Mets rotation walking on tightrope without Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer

The Mets are 7 1/2 games ahead of the rest of the NL East as dawn broke on Friday, and that is the largest lead they have ever had after 46 games. Even the 1986 crew, which won two out of every three they played that year and were 32-14 (tied with the ’72 and ’88 clubs for best record after 46) were but 6 ½ games up.

Though these Mets do sometimes seem as graced by the whims of good fortune as the ’86ers were, we know better. We know that in ’86 the Mets’ top four starters — Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Bob Ojeda, Sid Fernandez — all pitched between 32 and 34 times. Even the No. 5, Rick Aguilera, made 20 starts after replacing Bruce Berenyi.

“People always said the ’86 Mets were a great team,” Tim McCarver told me a few years ago, and he saw more of that team than just about anyone not in uniform as the club’s top TV broadcaster. “And crazy as it sounds, I always disagree. I say they were a very good team with extraordinary pitching.”

In the blueprints, of course, that was supposed to be something the ’22 Mets could aspire to, especially once Chris Bassitt was acquired to join Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer at the top of the rotation. Taijuan Walker and Carlos Carrasco could battle it out for who’d be the Fernandez and who’d be the Aguilera of that bunch.

And, well, a few steps more than a quarter of the way home, those drawings look a lot different. You know the old saying, “You want to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”

The Mets have gone a different way: “You want to make the baseball gods laugh? Think about a five-man rotation working in 151 of 162 games.” That’s how many the Big Five appeared in back in ’86. DeGrom will do well to make a third of his hoped-for 33 starts, Scherzer half. And even Tylor Megill — who actually wound up with the Opening Day gig — will be fortunate to make somewhere in the mid-20s.

And yet there is that seven-game lead.

And look, there are plenty of reasons for this. The offense puts the ball in play and — what do you know — good things happen. Buck Showalter’s imprints are already embedded in every facet of the operation. Helpfully, the other presumed contenders in the East — Atlanta, Philadelphia, Miami — have been unable to fire their engines, sputtering like old mopeds so far.

(Did you happen to catch the play that gave the Braves the lead for good over the Phillies Wednesday? Wild pitch by Jose Alvarado, scramble for the ball by J.T. Realmuto, who fired to second to try and catch Dansby Swanson. The ball sails by the gloves of Jean Segura and Bryson Stott, then rolls through center fielder Odubel Herrera. That’s the rest of the NL East right now. It’s even better if you add Benny Hill music.)

But it’s really been the starting pitching that has been the team’s backbone, despite its present state of tatters. When David Peterson threw six terrific innings at the Giants on Monday fresh from Syracuse, it was part of a six-week trend: The Mets don’t win every game but they’re in every game, and it’s the rotation that sees to that each day.

And then came the last two games in San Francisco.

And look, let’s just throw out the miserable inning and change that poor Thomas Szapucki suffered through Wednesday in his first career start. Of greater interest was Bassitt having only his second poor outing of the season — both against the Giants — though he wound up with a no-decision (and an ERA bumped up by more than a full run) after that crazy 13-12 pinball game.

OK. This isn’t to say the rotation is primed to spin in and collapse. But it does give a reminder — camouflaged so well by the Mets so far this year — of just how thin a tightrope they are walking as they wait for deGrom’s shoulder, Scherzer’s oblique and Megill’s bicep to heal.

The nice cushion allows for a bit of Zen. So does the resilient lineup. But at some point, the Mets could probably use those platinum arms, presently in mothballs. The rest of the East won’t stay trapped in a “Bad News Bears” movie set forever.