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On July 12 the Mets were 11 games under .500 at 40-51, 14 1/2 games out of 1st place and 8 teams to climb over for a wild card berth. Turns out it was their low watermark of the season. Five weeks later...they are 5 games OVER .500 at 65-60, nine games out of 1st place and ONE team in front of them for a wild card spot, two games behind. That's a 16-game swing!
They took care of the teams they NEEDED to put away… and now they are playing the meaningful games they wanted to play. The Mets had Citifield rocking like it hasn’t been since sometime in 2016, stealing two come from behind wins from the Nationals before finally seeing their winning streak come to an end in a way that has come to define the 2019 season. Then they headed to Atlanta to take on the 1st place Braves, and grabbed one of the three games before taking two of three from the lowly Royals in Kansas City. Now they are back home up against the Cleveland Indians who have had the same mid-season resurgence as the Mets.
In a season where the Mets are celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the 1969 Miracle Mets, management is actually asking the fans to think more in the line with the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets. The problem is that the Mets of 2019 do not resemble either of those teams.
It’s so easy to point to the bullpen as the problem. However, the Mets bullpen is actually not in any more of a state of dysfunction than any other team this year, except for the Yankees. Every team is having bullpen problems. The horrible state of the bullpen is AN issue but not THE issue.
Although the 1973 team was handicapped by injuries to just about every key player on the team and was in last place in August, the reason there was hope for that team was that once the team was again at full strength, the pitching rich team was exceptionally strong up the middle with Jerry Grote behind the plate, Bud Harrelson at short, Felix Millan at second base, and Don Hahn in centerfield. This year’s team falls far short of being strong up the middle, important especially when you build your team around your starting pitching.
Jacob deGrom throws another gem in the bandbox more commonly known as Oriole Park at Camden Yards...lowering his ERA to 1.98. Curtis Granderson blasted two home runs and had a great catch in the 8th inning.
The fallout from the Mets and Brewers debacle on Wednesday night has been lighting up social media. Carlos Gomez and his teammates were literally tweeting happy thoughts and goodbyes from an airplane in the air while Zack Wheeler was shaking his head in Florida about possibly being traded a second time at the trade deadline and Wilmer Flores was put in the unenviable position of not knowing what everyone else in the world seemed to already know, and left hung out to dry for the entire world to see.
Last week Jose Reyes made headlines saying that he would love to finish his career with the New York Mets. This coming while he was with his third team since leaving the Mets, having been traded for the face of the Colorado Rockies franchise, Troy Tulowitski, just a couple of weeks ago at the trade deadline.
Alan Karmin is an award-winning journalist and author. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and spent most of his life growing up in the New Jersey suburbs. Alan's family were avid Brooklyn Dodgers fans and when the Dodgers moved west, the Mets became the team to root for. The Mets have always been a true focal point, Alan even wrote a term paper in high school to analyze what was wrong with the Mets. While at the University of Miami, Alan honed his craft covering the, gulp, Yankees during spring trainings in Fort Lauderdale for a local NBC affiliate, as well as the Associated Press and UPI. He broadcasted baseball games for the University of Miami, and spring training games for the Baltimore Orioles and Montreal Expos. New York Mets Mania is a forum for Alan to write about his favorite team and for baseball fans to chime in and provide their thoughts and ideas about New York's Amazin' Mets.
