The One-Third Mark

2007 is one-third and one game over. Geez, doesn't it seem like Opening Night in St. Louis was maybe last week? It was more than two months ago. That's baseball for you: a long season that disappears way too quickly.

What kind of year has it been? Quite good, if you enjoy the Mets being 15 games over .500 and in first place by 3-1/2 games. Not so good if you're the kind of fan who worries over every little thing that doesn't go right. Most of us veer toward the latter after a dispiriting loss like Sunday's when we're shut down by a Diamondback who isn't Brandon Webb and drop a series in the process. But we shouldn't do that. As discussed in loose statistical terms a week ago, we are in the second year of a two-year roll. The first year doesn't do cut much ice in the '07 standings but it's no doubt changed the way we can look at things.

A year ago at this juncture, we were 33-22, two games off the current pace, 4-1/2 games up on the Phillies, a lead one notch better than what we've got on the Braves. You could say it's a wash regarding which one, last year or this year, feels or is better. 2006 informs our sense of the moment. We're not pinching ourselves over being in first. We more or less expect it. Then again, we were never headed in '06 whereas we trailed the Braves as recently as May 15. Plus, the Phillies — no offense to the dangerous, room-temperature club coming in for three — were the Phillies. The Braves are the Braves.

Having tasted the smuggled champagne of a division-clinching last year, can we assume another batch will be sprayed in our direction come September? I would assume nothing. A lot can change in two-thirds of a season, but right now one lousy stretch of baseball could put us not only behind the Braves but in a scramble for the Wild Card. The Central is a mess but the West is a rootin'-tootin' scramble with well-rounded L.A., the pitching-powered Padres and not-terrible (when we're not playing them in Phoenix) Arizona each showing signs of legitimacy. We'd do well not to engage in a lousy stretch of baseball.

Might we? Anything is possible, but the good news is while we always seem to be missing something or somebody, we don't fall apart. Imagine if the Mets click on all offensive cylinders for a week or two instead of selectively firing our pistons. Imagine Delgado hitting not just those satisfyingly majestic homers but filling the at-bats in between with two singles and a double per night in the next series. Imagine Wright truly, finally breaking out. Imagine J!4 lashing a few more extra-base hits and running just a bit wilder.

It can happen. It's exactly what happened exactly a year ago. The 2006 Mets threw off the last vestiges of their training wheels as June got going, heading west to Arizona and Los Angeles and, ultimately, well north of Philadelphia. That was The Road Trip, 9-1 in case you've forgotten. That was pretty much the clincher for '06, emblematic of how almost everything set up beautifully for the balance of the season.

Can we have that now? I don't know. We are due some hot streaks. Somebody somewhat unlikely usually does just enough to push us over the top of late. The exploits of the Endys and Rubens and Ramons and spare Carloses add up to one gargantuan godsend, but I have a theory I'm too lazy to back up with any real research: when your career offensive years are coming from your least likely sources, something's a little off. My precedent is the not altogether fresh example of 1987. Twenty years ago around now, the Mets were getting great stuff out of pinch-hitter deluxe Lee Mazzilli and unusually hot shortstop Rafael Santana and surprisingly strong Howard Johnson and successfully shuffling platoon second baseman Tim Teufel. It was the lack of consistency from Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter that was holding us back.

I love the pop provided by those Gotay guys. Believe me, I'm not throwing it back. But ya gotta think one superlative June from Reyes, Wright or Delgado — addressing the healthy Mets for now — would make all the difference in the world. Reyes' OPS plunged 300 points from his April Player-of-the-Monthliness in May. Wright and Delgado, conversely, made a big turn from April to May, but they have anecdotally been lacking true consistency, that hella good week, ten days that can carry a team, the kind of run (and runs) produced by Reyes and Beltran in April. If it sounds a little greedy to want one from Delgado and Wright after they've each had some very big hits since May dawned, well, greed is good when it comes to your big guns.

Now let's get Sunny Sam in here so he can tell Gloomy Gus to consider some context. The Mets have been absent of their left fielder, their right fielder and their second baseman for extended, concurrent periods of time. Their centerfielder has been nursing a bruise for a few days, too. If they've done as well as they have with Alou, Green, Valentin and Beltran not around, imagine how great they'll be with everybody contributing.

