Love the Mets You’re With

Let’s go live to the internal dialogue I’ve developed in the wake of the august Mets play of August 2026, right up through their 4-2 victory over the Padres at Citi Field on Wednesday afternoon.

The Mets are winning some baseball games lately.
Yeah, I know. I can read a scoreboard.
No, I mean REAL baseball games.
“No shift, Sherlock.”
No shift?
I’m polite, so I thought I’d crib from the section of the MLB rule book pertaining to defensive alignments.
Fair enough, but let me go on.
You usually do.

Me and I can have some contentious conversations.

When I say the Mets are winning some “baseball games,” I’m thinking about the substance and execution of those games. The Mets are proving themselves capable and opportunistic They look like they know what they’re doing, then they go and do it. The scores of the five wins on their just-completed six-date homestand say something in that regard.

4-1
5-4
4-3
2-1
4-2

Those are baseball scores. I enjoy being on the right side of a Met blowout or a Met slugfest as much as the next fan — and nobody relishes the Mets winning by a Unicorn Score as much as I do — but there is comfort to be had in knowing your team can take the field, play a reasonably standard baseball game, and emerge triumphant consistently.

This team is indeed winning some baseball games. This team is getting enough power, taking enough bases, making enough plays, and throwing enough effective pitches to get them from the first inning to the last in the finest of fettle. A Mets fan could get used to this. In fact, this Mets fan is beginning to believe this is who these Mets are.

NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST
SINCE TRADE DEADLINE DAY
New York 11-4
Philadelphia 10-5
Atlanta 7-8
Washington 6-8
Miami 6-9

That’s all the sample size I need. Tell the earlier, larger chunk of the standings to go back where it came from.

The Mets of right now are all the Mets I need. These are…

• the Mets of legitimate Rookie of the Year contender Carson Benge’s fourth-inning homer Wednesday, his fifteenth of the season (it was a two-run job that I’d love to say Benged around the foul pole, but was fair by several feet, which just as well, as you don’t want to leave these things to replay review);

• the Mets of building one run bit by bit (in the eighth, while trying to increase their 2-1 lead, A.J. Ewing walks, A.J. Ewing steals, Francisco Lindor singles, Bo Bichette delivers a fielder’s choice grounder to score Ewing);

• the Mets of taking advantage when advantage begs to be taken (Bichette’s grounder is thrown away, so Lindor rushes to third and Bo goes to second);

• the Mets of insuring their lead with additional timely offense (Jared Young singling home Bichette right after Benge couldn’t do the same with Lindor);

• the Mets of no starter automatically imploding (Robert Stock stood stern for four-and-a-third before allowing a Padre run, which, let’s face it, is more than you’d have dreamed of getting from Robert Stock when you first heard he was back in town);

• the Mets of this bullpen that makes you forget that most of the dealing they did at the deadline decimated one of their few strengths, middle relief (Jonathan Pintaro unjammed what Stock left in his wake, while Nate Lavender, reactivated Austin Warren, and Daniel Duarte built a bridge as sturdy as any Robert Moses ever constructed);

• and the Mets of a go-to closer who had never been a reliever of renown at any time in his professional career, yet is 4-for-4 in his four shots at filling that role (Kodai Senga’s last save prior to this month was in Japan, a dozen years ago).

When your team is leading the small sample size standings, that’s your team. Senga the closer. Stock the starter. Pintaro and Duarte and the lefty who leaves you in a Lavender haze. You still miss Alonso, but you appreciate the value in Young. Benge, you’ve decided, is verging on the stardom that was talked up for him before you ever laid eyes on him. Bichette, you’ve decided, wasn’t a bad signing, whatever the ridiculous price. You’re not looking to relitigate what went wrong. You’re living in the now and you’re delighted to be here.

If you have a heart, you’re sorry to see Jorge Polanco is too hurt to persevere, even if his perseverance wasn’t getting any of us anywhere. You kind of figured out he never really recovered from injury before it was announced he is done for the season, his left ankle bursitis slating him to surgery. “He seems like a decent guy” is one of those things you don’t lead with when you can cite flattering statistics. Polanco’s OPS in his first Met campaign was .431, roughly what the SAT folks give you for signing your name on a Saturday morning. Still, he seems like a decent guy. I can remember Jorge chipping in a couple of key hits. There weren’t so many Jorge Polanco hits to sort through that you can’t recall each of them if you try.

Your loyalty now is to the Mets of now, the conglomeration of bright futures, first-half underachievers, beating-the-bushes relievers, and whoever suddenly just kind of finds themselves here. Christopher Morel — the journeyman whose two stripes of eyeblack on either side of his face approximate cat whiskers, meaning he earned my affection when he was a nominally hated opponent — joined the Mets this week, so I will invest fondness in Christopher Morel until I find cause to disavow it. That’s how it goes when your team is on a roll. You’re into Benge and Ewing and McLean, but you’re also on board with Christopher Morel, Cristian Pache, and Chyace McDermott.

Gabriel Arias and his flowing dyed blonde locks were briefly in on the rising, in their way. Gabriel was a Met while the Mets blazed, claimed the other week from the discard pile of the Guardians, the team we’d just swept. Yet the entirety of his Met experience amounted to participation in a pair of rare Met losses, both by shutout. Arias was DFA’d to make room for Morel, then scooped up by one of the Chicago teams once we jetted off to play the other. His designation for assignment occurred the day after the Mets swept the Nats, the same day the Mets took their team picture. One assumes Gabriel had cleared out ASAP, sparing the photographer from instructing the assembled baseball players, “Everybody say CHEESE…except for Number 25 with the great hair.”

“Quick, snap it before Gabriel finishes signing for that shipment from Revlon!”

A definite The Replacements air informs one’s current consumption of this Mets team. The Replacements, the 2000 film based loosely on the games the NFL foisted on fans when the real players were out on strike in 1987, isn’t very good nor does it send a wholly constructive message about labor relations, but a sports movie doesn’t have to be high art as long as it can gin up some inspiration. Gene Hackman as Coach Jimmy McGinty surely brought that with the voiceover he provides during the movie’s denouement.

“There was no ticker tape parade, no endorsement deals for sneakers or soda pop or breakfast cereal. Just a locker to be cleaned out, and a ride home to catch. But what they didn’t know was that their lives had been changed forever because they had been part of something great. And greatness, no matter how brief, stays with a man. Every athlete dreams of a second chance. These men lived it.”

Honestly, that speech crossed my mind earlier this season, when our replacements were the likes of Austin Slater and Andy Ibañez and Guillo Zuñiga, and their respective tenures didn’t augur many happy endings. Who knows why some clusters of Mets blend while others blur? Some years — 2013, for example — it’s not working with Collin Cowgll and Collin McHugh and one player after another who might as well be Colin Quinn (tough crowd), then suddenly it’s not so abysmal when you’ve brought in Zach Lutz and Josh Satin and the alphabetical opposite of Guillo Zuñiga, David Aardsma. You can only hope the best of the replacements become permanents and the small sample size grows big and bountiful.

Until then, I’ll take the winning of baseball games, one at time. Beats the hell out of the alternative to which we became so sadly accustomed.