Mets' bid to create NL East drama gets off to auspicious start

NEW YORK -- If the Mets intend to make any sort of last-ditch run at the National League East title, the opportunity is right there in front of them.

It won’t be easy for a team that entered Monday’s play seven games out of first place with 32 to play. FanGraphs’ playoff odds calculator gave New York a 9.1 percent chance to pass the Phillies. Another popular projection system, PECOTA, estimated the Mets’ chances at just 3.7 percent.

But games aren’t played on computers, and the Mets also entered Monday’s play with seven remaining head-to-head against the team they’re chasing. They proceeded to win the first of them in convincing fashion, breaking out for double-digit runs in a 13-3 drubbing of the Phillies at Citi Field.

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“Is it possible? Yeah, it is,” outfielder Brandon Nimmo said of making a run at the division. “Do a lot of things have to go right for it to happen? Yeah. Sure. All I’m trying to do is get our foot in the door. If we can get our foot in the door, then all it’s about at that point is who’s hot.”

For now, the Mets are simply trying to play solid baseball on a daily basis. Monday, they again received a brief and ineffective start, this time from Kodai Senga. But their offensive players carried them -- particularly third baseman Mark Vientos, whose hot streak now includes four extra-base hits and six RBIs over his past three games.

Vientos drove home the Mets’ first run with an RBI double in the fourth inning, then hit another RBI double in the fifth to provide the lead.

All told, the Mets plated six runs (five earned) off NL Cy Young Award candidate Cristopher Sánchez. Catcher Luis Torrens later put the game out of reach with an RBI double in the sixth, a three-run homer in the seventh and a run-scoring single in the eighth to finish with a career-high five RBIs.

As a team, the Mets recorded 11 hits with runners in scoring position for the first time in more than eight years.

“I think we’re doing what we expect ourselves to do, honestly,” Vientos said.

It was indeed the type of dominant win that represented the best of these Mets. Despite their rotation struggles, their propensity to blow leads and their overall inconsistency, they remain a team capable of beating anyone. Their lineup is deep and laden with stars. Even on a night in which Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto and Pete Alonso finished a combined 2-for-14 with no RBIs, New York still managed to blow out one of the best teams in baseball.

Yet as Nimmo noted, the victory also won’t mean much if the Mets can’t engineer some momentum from it. Earlier this month, they won three in a row only to lose two straight against the last-place Nationals. They subsequently won their first two in Atlanta, only to blow another lead and fall short of a series sweep.

“We put ourselves in this position,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “We’ve been inconsistent.”

To pass the Phillies, the Mets will need to be better than that. They’ll need near perfection over their final 32 games, particularly head-to-head against the Phillies. (Or, if that fails, in three upcoming head-to-head games against the Reds to help decide the NL Wild Card race.)

Even winning the division might not be enough to secure free passage past the Wild Card round, considering the Brewers are in fine shape to take one of the two byes and the NL West winner could easily grab the other. Nimmo is among those who don’t believe the bye is much of an advantage, anyway, though that doesn’t mean the Mets will stop trying to get one.

Not with the NL East right in front of them, there for the taking -- if only the Mets prove capable of grabbing it.

“We haven’t done everything that we need to do in order to win the division,” Nimmo said, referencing the Mets’ sub-.500 record since the All-Star break. “But the great part is we did enough in the first half to still put us in a good position come this time, come September.

“It really is just going to come down to who plays really good baseball for this last five weeks, this last month. Everything else is in the past.”