After Sweep By Yanks, Mets Aren't Half Bad

They're also "half good". After 74 games, the Mets have won exactly as many games as they've lost. They're now half good AND half bad. Over the weekend, we saw the bad. Wanna know if the Mets win their next game? Flip a coin - it's 50/50. Even with all that money, we've got a .500 team here folks.

We all saw how the team was beat up by the Yankees over the weekend - enough said. They fulfilled the MetsFanClub.com request yesterday of just staying in the game and making it exciting to the end, which they did in their 4-2 loss. We can all live with the loss - no one expected the Mets to win yesterday's game anyway, right?

(By the way, I can't believe Jerry Manuel fell for the old "fake hitter in the on-deck circle" trick with Mariano Rivera in the top-half of the ninth inning. The fact that Joe Girardi even thought it would work should tell you what the entire MLB thinks of Jerry Manuel's baseball acumen)

Now, let's focus on the positives. Despite all the injuries... despite all the drop balls... the bad defense... the untimely hitting... the inability to come back from even a 1 run deficit... the lack of home runs... the inconsistent bullpen... the bad managerial moves... the bases-loaded no outs no runs... despite all this: the Mets are sitting in second place in the NL East, a division where it looks like a four team race to the end. I don't think any of these teams will run away with this division, so we'll be looking at meaningful games in September this year and a very unpredictable July and August as well.

If you told me before the season that the Mets would be as ravished by injuries to so many key players, yet be where they are in the standings at this point, every Met fan would take that. So that's good.

With Santana, the team has perhaps the best starting pitcher in baseball and one of the most dominant closers (when he isn't walking 500-save pitchers in the ninth innings for insurance runs) in KRod. With a rejuvenated Livan Hernandez and the emergence of Fernando Nieves, you can make a great case this team is built for the postseason (they just have to get there).

Believe it or not, the Mets have the highest offensive production from the catching position in all of baseball. Plus with Schneider and Santos, you also get some pretty good defense there too. And although it's hard to admit, minus the dropped pop-up, Luis Castillo has been playing a real nice second base both in the field and at the plate. Plus you have Alex Cora doing a good job filling in for Jose Reyes. The team's gotten way more out of Gary Sheffield than even Sheffield probably expected and even though you can make a case that David Wright's slumped in clutch situations this year, he is leading the league in batting average - can't ask for more than that.

If Daniel Murphy continues to improve... if David Wright starts hitting a few more homers... if Nick Evans can give the team some relief in the outfield... if Ryan Church gets his head on straight and plays with more consistency... if anyone can give the team anything in centerfield... if the bullpen can eat up productive innings... if Fernando Tatis stops grounding out into double plays, and if ANYONE can come back healthy from the disabled list, you're going to see the Mets contend.

That's a lot of "ifs", but remember: the Mets are half good. Let's take that attitude forward into Milwaukee and hope for better results on the road than what happened at Citi Field over the weekend.