Are the Mets (gasp) "Solid"?
If there’s one thing every New York Mets fan knows, it’s that you never celebrate too soon. That has to be the first lesson you learn at Mets School: Never celebrate too soon.
And by “too soon,” I actually mean you never celebrate,* because for Mets fans it’s always too soon, or maybe more to the point, they know it’s never too late for everything to go off the rails.
*At least not until Ray Knight touches home plate.
So, I do realize that I’m tempting the baseball gods by saying that this Mets team feels a bit different from every other Mets team since … well, since ever. There’s a word that comes to mind with this team, and it’s one that I have never even once thought about with previous teams, not the bad ones, not the good ones, not even the great Mets teams of the 1980s or the Miracle Mets.
And that word is: solid.
This team is solid. They do everything kind of well. Sure, it’s only a month into the season, but I mean, they’re playing without Jacob deGrom, who will be out for a good while longer, and yet they’re 20-10. Everybody on the entire team (except their catchers) is hitting. Every starter they throw out there gets outs. The bullpen, with a couple of exceptions (cough, Ottavino, cough) has been getting outs. They’re fielding well (particularly those no-hit catchers). They’re running the bases well.
They just kind of make sense.
They really and truly are solid.
And it’s weird. Super weird. This is the Mets we’re talking about here, a team that filmmaker Nick Davis — who directed the ESPN 30 for 30 Mets documentary “Once Upon a Time in Queens” — calls “doomed to only be comical or magical.” Is it really possible that after 60 years of screwing around with get-rich-quick schemes and falling for obvious scams, the Mets went back to school, got an accounting degree and are now making a good living working 9-to-5 in an office park?
It actually looks that way.
And so I was dying to know: What are Mets fans thinking? Like, it’s in a Mets fans’ blood to be skeptical — how can you not be after all these years? But at the same time, this team, this start, it has to be stirring up emotions. So I asked a few friends and longtime Mets fans what they’re thinking about right now.
And based on their answers, I think it comes down to three things: