There are those moments in Mets history when you just know. When the team does something that transcends the boxscore, sending a subliminal message that this is going to be a special season. Sometimes, the message comes late in the season. For the 1973 Mets, it was the September “Ball On The Wall” miracle. For last year’s heroes, it was the Wilmer Flores walk off homer over the Nats in August. Sometimes, though, the moment is early.

2006 had Carlos Beltran’s 2-homer game in a 16-inning win over the Phils in mid-May. The 86 Mets had Wally Backman’s diving stop of a Terry Pendleton liner that started a game preserving double play. That game was in late April. When the Mets left St. Louis one day (and more victory) later, the Cards all but ran up the white flag.

Granted, those other wins came against key divisional rivals, something the Cincinnati Reds definitely are not. Although that infamous extra inning affair with them back in 86, when Ray Knight cold cocked Eric Davis and Jessie Orosco played left field, was for me at least, the moment that I knew the Mets where not about to blow the big lead they had in the NL East and that they where going back to the playoffs.

But on a night where they looked as if they had rolled over and died, a night when a patchwork lineup made Reds starter Brandon Finnegan look like Cy Young, on a night when “Big Sexy” showed a few blemishes, two injured Mets starters blasted and blooped the team to an improbable 4-3 win over the Reds at Citi Field. In so doing, they drew within two games of the fast-starting Washington Nationals.

Exhale everybody, Washington won’t run away with it. There will be a pennant race in the NL East after all.

ICYMI, the Mets entered the seventh inning trailing 3-0. With one out, Juan Lagares drew a walk, which was followed by a Kevin Plawecki single. (BTW, I have grown tired of waiting for Travis d’Arnaud, bring on Plawecki). After a dramatic pause, Yoenis Cespedes stepped out of the dugout and strode to the plate to bat in the pitcher’s spot. In a rare case (for him) of successful gamesmanship, Mets manager Terry Collins fooled the Reds into believing that Lucas Duda, rather than Cespedes, would pinch hit. As a result the Reds kept Finnegan in for one pitch too many. “Yo” blasted Finnegan’s first offering 345 feet off the old wall in left, tying the game and turning Citi into an insane asylum. Next, Curtis Granderson tripled and one out later, David Wright blooped a single over third, plating the go ahead run. Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia got the final six outs. Final score: Mets 4, Reds 3.

After a lethargic spring training and a slow first week, the Mets appear to be hitting a good stride. FWIW, I would move Wright out of the 2-hole and instead go Cabrera-Conforto-Cespedes-Duda-Walker two through six, respectively. This isn’t hating on David, as I certainly appreciate all he has done for this franchise, but his power is all but gone and his bat has slowed. I maintain that he will retire long before his contract is up.

The Mets window of contention is wide open right now. As was the case last year, they are looking at some potential key defections in the offseason, so there is (or should be) a sense of urgency to this year. It’s an overused cliché for sure, but momentum in baseball is the next game’s starting pitcher. The Mets have a pretty good one going for game 20. Let’s hope he gets untracked.

So…maybe they needed a fire lit underneath them after all. After last week’s controversial all out effort to beat the Marlins, the Mets have won three of their next four games, including a series win on the road in Cleveland. Last night, David Wright drank from the fountain of youth that he must have hidden somewhere in Philadelphia, while Noah Syndergaard continued to look like the next Nolan Ryan. All told, a tidy little 5-2 win over the Phillies.

Suddenly, that lead the Nats have doesn’t seem all that insurmountable, no?

Two other developments are worth noting. The first is the ascendancy of Michael Conforto to the three hole in the batting order. No pressure kid, just go out there and carry the lineup. So far so good, a slash line of 333/375/733. If (and its still a big if) he can maintain some semblance of this pace, he provides a stabilizing presence in the lineup, probably the first since Wright was in his recognized prime. Of all of his swings, I was most impressed by one that Conforto took on a foul ball last night. The ball was nearly in on his wrists, but he was able to turn on it, sending a rocket down the right field line that was barely foul. With Wright fading and players like Lucas Duda and Travis d’Arnaud appearing to be too streaky and/or injury prone, Conforto has a good chance of being the next big face of the Mets, at least among the position players.

Speaking of former faces of the Mets, the last Matt Harvey start was disturbing. ICYMI, Matt flirted with perfection for four innings last Saturday before being strafed by the Cleveland batters for five runs in less than two innings. The loss lowered Matt’s record to 0-3 and his ERA is a whopping 5.71. Worse, his WHIP sits at 1.55, nearly half a runner higher than his previous norms. Pitching coach Dan Warthen claims to have discovered a flaw in Matt’s delivery. Let’s hope that is all it is. Early returns for sure, but the Mets offense appears to be very much a feast or famine machine and their bullpen has been shaky, to say the least. That puts all the pressure on their vaunted starting staff to cover this multitude of sins. If innings and injuries have reduced Harvey to a mere mortal, the Mets will be without a vital cog in their defense of the NL crown. Matt’s next start, probably this Friday in Atlanta will be a very important one, as he tries to get back on track. There is certainly an unlikeability factor about Matt, but there is no doubting that the Mets really need him to be Matt Harvey.

