So grab your spreadsheets and let’s go back on the last three months:

122 dingers: That’s the most taters the Mets have ever mashed in the first half of a season, two more than the ill-fated 2006 team that was perhaps a curveball away from the World Series. More importantly, it’s 47 more than last year’s team had at the break. That’s a significant increase, and one the Mets will gladly take, thank you very much, but the worry here is that it’s not sustainable. To which you might reasonably respond: Maybe? No one knows how this trend plays out for the year, but it’s not an insane developement by any means. Asdrubal Cabrera (12) has shown 20-homer power in his career and has two All-Star selections to show for it. Yoenis Cespedes (21) had a career-high 35 last season and seems like a sure bet to eclipse that mark and even threaten the team record of 41. Neil Walker (15) maybe feels like the outlier here, with his career-high of 25 coming two years ago, but compared to what Daniel Murphy is doing just down the Acela line, it seems quaintly understated in some way. Point is, I don’t fear the Mets not hitting home runs at some point. I fear them not doing enough when they’re not hitting home runs.

335 runs: The Mets have played 88 games thus far, so they’re averaging 3.8 runs per game, which is Not Great. For comparison’s sake, the 1962 Mets scored 329 runs in their first half in six fewer games. That’s 4.01 runs per game. Thankfully, Mets pitching is just a tad more capable this year than that, but you see what I’m getting at. If the Mets don’t score more in the second half, it won’t matter how good the pitching stays.

18 steals: The National League average right now is 46 steals per team. The Mets are not even at 40 percent of that figure. When steals are this few and far between, it’s not that you’re a slow team so much as you are incredibly disinterested. Also, hitting more dingers means fewer opportunities to get on base and steal, but the Mets largely do not steal because they do not care to steal. (Then again, that they’re tied with Milwaukee for the fewest triples in the NL, they almost definitely the slowest team.) They’ve got an outside shot at beating the 1973 Mets (27) for the fewest swipes in a full season in team history. If David Wright remains the club leader this season—with a whopping three—then a new low benchmark is all but assured.

749 strikeouts: This year’s Dodgers actually had the most strikeouts (866) of any team ever in the first half. Dan Warthen’s staff wasn’t quite that electric but they did post the second-most of any first-half Mets team, and the franchise’s three highest first-half totals have come in the last three seasons. Assuming Zack Wheeler actually makes his way back to the rotation in the second half—and Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard’s respective arms don’t fall off—they should keep pace with Los Angeles and Washington in the whiff department. (It was, relatively speaking, the best first-half K/9 in team history and by a considerable margin.)

80 dingers allowed: Balls are flying out at a crazy pace as of late, but Mets pitchers (at least compared to the rest of the league) are holding their own, just two ahead of St. Louis for fewest allowed in the NL. Historically speaking, it’s still a pretty terrible result compared to Mets history—that 2003 staff giving up 109 in the first half, holy frijoles—but it’s about the same as the 1969 staff did in its first half, and so long as the Mets continue to successfully limit the number of runners that get on base, the damage inflicted by such taters will remain minimized.

3.329 strikeouts per walk: The eighth-best rate of any first half ever. Cool! Less cool: The Yankees, Cubs, and Dodgers have all been even better this season.

1 Bartolo Colón: Yet again the undisputed league leader. And in that fact, there is hope.

Photo Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

Bartolo Colon, flamethrowing ace of the Cleveland Indians in the late-90s and early-aughts, was traded to the Montreal Expos near the deadline in 2002. Colon was dealt for three top prospects that all became major league stars: Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, and Brandon Phillips. Sizemore and Lee are probably done playing in the majors, their whole careers having occurred during just a part of Colon’s. The Montreal Expos no longer exist.

After being dealt again as a rental to the Chicago White Sox, Bartolo Colon signed a huge-for-the-time free agent contract with the Anaheim Angels in 2004, four years and $51 million. The next year, the team changed their name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and Bartolo Colon won the Cy Young Award at age 32. Six other pitchers received votes that year, and none are still active. Battling frequent arm injuries, Colon only threw 155.7 ineffective innings the next two years combined. The Mets were reportedly close to a free agent deal for Colon after the season, but backed out due to concerns over his health.

Bartolo Colon would ultimately sign a minor league deal with the Red Sox for 2008. After pitching his way back to the majors, Colon missed much of the season with a back injury suffered while hitting in an interleague game. “I think I hurt it on that swing where my helmet came off,” Colon said at the time. Bartolo would land back with the White Sox in 2009 and injure his elbow again. He did not participate in organized baseball in 2010.

