Breathe in, breathe out.
All it took for the Mets to lose first place and (potentially) four games in the NL East standings was one 1-5 stinker of a road trip. A sweep at the hands of the also-ran Astros, and all of a sudden there's some gum in the gears.
It's not as if the Mets were going to win every single game for the rest of the season. 10 straight had to end at some point. But then the Mets responded in kind with consecutive series wins in big tests at home. We began using adjectives like "resilient" to describe the team, even batting around words like "mettle" and "guts" when talking about our players.
I'm hoping these last six games were an isolated incident, and that it just didn't go well on this road trip. Looking back, you can tell it might not have gone so well when you figure that the Mets in the last week managed to lose individual games started by Johan Santana, Mike Pelfrey, and Oliver Perez, who had all been brilliant lately. Pelfrey lost for the first time in nine starts. After pitching to a 1.38 ERA in the month of July, Perez had a rough, though not horrible day today (4 ER in 6 IP). The bullpen wasted another strong effort from Johan Santana, who once again seems to have been removed from a game too early (with one out in the 7th, and a 4-1 lead on just 103 pitches). Did I mention that John Maine got hurt?
It's that bullpen that seems like the biggest ongoing cause for concern. Duaner Sanchez's fastball is topping out at 86 MPH. Aaron Heilman has been pitching better, but he's been exposed time and time again and you can't rely too heavily on the guy. Billy Wagner's arm hurts, and when he is in there, he's turning into a slightly more lovable version of Armando Benitez. The other guys are going to have their hiccups, and they picked an unfortunate time to experience them together. Hopefully Eddie Kunz can be an effective reinforcement, because there wasn't a whole lot out there at the deadline for anything other than Omar Minaya's firstborn child.
Look, if one thing has been made clear over and over again this season, it's that these Mets aren't that good. They've proven they can compete for the division, but we also now know that in the post-Willie Randolph era the momentum halting 1-5 road trip is still a part of the team's repertoire. Jerry Manuel has proven himself to be a much better manager; that doesn't mean that the Mets don't have some issues which go beyond the guy leading them.
What this road trip has done is turned the Mets' upcoming home stand into another test. It will either get worse, and the Mets will go 2-4 or lose comparably to the Padres and Marlins, or the Mets will again display some of that newfound resilience and regain their footing. One thing's for sure and that's that Chris Carlin wasn't kidding on WFAN last Friday when he called this the "don't screw around portion" of the Mets schedule. The hardest team we play before a quick two-game series in Philly beginning on August 26 is the aforementioned Marlins, who we'll see this weekend.
Another thing's for sure and that's there is more than enough room in October for a flawed Mets team coming out of the NL East. If this remains a close race, anything can and will happen. There are going to be some peaks and valleys in the season, and with the Mets competing against other teams that aren't that good either, this road trip won't look as bad if the Mets can just prevent it from getting out of control. We know that that won't necessarily be easy, but we've also been given reason to believe that it can happen.
In the end, what are the Mets going to do? At this point, anyone's guess is as good as mine.
(Image courtesy nypost.com)
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