And finally, a big sigh of relief, all the way around, for Jacob deGrom. Not only did he avoid the DL for his lat injury, but his infant son is by all accounts past a medical scare and came safely home. Its cliché for sure, but it is incidents like that which remind us of what really counts and what’s just entertainment.

I think we’re in for a season that will be both fascinating and turbulent. So in the words of the late, great Bob Murphy: “fasten your seatbelts.”

After reading the replies to a recent article here on MetsToday (Who are 2016’s Ten Most Important Mets?), I’ve come up with final rankings for this exercise, which I’ll proceed through in countdown fashion. For each player, I’ll list my subjective predictions, based on watching nearly every inning and every plate appearance over the last few years. I’ll do my best to identify something that I think the national experts and pundits have missed.

First installment: Mets No. 10-7
Third installment: Mets No. 3-1

The table data below is pulled from FanGraphs. Steamer and ZiPS are two player projection systems with as good a track record as any.

#6. Yoenis Cespedes

Was 2015 the beginning of a new level of performance, or a career year? I’ll guess the latter. At the time he caught fire for the Mets, Cespedes was 29 with roughly 2000 MLB plate appearances under his belt, and it’s unusual for hitters to make big improvements at that stage. We also saw his flaws in late September and October, as his free-swinging ways were more costly once his timing was no longer perfect. This is who he’d always been, and this is who I think he’ll be going forward: an extra-base hit machine who makes way too many outs. It’s nice to know how much damage he can do when he’s hot, but when he’s not, you can forget the “lineup presence” narrative. Pitchers are not scared of a guy they can get to chase pitches above and below the zone.

On the positive side, the Mets’ deep lineup and leadoff walk machine (Granderson) should help make Cespedes’s doubles and homers extremely productive. 100 RBI from Yoenis would not surprise me, and that’s saying something in today’s game.

Beyond that, I expect him to play more than the projection systems do (I don’t see any particular injury vulnerabilities, he generally plays under control), but I expect his defensive value to take a hit with more time in his less-adept position, center field.

My prediction:

#5. Steven Matz

To quote Howard Cosell, “what a performance.” The calendar may have read April 13, but the Mets acted as if it were October 13, as they pulled out all the stops; from high-priced outfielders supermanning it into the stands, to their valuable closer getting five outs, coupled together with some aggressive base running, all in an effort to stem a losing streak and getting a win over what may prove to be a very pesky division rival.

I may be in the minority on this, but I applaud these efforts. As I wrote here, have wasted way too many days and nights of my life watching players and managers wearing Met uniforms that appeared to be simply mailing it in. “There’s still plenty of time,” they would say, or “wait until the weather gets warmer,” or “they (the Pirates, the Phillies, the Braves, etc.) will have their slump and we’ll close the gap.” The dearth of championship banners waving in the breeze on top of Citi Field is a good indication of the results of this way of thinking.

After Wednesday’s tour de force, Mets manager Terry Collins made several statements that made me wonder if he isn’t lurking somewhere on this blog.”The perception is there’s no energy here, which is completely not true,” Collins said. “That we’re not prepared. That we’re overconfident or we’re not taking things seriously. I heard that and it made me sick to my stomach.

“I (Collins) said, ‘We’ve got to win this game. We’ve got to show people we mean business…I just thought it was important for our fan base, to stay excited.”

Isn’t this what we want? So why is he being ripped in the papers, on talk radio and in other blogs? I thought the feeling was that after watching the Royals rub their collective noses in it for two days to open the season, that we wanted this kind of play, right from the start. We got it from them yesterday and now we don’t like it?

What’s wrong with us?

Marlins 2 Mets 1

Noah Syndergaard was utterly dominant, but the Mets again didn’t hit, and the Marlins did a better job of executing when they had to.

Mets game notes

A friend of mine was irate over the 8th inning match-up between Jerry Blevins and Martin Prado, which Prado won with a lead-grabbing sac fly. Personally, I don’t think Terry Collins botched that one — the likely alternative was Addison Reed vs Justin Bour, which I don’t like any better.

The mistakes I saw were elsewhere:

Mistake 1

By the time he’d retired Marcell Ozuna for the first out of the 8th inning, Jim Henderson had nothing left. However he might normally match up against Yelich and Stanton, Collins would have been wise to ignore that, as Henderson could no longer finish his pitches, with everything sailing up and away. Maybe that wasn’t obvious until a few pitches into the Yelich AB, but what was obvious was the health risk. 33-year-old guy coming off shoulder surgery throwing max effort in the cold and showing obvious fatigue? It wouldn’t surprise me if his Mets career is done before it even gets started.

