The Mets lost a game yesterday, lost a Subway Series to the Yankees, ended a nine-game road trip 7-2 after starting it 7-0. And yet as they walked away from Yankee Stadium following a 4-0 loss, the prevailing sense was this: The prologue is finally over; the opening credits have finally rolled.
Now, we will finally get a sense of what kind of a baseball team the Mets are. And what kind of a baseball season they are going to get. The meat of the 2010 season arrives immediately.
The Mets are 39-30, in second place in the NL East, 2½ games behind the Braves, three games ahead of the Phillies. They are guaranteed to start tomorrow’s series with the Tigers no worse than tied for the loss-column lead in the NL wild-card. All of this after enduring a 4-8 start to the season, a near-calamitous May and a stretch when you wondered if they might go 0-for-the-road.
“It’s only been 69 games,” Jeff Francoeur said. “But it sure seems like it’s been an awfully interesting season already, doesn’t it?”
It does. And everything that has led up to now feels like prelude. The Mets made some news before leaving The Bronx, finally doing the right thing and sending Jenrry Mejia down to Double-A Binghamton to get some regular work as a starting pitcher.
So much of the Mets’ first 2½ months have been about reshaping a roster that out of spring training seemed thin and full of holes. Frank Catalanotto, Mike Jacobs and Gary Matthews Jr. vanished for good. Ollie Perez and John Maine took sabbaticals, and it’s anyone’s guess the next time we will see either of them. Fernando Tatis, his bat slower than the Cross-Bronx Expressway, should be next.
Mejia’s presence on the team was a puzzle from the start. Before the game, manager Jerry Manuel said he had hoped Mejia would grow into the eighth-inning job by now, but he was the last one who believed that was ever going to happen.
“I think he leaned a lot up here,” Mets general manager Omar Minaya said. “But it’s time for him to develop and I think we all believe the best place for him to do that is Binghamton.”
In many ways, it will be Mets 2.0 who show up at Citi Field tomorrow night, the start to an intriguing stretch of their season, if not yet a critical one. You know how Tiger Woods reminded us at the U.S. Open how Saturday at a major is always moving day? The next three weeks of the Mets’ schedule will be their moving day. From here to the All-Star break, the Mets are scheduled to play 19 games, all but seven of them at Citi Field, where they remain one of the majors’ best home teams.
Mixed in between are three neutral-site games against the Marlins in Puerto Rico, four winnable games against the Nationals (save for the one that likely will feature Stephen Strasburg). And it will be capped, heading into the break, with three home games against the Braves, a hell of a way to close out the first half.
The Mets have already answered one question that has stuck to them all year: They are definitely not as bad as they looked when they were 4-8, when they were 20-23, and when they were 8-18 on the road. But the other question is just as intriguing: Are they as good as they looked in going 19-5 from Saturday of the last Subway Series to Friday night of this one?
The last time it seemed the Mets were surging, the beginning of May, they also lost Saturday and Sunday games with Mike Pelfrey and Johan Santana on the mound. That time it was at Philadelphia, this time it was in The Bronx. That time, the good feeling vaporized seemingly overnight. This time? It had better be more real, more lasting than that. The Braves are good enough to run away and hide. And that leaves the Mets in a crowded pile with three NL West teams, the Reds and the Phillies in the wild-card hunt.
The Mets have proven themselves legit. Now, across the next 19 games, they’ll prove if they are something beyond legit. The test starts now. The previews are over.