The Mets are like a temperamental shower these days: they get hot, then they get ice cold, then get hot again with one turn of the dial. Since the All-Star break they are 10-8, but that includes a five-game winning streak against three different teams and a 2-4 stretch entering Wednesday.
The latest loss was a brutal one, though: a 6-3 defeat in Colorado, in a game that ended after a lot of people went to bed against a team that is the worst in the NL and only ahead of the putrid White Sox in all of MLB.
“These west coast trips, you wake up and the game’s over and you wonder if it really happened – well it happened, in front of very few fans against a crappy team,” Jerry Recco said Wednesday morning.
But, they’re 59-54 overall, somehow 1.5 games out of a Wild Card despite everything this season…and maybe, this is just who they are, a .500-ish team that could sneak in? Maybe, but this western swing against Colorado and Seattle, with a homestand against the awful A’s and Marlins following it, is a stretch where they need to make hay in order to be something more.
The problem is they lost two of three in Anaheim, so they’re 2-3 so far counting the makeup win in St. Louis, meaning a .500 road trip means winning at least one series in Colorado or Seattle.
“The Diamondbacks and Padres continue to win and you've got the Braves sliding now all of a sudden, so guess who you're chasing for the third spot?” Jerry said, and of course, it’s Atlanta. “These games, 6-4 is what I thought, 5-5 you’ll take, but the problem is you're not gonna make up any ground, and you've got another West Coast trip at the end of the month. These are the crappy teams that you need to be winning series against now.”
“When I saw this road trip my first thought was 5-5, right off the top of my head, but it’s a terrible trip,” Joe replied. “And here’s the other thing: people get crazy, but anybody beats anybody in baseball. Over 162 games, you're gonna lose games to bad teams.”
Unless you’re the White Sox, whose last win before Tuesday night was July 10 (that’s 21 losses in a row between ‘em), but hey, all they need to do is win two more games than the Braves over the final 50 and we’re looking at Serious October Baseball ™ in Queens?
“I think if you are what you think you are and you think you're a playoff team…I'm not you gotta go in and sweep the Rockies, but you gotta win the series, because this is a bad team,” Jerry said.
“This is my mindset with the Mets this year: if you told me two months ago that they’d be five games over .500 in early August, I’d have said you’re out of your mind,” Joe replied.
Ah, yes, Joe B. is optimistic but ready for the pain…but hey, at least he’s ready?
“I had no expectation level for this team this year, okay, and I understand they go on this crazy streak and they're playing great, so all of a sudden, the expectation level has been raised – but it is what it is, and this team is what they are,” Joe said. “They're giving us a season, which we didn't think we were gonna get. I thought by this time the team would look completely different than it did two months ago because they would have got rid of everybody. So if they make the playoffs, great, and if not, okay, because I didn't expect it anyway. I love my team, been with them since Day 1, but my expectation level has never changed. Nobody thought this team would be any good this year.”