Mets' major resurgence comes thanks to some minor tinkering

The Mets were 22-33 after the games of May 29. The game they’d just played that night had been a 10-3 loss to the Dodgers, a loss so bad that the players called a team meeting to talk about all the losing they’d been doing, in a season that was starting to look like a total loss already.

The Mets were 11 games under .500 after finishing 12 games under .500 the previous season, one that ended Buck Showalter's tenure just one year after he had won 101 games and won a Manager of the Year Award again.

All that has happened since that May night is that the Mets have the best record in baseball -- along with the Astros -- at 25-12. They’ve played slightly better than .667 ball, just swept the Nationals, and now they head into the last weekend before the All-Star Break in the third Wild Card slot in the National League. A month ago, the Yankees looked like the hottest team going. Now it’s the team on the other side of New York City.

The Mets have made this move because a series of adjustments, some of which seemed small enough to fit in the pocket of a glove, that continue to work out for them, even if some of them started before they officially began to turn everything around.

Carlos Mendoza, the rookie manager who did such a superb job of holding his team together when everything seemed ready to explode in all directions, had already moved Francisco Lindor to the leadoff spot 10 days before the hot streak began, replacing Brandon Nimmo there. Lindor is now hitting .299 since then, with nine home runs and 26 runs in 47 games. And since Nimmo locked in the No. 2 position in Mendoza’s batting order, he has hit .344, with nine homers and 40 RBIs. Nimmo broke Thursday's game wide open with a bases-clearing double. To talk about what has been happening with the Mets, then, you have to start with the top of the order, Lindor and Nimmo trading places the way they did.

But it’s more than that, much more, and all over the field.
Mark Vientos has quietly turned himself into one of the young stars of the entire season since Mendoza made him his regular third baseman. Vientos, still just 24, was hitting .292 after the sweep of the Nationals on Thursday, with 11 home runs and 31 RBIs. So there’s the kid at third. And now that their kid catcher, Francisco Alvarez, has come roaring back from two months on the IL because of a left thumb injury, the Mets suddenly look as loaded at the catching position as any team in the big leagues. Alvarez was batting .301 going into the weekend. Luis Torrens, whose contract the Mets purchased from the Yankees at the end of May, was hitting .280, making himself part of the story the Mets have been writing every time he gets his chance.

Then there is Jose Iglesias. Iglesias is definitely not a kid. He is 34 now and the veteran of six organizations and 1,000 games in the big leagues before he began this season in Triple-A with Syracuse. Since the Mets called him up, Iglesias has merely hit .338 (.526 with runners in scoring position) and been as impressive a clutch hitter in June and July as there has been in baseball, and as tough an out as anybody around.

“He’s been amazing, man,” Nimmo said of Iglesias.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, here are the top records in baseball since the Mets began balling the way they did after that loss to the Dodgers:

Mets: 25-12
Astros: 25-12
Red Sox: 23-13
Twins: 23-15
Phillies: 22-14

It’s also worth mentioning that the Mets continued to win even while their closer, Edwin Diaz, was serving out a 10-game suspension, having been ejected from a game against the Cubs because the umpires detected what they said was an illegal and extremely sticky substance on his pitching hand. Of course, the Mets didn’t lose all the close, late-inning games in which Diaz might have pitched. But they sure lost some of them, in this season when their fans have seen so many late-inning bullpen implosions they feel as if they’ve lost count by now.

The Mets have gotten going like this even though Pete Alonso hasn’t really gotten going himself yet with home runs, at least not in a way the Mets expect from him. The Mets keep winning, anyway. They keep coming, even though they still don’t have their best starter, Kodai Senga, who is expected to make another rehab start on Sunday for Triple-A Syracuse. When he does show up again in Mendoza’s rotation, it will feel as if the Mets have acquired an ace before they even get to the Trade Deadline.

After Iglesias, an overnight sensation at 34, got three more hits on Wednesday night, scoring two runs and knocking in two more, he explained what’s been happening with his team this way: “It’s the energy.”

The energy is there for everybody to see. The Mets have been something to see. It’s not just Iglesias who’s been amazing. The whole thing has been, for the suddenly Amazin’ Mets.