Health risks aside, you certainly had to see the walk to Stanton coming, which pushed the winning run to 3rd. Better to have a pitcher (even a lesser one) who isn’t totally gassed in that spot.

First off, Joe Janish lives. I had an email exchange with him late last week. Among his many statements was this: “the Mets are a mediocre team with great starting pitching playing in a league where half the teams have already tanked.” My first thought was that he was being a bit harsh. Then came the Phillies series over the weekend. Now, I am wondering if Joe hasn’t (once again) nailed it.

Right now, the Mets are hitting like a bad high school team. In both Saturday’s and Sunday’s games the Phillies pitchers followed the same formula in approaching each batter. Inside slider that they foul off. Check. High heater that they swing and miss. Check. Curve on the outside edge of the plate (or further out) that they flail at. Check. All told the Mets struck out a whopping 21 times against a supposedly ragged Phillies pitching staff. In doing so, they fell below the .500 mark and already trail the hated Washington Nationals by a game and a half.

This is where we find out what kind of a manager Terry Collins really is. And as this is very likely his last managerial job, what happens next is probably what he will be most remembered for. You may recall the tepid (to put it mildly) reaction to his hiring back in 2011. Up to then he was remembered as the tightly wound martinet whose players rebelled against him. It was hard to be critical of him as a team of castoffs and has-beens struggled from 2011-14. He did get some credit for holding the team together during those dark days. GM Sandy Alderson admitted that he nearly fired Collins after the 2014 season. Then came a magical 10-week ride in 2015, all the way to the World Series.

Now, the Mets are the hunted. You could sense the glee in the Philadelphia dugout as Sunday’s debacle drew to a close. The Mets played tight. I don’t buy the weather excuse as the Phillies played in the same climate. Right now, it’s up to Collins to get this turned around. Unlike past years, he has the horses. And also unlike those seasons, there is no more help arriving from the farm. The team is relatively healthy and almost everyone has a role. Not much of a stretch to imagine that Collins is a goner if the Mets fail to qualify for the playoffs this year. Like his team, he has much on the line and the stakes are very high.

Putting Janish’s comments in perspective for a moment: the Mets of the Miracle era (1968-1976) also had great starting pitching and a mediocre lineup. They did make the World Series twice. Also, the 1986 and 2015 teams also started 2-3.

Mets 7 Phillies 2

The pitching-poor Phillies showed up in Queens to subject their #4 starter and a parade of 5 relievers to the mighty NL champs, with predictable results. Good hitting from Michael Conforto and clutch hitting from Neil Walker led the way. Meanwhile, Jacob deGrom held down a Maikel Franco-free lineup, despite not having his best command. Unfortunately, he pitched through a tight lat in the 6th, and now Mets fandom must hold its collective breath.

I can’t stand the Hot Stove or Spring Training. Uncle Terry’s popgun team “won” Spring Training in 2015 but only jet-streamed into contention once they signed some proper baseball players at the deadline. As a sportsman I hated practice, but I could understand its value to players. Just watching it seems masochistic, as are the constant rumours and fluff stories about people not making opening day (Asdrubal Cabrera) and problems having a tinkle (Matt Harvey).

Those of you who watched plenty of Spring Training can prove me wrong. Please give your win totals in the comments below, and feel free to add your reasons too. We’ll keep track of wins over the whole season on Mets Today. There are no do-overs, no complaints. Factor in injuries, hot streaks, opposition strength and everything else.

If you win – like McKee with his bold prediction of 90 wins last year (bravo, McKee!) – you’ll get your choice of weird Mets merchandise that costs less than $15. My recommendation this year is a terrifying Mets “Mini Pillow Pet” that will recreate scenes from The Exorcist as you gaze at it before you drift into endless nightmares.

STEVE HUSSY’S PREDICTION

94 wins. I’ve bet my annual £10 on 93-95 wins at 12-1, which is a little better odds than the Mets winning the World Series (10-1!). I have the Mets making the postseason with room to spare, but losing out in the NL Championship game. Here’s why…

REASONS FOR MY OPTIMISM

The Mets won 90 games last year, and each year I base my prediction in a WAR style. To what extent have the Mets improved or worsened since the previous year?

A bunch of things – for me – remain steady. I’m less tetchy about the bullpen than most. I know Bastardo has had a rough Spring Training but I like his stuff. I’m also a big – and perhaps only – fan of Logan Verrett, who’s crept onto the roster. If he throws his nasty, nasty hard change-up (I’m still convinced it’s a “fosh”) about 50% of the time he’ll get excellent results. I like Blevins’ looping breaking ball and maybe Robles will be a little better (and hopefully calmer) with experience. The league will be more used to Familia but when he’s good, he’s very good.

