Mets Monday - It's That Time of Year Again

No, it's not THAT time of year again, meaning one of the three big holidays: Christmas, Halloween, and my birthday (trust me, if you're around the week of my birthday, you know it's a holiday). It is, however, that time of year that every Mets fan dreads from the beginning of the season... hell, from the beginning of Spring Training, even. It comes at different times every year; for a few seasons there, it didn't come until the last game of the season. Recently, it's come earlier, like in August, or in this case, July. Yes, Mets fans, it's that time: the time when we know the season is, for all intents and purposes, over.

Of course, mathematically, nothing is over, but let's look at a few things. This is a team that has lost thirteen out of sixteen games since the All-Star Break. A team that has dropped to four games under .500, 12.5 games out of first place in their division, and 8.5 games out of the wild card race. A team that has lost two of its starting pitchers to the DL in the last two weeks (for a total of three of the starters from the season being on the DL right now), and has sent one of its bright young stars, Lucas Duda, down to the minors due to lack of production.

Yet it's a team that still keeps Jason Bay around, something I will never understand. He's never done anything for the Mets but suck.

But he sucks for a lot more money, so it must be okay...

No, nothing is mathematically over, but we Mets fans know better. We know we got much more from this team in the first half than we had any right to expect. We got our first no-hitter. We watched R.A. Dickey be positively Herculean. We saw David Wright find himself again. We watched a bunch of young kids play their asses off, even when they screwed up. It was great fun... but we knew it wouldn't last. Still, we can enjoy the rest of the season, as ugly as it might get, for the glimpses of the future it holds. This season might be on its last legs, but the Mets are on the right path.

As the oldest truism in baseball goes, "there's always next year."