Coming off a series split in London, the Mets (28-36) return home from their trip abroad with the third-worst record in the National League and an opportunity to get right back into the Wild Card mix over the course of their next six games. The bar is low, and the team couldn’t find much weaker opposition than the Marlins (22-43), owners of the worst record in the National League.
The last time the Mets faced the Marlins was just a few weeks ago, and the Mets botched that opportunity, losing two of three games in Miami. Over their last nine games, however, they’re 6-3, having split a four-game series with the Diamondbacks, swept a three-game series with the Nationals, and split the aforementioned pair of games in London with the very good Phillies.
With that, the Mets are 3.5 games back of the third Wild Card spot and 4.0 back of the second spot. The Padres—who come to Queens this weekend—lead this illustrious pack of baseball teams with a 35-35 record. At 33-34, the Giants hold the third spot for now, and between them in the Mets are the Cubs, Reds, Cardinals, Pirates, Diamondbacks, and Nationals.
So there’s still plenty of work ahead of the Mets if they are to be taken seriously in that mess of a playoff race. If they were to take care of business against the Marlins over these three games, that would set them up for a relatively big series over the weekend against San Diego.
Since the last time these two teams played one another, not much about the Marlins has changed. The Mets will see two of the three same starting pitchers that they saw in the series in Miami. The Marlins still have a very bad offense that’s averaged 3.58 runs scored per game, the third-lowest rate in baseball. And they remain bad at run prevention, as they’ve given up 5.09 runs per game, the third-highest rate in baseball.
Over the past two weeks, Josh Bell has been red hot with a .400/.405/.625 line and a 187 wRC+. You may remember that he hit a big home run against the Mets in that series in Miami. Jesús Sánchez and Jake Burger have been hitting well lately, too, for what it’s worth.
Jet lag will be something of a question for the Mets as they had just one day off yesterday to get back on local time. Despite Pete Alonso’s declaration that jet lag is a choice, it’s a real thing, even for professional athletes. Players are much more regular time zone-changers than the average person, but the five-hour difference between New York and London is a bigger change than any domestic series.
Still, anything less than a sweep of the Marlins in this series would be disappointing given the Mets’ relatively good stretch coming into it. But this is baseball, and we all know that such things are far from guaranteed.
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