On Expectations

I will admit that I haven’t exactly paid the closest amount of attention to the happenings within Citi Field this season. I have a major side-project underway that keeps my focus diverted not only away from the Mets but from all of baseball for certain stretches of time. Then comes time to play speed-round catch-up, which isn’t all that bad because accelerated baseball consumption in heaping doses is, I contend, as good a head rush as any you’ll find.

But the downside is I invariably get a lot of my Important Baseball News via the push notifications on my phone, so it feels like every bit of news is being smushed into my brain in large, dopamine-soaked capital letters: Travis d’Arnaud is OUT. Steven Matz scheduled for an MRI. Lucas Duda and David Wright on the DL. Yoenis Cespedes SCRATCHED. Juan Lagares has a partially TORN ligament. Matt Harvey has LOST ALL SEMBLANCE OF THE PITCHER WE ONCE RECOGNIZED. It gets a little ridiculous–all this breaking, bad news coming to your home screen every few hours or so—and what it really does is skew your overall perception of the season. The line from macro to micro is imperceptibly fine at times, but you sure do know when you’ve crossed over.

Which is to say, I was both chagrined and dumbfounded to check the standings and see that the Mets were only—any guesses?—two games behind the Nationals for first place in the NL East. They were 31-24 heading into last night’s eventual rainout against the Pirates, who are in second place in the NL Central, have a worse record than the Mets, and seem generally less panicky in temperament. The Mets have a solid home and away record, boast starting pitching that is beyond playoff-caliber, and are likely a much better offensive team than the numbers through two months would indicate. (Do I think their true run-producing ceiling is anywhere near the Cubs? Of course not, but there’s no way they end up 28th in runs scored, which is where they sit today.) So, only two games back? This was a delightful surprise!

We think of last season as a year that pulverized all expectations, when the Mets surprised us with a thrilling run to the World Series after we expected nothing like that to even remotely occur. And those Mets? They were 30-25 through 55 games last year, so this 2016 team is actually ahead of that pace this time around. Despite that fact, how enjoyable would you say this year has actually been? Maybe a four or five out of 10? Noah Syndergaard has undoubtedly supplied all the best singular achievements, every one of his starts feeling like an event worthy of a national audience.

But beyond Thor, disappointments abound: Michael Conforto started off hot yet has regressed. Matt Harvey has been up and down since Week 1, now tenuously straddling the portion of the performance spectrum labeled Cautiously Optimistic (?). Jinxy, wide-eyed optimists wrote of Travis d’Arnaud’s inescapable breakout only to have him shelved the next day. And on it goes down the line. Hope, this season, has been a bad thing, maybe the worst of things, and that’s not how anyone foresaw these first couple of months coming to pass.

Here’s the good news: The very nature of hope, as well as the expectations that inevitably follow, is all relative. Insofar as what the Mets do on the field is out of your control, how you process those results is entirely a self-run enterprise. You are the boss of you, and with a little necessary context, even a frustrating, down season can start to come into a little more positive focus. That’s not a plea for full-on desensitization—we’re only human, after all—but maybe we shouldn’t be held hostage by headlines that play on our worst suspicions about the unformed future.

As for me, I’m going to start paying more attention from here on out—starting by turning off my push notifications. Seems counterintuitive, sure, but it feels like a place to start.

Photo Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports