3 UP

1. Unlikely Heroes

Who in the pool had Juan Lagares and Rajai Davis combing for six RBI against Sean Doolittle in a Mets eighth inning rally?

Did you also have Adeiny Hechavarria and his career 4.9 percent walk rate starting a ninth inning rally with a walk and scoring a run on an Amed Rosario infield single?

How about Carlos Gomez doubling in a run and then walking later in the game to score in front of a Dominic Smith pinch hit RBI single? What about Gomez hitting his own three-run homer?

Throw in Todd Frazier becoming the Mets hottest hitter and Drew Gagnon doing his best Seth Lugo impersonation, and suddenly you have people long written off becoming key contributors to the Mets winning games.

This is the .161 hitting Melvin Mora starting a rally with a one out single and scoring on a passed ball. It’s Endy Chavez with a walk-off drag bunt. It’s a Kirk Nieuwenhuis three home run game. It’s Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman anchoring a rotation making a charge back to the postseason.

Baseball is a team game. It’s not always your starts who step up, especially when those stars are injured. Good teams need depth and great teams have that depth deliver in big situations. If the Mets keep this up, they will go from being an average team to being a great team who can win this division.

2. Thrown for a Curve

When talking about the best pitches among Mets pitchers, we oft overlook Steven Matz‘s curveball. You could see how that happens when he is on the same team as StatCast legend Seth Lugo. That said, Matz has a very good curveball in his own right, and he showed that Thursday against the Nationals.

As noted by MMO‘s Michael Mayer, Matz threw a career high 27 curveballs. You could understand why because it was really working, so much so that 16 of those curves were called strikes. His curve was a big reason why he struck out seven over his six innings in what should have been a win for him.

It should also be noted aside from the one disastrous outing and his first start back from the IL, Matz has been quite good this year. If he continues to pitch this well, the Mets rotation is that much stronger making their chances of getting back into things that much better.

3. Feeling Blue

After the embarrassing sweep at the hand of the Marlins, the Mets needed to shake things up, and they chose wearing their home blue alternates. While they didn’t make the Mets better pitchers, hitters, or fielders, the Mets looked like a different team.

Even with Jacob deGrom opting to pick the home blues in his start for seemingly the first time since his Major League debut, it is easy to dismiss the correlation between wearing the uniforms and winning. After all, those uniforms were not the reason the Nationals bullpen is a dumpster fire.

However, the Mets did need to shake things up a bit, and with players dropping like flies due to injuries, the team was limited in what they could actually do. For whatever reason, at least in terms of mindset and confidence, the decision to roll with the blue uniforms seemed to work. Maybe, just maybe, there was a psychological effect to wearing them, and if that is the case, we should hopefully see the Mets making a charge up the standings in these blue alternates.

3 DOWN

1. Injuries Continue to Mount

With the way Mets players seemingly suffered injuries at historic rates, Ray Ramirez became cast as a villain among Mets fans. In all truth, we don’t know what impact he had on those injuries. As time has worn on, we again see this is more an organizational problem than the purported incompetence of one individual.

Brandon Nimmo finally landed on the IL after he couldn’t go on any longer with a neck injury he’s been dealing with for over a month. We’ve seen Jeff McNeil deal with an abdominal injury, which has seemingly impacted him at the plate, and eventually landed him on the IL. The team also waited for Robinson Cano to suffer a quad injury to put him on the IL despite his ability to hit being clearly impacted by his getting hit on the hand.

There are other injuries past these and as time progresses we know the real culprit if Jeff Wilpon. No, he doesn’t have a voo-doo doll trying to injury players to collect and pocket insurance money. However, as previously reported by Jerry Crasnick of ESPN, “Multiple sources said the lack of a single medical point person allows for greater involvement by COO Jeff Wilpon in areas where he’s lacking in professional expertise.”

Crasnick’s report is further supported when you consider Pedro Martinez wrote in his eponymous book “Pedro” about how Jeff Wilpon pressured him into pitching despite team doctors and his manager, Willie Randolph, telling him to shut it down for the season.

2. Slow on the Uptake

Get J.D. Davis away from third base where he is terrible and try him in left field.

Dominic Smith is hitting. You need to get him more at-bats. He should be working out in left field again.

You gave up Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn in a deal to get Edwin Diaz. Jeurys Familia has been unreliable. When the situation merits it, you need to go to Diaz for more than three outs.

With the way Wilson Ramos is struggling in every facet of his game, perhaps it is time to make Tomas Nido the personal catcher for Jacob deGrom. It will help Ramos get the rest to be fresher, and it should help deGrom get into a rhythm.

There were all ideas fans and baseball people were telling the Mets they needed to try. For over a month, the Mets were dismissive of the suggestions purporting to know better than everyone. Well, now that it is clear the Mets didn’t, they are finally going to listen to the common sense suggestions everyone had for them.

Hopefully, their stubbornness did not cost them too many games.

3. Kiddie Pools Have More Depth

When you enter a season with just two established everyday outfielders, you know your team has real depth issues. This has led to the team calling up has beens like Gomez and Davis. It also now has the team claiming Aaron Altherr off waivers.

If you think Keon Broxton was bad this year, you were not paying attention to Altherr. In 23 games, he is 1-for-30 at the plate (.033/.065/.067). Seeing how the Mets jumped at the chance to claim Altherr, you really wonder how it was the Mets acted so rashly with Broxton knowing the depth behind him.

As for the claim the Mets got something in return for Broxton, it was fools gold. The $500,000 in international bonus pool money is for the signing period which ends on June 15, 2019. At this point, everyone of value eligible for the period has been signed.