With ownership changes at the mothership come some structual changes to the way we do things around here, and part of that means a goodbye to the local sites. People far above my head and far smarter than I will explain what that all means later, but for now, I can offer this.

We’re not going anywhere. A lot of the BP Mets writers you have grown to know (and hopefully love, or at least respect) will still be popping up, just over at the main site now. The podcast will live on (as if we could ever get Jeffrey and Jarrett to stop talking). The Mets, unfortunately, will still give us plenty to write about. We’ll still have to look up how to spell Brodie’s last name and then just refer to him as Brodie anyway. We’ll all still be around.

The BP Mets site will stick around too, at least for the foreseeable future, so you can always go back and read about Jacob deGrom’s magical Cy Young season or Matt Harvey’s fade from glory or Eric Campbell’s, well, Eric Campbellness.

On a personal note, this job has been a dream, if not also a nightmare. I grew up loving the Mets and hating them too, and getting to write about them was a fantasy that SB Nation made come true and BP took to new heights. The last few years have been absolutely miserable to watch, but running BP Mets was an honor. Getting to work with these talented, creative, thoughtful writers was an honor. Pouring my heart out about this stupid team and not having you, the reader, run away was an honor.

I’ll still be around, over at the mainsite and on Twitter, where I will surely still be looking up how to spell Brodie’s last name and then just referring to him as Brodie anyway. I hope you’ll come with us.

It’s been an honor.

The Mets won! Jeff McNeil went 4-for-5! Michael Conforto drove in three runs! We only have to watch the Mets play baseball six more times this year!

The Bad:

Steven Matz lasted just three innings, allowing three runs amid questionable command. Drew Smith gave up three runs on five hits without recording an out in the eighth inning, his second turn out after a scoreless seventh. We only get to watch the Mets play baseball six more times this year.

The Ugly:

The Mets only play six more times this year. This year, more than most, I’ve been ready for the season to end. Maybe it’s because the Mets have been bad and the world has been bad and it’s all too much. Maybe it’s because they haven’t just been bad, but also boring. Maybe I’m getting too old for this. But I’ve wanted it to be over earlier than usual, and I hate that. I stuck with the Mets through some truly awful years and I never stopped wanting to watch them play. Now, it’s an effort to force myself to sit through nine innings.

Next year probably isn’t going to be great. They’re relying on Jacob deGrom to have a second once-in-a-century season and Zack Wheeler to pitch like an ace again and Jeff McNeil to be the role 6 (or maybe 7) guy that Jarrett Seidler thinks he is and the bullpen to, you know, be good. Maybe one of those things happens. Maybe Anthony Swarzak goes back to his 2017 self. Maybe Michael Conforto turns into the elite-hitting outfielder we all see when we close our eyes. Maybe Peter Alonso actually makes it to the majors.

Maybe none of that happens. Maybe this is it. Maybe 2015 is all they got.

It was painful to watch for any multitude of reasons, none of which were eased by the fact that we’ve all known this day was coming for two years. Because we have. Even the most optimistic among us knew, on some level, that David Wright wasn’t coming back. On Thursday, he admitted it too.

“Throughout this process, a lot of times my mind and my heart were telling me one thing, and my body was telling me something completely different,” he said at a press conference. “It was always, ‘I can do this. I can do this.’ The goal when I was injured was to come back as the player I expected myself to be. Once things ramped up and baseball activities got tougher and the games became for me more of ‘Just let me get through this and survive it,’ it became more apparent to me that that goal is now, ‘I just want to put this uniform on again.’ . . . I needed the games for my body to finally tell me, ‘It’s not happening. It’s not working.’”

I wanted to believe that he could do it, that he could overcome the spinal stenosis. I wanted it for me and for him and his daughters. So I guess, technically, my wish was granted. I get one last David Wright game. But to get there, I had to watch a man admit it’s over.

Sandwiched between John Ricco and Jeff Wilpon, Wright sat in the Citi Field media room and cried. In orange and blue, he said his body had failed him. It had been 840 days since his last major league game, since he stood in a batter’s box and watched strike three cross home plate. He’d tried some minor league games, a few that Gameday had recorded, a few it didn’t, but we knew this was the end. The lies we told ourselves were fantasies. “He’s just rusty!” we proclaimed. “His bat speed is still there,” we pretended. “The arm strength will be back, just give it time,” we whispered. We knew it wasn’t true. But we lied because we wanted to believe it. We lied because the alternative was failure.

We can’t lie anymore, because Wright told us not to.

