Three wins. That’s all the Mets have in June so far and when you put it along side the twelve losses, you wonder how the Mets have stayed on top of the pack. The Phillies, who were way back at one point have now pulled to within two games and even the Nationals of all teams sit just eight games back of the Mets. Still, the Braves haven’t capitalized so the Mets remain in first and all it’ll take is a nice run to give the Mets another cushion.
One of the problems has been the hitting. After a team OPS of .809 in April and .752 in May, the Mets are now down to just a .681 OPS in June. That equates to an 81 OPS+, which isn’t going to cut it for a first place team. And then the pitching has been downright awful. Heading into yesterday’s game, the team ERA was 5.41 in June. So I guess when the pitching and the hitting tank at the same time, you expect the team to play poorly. I just didn’t expect the Mets to have a stretch like they have. It almost seems like someone pushed an off button on June 1.
One encouraging sign is that David Wright is finally starting to heat up. After a rough April, he put together some nice numbers in May and now he’s simply on fire. He leads the team with twelve homeruns and he’s right behind Carlos Delgado with 37 RBIs.
Oddly, Jorge Sosa has two of the Mets three wins this month and he’s been a pleasant surprise. He’s now 6-2 and if he can keep it up, he’ll give the Mets a nice option as a fourth starter (fifth once Pedro comes back). It’s funny how the Mets rotation looked full of holes but with Sosa and Oliver Perez stepping it up, the starting rotation has definitely held their own.
The Mets play the Twins beginning tonight in another three game interleague series. It’ll be John Maine going up against Carlos Silva in the opener. Silva’s been mediocre so this would be a good game to get those bats going again.
