Can't Stop, Won't Stop
Mets earned their first-place position at the break, no time to slow down now..
The New York Mets have already outlined a fantastic story. Now it’s time to put it all together and wrap it up with the perfect ending.
Adversity wouldn’t begin to encompass what this team has encountered over the first half of the season. Injuries, postponements, downright putrid stretches at the plate.
This team has successfully navigated a season’s worth of drama in three months. And thank goodness they did. This is what builds the competitive callouses necessary to make deep runs into the autumn months.
A three-and-a-half-game lead in the National League East at the All-Star break isn’t what most would have predicted as the walls were crumbling around this team in May. They’re here now, though.
The Mets’ journey to this point is their foundation — a sturdy one, at that — and their unwavering desire to accomplish great things has to be the wind in their sails moving forward.
There’s no telling what the future holds. Shit happens; we’re all well aware of that by now. But, at the moment, things are trending in the right direction for calmer seas than the ones this team has been forced to negotiate this spring.
We’ve talked about the immeasurable contributions of The Bench Mob, and Flushing legend will reflect heroically on them. They earned it, no matter how this thing turns out.
Without the next-man-up mentality that this team embraced over the last 12 weeks — step in, step up, and do your job — the Mets could very well be battling the Fish in the division basement.
Losing the likes of Brandon Nimmo, Michael Conforto, Jeff McNeil, and J.D. Davis — all foundational players on this roster — for extended periods of time could have been the doom of this ballclub.
Toss in the back end of the rotation being in constant flux and the at-times mercurial nature of the Mets’ bullpen (and everyone else’s except the Padres, geez) and there have been hurdles aplenty.
The Mets reserves — and the pitching, ohhh the pitching; Jacob deGrom, Marcus Stroman, and Taijuan Walker get statues, or at the very least plaques, if they pull this off — carried this team at a time when no one (healthy starters included) could barely get anything going offensively.
Judging by the Mets’ .752 OPS and 113 wRC+ in July — both rank seventh in the majors over that span and is rock-solid evidence of this offense’s ceiling when at full-strength — that storm has passed.
Put the patchwork quilt back in the closet. The high thread-count linens are back on the bed. It’s time for the Mets’ frontliners to reward this team’s resiliency in their wide array of absences.
You know the sign-off. Onward and upward, friends.
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