“As far as regrets go, I can’t say I have regrets,” he said Thursday. “I felt like, I knew one way to play the game, I tried to play that way, and there’s not a lot of people out there who can say they made it to the big leagues, that they got to be with one team for their entire career, and got to captain that team, and to have the success that, at least in my mind, I like to think that I had.”

And with that, a 13-year career ends.

For me, Wright was the Mets. He was young when I was young and he was sad when I was sad and he was hopeful when I was hopeful. I will never be a Hall of Fame-level talent at anything except convincing myself that I’m on Amazon’s website anyway, I may as well just buy the boxset of “The O.C.,” but I lived vicariously through him, because that’s what sports fandom is at its core.

Wright was good, but the Mets were bad. Of the 13 seasons he played at least part of, the Mets finished atop the NL East just twice. There was heartbreak and disappointment and a lot of bad baseball. But there was also Wright, who never complained, never grumbled, never asked for a trade. He was pure joy to watch, and he played like he enjoyed doing so. He was just there, every day. Until he wasn’t.

We’ve had two years to prepare for goodbye. Wright sat at that press conference and said it’s over. Now we have to do the same.

We lie because we don’t want to admit the truth. We lie because we don’t want to acknowledge that we’ll never see another Wright home run or a sidearm throw from third. We lie because we’re not used to watching people give up. Athletes, overwhelmingly, don’t give up. They push their careers as far as they can go and then hang on for a few more years. Wright didn’t get that option. His body betrayed him and stole him from us before his time was up.

We lie because admitting it’s over is admitting defeat.

Photo credit: Andy Marlin – USA Today Sports

I’ve written this article before. About how he deserves to retire on his own time and about who benefitted from his downfall. But the finish line was always if, not when. I didn’t actually think he’d come back. For a while, he couldn’t lift his infant daughter because his back hurt too badly. Why would I expect that man to make a triumphant return to the Flushing faithful? But he proved me wrong. He proved the doctors wrong. By all accounts, he proved himself wrong too.

This time, he’s not fighting his body. He’s fighting his bosses.

“The challenge has been accepted,” Wright told reporters last week. “I’m going to do everything I can to get that clearance. I’m going to do everything I can to put that big-league uniform on, because I’ve come way too far with the work to give it a ‘poor me.’”

No one has specified what, exactly, Wright is incapable of doing. He’s said his arm strength is still an issue, which is predictable, but no one will say if that’s one of John Ricco’s vague benchmarks. Mickey Callaway said there’s a difference between medical clearance for minor league and major league games — for what it’s worth, the CBA does not even mention such a distinction — but couldn’t give any details. They just keep saying that Wright isn’t ready.

What they’re not saying is that the team’s insurance claim on Wright ends if he’s activated. The Wilpons have recouped 75% of Wright’s contract since July 2016, saving them approximately $28.5 million. That will continue until Wright retires or his contract expires, whichever comes first. Unless, that is, he comes off the DL, even for a game. Then the clock resets and the insurance claim will be pushed back another 60 days from the day Wright goes back on the disabled list. Best estimates say that could cost the Wilpons about $5 million.

Is $5 million enough to keep Wright off the field?

The logical, rational answer is no. The ticket revenue and merchandise sales from a David Wright game in 2018, more than 27 months after he last took the field in a major league game, probably wouldn’t add up to $5 million, but it would come close. But it’s not about money. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be about money. Call it good PR, which the Wilpons could sorely use. I like to call it the right thing to do.

He’s probably not up to game speed. I know that and you know that and he knows that. Not because of his stats from minor league rehab games, but because he has spinal stenosis and he’s missed two years of baseball and there are days when he can’t get out of bed. No one expects him to come back and slug .550, nor does anyone need him to. Proper narrative structure dictates he homers again like the last time he returned from the DL, of course, but that’s just theatrics. Wright didn’t fight for two years to have his baseball career die over an insurance policy. If he can handle throws from third base and make contact at the plate, how can the Wilpons deprive him of that? Of one last standing ovation at Citi Field? Wright struck out looking on May 27, 2016 and then disappeared into the abyss of operating rooms and rehab centers. He never got to say goodbye. Fans never got to say goodbye. They never got to tell him how much he meant.

Mets fans deserve a chance to see Wright play. His daughters deserve a chance to see him play. He deserves a chance to play.

“Anywhere I go — St. Lucie or Vegas or even walking around New York earlier this year — the amount of support and the love that has been shown has been overwhelming,” Wright told Newsday last week.

It would be nice if his bosses showed him a little support too.

Photo credit: Adam Hunger – USA Today Sports

It’s tough to find the positive in a 15-0 shutout, of which 14 of the runs were scored in the final two innings, but Steven Matz was a revelation in a truly ugly Sunday. The lefty tossed seven innings of one-run ball, faltering only when Juan Soto drove in a run on a groundout following back-to-back hits by Trea Turner and Anthony Rendon.

