The Mets will wake up Friday morning, and when they flip open their Post and head for the boxscores and the standings (because surely they start their days by flipping open their Post and checking boxscores and standings) they will see a most delightful thing next to their name.
They will see this: “—”
That will be under the “*WGB” column,” as in “wild-card games back.”
And it means that as they get ready to race the final furlong before the All-Star break, they will be in playoff position.
How long has it been since the Mets were in playoff position?
This long: the last time the Mets woke up in playoff position we felt pretty safe making plans for a Rangers parade up the Canyon of Heroes, and wondering how hard the Knicks might push the Celtics to possibly join them.
“We’re not looking at standings,” Carlos Mendoza insisted Thursday afternoon. “We’re just taking care of business day in and day out.”
They took care of business Thursday.
David Peterson made like Spider, dancing between a hail of bullets early, and then the Mets pounced in the fifth inning, mostly because MacKenzie Gore must not have been paying attention the last few days to how raging hot Brandon Nimmo is.
Gore chose to work around Francisco Lindor in order to go after Nimmo, and that turned out to be as ill-advised as any of the choices Rusty Sabich has made so far on “Presumed Innocent.”
Nimmo raked a three-run double, soon it was 5-0, and it ended 7-0, the Mets’ first shutout in their 92nd game.
“I’m swinging a hot bat right now,” Nimmo said, “and when they want to pitch to you in a situation like that and you come through, it’s just a great feeling.”
So the Mets joined the idle Padres in the third wild-card position (and since they’re 3-0 against them so far this season, you can nudge them half a line higher) and crawled a game behind the idle Cardinals for the second one, and that’ll be a fine thing to ponder for another 24 hours until they have to do it again.
But what’s far more encouraging — and far more important — is the quality of the baseball the Mets have played across the last month, the best extended stretch since just before things started to go sideways for them two years ago, in early September.
Yes, the bullpen remains a point of concern, and that has to be bolstered.
But David Stearns’ first July deal, acquiring Phil Maton, paid immediate dividends when he worked a breezy 1-2-3 seventh on only 10 pitches.
Adam Ottavino did his best to see if seven runs might not be enough to officially Ottavino-proof a game in the ninth, loading the bases, but actually looked as sharp as he’s looked in weeks in extricating himself from the jam, striking out three left-handers.
(And good for Nimmo, saying afterward: “We want to be buyers at the end of this month.”)
But the lineup has begun to look awfully beefy from 1 to 9, and that’s without Pete Alonso having the kind of two-week power blitz he’s usually good for at least once a season.
The rotation has been terrific — and promises to get better once erstwhile ace Kodai Senga returns after the break.
“A lot of passion, a lot of care, there’s a lot to like about this team,” Mendoza said. “How much they care for each other, how they trust each other. It says a lot about this group.”
It says as much about their manager, who has had his share of growing pains this year because all first-year managers do.
But he was the same when the Mets were 11-under .500 and six games out of the playoffs as he is at two-over and inside the bracket.
That resonates in a clubhouse.
The Mets still get three against the Rockies and four against the Marlins sandwiching the break, and those teams were a combined 56 games under .500 entering Thursday.
The schedule stiffens after that, and it’s true that the Mets have done much of their resurrecting during the first 28 games of a 35-game patch against teams with mostly losing records.
But it should also be remembered that when they began that streak — now 19-9 — they were behind four of the National League teams they’ve faced, and had worse records than all three of the American League teams they’ve played.
All of those teams were looking to get fat off the Mets.
Instead, the Mets are the ones who get to wake up on Friday morning, open the newspaper, and see what a month ago would have seemed a most impossible sight.
“—”
