Feeling Good? Feeling Great!

Thirteen over. At long last. After my bitching about the Mets' inability to get over the 12-game hump on Wednesday, our boys responded with a dominating win over the Diamonbacks in Arizona to move 13 games over for the first time all year.

Thirteen games over for the first time in 6 years, actually, but hey, who's counting?

So I'm feeling a hell of a lot better than I was on Wednesday. I'm not going to claim temporary insanity or anything, but the situation has changed dramatically in the 48 hours since my Wednesday polemic.

What exactly has changed? Here's a brief list:

1. The Braves are now 3 games under .500 and 8 games out of first place.

One of the frustrations articulated on Wednesday was our inability to run away with the division, to bury rivals like Atlanta and Philadelphia who have played mediocre baseball for the first two and a half months of the season.

Neither team is buried per se, but Atlanta is coming close and I'm not aware of any reason why they should improve dramatically enough to make a real run at the division (other than the fact that they're the Braves and winning the division is what they do).

After several years of watching middling Mets teams trick us into thinking they were contenders actual in June or July, here's the way I look at it.

I used to say, hey, the Mets are 5 games out, that's not so much, we can overcome that! And that's true. A 5-game lead in the division is certainly surpassable.

The issue, however, that I only came to appreciate a year or two ago is that there is a bigger difference between the Mets team at .500 and the Braves team that was 10 games over than the 5 games separating them in the standings.

A team playing .500 ball is perfectly decent, but it's not a legitimate contender. The team that's 10 games over has won significantly more often than it's lost. Ultimately, there's not much reason to suspect that either team will change its stripes after 2-and-a-half months.

Teams like the Astros last year or the A's seemingly every year are exceptions to a decidedly sobering rule: at the end of the day, your record is a damningly accurate reflection of how good you are.

Believe me, I'm not saying the Braves are done. I'm not saying they can't come back. I'm just saying that here we are: the Braves have played 61 games and won 29 of them. Just marinate on that for a moment.

2. The back of the rotation is paying dividends (finally).

Ask anyone, ANYONE, following the Mets this year and they'll tell you the biggest issue with the club has been the inconsistency (or general shittiness) of all starting pitchers not named Tom Glavine or Pedro Martinez.

Jose Lima and Jeremi Gonzalez were more than the epitome of our back-of-the-rotation deficiency, they were like cries for help. Something needed to change.

Two weeks later, things have changed. We've just had a week in which Steve Trachsel (No. 3), El Duque (No. 4), and Alay Soler (No. 5) pitched spectacularly while Pedro and Glavine pitched like shit. My god have things changed.

Now, nobody expects this past week to become the norm. We all expect Glavine 2.0 to be Glavine 2.0. We all expect Pedro to be Pedro.

But what happened this past week simply could not have happened in the days of Lima and Gonzalez. Trachsel dominated the Giants. Soler dominated the Dodgers. El Duque really dominated the Diamondbacks.

Some ballplayers are fond of saying that every game is the same, that a win's a win and a loss is a loss.

That's bullshit.

You can't tell me that the O.O.T.G.C.O.A.T. (http://yankees2000.blogspot.com/2005/11/memories-of-ootgcoat.html) wasn't a bigger win than, say, that game we won over the Cubs that one time... you remember.

And for a team like the Mets who have trotted out shitty pitcher after shitty pitcher following Pedro and Tommy (and Trachsel, I guess), you can't tell me that the performances by Soler and El Duque weren't a real shot in the arm for everyone on the club.

We have a chance to win with our 4 and 5 guys on the hill. That's as important a change in the Mets' fortunes as any you're likely to see all season.

3. My cold is gone.

Wednesday morning I felt like shit. As bad as I felt, Pedro had pitched even worse the night before. It was a bad combination. I had to vent.

But here we are now, my cold is gone, my Friday is here, and the Mets are playing good baseball.
Trax gets the ball tonight, Soler tomorrow. We've got a shot.

- A.F.O.M.G.

PS.. The Kaz Matsui Era may be drawing to a close, Mark Hale in the New York Post is reporting (Link: http://www.nypost.com/sports/mets/67245.htm).

For those worried about what roster move awaited Xavier Nady's return from the DL, it seems that a trade of Kaz or his outright release is a definite possibility.

That doesn't answer the question of what happens to our outfield once Nady returns, as we now have 4 starters, but at least a little part of the mystery appears to be clearing up.