Keidel: Mets Should Be A Lot Better Than Yankees, But They're Not
By Jason Keidel
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The mutation of Boomer & Carton -- Carton & Christie -- was wildly entertaining Friday morning.
While New Jersey's governor is a confessed Mets apologist, dizzy off his club's Subway Series win on Thursday night, Carton was quick to point out that the Amazins' are only two games better than the Yankees.
If you heard in April that the Mets and Yanks would square off in August with almost identical records, you'd assume that either the Yanks were having a surprisingly good season or the Mets were alarmingly bad.
Turns out the latter is more apropos.
Had the Yanks snuck out a win Thursday night, the clubs would have been in a virtual tie. As it is, the difference between the two squads is marginal, with the Mets merely 56-52, and the Yanks at 54-54. The Bombers are in fourth place. The Amazins' are in third. And you could easily argue that the Yankees play in a way more ornery division, the AL East.
All Mets fans, all baseball fans, knew that the Mets would win as long and often as their divine young arms allowed. This team was built on pitching. It was good enough to get them to the 2015 World Series, and, with a break here or there, they could have won the darn thing.
The Mets saved abject embarrassment Thursday night by winning the finale of the four-game set, splitting the Subway Series with their blood rivals across the Harlem River. The Yankees and Mets joust for players, publicity, fans, and finances.
But the Yanks were not supposed to play for playoff position. By now, the Mets were supposed to ponder division titles and playoff rotations.
In fairness, the Mets have been vaporized by injuries. Their already anemic lineup has suffered pulled muscles and mangled limbs to go along with poor performance. Then we have the Yoenis Cespedes melodrama. The masses now wonder why he wasn't healthy enough to play baseball yet was feeling robust enough to walk the verdant hills of his local golf courses.
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Cespedes isn't just the Mets best hitter/position player; he's the symbol of their resurgence, the main man in their epic awakening. They literally rode his home runs into October. For all their absurd pitching spoils, there is no World Series run sans Cespedes.
The Mets' lineup ranks at or near the bottom in almost every salient statistic. They are 13th out of 15 NL teams in runs scored. They are 13th in RBI. They are dead-last in batting average. They are dead-last in hits. They can't just be that bad, and surely suffer from a confluence of maladies, from poor production to twisted tendons.
But no team is really allowed to hide behind the banner of bad luck. Great teams overcome injuries, and average teams tank with them. They should be good enough to overcome Matt Harvey's issues, as he was pretty awful well before he was sidelined for the season.
Even still, the Mets enjoy the serendipity of a division and league that has no supreme teams lapping the field or galloping away with the wild-card spots. They trail the Cardinals and Marlins by a nose hair for the final playoff berth. (Kudos to Donnie Baseball, by the way, who clearly knows how to manage, and has done a divine job in Florida.)
Now the Mets may lean on another deadline acquisition to save their season. Just as Cespedes lifted the lifeless lineup in 2015, the Mets hope Jay Bruce's bat will bring similar results in 2016.
Right on cue, Bruce smoked a three-run homer Thursday night, providing the margin of their 4-1 victory. All teams await that August moment when their July signings pay off, when their new stars and sluggers stamp their names on the dugout. Thursday night was clearly Bruce's Big Apple baptism.
Someone has to whip the Mets to attention, some lumber to snap the slumber. It would be silly to assume the Mets can mail it in this year and bank on their young and wildly gifted pitchers to pick up in 2017 where they left off in 2015, as if each year were merely a bookmark in an endless career.
There's still time to recapture the magic that enraptured the city last fall. An enchanted August bled into autumn, sweeping the preordained Cubs, and then coming within a few foul innings of a World Series title.
But now is the time to make their move, to see if there's any Amazin' left in the Amazin' Mets.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel
