Incredibly, the Mets, who were running away with their division for most of this year, have slippped to just one game ahead of the Phillies as of today after getting swept last night (at home!) by the Washington Nationals. The Nats have taken five of six from the Mets over the past two weeks.
As you may or may not know, I report to you from the NY Metro area and the Mets fans I know are absolutely beside themselves. Last week, I was at a meeting and an attorney (and Mets fan) I know was so disgusted, he could barely articulate it. His answer to the issues? "They need to fire that manager." He couldn't even bring himself to say Willie Randolph's name. And he went on to say he knew they never should have hired a Yankee. Good gracious, are Mets fans this deluded? Do they think a Yankee is some kind of cancer? A guy from a winning organization? Who should they have made the manager? Rickey "Me First" Henderson? (Who, by the way, has to be fired from his job as first base coach. Jose Reyes now gets thrown out way too much and what's changed? Rickey as first base coach.)
Today I came into my office and, again, Mets fans cannot even bring themselves to discuss the situations and many of them (and this is something I've always noticed about Mets fans) claim they're not even watching the games anymore because they don't want to be upset. Amazing.
They are indeed in trouble, though. This isn't one of my posts where I'll tell everyone to calm down. This isn't the New York media building this up to be more than it is. This is the Mets, who had a 7-game lead in mid-September, down to a one-game lead over a hot Phillies team. And if they Mets don't watch what they're doing, they could miss the playoffs altogether. They have four games to go and their magic number is STILL four. This isn't a good team. Pedro's arm is always suspect, Glavine is over the hill, El Duque is over the hill AND hurt right now. Their bullpen is a complete disaster, blowing leads almost every night. And their offense is relying on guys who keep talking about being "tired" (Wright and Reyes) and guys getting older (Delgado, Alou, Lo Duca). Even if they make it into the playoffs, they're not winning it all and I think they'd be lucky to make it out of the Division Series.
But we shall see. Who would have thought the Yankees would clinch first?