Keidel: Mets Have Something Special Going On, And It's Time To Take Them Seriously
By Jason Keidel
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Washington, D.C. is the cleanest city in America. No, not because of a colossal drop in crime; but because a team from the north brought out a mound of brooms, sweeping the areas around the White House and the Nationals into the Potomac River.
We know all about the cosmic collapses.
The twin tanks to the Phillies. Slamming into the Orel Hershiser buzzsaw after beating the Dodgers 10 times in 11 regular-season games. Yadier Molina.
Forget that. Those were different teams and times. CBSSports.com/WFAN baseball insider Jon Heyman tweeted it this week -- there's something special going on with the Metropolitans in this metropolis. Some of it can be quantified, and some of it is just otherworldly. The Mets entered Washington with a four-game lead and it's now swollen to seven, with no hints of a 2007 or 2008 redux.
And they just delivered a most poignant and painful baseball eulogy to our nation's capital. While the Washington Nationals are very much victims of their own hand -- their incompetence and implosion on full display -- the Mets accelerated their demise.
They faced Washington's best three pitchers and won, despite two of the Mets' three pitchers delivering wretched performances. Despite the Matt Harvey saga and his karmic collapse on the mound. The Mets were also losing in all three games. It doesn't matter. The Mets win with clutch hits from marginal hitters and divine pitches from marginal pitchers. And even their beleaguered bullpen tossed six shutout innings in one of the three games.
This is what happens to blessed teams, to clubs touched by the baseball deities. They win in conventional and crazy ways.
On Tuesday night, soft-hitting sub Kirk Nieuwenhuis smoked an epic home run to win one game. Little-known Kelly Johnson, acquired shortly before the deadline, whacked a monster homer to tie the game in the eighth inning on Wednesday.
They picked up a good player at the trade deadline, and suddenly he's become a behemoth. Yoenis Cespedes has the most sizzling stick on Earth south of Josh Donaldson. The Mets averaged 3.54 runs per game on July 31. Since Cespedes brought his scalding swing to the Big Apple, the Mets have averaged 6.1 runs per contest. Cespedes is batting .312 with 14 HRs and 36 RBIs in blue and orange.
Two months ago, the Mets had to have a biblical performance from their Big Three - Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard. Now they feel they can hurdle any deficit. Though they are riding Cespedes' singular thunder stick, even their less celebrated hitters are hot.
Since Aug 1, Michael Conforto is batting .304 with 6 HRs and 17 RBIs. Travis d'Arnaud is batting .301 with 7 HRs and 20 RBIs. Curtis Granderson, whom many had discarded as an old man in repose, has 7 HRs and 25 RBIs over the last five or so weeks.
It's time to take the Mets seriously. They may not win the World Series, but they will get a crack at it. Few folks would have anticipated that just three months ago.
It's hard to name a Met that doesn't matter. It's not so hard to name the last time the Mets didn't matter. But it suddenly feels like a long time ago.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel.
