Mandatory Credit: John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports

The Mets’ West Coast trip is over. They went 2-5, salvaging the final games of each series against the Dodgers and Giants. There are three more Giants games coming up, then 15 in a row against the Nationals and Marlins. They’re seven back of the Braves now, though, and sitting at 61-63.

As per the rest of August, not much went right over the last four games, but let’s look at both sides of the coin now.

3 Up

Big Pete Almost Brings The Mets Back

Pete Alonso is doing everything he can to keep the offense going, especially when the team is down. Alonso has three home runs over the last week, and each one brought the Mets within a run of the lead.

The Polar Bear had one of the better West Coast trips on the team, slashing .292/.370/.667/1.037 over the seven games (27 plate appearances). The Mets are gonna need these types of performances from multiple players over the last 40 games of the year.

Seth Lugo Is On Fire

Seth Lugo had a dreadful start to the second half, allowing five runs to the Pirates in less than an inning with his ERA climbing over 5.00. Since then, he’s been one of the best relievers in baseball (along with Aaron Loup, of course). Lugo has thrown 14.1 innings since the Pittsburgh debacle, and he’s allowed one run (0.63 ERA). He has 16 strikeouts to just three walks in the span.

The Mets have decreased how often Lugo throws more than an inning at a time this year. In 2019, when Lugo made 61 appearances and had one of his best seasons as a reliever so far, Lugo threw more than one inning in 23 of his appearances (37.7 percent). This year, that number has dropped to six of 30 appearances (20 percent).

He missed the first month-and-a-half of the year because of offseason elbow surgery, so maybe they’re just being a little cautious with him and making sure he gets through the season. But part of Lugo’s dominance came from his ability to last multiple innings. If he can’t do that as often anymore, that’s fine if it means putting up a 0.63 ERA over a month.

No More Late Games

The Mets are done playing games on the West Coast this season, which means no more games that start past 10 p.m. on the East Coast. The Mets went 8-9 in the 17 games against the NL West on the road, but they got shut down by the premier teams in the division when playing in their parks. (To be fair, this winning percentage is better than their overall road record of 24-37 this year.) They combined to go 4-7 against the Dodgers, Giants and Padres.

In addition to their iffy record on the other side of the country, both trips–this one and the one in June–didn’t have an off-day as the Mets traveled out west, and they played seven straight days when they did make it out there. Their first game against the Giants this week came less than 24 hours after they finished a game on Sunday night versus the Dodgers in New York. Perhaps this is something that can get talked about in the next collective bargaining agreement.

3 Down

Hitting With Runners In Scoring Position

Tell me if you’ve seen this heading before.

The Mets were pretty poor once again with getting runners in when they were in scoring position this series. They were 4-for-28 in those scenarios. That, combined with their 2-for-29 with RISP the last series with the Dodgers, makes them 6-for-57 (.105) with runners on second and/or third in seven games against once of the best teams in baseball.

They went 1-6 in those seven games. Three of those six hits came in their only win. They lost four of the other six games by just one run each, which makes the frustration about lack of performance in those scenarios particularly frustrating.

Dominic Smith‘s Struggles Continues

I wrote a bit after the last Dodgers series about Dominic Smith‘s struggles, ending on a slighty hopeful note that Dom, who’s performed far better on the road this season than at home, could get things going on the seven-game road trip. He didn’t.

Smith had one hit–a single–and no walks over 19 plate appearances in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He sat out two of the seven games, and he was switched out of the game in another in the sixth inning.

With Francisco Lindor potentially returning to the Mets’ lineup within days, and Luis Rojas saying Jeff McNeil has gotten reps in the outfield recently, Smith’s playing time will likely reduce over the remainder of the season.

Mike Puma wrote a story about how Smith, the only player from the Mets’ Opening Day lineup who hasn’t been on the injured list this year, has been playing dinged up. When asked about it, Smith responded (per Puma): “I’m not here to make excuses. … I’m here to play every day. I have been playing through stuff all season, so this is not something I’m trying to bring light to. I don’t want it to even be a thing.”

You always look out for those kind of stories when a player isn’t playing his best (especially when most players are playing through some level of pain at this time of year), but it’s not totally unreasonable to connect that the playing time of the last four-plus months has caught up to him. It’s the first year he’s been “healthy” all season, but it’s also the first year he’s started basically every game for the team. The left-hander never had more than 200 at-bats in a season before this, and he’s at 400 now. He’s played in 118 of the Mets’ 124 games so far. Over the last 38 games, Smith might benefit from a platoon role or starting three or four times a week rather than seven to help keep him fresher at the plate.

“An Unfathomable Tumble”

As Anthony DiComo points out, the Mets lost 11 games in the standing to Atlanta in 21 days–right when the trade deadline happened. They went from four up to seven back in three weeks. (They stayed seven back on Sunday as both the Mets and Braves won.) It would be a worse drop than the 2007 season, when they coughed up a seven-game lead with 17 left, only this didn’t happen at the end of the season.

Nineteen of the Mets’ next 25 games are at home, where their record is 13 games above .500. Most of those games are against the Marlins, Nationals and Phillies, so there will be plenty of chances to re-gain ground they’ve lost over the last month. And then they’ll end the season with three games in Atlanta.