The Mets have managed to win five of their last seven games, all against National League West opponents and all of whom had a .500 record or better entering play.
There’s no question the Mets have gotten stellar pitching during that stretch. They’ve posted a 1.34 ERA and won all five of those contests during that stretch.
The bullpen has also been equally as impressive, posting a 1.92 ERA in 14 innings during those seven games.
But the Mets aren’t winning these games on pitching alone. Terry Collins offered a simple measurement to help explain the team’s upswing over the last week.
“Big hits,” Collins explained. “We weren’t hitting. We went on the road and got big hits from a lot of different guys. And tonight, two guys [Lucas Duda & Michael Cuddyer] we hope to ride in the second half broke out a little tonight. We get them going, it changes the whole dynamic of the lineup.”
Collins has no illusions of how poor the Mets offense is, and it’s not as if they’ve lit up the scoreboard over the last week, either.
Sure, they’ve put up some modestly crooked numbers at times, as Friday night marked the first time the club has scored more than three runs in an inning since June 1. But they’ve hit just .247 with 17 extra-base hits and only three home runs in their last seven games.
But Collins is indeed correct about the timeliness of the hitting. In three of the five wins, the Mets have gotten those big hits late and scored the runs they’ve needed to win. On Friday, the Mets scored the runs they needed to win immediately in the first inning, and didn’t do a thing for the rest of the night.
But this style of play simply underscores the fact the Mets need “just enough” offense to win this thing.
Their pitching is so incredibly good, they just need more guys who are capable of coming up and moving runners along, going first-to-third, stealing a base when needed, or hitting the big home run to rally the team from behind and win a game.
As Collins said, they absolutely must get Cuddyer and Duda going. They need more consistency out of Curtis Granderson too, and they have to find a way to get Travis d’Arnaud’s bat back in there in short order.
But they’ll also need that one extra piece to lengthen this lineup. That’s going to have to come from the outside. However, make no mistake – that one piece won’t matter if the people who are here don’t wake up from their first half slumbers.
They’re close. We can all feel it. The last seven days have shown exactly how close they are, and what this team can be with a completer offense.
Just Mets 