Colon’s next appearance in the baseball narrative is in the Dominican Winter League in the 2010-11 offseason. He was noted by Enrique Rojas of ESPN as struggling in winter ball, yet the Yankees saw enough to bring him to camp as a non-roster invitee. This is the beginning of the Colon redemption narrative: reborn as an elite command/control artist working off a middling fastball and not much else, he pitched his way onto the Yankees roster and ultimately the rotation, and pitched well. At the time, the recovery of Colon from elbow problems that looked career-ending from was largely credited to controversial stem cell treatment. The Oakland Athletics signed him to a one-year major league deal for 2012.

Here’s where our redemption narrative detours a bit: in the middle of another solid season in 2012, Bartolo Colon tested positive for steroids. After re-signing with the A’s, Colon would be named as part of the Biogenesis ring—but he also made the 2013 American League All-Star team, finished sixth in Cy Young voting, and pitched to the second lowest ERA in the league. One of the strangest free agency cases in years loomed. Meanwhile, Matt Harvey suffered a torn UCL and the Mets suddenly needed a starting pitcher for 2014.

Bartolo Colon agreed to terms with the Mets on December 11, 2013. The price—just two years and $20 million for a pitcher coming off one of the best seasons in baseball—was surely cheapened by Colon’s ties to PEDs, his injury history, and just being 40 years old. Yet Colon quickly emerged as a quality workhorse for the 2014 Mets, pitching 200 innings for the first time since his Cy Young season of 2005. Quickly, you began to hear stories about Colon’s positive influence in the Mets clubhouse. Just as quickly, Colon’s plate appearances became circuses, as he was completely overmatched by his first regular looks at major league pitching as a batter. Sometimes, it was tough to tell whether fans were laughing with him, at him, or both.

The Mets, of course, didn’t contend for much of anything in 2014, and made Colon available for the July trade deadline. Nobody bit. The Mets placed Colon on revocable waivers, and he cleared, making him available for August trades. Nobody bit. The Mets entered 2015 with six major league starters and Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz not far behind in Triple-A, so they tried trading Colon again. Nobody bit. Bartolo Colon: still a Met.

With plenty of choices on his plate, Terry Collins surprisingly named Bartolo Colon his 2015 Opening Day starter, a nod to his long career and veteran presence. Colon hung around the rotation all summer as Dillon Gee pitched his way to Vegas and the younger starters rotated in and out around injuries, six-man rotation schedules, and innings limits. Perhaps the most notable part of the bulk of Bartolo’s 2015 was his vastly improved hitting, the result of hard work with hitting coaches Kevin Long and Pat Roessler. Unfortunately, his ERA hovered in the mid-to-high fours from May until late-August, and as the Mets heated up and started looking towards October, Colon looked like a man on the outside looking in. It wasn’t hard to wonder if the end was near.

Then? The clock turned back again. Starting on August 26th, Colon fired off starts of seven, eight, and nine shutout innings consecutively. From that date on, Colon threw 49.7 innings and put up an ERA of just 1.99. Although this was not enough to pitch Colon back into a playoff rotation featuring four young stars, he made the playoff roster as a reliever. Thus was born “Fireman Bart,” playoff relief sensation–striking out Kris Bryant in a key spot here, soaking up medium-leverage long relief innings there–as the Mets made a World Series run.

Yet for all his playoff exploits, Bartolo Colon looked like he would be on his way elsewhere for the 2016 season. The Mets had five legitimate major league starters under contract, and a sixth in Zack Wheeler scheduled for a midseason return. But sometimes things come together how your heart wants them to: the Mets cleared a space for Bartolo by trading Jon Niese to the Pirates. Colon, reborn at age 42 into a rotation workhorse, clubhouse wizard, and something of a pop culture icon, rebuffed higher offers and chose to remain a Met on a one-year, $7.25 million contract—with a $50,000 bonus if Colon won the 2016 Silver Slugger.

Bartolo Colon started the 2016 season much the same way he ended 2015: 38.7 IP, 2.82 ERA, 33 strikeouts to only four walks. His spring training batting practices were a running legend of an otherwise dull spring training. A scorched foul ball during his 220th career win was a notable major news story.

On a 1-1 pitch on a Saturday night, the unlikely 2016 Met became the oldest player to ever hit his first home run, and the last Montreal Expo to hit a home run. I’ll let Gary Cohen take it home from here:

“Colon looking for his first hit of the year. He drives one, deep to left field. Back goes Upton, back near the wall. It’s outta here! Bartolo has done it! The impossible has happened. The team vacates the dugout as Bartolo takes the long trot, his first career home run. And there’ll be nobody in the dugout to greet him. This is one of the great moments in the history of baseball.”

Photo Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports