Memorial Day is one of those unofficial markers of the MLB regular season where teams, analysts, and others take stock of how a team (or player) is performing. It doesn’t guarantee anything — there are still four months of games left to play, after all — but with two months in the rearview mirror, the “small sample size” argument begins to lose its luster.

While the New York Mets’ roster is a shell of what it was on Opening Day, it’s virtually impossible to not be excited about what this squad has accomplished. Despite having approximately three million players on the injured list, New York has put together a 16-9 record this month heading into Monday’s series opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field.

When looking at where the Mets have put themselves with regard to record and positioning in the National League East, the 2021 squad is in a spot they haven’t experienced in a long time. Excluding 2020 because it was a shortened season, here’s how the Mets were sitting within the division at the conclusion of their Memorial Day games since the 2015 campaign.

And, for those keeping score at home, here’s how the NL East standings currently look prior to Monday’s action.

Doesn’t that just look wonderful? Although the Mets still need to catch up with regard to playing a similar number of games, I’m especially enjoying how things are looking in the loss column. If we take a look at what New York has done compared to the previous five full seasons, they’re finding themselves in a territory they haven’t occupied since 2016. This is the first time the squad is taking up residence in first place at this point in the season, and they’ve somehow done it with an insane number of players sidelined.

That’s incredibly impressive, and it only has to build the confidence of this club/organization moving forward as they start getting the mental boosts of players returning. However, with May drawing to a close on Monday, it brings a period in the regular-season schedule that’s been a thorn in the Mets’ side in recent years: the month of June.

A silver lining of last season’s 60-game schedule was that New York was given the opportunity to completely skip over June. It didn’t help much, unfortunately, but the organization needed a break. Although June 2018 and June 2019 were both pretty bad, this part of the calendar has been a problem for the majority of the past decade. As a refresher, here’s how the Mets have performed in the month of June since 2010, along with how they bounced back the following month (which I talked about in this article):

So, if we do some quick analysis, we can see New York hasn’t enjoyed a winning June since 2012, with the last two years being the worst of all.

There are definitely some demons for the Mets to get rid of as they embark on a month that’ll include 30 games in 30 days. Manager Luis Rojas‘ club will have three scheduled off days, but the two rainouts at Citi Field against the Atlanta Braves this past weekend means the Mets will also have to navigate through a stretch of playing three doubleheaders in seven days.

That likely won’t be all that fun — especially from a roster management perspective — but with everything this team has gone through over the season’s first two months, it’s easy to think they’ll just find a way to figure it out. It doesn’t hurt that they’ll be entering the month with a winning record and a multi-game cushion in the NL East. Plus, it helps to be playing so well as a unit right now.

Momentum isn’t exactly a quantifiable thing in sports, but it’s hard to think the Mets haven’t built a huge wave of momentum after the kind of performance they’ve put together this past month. The 16 wins New York has already collected is the most the franchise has recorded in May since they went 19-9 in 2009.

While just saying the word “June” is enough to give any Mets fan nightmare fuel for a good week or two, I always look past what happened in 2018 and 2019 and think about that awesome 2006 club. David Wright, Jose Reyes, and the rest of the crew got off to a 16-8 start in April, and although the next two months were good but not great (31-24 combined), the June road trip they took out west is what set them apart from the rest of the NL East for the remainder of the year.

The 2006 Mets went 9-1 on that trip, and it felt like the division was theirs by the time they made it back to Shea Stadium. A little bit of potential symmetry I can enjoy here is the 2006 road trip included a stop in Arizona to face the Diamondbacks, where the 2021 Mets will be starting a series on Monday before heading to San Diego.

New York doesn’t necessarily need to go 8-1 over the next nine games (although it’d be welcomed with open arms), but having a solid road trip is a good recipe to actually have a chance at enjoying the month of June for the first time in quite a while.