Palladino: Mixed-Emotion Mets Own New York — For Now
By Ernie Palladino
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In normal circumstances, a huge chasm lies between unbridled joy and guarded optimism.
Nobody in their right minds would have thought two weeks ago that the Mets would place those emotions to rub shoulder to shoulder.
But here they stood Tuesday, lead horse in the NL East for a second day, owners of the city.
At least for now, nobody wants to pillory Sandy Alderson and no one is calling for Terry Collins' head on a Lazy Susan. Newspaper and website headlines blare the happy tidings of turnaround. Barring a total collapse over the next month, the Mets have all but assured themselves of playing meaningful games for the rest of the season.
That hasn't happened since the last pterodactyl landed at LaGuardia.
It's amazing what has happened since the July 31 trade deadline. Getting Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson from the Braves, Tyler Clippard from the Athletics and Yoenis Cespedes from the Tigers turned the Mets from unwatchable to downright exciting. Almost overnight, their fans put down the mourning wreathes they busily wrapped all season for the young, tough, but ultimately doomed pitching corps and began readying the bunting for -- dare we say it -- postseason play.
See how close those emotions sit now? The electricity generated in the stands over the weekend sweep of the Nationals alone could have powered the Citi Field lights. And yet, even after extending their winning streak to five games with Tuesday's win in Miami, the feeling remains that these are still the Mets. The elation of the past few days can all disintegrate in an eye's blink.
But this seems different. The offense feels genuine now, and every move Collins and Alderson make comes out right.
Johnson homered his first game here, and he's scored four runs in his eight games. Uribe has knocked in two big runs with his four hits.
Wilmer Flores stopped crying long enough to trigger the weekend sweep with a 12th-inning, game-winning homer. Cespedes came alive Monday night in Miami with his first big game as a Met. Three doubles, two off the Marlins Park wall, showed power. The four RBIs were complemented by a show of speed when he scored on a wild pitch.
Bring up Michael Conforto after a short demotion to Triple-A Las Vegas? He homered, 430 feet worth.
They're still not hitting much with men in scoring position -- 3-for-15 in the Washington sweep before Monday's 8-for-17 outburst. But that may yet come with the stronger lineup that put up a four-spot in the eighth in Tuesday's win. Besides, who needs that when Lucas Duda, fire raging under his posterior from Collins' recent threat over his starting status, is hitting homers at an incredible pace?
And Zack Wheeler, whose Tommy John surgery kept him out of all this, burned through a bunch of cell phone minutes Friday to plead with Alderson to keep him around for next year's fun.
Oh, yeah: Clippard hasn't given up a run in his first 4 2/3 innings here.
Meanwhile, the Mets have hit the back pages of the newspapers for something positive, a rarity at this time of year since 2008. For those keeping score, that was a long, long time ago.
What seemed like fantastic propositions at the year's start have come true, at least for the time being. The remade Mets are winning New York. Not that the Yanks are any slouch. The gap between them and the Blue Jays is 4 1/2 games longer than the Mets' advantage. And let's face it: 15 games over .500 is a lot better than the Mets' seven.
But such things are expected of the Yanks.
The Mets? Total surprise.
Thus the unbridled joy. The guarded optimism comes in that 55 games remain for Collins' crew to revert to the 2-1 and 3-2 losses of pre-deadline days.
Dealing with such diverse emotions can be a challenge, but it's certainly doable, especially with a team that hasn't experienced joy since '08.
The best advice is to just go with the flow. For now, anyway, the flow is good.
