Paul Articulates – Keep Grinding

The New York Mets had lost 10 of 11 games going into Wednesday’s game with the Braves.  This is too many losses in too short a time for such a good team to have.  But in the game of baseball, sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way.  In this case, the ball bounced the other way, rolled down a hill, across a busy highway, and into the ocean.

But patience is a virtue, and both Carlos Mendoza and his team have patience because of good leaders and good team chemistry.  They did not point fingers and they did not fight amongst themselves.  They just stuck to the plan, worked hard, and in baseball vernacular, they ground it out.  Last night, on the last game of the first half of the season, that work paid off.  It was not a fluky 7 solo home run night.  It was solid baseball with good defense, timely hitting, and good pitching.

Does this signal the end of the skid?  That would be impossible to foretell.  However, it was at least a signal that there is no give-up on this team.  The Braves have proven to be a formidable opponent, and they have played their best baseball of the year against the Mets.  That was not enough to stop yesterday’s victory and hopefully will not be enough to impact the Mets’ trajectory this year.  Even after losing 10 of 11, the Mets with last night’s victory find themselves 13 games over .500 at the halfway point of the season.

With a half season to go and the “dog days of summer” upon us, there is still a lot of grinding to do.  The pitching is still depleted with Senga on the IL and Manaea suffering a setback in his recovery.  There is an upcoming west coast trip to face tough opponents in the Giants and the Padres.  But there is also relief in the wings.  Mark Vientos is coming back this week, Frankie Montas showed well in his first post-recovery start, and Jonathan Pintaro made his major league debut.  Jonah Tong and Jett Williams are lighting it up in AA. 

Another indication that persistence is valuable in baseball is the rise of Juan Soto.  Soto has hit the ball hard all year, but with limited results.  Rather than dwell on his “ordinary” statistics, he just continued to work until those hard hit balls started to fall in (or over the wall).  Now he is having a prodigious June with a MLB-leading 1.170 OPS this month.  When the rest of the lineup grinds their way out of this slump, it will be interesting to see the kind of damage this lineup can do.

There are 81 games left to find out.  Stick with this team.  Let’s go Mets!