The Mets started up a nine-game homestand on Tuesday night with a bang, defeating the Cleveland Indians by a score of 9-2 at Citi Field.
J.D. Davis played a big part in that, giving the Mets a lead in the bottom of the second with a two-run homer to dead center off Shane Bieber to put the Mets up 2-1 less than 15 minutes after Jason Kipnis had given the Indians their first and only lead of the night.
That win was a nice statement by the Mets, proving that they can beat good teams and that they weren’t just simply taking advantage of a bad schedule the last few weeks.
However, they can’t stop there.
The Mets schedule gets much harder from here as they have two more games with the Indians before facing the division-leading Atlanta Braves for three games followed by the current owners of the second NL Wild Card spot, the Chicago Cubs, for three as well.
“I think the elephant in the room is we have a lot of home games, but we also have a lot of games against playoff teams,” Davis said. “This is our playoff time and we have to come out and get ready to play.”
The schedule certainly would imply that. If the Mets want to make the playoffs, they must beat good teams, with 17 games against playoff teams if the season ended today and 27 games against teams over .500. In turn, that means the Mets only have 10 games the rest of the way against teams under .500.
As mentioned by Davis, the team does, fortunately, have a lot of home games down the stretch, with 25 of their remaining 37 games at home. That actually is a major advantage for the Mets as they are 35-21 at Citi Field this season as compared to 30-39 on the road. They have won 11 of their last 12 home games as well.
According to FanGraphs, the Mets currently have the highest odds to make the postseason of any team currently not in possession of a spot in the National League, with a 43.4% chance of making the postseason and a 42.4% chance of claiming a Wild Card spot, in particular.
With the Mets currently two games behind the Cubs for the second NL Wild Card spot and three behind the Washington Nationals for the first spot, the Mets really need to take advantage of these home games and essentially treat these games the way Davis said, as playoff games.
