An Easy Stretch

So the Mets are back home and the Pittsburgh Pirates are coming to town. The Mets also get the Washington Nationals on this home stand. It is nice that the Mets have a couple of easy teams, yet I am nervous. Teams that are not doing well can be extremely dangerous and even if they are not, the Mets need to make sure not to beat themselves.

As I see it, the Mets need to cement themselves in first place. They will have a tougher part of the schedule coming up after these two teams leave Shea Stadium. It would be nice to see them pad their lead. They should be able to take at least four of the six games against these teams. While four is acceptable, they really should be able to do better than that. Five is certainly feasible and even realistic and six, a sweep, would be ideal. Certainly the Mets are capable of sweeping all six of the games. That would be nice as I cannot remember the last time the Mets were on a six game winning streak. If the Mets come away with just a split, I will not be very happy. I might not even be happy with four of the games. Five will have me happy.

We have all seen it happen before. A team does well against the good teams they face but somehow they turn it down a notch and let the bad teams split series, or even win series. This is where the Mets have to crank it up. They need to have the pitching get going against these teams, the bullpen has to look dominant (although they came through big time in the last game at Los Angeles) and the hitters have to start hitting.

Once they get going against these teams, then hopefully they will be hot when they go to Milwaukee and Chicago, and come back home to take on the Braves. I believe they can do this, I just hope they will.