That’s it. That’s the only good part.

The bad

Jeff McNeil, after extending his hitting streak to 11 games, left after the seventh inning with right quad tightness. He said after the game that it’s “nothing too major,” so he may just be ready for spring training.

Also, the offense has gone back to that whole we-don’t-believe-in-hits-anymore thing.

The ugly

Photo credit: Wendell Cruz – USA Today Sports

Daniel’s Discipline: Daniel Robertson was a 2012 first rounder by the Athletics and was subsequently traded as part of the deal that sent Ben Zobrist and Yunel Escobar to Oakland at the 2015 trade deadline. Fast forward to 2018, and Robertson is starting to show some of his first-round promise at the major league level. His .262 batting average and seven home runs are not all that impressive on their own, but his OBP is close to .400 (.389) thanks to a 15.2% walk rate (10th among hitters with 250 or more plate appearances). This production has led to a .307 TAv and 2.3 WARP. The first starter he will face is Jacob deGrom, who has the 23rd lowest BB/9 this year, while he’ll go up against Steven Matz, who has the 24th highest BB/9 this year, on Saturday. Look to see if his disciplined approach plays differently against those two pitchers on different ends of the control spectrum in this series.

Snell’s Sustainability: Another former first rounder mentioned in the intro is Blake Snell, the lefty hurler who was taken in the 2011 draft. Snell throws four pitches (fastball, changeup, slider and curve), each of which has seemed to improve this year. His velocity is up about 2 mph on all four pitches, averaging 96.3 mph on his fastball. His swing and miss rate is also up on all four pitches, with the biggest jump coming on the curveball (20.17% in 2017 to 24.07% in 2018). Unsurprisingly, these improvements have translated to better strikeout numbers, as his 10.19 K/9 is the best in his young career. While FIP (3.43) and DRA (2.63) have differing opinions on how real his 2.24 ERA is, they both like his 2018 performance. There are two somewhat concerning numbers, though. His .225 BABIP ranks third among qualified starters, and his LOB% of 87.1% ranks first. Of course, the expectation is that better pitchers will tend to have better numbers in these categories (ex: Kershaw has a career .271 BABIP and 79.2% LOB%), but Snell is living on the extremes of both categories, suggesting some regression may be on the horizon.

Stanek’s Splitter: Ryne Stanek (first round pick in 2013 by the Rays) has only thrown 27.1 innings this year, but he has found success to the tune of a 1.98 ERA, 3.18 FIP and 3.13 DRA. One of his three pitches is his splitter, which has helped him achieve his current levels of success. His velo of 89.6 mph on the pitch is the sixth fastest among the 56 pitchers to throw one this year and his 54.6% whiffs per swing rate also ranks fourth among splitters. Additionally, the pitch has generated a 57% ground ball rate. The sample size is still small for Stanek, but what all this means is he could have a pretty dangerous weapon in the splitter. In terms of its relevance for this series, Jose Bautista has seen more splitters (142 — 14th most over that span) over the last three seasons than any other Mets player, hitting .250 against them. Stanek lines up to start Game 1 of the series Friday night, so look to see if Bautista’s experience with the pitch benefits him.

Quick Hits

The Good: Two of the Rays’ most underperforming position players in Carlos Gomez and Kevin Kiermaier have BABIP of .257 and .213, respectively, suggesting their results should improve.

The Bad: The Rays have the second fewest number of doubles with 126 (Mets are ninth worst with 135).

The Ugly: Rays batters have been intentionally walked just five times all season, worst in the majors (Mets are eighth best with 20).

Mets Check-In

After putting together a monster first half, Brandon Nimmo seems to have hit a mini-slump. Over his last nine games, he is hitting .107 with 12 Ks in 28 at bats. Hopefully his struggles are temporary and just a lingering effect from his finger issues, because he has definitely been one of the only bright spots of this team in 2018.

Photo credit: Kim Klement – USA Today Sports

Does Mickey Callaway?

The Wilpons were never going to hire a manager who wouldn’t follow their directives. So they found an American League pitching coach who doesn’t know how to double switch or when to pull pitchers and an American League bench coach who, well, also doesn’t know how to double switch or pull pitchers. It’s worked out because Callaway, to a tee, has played by their rules. He’s prioritized the veterans and defended the incompetent and given the soundbites.

“I have 25 guys that I’m in charge of, and I go out there every day and try to put those guys in the best situation to succeed — whether it’s, okay, I know that these younger players need more development, (or) I know that these older players may need a day off or need more at-bats to keep them going,” he said recently.