I suppose. Even if we overlook Carlos B.'s random bouts of brittleness and concede he's not in the same ballpark as the other three when it comes to the wear and tear wrought by age, we still have the other three. I'm not overly concerned with Moises, Shawn and OtherJose's capabilities. I am significantly concerned with their well-being in light of their accumulated yearage. Alou had a great April. We were told throughout April that he always has great Aprils. April is over. He's even older than he was when he went out in the middle of May. It will, presumably, take him a little while to rev it up; it's already taken him longer than suspected to come back. Valentin…same thing at least a little. Green…his injury was a bit freakier but, c'mon. He's Shawn Green. Who doesn't figure he's one extended ohfer from a spiral of dismal? (And I'm the big Shawn Green fan here.)

It's quite possible it all seeks its own level, that the reasonably healthy Mets of the very near future — with returning starters approximating if not duplicating the fine things they did in April; the starters who haven't gotten hurt heating up in simultaneous fashion; and the benchmen asked only to chip in, not haul loads of playing time — will improve upon the performance of the contemporary Mets who have acquitted themselves respectably (7-6 in their last thirteen) under less than ideal circumstances. It's hard to tell there's been a problem when you look at the top line of the N.L. East.

It's also hard to tell from the Mets' pitching, which has been damn near brilliant. We hoped for adequate. We got so much more. Oliver Perez pitched well enough to beat the Diamondbacks Sunday. If the bats hadn't wilted at the sight of Doug Davis, he would have. Similarly, John Maine simply picked the wrong Friday night to take the ball, going up against Brandon Webb when he was recertifying his own greatness. I'm not crazy about Maine's intermittent struggle for command (who would have thought that it would be Johnny, not Ollie, walking more than 4.5 batters per nine innings?), but are you ready to declare them both bona fide No. 2-type starters? I am.

Jorge Sosa has done nothing to not inspire confidence in 2007 except for having been Jorge Sosa in 2006. If we can look past his pre-Jacket body of work and assume that the relevant sample is the one he's building, then what a No. 5 starter, huh? If you told me nine weeks ago that Mike Pelfrey wouldn't pitch nearly as well as Jorge Sosa, I would have guessed Pelfrey's ERA was in the 20s. But Sosa has been the Damion Easley of the staff — a lifesaver. The Easley magic has been a little spotty of late, which has nothing to do with Sosa per se, but reminds us, just a bit, that some sources can only be tapped so successfully for so long. But honestly, who saw five wins from Jorge Sosa by June 4? Everything else is gravy for the guy.

Expectations do change. My expectation for Maine and Perez, more like my hope, was one decent start, one very good start and maybe one clinker for every three. With our lineup, I figured that would suffice. Maine and Perez between them have had, what, maybe five undeniably poor starts between them out of 22? And Sosa's had one in six? Even with Glavine valiantly fighting Father Time and El Duque regularly subject to the AARP wing of the DL, the rotation has become the rock of the Mets. It's the who-woulda-thunkiest positive of this season's first third.

The bullpen's been so sound that it almost escapes my attention on a daily basis. Wagner can drive you nuts now and then because that's what closers do (it's in their contracts), but he hasn't really blown anything worth complaining about, has he? Heilman has had his rough patches, Mota gave in to Stephen Drew Friday night and Scott Schoeneweis is the 21st-century answer to Doug Simons until further notice, but Met relief pitching has been the best kind of relief pitching — the kind you barely notice (kind of like our Steady-Endy glovework). Kudos to Billy (or Rube Wagner as my new pal Rich affectionately dubbed him last Tuesday), to Aaron, to the only Pedro we've got thus far and to Smitty the Kid. And our catcher probably has something to do with all this fine pitching.

We haven't beaten the Braves enough and we haven't played the Dodgers and Padres yet and we have some tough assignments from the other league on the docket and nobody's handing us a free transfer to October. We're not 55-0, which is the only prescription for some Mets fans' happiness (and even then we wouldn't be winning by enough) and the back pages are going to be a problem beyond any sane person's control for a little longer. We're not completely healthy and we may never be, given our 40-man's CBS demographics. We're not a sure thing to get everything we want out of the 107 games that remain on the schedule because you just can't be a sure thing on June 4 without a 10-game lead.

But we're 15 games over .500, we're up by 3-1/2 over Atlanta, we're authors of heartstopping keepsake victories over Colorado, Chicago and San Francisco and we're just plain better than anybody and everybody we've faced. So what kind of year has it been?

You have to ask?