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Mets show they're alive, it's NL East in coma

Johnette Howard

June 26, 2008

The Mets are like that cold, creepy hand that comes up out of the grave and grabs your wrist just when you think they're dead and buried, nothing but a bunch of stiffs. They're not hard to figure out anymore. Stop saying that. This is what they are: They're as warped as a funhouse mirror. That's the answer.

One night they look so distorted you want to blow up the whole roster - just push down the plunger and say good riddance to five or six of them. Get lost. The next day they play a rousing game like they did in last night's 8-2 laugher over a truly rotten Seattle team, they make Shea feel like it's 2006 all over again, and they go to sleep knowing even after all the disasters and humiliations they've already been through, they could still wake up this morning at the very worst four games out of first place in the NL East.

And that's not all. With just one hot week - just seven more days of throwback baseball and strong pitching like the Mets got last night - the Mets could pass the Phillies and Florida. Imagine that. From flatliners to first.

And they have the rest of the National League to thank.

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This is how mediocre the National League is this year. Heading into last night's action, only one of the league's 16 teams - Milwaukee - had played better than .500 baseball in its last 10 games. They were 8-2. The Mets were only 5-5 over the same span but actually picked up three games on Philadelphia because the Phillies went 2-8.

In short, the Mets picked a good time this season to be bad.

The ordinary competition is all that has saved the Mets so far - that, and just barely enough games like last night's, when David Wright came back from his first off-day this season to hit two booming home runs in his first two at-bats, and John Maine started the game with four innings of no-hit ball, and Jose Reyes walked, stole second, and came around to score in the first, then smacked a three-run, two-out homer in the third to chase Seattle starter Miguel Batista.

Wright called it a "big day," but only because "we need some wins."

This is not to say the Mets are a good team yet. Winning only one out of three against Seattle, the worst club in baseball, doesn't work some sudden alchemy on the Mets heading into this weekend's Subway Series against the Yankees any more than the Mets' humiliating start to this Seattle series was fatal to their season.

On Tuesday, the Mets played their worst game of the year, an 11-0 abomination against these same Mariners. And that came on the heels of a Monday game that the Mets lost when their two-time Cy Young Award winner, Johan Santana, gave up a grand slam to the opposing pitcher, who admitted he closed his eyes when he swung.

These Mets are maddening, all right. But - it must be said - not dead yet.

Amazing.

First baseman Carlos Delgado has calcified before our eyes. Moises Alou might play leftfield again - if someone lets him use a Segway. Willie Randolph feels long, long gone and Jerry Manuel - Gangsta Jerry - has taken his place, talking way too flippantly way too often for a man who supposedly reads a lot of deep books.

Manuel is the face of the franchise now, and he got off way too easy - even if he was joking - when he said he was going to cut Reyes with his "blade" or when he called Reyes a "she," a term Manuel likes to throw around a lot ("ladies on the bus" being another one).

The new manager is clearly a smart man. The Mets already have an image problem. So why even go there?

Manuel is better off sticking to the other cage-rattling gestures he's made since he's taken over, like hinting that Carlos Beltran is selfish for not stealing more, calling out hitting coach Howard Johnson and threatening changes could be coming for the likes of underperforming pitcher Oliver Perez.

But not only Perez.

Now, if the Mets slide back to seven or eight games out by the time the July 31 trade deadline nears, we'll be back to howling for them to blow up this team now rather than wait for winter, when Moises Alou, El Duque, Pedro Martinez and Delgado all figure to be goners. But for now, crazy as it sounds, the Mets are potentially only one or two hot weeks from vaulting back into first place in the NL East.

"It is unbelievable," closer Billy Wagner agreed last night.

"We better realize it, too."