If you scratch out the psychobabble, it says this: when he’s told to play Jay Bruce, through plantar fasciitis and a .613 OPS, he plays him. When he’s told to start Jose Reyes and his -0.7 WAR, he starts him. When he’s told to say Amed Rosario needs a mental health break or Luis Guillorme isn’t ready, he lets them rot on the bench.

I’m not in the room to ask if he really believes the words he’s saying, and the people in the room don’t ask. I don’t know if he drank the Kool-Aid or if he’s just doing what he’s been paid to do. But fans deserve to know.

In his defense, Callaway has not had great— or any— luck in his rookie season. He was handed a rotation that included Matt Harvey and Jason Vargas, an outfield based around the aforementioned Bruce and a roster built perilously on the idea that the team would be good if it was healthy, which is had never been before and almost certainly would still not be (spoiler alert: the team is not healthy). None of that is Callaway’s fault. He didn’t infect Anthony Swarzak with a strained oblique or steal Jerry Blevins’ curveball. He’s not in charge of calling up Peter Alonso or Jeff McNeil and he didn’t tender A.J. Ramos a contract. The team was always going to be bad.

Did he know that?

What I most want to know, I suppose, is what Callaway is doing. Is he a mouthpiece for a front office that promised Reyes at-bats out of some twisted loyalty to a man who was arrested for domestic violence? Is he trying — and failing — to win? Is he drowning? I don’t know which option I prefer, but I think an answer would tell us a lot about him. It would tell us a lot about the organization too. Are the Mets a professional sports team or a money-making enterprise that will survive as long as fans buy tickets and concessions and shirseys? What’s the priority?

This isn’t a discussion of whether Callaway can survive the heated New York media, which is what is normally meant by “can X manager/player/ball girl handle the job,” because the media isn’t heated. It’s a discussion of whether Callaway can handle the balancing act between obvious pressure from the front office and what’s actually best for the team — the two rarely line up. It’s a discussion of  whether he knows how to get the best out of players. It’s a discussion of whether he knows what to do with them.

“Other than the seven homers, we did okay,” he said Monday of his bullpen after a mindnumbing loss to the Dodgers the night before.

He was joking, sure. But was it the joke of a man who thinks he can get more out of Chris Beck and Paul Sewald or a man who has two years left on a contract and knows Andrew Miller and Manny Machado aren’t walking through that clubhouse door next year?

A baseball team cannot admit it’s tanking. The Orioles and Marlins and White Sox have to feign a valiant attempt to win, if only so Rob Manfred can look the other way. Callaway cannot sit at his podium and say he’s given up on 2018. He has to pretend to try. The question is whether this is what it looks like when he’s trying or this is what he’s been told to look like.

Photo credit: Aaron Doster – USA Today Sports

The Mets won. These days, that’s cause for celebration in and of itself. Better yet, they’ve won two in a row! For the first time in five weeks, the Mets have a winning streak. How they got there was unlikely at first — a Devin Mesoraco two-run homer that tied the game at 4 in the eighth off Archie Bradley — and then predictable at last — a Brandon Nimmo leadoff double in the ninth, an Asdrubal Cabrera bunt hit (okay, maybe not super predictable) and a Wilmer Flores walkoff, his second this year and eighth in his career.

The Bad

Something is rotten in the state of Long Island. Steven Matz, once again, failed to prove to Mickey Callaway or anyone else watching that he’s capable of taking the ball every five days as a viable starting pitcher. Paul Goldschmidt was eventually going to turn it around, but the two-run homer to No. 8 hitter John Ryan Murphy was less luck and more proof that the Mets should have gotten some better starters in the offseason. Except…they didn’t.

The Ugly

I know you’re sick of me ranting about Jose Reyes. I’m sick of ranting about Jose Reyes. But as long as Jose Reyes is on this team, I’m going to rant. There’s the .132/.179/.189 slashline, which I genuinely thought was a typo. There’s the 3 OPS+. 3! The 2 WRC+. The inability to make plays any more complicated than a ground ball aimed directly at his glove. There is no reason for Jose Reyes to be on the Mets. Luis Guillorme can do his job better than he can. Phil Evans and Ty Kelly and Gavin Cecchini can do his job better than he can. You and I can probably do his job better than he can.

Photo credit: Noah K. Murray – USA Today Sports

Matt Harvey isn’t easy either.

