If I was to pick a low point of the young baseball season for the New York Mets, it would probably be April 30. The Mets had just lost the opener of a series in Philadelphia, despite Marcus Stroman only allowing the Phillies a pair of unearned runs that scored on a passed ball. That dropped the Mets to 2 games under .500 and honestly made me question if I had overrated the team's chances of contending this season. It wasn't just that awful game that disheartened me. It was also losing two games against the Boston Red Sox earlier that week where they only managed a single run and the way the Mets had their butts handed to them in a disheartening sweep by the mediocre Chicago Cubs the week before.
They managed to rebound and win the series against Philadelphia but then dropped the first two games in St. Louis against the Cardinals. If the Friday game in Philly was the low point, Wednesday afternoon in St. Louis between games of a doubleheader was a close second for that dubious honor. They dropped the first game after scoring a single run once again in support of Marcus Stroman and were facing a bullpen game in the nightcap.
Unexpectedly, the Mets took that second game rather easily, winning 7-2 with 6 Mets pitchers contributing to the victory. Since then, they've played six more games and have won all of them — a most improbable and unexpected 7-game winning streak. Last week I wrote a piece hoping that the Mets might get to 5 games over .500 by the end of the month, positioning themselves to make a run at the 90-win season that would likely earn them a playoff spot. It never even occurred to me that they might hit that goal in just over a week.
Interestingly, the Mets put that streak together without solving most of the problems that made them so inconsistent in the early going this season. They're still not scoring a lot of runs, and the home runs have come very infrequently for a club built to score a substantial amount of their runs with that weapon. The team as a whole is slashing .238/.330/.350 over their first 31 games. That 350 slugging % ranks them 14th among National League teams.
In their 7-game winning streak, the Mets have only managed 10 extra-base hits — 6 2B, 1 3B, and 3 HR. They've received solid pitching from their starters and bullpen, played good defense, and ran the bases well. They've minimized their own mistakes while cashing in on some of their opponents' blunders. In fairness, they've also been a bit lucky after suffering from some terrible luck at times when things weren't going so well.
So what does it mean? Well, I'm still convinced the Mets are going to need to hit for much more power if they're going to win 90+ games. They're not the 2015 Kansas City Royals, full of scrappy guys who tenaciously hung in at-bats and were built to play small ball.
One thing they do have in common with those Royals, at least so far, is a stellar bullpen. The front office did a solid job of assembling the pieces for the bullpen, and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner deserves a ton of credit for the success of the whole staff, the bullpen in particular. Still, I think it's quite unrealistic to believe there won't be some rough stretches from that crew over the course of a 162-game season. If the Mets are going to be a playoff team, they'll need to outscore the other team sometimes when their own pitchers falter.
Of course, one thing that bodes well for the bullpen moving forward is the depth of arms that contribute to it. The core of the bullpen, as it stands, is Edwin Díaz, Trevor May, Aaron Loup, Miguel Castro, and — surprisingly — Jeurys Familia. That's quite a lot of depth in relievers that you can feel pretty comfortable watching in late-inning/close situations. Robert Gsellman, Jacob Barnes, Tommy Hunter, Sean Reid-Foley, Jordan Yamamoto, and Drew Smith have all provided some solid bulk innings to back up the top guys. There is still the prospect of Seth Lugo returning, with the hope that he can join the group with Díaz, May, Loup, Castro, and Familia as part of the core.
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