It felt positively fitting that the Mets’ 81st game of the season happened to coincide with Sunday’s complete drubbing of Chicago, that the midway mark of this back-and-forth 2016 campaign was capped off by a week-long stretch that witnessed a truly dreadful three-game sweep by the Nats segue neatly into that four-game sweep of the Cubs I alluded to up top. In short, it was a sampling that evinced the best and worst these Mets can offer this year. World-beating domination and spiritless capitulation. A little from Column A, a little from Column B.
And so now the Mets, who were 44-37 heading into July 4, are on pace for 88 wins on the year which is a figure that would likely keep them competitive for the National League wild card slots and, quite possibly, yet another division title over Washington, which appears both more formidable and (most importantly) far less injured than it was a year ago. But for as inconsistent as the offense has been and as much as the starting rotation seems like it could fall off a cliff, either through the looming specter of UCLs snapping or bone spurs, uh, spurring, the season is far from lost. Quite the contrary, the fate of the Mets is far from sealed. They very much control how this season will play out, but perhaps feels equal parts comforting and terrifying, but it’s a lot better situation than many other National League teams.
It has no bearing on this year’s expectations, but it’s not an insignificant exercise to think about where the Mets were at this time last year, which was 41-40. They went 49-32 for the rest of the regular season, and though replicating that feels optimistic for this year’s squadron, I would take into account first that the team that will finish the season is not the team you currently see out on the field. There are moves to be made, trades to be negotiated, call-ups that will prove themselves unexpectedly valuable. (For the second year in a row, that means you, Michael Conforto.) Zack Wheeler will likely be back in the rotation, thus preserving some of Bartolo Colon for the later weeks when his ability to eat up late-game innings will be utterly invaluable. Lucas Duda will be back from injury. Someone will likely be acquired to shore up the infield depth and/or add some pop to the lineup. Say what you will about Sandy Alderson but he has shown a clear predilection to making the moves that need to be made. Yeah, sometimes it works out that you get saved from yourself and get a Yoenis Cespedes instead of Carlos Gomez or Jay Bruce, but you have to be aggressive to make yourself that kind of institutional luck, and there’s no reason to think, as long as the Mets are still competitive in two weeks’ time—say, five games back or fewer—they’ll kick every tire out there on a move that could net more wins in the here and now, even if means a slight sacrifice for 2017 and beyond.
And so you hope all that happens. And you hope that, in turn, signals some course correction for an offense that ranks 28th in runs scored, sixth in dingers but 28th in doubles, and sports a batting average one percentage point off of Atlanta for worst in MLB. And you hope Wheeler’s comeback is enough to bolster a staff fighting like hell to keep the injury demon’s appetite quenched until at least November and everyone has already dispersed. And you hope that this offseason, when the Mets watch Cespedes walk away (for real this time) and negotiate some buyout on the remainder of David Wright’s contract and feel the pressure to either trade Matt Harvey or buy out his arbitration years in the hopes of avoiding an ugly Boras-y squabble down the line, you’ve accumulated enough good memories from this season to get yourself through all of that.
There is so much baseball left to play this season, and I would say the odds are better than 50-50 that the second 81 games show off a more competent Mets team than the first 81. Maybe that’s a dangerous setup for something unpleasant to come, and maybe that’s the kind of thinking that, in the end, makes the long winter feel colder than you’re prepared for. But it’s a hope that can’t help but be felt this time of year, when you’ve made it to the halfway point and, wouldn’t you know it, there’s still some light up ahead.
The second half of the 2016 season holds infinite, unrealized possibilities. It could all go very wrong, but you sit and wait and (yes) hope that, somehow, yet again, it all goes very right.
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