The starting rotation will, of course, excel. Are they way better than last year? Hmm… I’ll get into that a little bit in my predicated pluses and minuses. Here goes…

+1 win: Yoenis Cespedes for a full season.

Signing Cespedes for a full season changed most folks’ perception of the Mets. It’s more a case of the wins lost without him in the lineup. His huge second half will be impossible to replicate, and we all know his center field defense will be an adventure. But I still feel he can add another win to the team with his bat and presence. 25 homers and 95 RBI? I’d take that.

+1 win: Juan Lagares and Wilmer Flores

Yes, the bench players. Both have massive holes in their swing at breaking balls away. It was particularly sad to watch Flores flail at sliders down in 2015. But both Lagares and Flores actually have nice, tight swings if they learn pitch recognition. I also think Flores will benefit from avoiding the worry of playing shortstop, and Lagares (hopefully with a better throwing arm this year) will appreciate mostly having to face lefties.

+1 win: Neil Walker

He’s a better player than Daniel Murphy in every department. Murph will feel great from a distance, but the Nationals now have the treat of watching his almost daily brain farts.

+2 wins: Stephen Matz and Zack Wheeler

This is a riskier one. I like Matz despite his control issues, and he also offers something with his bat. He could win a game by himself with a couple of hits. I have no clue what to expect from Wheeler and his new arm slot. But if he can make it back, I like Bartolo in the bullpen too. I’m convinced Bartolo is immortal and will outlive all of us.

+2 wins: Michael Conforto for a whole season

A very non-risky one. I wonder if his defence will be quite as good, but his bat will be.

+1 win: Travis d’Arnaud and Kevin Plawecki

This depends a little on remaining injury free, but even if d’Arnaud goes down I expect Plawecki to be a little better this year. Like Flores, Plawecki seems a smart kid who’s eager to learn.

+1 win: David Wright and Eric Campbell

Hmm. In the few at-bats I’ve seen of Wright in poxy Spring Training he seems to be “dipping” less this year. And now his back condition has been identified I expect it’ll be better managed. He needs to sort out his throws to first base, though, but he still has a good eye at the plate and in the field. Soup is just due a few hard hits that will drop in.

REASONS FOR CAUTION

-2 wins: One of the starting 5/6 pitchers will have a season ending injury

Odds are that one of the starting 5 or 6 (I’m including Wheeler on this) will get severely injured.

In the spirit of Joe’s analytical approach to pitchers, Syndergaard’s delivery looks like his arm may fly along with a pitch one day. It’s hard to hit a ball and an arm with a bat so he’ll get an out, but odds are he’ll join Matz, Harvey, DeGrom and Wheeler with a new tendon in his arm. Reps with Mjölnir can only help so much.

On the plus side, Colon will tootle along to a 4.00 ERA and cover reasonably well. And did I say how much I liked Logan Verrett?

-2 wins: More injuries to a non-pitcher this year

The Mets battled through the injuries to Wright and d’Arnaud last year, but odds are a more core piece will go down this year. Again, the nice side is I like Flores a lot if he has to plug a hole in the infield. And I like Lagares a little if (gulp) one of the starting outfielders goes down.

-1 win: The misuse of the outfield and the age of Curtis Granderson

As you know, I’m a huge fan of Curtis Granderson. No-one is plugging more for him than I am with my little CG pom-poms as I watch every Mets’ game. Prove me wrong, CG.

It just frustrates me that – despite some claims – Uncle Terry will probably still wheel out the Grandyman against some left handed pitchers when he clearly can’t hit them. Granderson looks SCARED in the box against lefties. The assumption is that Lagares will take over center against lefties and Grandy will take a seat. But will this happen? I have severe doubts.

It’s highly unlikely Granderson can replicate last season’s stellar performance but putting him in the best position to do so would make me happy… and also help the Mets’ win total.

INTANGIBLES

It’s important to remember the Mets division still ain’t great. That hasn’t changed since last year.

The Nats look a little worse on paper but they still have to get more wins than 2015, when they were crippled by injuries, poor management and a bad vibe. The Marlins – as always – seem tempting. Might they be good? Perhaps. But they could also be REALLY bad if Stanton and/or Fernandez go down. The Braves are best summed up by the fact Frenchy made their opening roster. And the Phillies… if it’s possible to cry cheese-steak for them, I would.

The NL is general seems as weak as last year. Everyone likes the Cubs, I like the Pirates and the Cards will be thereabouts, as usual.

SOUND OFF BELOW

Don’t forget, no do-overs. This is bold prediction time. There’s a potential Pillow Pet riding on this.
I hope to see you throughout the season… usually on a Sunday… and thanks for continuing to read Mets Today. It’s like a typical Mets blog, only with sane people.