METS’ GLASS IS HALF PHIL
Game 81 a dud, but club’s gotta believe that change will come
The Mets reached the 81-game halfway turn in fitting fashion on Sunday. Their sloppy loss to the putrid Phillies not only undercut their recent surge over the past week, but it featured yet another injured player limping across their clubhouse afterward.
Curtis Granderson looked and sounded like another regular possibly facing a DL stint after sitting out a forgettable 7-1 defeat with a wonky hip flexor, so why should the recurring storyline of the entire first half for the Mets be any different now?
Well, that’s their only chance to salvage the rest of this season, for starters, and Terry Collins knows it.
“I look at the rest of the standings, look at everybody else that’s played 81 games,” Collins said after Sunday’s loss. “If we can put together a second half like some of these (teams) did in the first half, we’ll be fine.
“If we continue to not play well, if we continue not to do some things or we lose some more key guys, it’s going to be tough to catch back up.”
Winning seven of their previous eight prior to this matinee slop fest at least had put the Mets in position to try to convince themselves that the final half-dozen remaining games before next week’s All-Star break — all on the road, split between Washington and St. Louis — actually still hold some significance.
At five games south of .500 (38-43) and 9.5 games off the pace in the NL East after the Nationals beat the Cardinals on Sunday night, the margin of error is gone.
The Mets clearly can’t afford anything close to a repeat of their last series against first-place Washington at Citi Field in mid-June — in which they dropped the first three before Jacob deGrom’s gem prevented a sweep, only to then lose four straight thereafter in Los Angeles.
Now, after failing to sweep the Phils, they must gain further ground head-to-head beginning Monday in our nation’s capital.
Or the rest of this month and summer and season finally will shift to the trading of