Get Worried

We appreciate Nails sneaking onto the comments board and trying to poach away Mets fans to the Rays bandwagon. Especially apropos with Scott Kazmir, Tampa's best pitcher, absolutely atom-smashing the Texas Rangers last night even as his putative replacement, Mike Pelfrey, was getting knocked around by a $22 million roster.

The fourth-place Metsies, you might have noticed, are rapidly reaching must-win territory. In fact, a loss tonight would more or less be a complete portent of doom. We've got the new ace, Johan, going up against a rookie pitcher, Andrew Miller (who, yes, has been hot as of late).

An L tonight would push the Amazins to four games below .500, at 23-27. We'd be 7.5 games back, albeit behind a team I fully expect to finish ahead of when all's said and done, but with both the Braves and Phillies sitting between us and the playoffs.

To get to 93 wins at that point, where I predict the AL East champ is going to wind up, the Mets would need to go 70-42 for the rest of the season. That's a .625 clip. They'd need to leapfrog Hotlanta. They'd need to leapfrog the MVP and the Team to Beat. It would be exceedingly tough.

Something to think about as you watch tonight's contest ....