Just Mets

The Mets are 40 percent through their regular season schedule, having won 36 of their first 66 games with 96 games remaining.

But since they started their season 13-3, the club has gone 23-27 in 50 games since.

The Mets are obviously not an .812 team, but they’re probably not a .460 team, either.

The question is, who, or what are the Mets?

In that span, the Mets have been without David Wright virtually the entire time, without Travis d’Arnaud and Jerry Blevins most of the time as well. They’ve incurred seemingly countless other injuries (they’ve lost the second most days to the disabled list in the game), have seen their bullpen and bench transform on a daily basis, have had an up and down starting rotation and little, if any, overachievement from any of the position players.

Perhaps the Mets are more like the 86-76 record they’ve posted over their last 162 games. Good enough to make some noise, but not quite good enough to push through the wall to the playoffs this season.

Maybe they’re the team that’s on pace for 88 wins in 2015, which may be just enough to earn a playoff berth in this tremendously uninspiring National League East.

Most certainly, the Mets are resilient and character-driven, evident by two of their last three wins, and potentially last night if Bobby Parnell’s guile counts for anything. That has certainly been a common denominator and a recurring theme for these Mets since Opening Day when they rose to the occasion to beat Max Scherzer on a day he was absolutely lights out.

Perhaps the best way to describe the Mets are they are a team without a face, having not yet formed an identity. Sure, there’s no question that without Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, and Jacob deGrom producing, the Mets will be dead in the water, because the offense as it stands today will outslug almost nobody in this league. But they’ve essentially been treading water for eight weeks, and pretty much the last calendar year.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. They’ve dealt with a lot of injury, an absent third baseman, a bunch of no name surprises in their bullpen, and again, underperformance from other high-priced veterans. But there’s going to be a time when the Mets have to take that next step forward and in fact form an identity.

Certainly changing the way the club has operated over the last year from a clinic at the big league level to an emphasis on winning here is an important step and clearly evident. And certainly upgrading the offense and getting an arm to deepen the bullpen would help vitalize the roster and put them in a position to be more consistent.

They’re good, and probably even better with all of the troops active on the roster, something they have yet to have at any point this season. And the opportunity is real for the Mets in this division right now.

But how all of this gels together in the end, and when that might happen remains to be seen. And until then, the real Mets may not be revealed.