The Mets are 13-7 on the young season and nipping at the Braves’ heels in second place. By almost any metric you want to use, this is a good start to their season. However, when you consider that the team has done all of this without one of their co-aces, their fourth starter, and their closer, it’s much more impressive. Factor in that their starting catcher went down early in the year and their fifth starter was mostly inneffective before also hitting the IL, and the start looks almost implausible.
The implausibility just got ratcheted up again, as Max Scherzer has begun his ten game suspension for a ‘sticky stuff’ violation in Los Angeles on Wednesday.