He never was. From the day the Mets drafted him in June 2010 as the seventh overall pick with that stupid typo to Friday, the last day of his Mets career, he was never easy. None of it was easy. He fought with Terry Collins in the dugout and through Scott Boras. He drove too fast and drank too much and had his heart broken. He loved pitching, even if it didn’t seem like it sometimes. He was loud and brash and abrasive. He was a true New York athlete, for all that title entails. That’s what the Mets wanted out of the Dark Knight and that’s what he gave them. But that doesn’t work when your fastball tops out at 92. Relievers with a 7 ERA don’t get to be loud and brash and abrasive.

Game 5 of the 2015 World Series was one of the best pitching performances most of us will ever see. The 2013 bloody nose game too. But injuries destroyed him and he became Mike Pelfrey without the split or the breaking ball. Arms like Harvey’s aren’t owned. They don’t last forever. They’re gifts from the baseball gods that can be ripped away at any time, by Tommy John surgery or Thoracic Outlet Syndrome or age. We take stars for granted because we think they’ll last forever. We think they have more starts, more home runs, more diving catches. But that’s not how time works, and it’s not how the Mets work. Because the Mets don’t make it easy and they don’t let legends live.

It’s hard to describe a true Metsing; you just know it when you see it. Hansel Robles pointing at 425-foot home runs as if they were routine pop-ups is the Mets. Michael Conforto dislocating his shoulder on a swing is the Mets. Bobby Valentine’s disguise is the Mets. Luis Castillo’s dropped ball and Endy Chavez’s catch are the Mets. Willie Randolph’s 3 a.m. firing is the Mets. Jordany Valdespin is the Mets.

Matt Harvey was supposed to get a ring and a statue and a plaque in Cooperstown. But there’s nothing more Mets than failure. He was a legend for a while, longer than he had any right to be and yet for just the briefest moment in history. He won’t be remembered like that because that’s not how the Mets are. He was too easy a villain. He partied too much and he didn’t respect the media and he put his own interests above the team’s. “You either die a hero or you live long enough to become a villain.” That was never fair but that was always how his story was going to end, because it was easier to cast him as the Joker than to admit that he had to fail. Harvey was hope and strength and power. He was the Dark Knight. He was something to believe in.

Then he wasn’t. And the Mets keep going.

Photo credit: Tommy Gilligan – USA Today Sports

What if this version of Matt Harvey, reboot No. 12358, is good? What if he’s reinvented himself, once again, away from a power pitcher and away from a finesse pitcher and into just a guy who gets outs. What if that’s enough?

No one knew what to expect from Harvey in 2018. Some crossed their fingers for a return to former glory. Some wrote him off. I shrugged, because I had no idea. I assumed he would be bad because it’s the Mets and good things don’t happen to the Mets, but I didn’t really know. Maybe he’d find new life as a reliever, but we probably would never find out because the front office relies on star power and name recognition more than it does on talent. So there he was, with actual stars like Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard and Spin Rate King Seth Lugo and Maybe This Time He’ll Stay Healthy (He Won’t) Steven Matz, in the rotation. Failure felt inevitable.

Except…it worked.

On Tuesday night, Harvey looked like a pitcher again. Not a guy coming back from Tommy John Surgery or Thoracic Outlet Syndrome or a stress fracture or a broken heart. He was just a pitcher.

Harvey lasted just five innings against the Phillies, in the bitter cold and rain and wind. That was fine. He gave up just one hit, which was good. He held the division rivals scoreless, which was even better. There were no 100 mph fastballs; Harvey sat 90-92 and touched 93 on a few pitches. He threw his fourseamer almost 64% of the time, 55 of 86 total pitches. The slider made up the rest of the outing, with a few curves and sinkers thrown in for good measure. Hitters swung and missed on nine pitches, which may not sound like a lot, but Harvey induced more whiffs than that in just four games last year. Eight outs of 15, good for 58.3% of his total, came on the fly ball; in 2017, Harvey put up a 33.8 FB%. Avoiding ground balls seems like a good idea with Asdrubal Cabrera and Adrian Gonzalez manning the right side of the infield.

It was one start, just five innings. The season is long and things happen and Lucy is still going to pull away my football. Sometimes a good outcome is just a fluke. But sometimes it’s real.

“He’s got that look in his eye back like when he was dominant,” Travis d’Arnaud told reporters after Harvey’s start Tuesday. Dominant means something different these days. Dominant means five good innings, not fighting for the ball in Game 5 of the World Series. Dominant means a blank runs column on the scoreboard, not coming inches from a perfect game. Dominant means being okay. The Mets don’t need Harvey to be an ace. They already have one. Two, in fact. They don’t need him to be the Dark Knight. They just need him to be okay. And maybe, after all this time, he can be.

Photo credit: Wendell Cruz – USA Today Sports