As a Mets fan, you never know where you’re going to find yourself. Oh, sure, you have a general idea of what will happen: history tells us that more often than not, they’re going to be bad. But even being bad carries with it some surprises. As far back as 1963, the brilliant baseball essayist Roger Angell noted that “It’s safe to assume the Mets will lose, but that doesn’t mean they won’t scare the hell out of you before they do.” Even fans with a fifty year or more pedigree can find themselves in relatively unfamiliar territory every now and then.
Much has been made of the Mets’ inevitable cooling off from their white-hot beginning in 2015. After winning 11 straight, the Mets simmered down to 3-7 in their next 10, against what wags would call “real” teams: the Yankees, Miami and Washington. Over the past two nights, it seems they’ve righted themselves and if they can win the first two games in Philadelphia this weekend – eminently doable, considering the Phillies’ woes in the early going – it will bring them back to exactly .500 since the streak, ten games over .500 overall. The thing is, if you look past the surface of their opponents so far, you can see that — again, Philly excepted – they haven’t been fattening up against the patsies of MLB. They have been playing “real teams.” Of their six opponents so far this year, only one has an over .500 record and another is exactly .500 as of this writing – the Yankees and the Braves, respectively. On the surface, that doesn’t look so hot. What gets lost is the fact that these other sub-.500 teams have losing records because they’ve played the Mets. If you remove the Met games from their records, they look a lot better than meets the eye. For instance, Baltimore is one game under .500, at 12-13, but if you take their 0-2 record vs. the Mets out of the equation, their record is 12-11. The Braves would be 12-10, the Marlins 11-10.
The difference here is that in years past, the Mets would be the ones being fattened upon. Look no further than the Washington Nationals, who famously beat the Mets around like a piñata last year. First of all, the Mets have almost equaled last year’s win tally against the Nats. That much is obvious. The sub-text, though, is that only one game out of seven so far has been a blowout. The Mets have scored 16 runs vs. Washington so far this year. Wanna know how many they’ve allowed? 16. That’s right, in seven games so far this year, the Mets and Nats have basically played to a standstill. Who saw that coming back in March? Speaking of which…
Another first occurred for your intrepid columnist last week: he got to indulge in excitement of his first Harvey Day ever! It offered a glimpse of what’s to come if things hold for the rest of this year: limited parking, extremely large pre-game crowds milling around the Rotunda and five-deep at McFadden’s bar. The roar returned to the crowd, after being largely absent upon their return home. And oh, yeah, a terrific ballgame, featuring a long ball by Michael Cuddyer, some late lightning from Daniel Murphy, a five-out save by Jeurys Familia and Matt Harvey doing Matt Harvey things, even without his best stuff on a chilly night. Max Scherzer pitched even better, but luck deserted him and his mates on this night and the Mets had themselves a shutout. They should keep me around: I’ve been to two games so far this year and the Mets have outscored their opponents, 6-0.
A fella could get used to that kind of a thing.
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The streakiness of this years team has been interesting so far, let’s hope that things find a little more consistency the rest of the way. Consistently good, that is.
The pitching has been consistently fantastic. The hitting has been hit or miss, but we’ve been relied too heavily on the bench. Things are looking up!
I hope the offense gets back on track when David Wright comes back. Losing d’Arnaud and Wright have put some pressure on the lineup. Luckily Plawecki has come up clutch throughout some of the games, but we still need more production from the lineup.