- Faith and Fear in Flushing - https://www.faithandfearinflushing.com -

Mets' Magic Number Continues to Dwindle

The New York Mets would like to welcome their exclusive sponsor for the month of June, Kinko's.

Kinko's: For when you need every loss in a pile of losses to look and feel exactly the same as the loss before it. At Kinko's, we can rapidly replicate a single loss over and over and over again so before you know it, you're hauling a ton of losses back to the car.

Copiers hummed to perfection Wednesday night as a superior opponent outplayed the dogass Mets in all facets of baseball. Details [1] available upon request for fussbudgets and masochists.

One other fact also keeps coming out exactly the same, however: We're still in first place. The schedule and the margin being what they are, we will, at the very least (which itself is often beyond our meager reach) end Friday in first place for the 38th consecutive East-leading day.

Fellow members of the Legion of Doom, I ask you for a moment to pause from mulling what is wrong with the Mets and instead devote thought to this:

How lame is our competition?

The Braves have picked up all of TWO games on us since we began sucking irredeemably. We've been 3-13 since winning on June 2. The Braves? They're 6-12. And the Phillies? The Winnin' Utleys who gave us the unkindest shove downhill? They're 6-6 since sweeping us. The brass ring would be theirs if they'd stepped up. But they, like the Braves, have not.

The Marlins have pulled from 9-1/2 out on May 27, when we swept them in Miami, to 4-1/2 back today. They were four under .500 then. They're three under now. Any gains the Marlins have made on the Mets have been purely coincidental. Though I'm admittedly in no position to look down my slumping nose on any team, if I have to start worrying about the Marlins, then it's probably not our year anyway.

T.S. Eliot never lived through this particular June, yet our Mets are still in first place. The lingering effects of April and May are doing a John McClane and dying hard. Unless someone discovers steroid-fueled gambling was at work (and passes a few rules to retroactively make it punishable by forfeit), the sublime spurt that sent us out on a commanding 35-19 start counts in the National League records. That's the only reason we're still in first place…that and the composite April 1-June 20 mediocrity of the Braves, the Phillies, the Marlins and, because they're still in the division, the Nationals.

It doesn't seem like it, but we play under lucky stars. Play atrociously, but play under them nonetheless.