season with the top three hitters in the Pacific Coast League, but wound up with a third-place division finish because of that same pitching staff, which was inconsistent throughout the season and finished last in the league with a 5.32 ERA.

Las Vegas beat Salt Lake 7-1 at Smith’s Ballpark on Monday in its season finale, finishing with a 70-74 record.

“With the season coming to a close, I can’t be happier with what the offense did and the improvements that offensive players made. I would give those guys an ‘A’ as a whole,” Backman said. ‘The pitching, I would probably give the starters maybe a ‘C’ and the bullpen maybe a ‘C-.’ It all comes down to pitching no matter what level you’re at and our pitching was very inconsistent this year.”

As a team, the 51s finished the season batting .291, second in the Pacific Coast League behind El Paso, and first in runs scored at 821, averaging 5.7 per game.

Two players that led that offensive charge throughout the season — Brandon Nimmo and T.J. Rivera — provided some intrigue on the season’s final day as they competed for the batting title.

Nimmo, who Backman has often referred to as the most improved player he’s ever had, came into the day with a four-point edge over Rivera.

By the time the game reached the eighth inning, Rivera had overtaken him by less than a percentage point.

At that point, Rivera started to realize how close the race actually was.

“At the beginning of the day, I truly thought I was way behind him. I didn’t even realize how close we were because I’ve never really looked at those things,” Rivera said. “As the day went on and I got a couple hits, I could hear people in the background saying, ‘Oh, this guy’s ahead, this guy,’ and I was like ‘Oh, my goodness. I didn’t realize how close we were.’ ”

The race came down to the final at-bat.

With Rivera holding a slight edge, Nimmo lined into a double play. The next batter, Gavin Cecchini, who finished third in the PCL at .325, lined out, too.

That left Rivera one percentage point ahead — .353 to .352. Rivera finished the day 3-for-5 and Nimmo 1-for-5.

“It kind of tells you what I was able to do throughout my season,” Rivera said “You work really hard in the offseason to accomplish just good seasons and just have the best season you can have and when something like this is awarded to you, it’s pretty cool.

“Obviously it stinks that it has to be against one of your buddies and one of your teammates, but I’m definitely grateful for it.”

Now Rivera, Nimmo, Cecchini and Eric Campbell, Josh Edgin and Erik Goeddel will join the Mets as September callups.

That’s in addition to Matt Reynolds, Michael Conforto, Ty Kelly, Gabriel Ynoa and Kevin Plawecki, who already have joined the big league club, and speaks to the strength of the roster the 51s had throughout the year.

“All season we’ve had such a dominant team really even with the moves, there’s been a lot of moves up and down with the big league club so that sometimes affects chemistry and the way things go,” Rivera said. “It was crazy the whole season how many talented players we had and we didn’t really put anything together.

“Sometimes that happens and there were a lot of moves which you’ve got to expect in Triple-A. Unfortunately as a team, we didn’t accomplish the things we kind of set out to get.”

Betsy Helfand can be reached at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @BetsyHelfand