Amazin’ly average won’t get it done
CHICAGO — Baseball New Yo rk l ate ly has b e co me obsessed with the Yankees and .500, and maybe that’s understandable since the Bombers seemingly have spent the entire year either a game or two above sea level or a game or two below, playing ping-pong between poverty and prosperity.
But the Mets have been a breakeven story almost as long.
They are .500 since the All-Star break (3-3). They are .500 since June 24 (11-11). They are .500 since June 1 (21-21). They are .500 since May 14 (29-29). They are .500 since April 27 (37-37). They are, to put it mildly, stuck on a slow-moving
treadmill heading precisely nowhere. As bad as it sometimes seems things are for them in the NL East, it is remarkable the Nationals haven’t yet run away and hidden from them. As frustrating as things seem in the wild-card race, the Mets still are right there in the mix, even in the wake of a 6-2 stomping by the Cubs at Wrigley Field on Wednesday.
Yet it is becoming harder and harder to muster a genuine belief the Mets ever can make a run at the Nationals. And it is becoming more and more complicated to see them staying in the hunt for either wild-card berth, mostly because it isn’t likely a wildcard participant is going
to get in with an 84-78 record.
Which is exactly where the Mets will be if they do as they’ve done the past month, the past two months, all the way back to April, and they spend the season’s final two months-plus going 34-34. Which is what all the evidence points to.
The next six days should offer us some idea about what the Mets are, and where they are headed. Three in Miami against the Marlins then three at home against the Cardinals, both teams that are lumped tightly with the Mets in the wild-card race.
“They’re all big now,” manager Terry Collins said.
They won’t win the wild card in the next week. But the week could sure go a long way toward losing it.
“We’re sitting here right now going to play the Marlins, and they’re playing very well,” Collins said after Wednesday’s slog, which featured Bartolo Colon at his batting-practice worst and the Cubs at their get-after-you best. “There’s no doubt, we have to take two [out of three]. We have to make up some ground.”
As important, they can’t afford to lose any more ground. There still are 68 games to play, and that’s an eternity — until it’s not. Late July isn’t September. But it isn’t April either. The Mets had one eightgame winning streak then that, in essence, is what has given them whatever breathing room they possess. They’ve been searching for another ever since.
The biggest winning streak since has been five. The biggest losing streak has been four. Win one, lose one. Win two, lose two. Take a few steps forward, take a few paces back. For three months they have been the absolute definition of mediocrity. It’s not a preferred path to glory.
“That’s what this time of year is about,” Collins said. “If you’re in the race, it’s a string of good games against good teams and great pitching. “That’s when it’s fun.” It’s more fun for a team when it figures things out, when it emerges from a crowded pack, when it learns to take advantage of prosperous times.
In many ways, that’s the puzzle with these Mets. In the past two weeks they’ve ground out terrific comeback wins against good teams — 9-7 over the Nats 13 days ago, 2-1 over the Cubs on Tuesday — and followed them with banana peels: a buzz-killing three-game skid to Washington, this listless 6-2 stinker to Chicago.
So now they get the Marlins and Cardinals, and the urgency has to be there. It has to be tangible. It has to be real. The Mets won’t be able to set themselves up for a two-month coast across the next six games, even if they go 6-0 or 5-1. But they certainly could go a long way toward burying themselves if they go 2-4 or 1-5. Besides, who are we kidding? If the 2016 Mets have taught us anything it is this:
It’s all but a mortal lock they’re going to go 3-3.