PHILADELPHIA – The Mets were a .500 team after losing the first contest of their current 10-game road trip. Now, six games later, they are a first-place team again.
No big deal, some might say. A club that will earn roughly $102 million in salary should be expected to be at the top of its division, as the Mets (24-20) are entering tonight’s opener of a three-game series with their NL East rival Phillies. But the first week of a brutal road stretch has been a big deal, for a number of reasons.
Every starter won a game as the Mets took two of three in Los Angeles and three of four in San Diego. The hitting has shown signs of life, albeit an intermittent heartbeat.
The defense has been something to behold, and not in a bad way. After losing eight of nine, the Mets have taken five of their last six and are 5-2 on the current road trip.
If this team was fractured or due for a downfall, it might have happened by now. So has this club come together?
“More so off the field than on the field,” lefty Shawn Estes joked after beating the Padres 5-2 on Saturday night. “This team gets along very well. I think it’s just a matter of time before we jell together and swing the bat.”
The Mets are in a franchise-record stretch of playing 23 out of 29 games on the road. They will play the Marlins and the Phillies at Shea after ending their current trip Thursday. Then Florida, Atlanta, Cleveland and the White Sox await on the road.
Jeff D’Amico, who starts tonight, knows that victories must come by any means necessary, whether his teammates hit or not.
After Pedro Astacio threw a two-hit shutout to get the Mets rolling again last Tuesday, D’Amico did the same against the Dodgers on Wednesday. It may have been the most important 48 hours yet this season.
“We beat L.A. two out of three, which was big,” Estes explained, “because we hadn’t been playing that well up until that point. The week before we were brutal at home. The homestand was not good.
“It started with Pedro and that great game he threw in L.A. Big Daddy [D’Amico] duplicated that. That was big, because we weren’t scoring runs.”
Joe McEwing was an unwitting center of attention during the last homestand, when GM Steve Phillips called a meeting and pointed out one teammate didn’t congratulate another after a home run. McEwing was the player supposedly snubbed at home plate, but he never made a fuss then and hasn’t since. The super-sub believes the road has been good, not that this team needed to grow.
“I think the road helps because you’re all together,” he said. “That’s what this is, it’s a family.
“But I’ve always thought this team was together. I never thought we were going separate ways, but I always thought we were a unit. I got that feeling.”
Reliever Mark Guthrie, who gave up the tying run in a tough 4-3 loss to the Padres on Sunday, was able to take a positive perspective from the first seven games of the trip.
“I haven’t been on too many teams that have had success on the West Coast.” Guthrie said. “All in all it was a good step.”
Estes agreed, saying: “I don’t want to say the road trip came at a very crucial point in the year, but we needed to get hot before we start facing these teams in our own division.”