New York Mets: Treading water is good enough for now

Despite early season injuries, the New York Mets have not faded from playoff contention. Sometimes you have to be in it to win it.

New York Mets fans take heart. You know that sometimes an athlete or team just needs to stay in contention long enough to take advantage of an opportunity. How many times have you seen it happen? It has to be many times because an underdog staying close and then coming through in the end is a persistent theme in sports.

Want some examples? 1980 Miracle on ice. Team USA hung with their dominating Russian counterparts, trailing by a 3-2 margin after two periods. Mark Johnson and Mike Eruzione each scored in the third and the United States won 4-3. Almost 10 years later Buster Douglas was still on his feet after nine tough rounds of punishment from Mike Tyson in the Tokyo Dome. Douglas stuck around long enough and KO’d the champ with a flurry of punches in the 10th.

Throughout their history, the New York Mets have been on both sides of the pendulum. This week in 1969, the Amazins were five games under .500. On September 1, the Mets lost 10-6 in Los Angeles to fall five games behind the Chicago Cubs. At the same time, the Cubbies won their fifth in a row the next day in Cincinnati 8-2 as Fergie Jenkins went the distance.

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What happened after that is history. Chicago lost 11 of their next 12 and finished the rest of the season 7-7. Meanwhile, the good guys played the balance of their 1969 season at a 24-7 clip which included both a 10-game and nine-game winning streak. You know how the story ended.

More recently the Mets were on the wrong side of two awful collapses. What was worse is that they were back-to-back. In 2007, the Amazins had a seven-game lead with 17 games to go. A 5-12 finish didn’t cut it and Philadelphia won the division on the last day of the season. It happened again in 2008 when they blew a three-and-a-half game lead. NYM went 7-10, while Philly turned on the jets and went 13-4 to win the East by three.

The takeaway here is that the winners stayed in the contest long enough to overcome their early mediocrity to step it up in the end to gain victory. Well, the 2019 version of the New York Mets, despite the injury issues and adversity they have suffered the first two months of the season are still playing .500 baseball after yesterday’s brilliant two-way performance from Steven Matz.

Although the Mets have been anything but dominant this season, so far no one has run away with the NL East Division or the NL Wild Card. Coming into Wednesday’s game against L.A., the Amazins are in third place only five games behind Philadelphia in the division. They are in fifth place in the Wild Card race, only two-and-a-half behind second-place Atlanta, and three back of the first place, Milwaukee Brewers.

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So it’s not all doom and gloom. As long as the New York Mets can stay in striking distance the next six to eight weeks, they can be buyers at the trade deadline and have a chance to make a run at the postseason.

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