As I’d mentioned often before, 10 games over .500 is the level I need my team to be at before I start getting excited about their possibilities. And unless the circumstances are exceedingly weird, that’s a minimum. Ideally a playoff team demonstrates this is a possibility in May or June on their way to 20 games up. That of course hasn’t happened for the 2024 Mets but something stranger and more powerful has. After plateauing at the ~4-games-under and ~7 games over marks they’ve blown past 10 on their way to 13, and perhaps more if they can keep this hot streak going.

And who’s to say they can’t? Mark Vientos, whom I’d once dismissed as a discount-store Giancarlo Stanton, is hitting for average and power; Francisco Lindor is having an MVP year and the role-players and reserves are all doing their jobs. The scrap-heap starting rotation has also been good and the bullpen after a few turns of the soil has also come through most nights. And don’t look now but Carlos Mendoza is a manager of the year candidate even after that awful start.

I don’t have to tell you this; just that it’s OK to believe.

Pablo Reyes was the only new callup when rosters expanded (they don’t expand like they used to). He was issued No. 26.