Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

The Mets took two of three games from the San Diego Padres this past weekend. It still feels slightly disappointing, though, doesn’t it? The team was on the verge of a sweep if they could’ve just gotten through Fernando Tatis Jr. in the seventh inning Sunday. As I’m typing that, it feels a bit ludicrous, and that’s fair. So, two of three is good, and it’s solid against one of the best teams in baseball.

The Mets once again put up incredible pitching numbers (from the starters, at least) and limited the Padres to just four runs through the series’ first 24 innings. A couple of timely hits (one from Jacob deGrom) and home runs supplied enough runs for the offense to win the first two games. They now sit at 32-25 with a three-game lead over the Phillies in the NL East.

New York welcomes the Cubs to town for four games before ripping off 17 games against NL East teams in 14 days. But before that starts, let’s look at what trended the right direction and the wrong direction this last series.

3 Up

Starter ERA

The Mets’ starters have the best ERA in the major leagues at 2.78 — almost 0.20 better than the next team. This is largely off the strength of deGrom (0.56), Marcus Stroman (2.33), and Taijuan Walker (2.07). Those three have combined for 72.7 percent of all the starting innings the team has thrown so far (202.1 out of the 285.1).

It’s also aided by recent performances from Joey Lucchesi, though, including his five innings of one-run ball Sunday. It was his second straight solid outing against his former team.

Lucchesi, deGrom, and Stroman threw 17.1 innings this series against the Padres. They allowed two runs. (The remaining eight runs allowed this series came off Miguel Castro, Jeurys Familia and Jacob Barnes.)

Here’s how the starters rank in the majors in some other statistics:

  • xFIP (3.25) — 1st
  • AVG against (.207) — T-1st
  • K% (28.2%) — 3rd
  • BB% (7.1%) — 7th
  • WHIP (1.03) — 2nd
  • HR/9 (0.82) — 1st
  • WAR (7.6) — T-2nd
  • GB% — 5th
  • WPA (2.97) — 6th

So, really freakin’ good.

The Mets are still second in team ERA at 3.16, and that’s because the bullpen is ranked eighth in the league in the stat (despite Sunday’s six-run meltdown). The starters are what have been carrying the team, though.

José Peraza’s Clutch Gene

I do not understand this.

Jose Peraza has four home runs this year. Have they all come at critical points? They have, as Mike Mayer points out. All four of his homers have given the Mets the lead — the latest coming Sunday when Peraza put the Mets up 2-1 against a cruising Chris Paddack. (All four have been the team’s first runs of the game, too.)

Peraza’s perfomance has been poor the last two weeks or so outside of a couple home runs, but I’ll take the timely dingers when I can. He likely will get more plate appearances off the bench in the near future. We’ll see if the clutchness carries over.

Team Health

Luis Guillorme returned this weekend. Albert Almora Jr. isn’t far behind him.

Jeff McNeil started a rehab assignment Sunday, as did Dellin Betances. Michael Conforto will start a rehab assignment next weekend in all likelihood after successfully running the bases at 95-100 percent speed, according to Rojas. Carlos Carrasco was seen throwing in the Citi Field outfield (though his return is much further away).

This is all good news for the team, which is now three games into a 33-games-in-31-day stretch. They were able to remain in first place through the entirety of their worst injury woes. A team with a healthier (and better) set of players can then work on pulling away in the division ahead of the All-Star break.

Mandatory Credit: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports

3 Down

Jacob deGrom Health Scares

I’M OVER THESE.

The best pitcher in baseball has had a couple of injury scares this year, the latest coming Friday when it was announced he left the game early due to flexor tendonitis in the right elbow. That’s not a fun thing to hear.

After the game, deGrom reassured everyone he was fine, and Saturday, his MRI came back clean. He played catch Sunday and still felt fine. We’ve gone through this whole 72-hour process of wondering if deGrom suffered the worst half-a-dozen times over the last couple years. It doesn’t get easier! Thankfully, it seems he’s once again avoided bad injury news.

If we’re looking at the positive side, it’s that we’ve learned two things. First, deGrom knows his body incredibly well, and the coaching staff has full trust of that knowledge. He knows when to push and when to not push it. And second, these small nicks and strains seem to stem from the *slightest* change in his mechanics over the course of the game. The lat issue came from him flying open on his delivery, he said, and the elbow issue stemmed from a similar issue that he felt didn’t really hurt over the course game until later on. It speaks to how nearly robotic he is as a pitcher, which has allowed for such consistent results over the last three-plus seasons.

DeGrom is expected to make his next start Wednesday versus the Cubs.

Tomás Nido’s Cooled Down

When James McCann was in his deepest rut of the season, he and Tomás Nido were splitting playing time. McCann has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball over the last two-and-a-half weeks or so, though, and Nido has returned to his backup role.

During that time (just four starts and one pinch-hit appearance in June), Nido is 3-for-16 with eight strikeouts.

Nido’s starts will likely trend more toward a split over the next month given the volume of games (including three doubleheaders over the coming weeks), so we’ll see if Nido heats back up with more starts. The Mets need to find the right balance between McCann getting enough rest to remain productive and getting Nido enough starts to stay in a groove.

Leaving Familia In Too Long

Jeurys Familia pitched fine through his first handful of batters in the sixth and seventh Sunday, escaping trouble in one inning and getting into it the next. On his 41st pitch of the game (his most in one game since 2014, according to the SNY broadcast) he walked Tommy Pham with the bases loaded to tie the game.

It was the highest-leverage plate appearance of the game for the Padres at the time, as the Pham walk notched 18.5 percent in Win Probability Added (34.8 percent to 53.5 percent).

Familia was taken out, Jacob Barnes came in, and Fernando Tatis Jr. cranked a grand slam. (That at-bat turned out to add the greatest win probability of the game, naturally.)

Luis Rojas has been pretty good about trusting his relievers and managing the bullpen this year, but it was pretty clear Familia should’ve been taken out a couple batters sooner — at least before Pham came to the plate.

Edwin Diaz and Aaron Loup surely weren’t available, and neither was Seth Lugo, but it would’ve been nice to see a fresher arm like Trevor May (along with a double switch getting May into the eighth) pitch in that high-leverage of a situation. It gets to a point as late in the game as they were where you make bullpen decisions based on leverage, rather than hoping to get to the eighth or ninth inning by making one of your better relievers throw too many pitches. And you certainly don’t bring in the worst reliever on the team against the best hitter in the league.

Familia will need a couple days off and will rebound fine. Jacob Barnes may not make it past another 40-man roster move or two.