Mets roll through Yanks, set for showdown vs. surging Astros

The Mets didn’t just win New York City the past couple of nights, pounding the Yankees twice and scoring a combined 21 runs in the process. They’re winning baseball in the month of June, surprising everybody and maybe even themselves.

The Mets were 24-33 after the games of May 31. After they bounced around Luis Gil on Wednesday night the way they’d done the same to Gerrit Cole on Tuesday, they had gotten all the way back to .500, 39-39. The record for June became 15-6, best in the big leagues, half-game better than the Astros, who are .500 themselves after starting June at 25-33.

Look out for the Astros the rest of the way in the AL West, because they’ve probably played all the bad baseball they’re going to play this season. And maybe look out for the New York Mets. Wait. Look out for the Mets? You know who was saying that a month ago? Nobody was.

There are so many elements to this story and this pretty dramatic turnaround for the Mets, from the time when it looked as if their season was lost, and people in New York, not just Mets fans, were already talking about which of their stars, maybe even Pete Alonso, might be moved at the Trade Deadline. Much has been made, and properly so, of the players-only meeting that was held after a 10-3 loss to the Dodgers on May 29 that dropped the record to 22-33, which really did seem to be the bottom for them at the time. Their manager, Carlos Mendoza, referenced it himself on WFAN radio the other day.

"It was important for them to get together and get a lot of things off their chest, and basically call each other out," Mendoza said. "You talk about accountability. How can we get better? Things got to get better. What are you doing to help this team? Coincidence that we started playing better? I don’t know."

But it wasn’t just that meeting that has restored order to the Mets' season and has given them and their fans hope about what they might be capable of over the second half of the season. It was also the way Mendoza, a skilled rookie manager, also helped hold his team and its season together when the sky could have fallen on all of them the way they were looking at the end of May.

It was Mendoza who moved Francisco Lindor, in the process of reminding people why he has been the kind of star he’s been at shortstop in both Cleveland and at Citi Field, to leadoff back on May 18, when Lindor’s batting average was still under .200, and he looked so lost at the plate. Now Lindor has raised it more than 50 points since then. On Wednesday night, around all that rain at Citi Field, he went 2-for-5 and got two more doubles and came away from the game with 13 homers and 39 RBIs and a batting average of .246 in a season that feels as if it’s starting all over again for him the way it is for his baseball team.

“The vibes are in a good place,” Lindor said after the Mets had done it to the Yankees again.

But there are so many other good things that have happened to the Mets despite Starling Marte going on the injured list and their closer, Edwin Díaz, continuing to serve out a 10-game suspension after getting tossed from a game against the Cubs for having a sticky substance on his pitching hand that the umpires considered to be illegal.

J.D. Martinez, who joined the season late after signing a free-agent contract, continues to be a force in the middle of Mendoza’s batting order. Brandon Nimmo, who got off to a woeful start himself, has started to swing a hot bat himself after being replaced by Lindor in the leadoff spot. Nimmo was still at .214 when May ended. Now he is up to .242, with 12 homers and 46 RBIs.

And none of them, really, are the biggest stories of all as the Mets currently look like as dynamic an offense as there is anywhere in baseball because two kids --- catcher Francisco Alvarez and third baseman Mark Vientos – are, and in lights.

Alvarez, who had been on the IL since April 19 because of a thumb injury, has come back swinging away. He is leading his team with a .313 average, and on Wednesday night, he was 3-for-3 with a home run and three runs scored and three knocked in. The night before, Vientos hit two out himself against the Yankees, and he comes away from the Subway Series with a .298 average.

The two young guys are hitting like this, because everybody seems to be hitting while the Mets wait for the home run tear from Alonso they know is coming, just because it always has in the past.

It was the Yankees who looked like the best team for so much of April and May. Now it is the Mets, out of nowhere, who have been the best team in June. Now here come the Astros, the next-best team, into Citi Field. A month ago, nobody could have envisioned this possible being a big series to end the baseball month. Now it is. Long season. Google it.