The New York Mets understand what they can impact going forward with their playoff destiny and what they cannot.
Who would’ve thought the New York Mets would be in the position they’re currently in. From one of the major league laughing stocks to sitting 2.0 games back in the National League Wild Card race. It’s truly been a great run this second half of the year, but they still have some games to win.
With 32 contests left to play in the regular season, the Mets still have the Philadelphia Phillies, the Chicago Cubs, and the Washington Nationals ahead of them in the Wild Card race. The Milwaukee Brewers are also right behind them at 2.5 games back. However, the only thing the Mets can impact right now is their upcoming three-game series against the Cubs. Everything else is out of their control, and they seem to understand that.
“You can’t help but look,” outfielder Michael Conforto said, per Mike Puma of the New York Post. “There’s a group of guys watching, seeing what’s happening, but we all remind each other that if we just take care of business here we won’t have to worry about all that stuff. Everything else that is going on we can’t control, so we may get some help, we may not. You can’t worry about anybody else.”
The last time the Mets faced off against the Cubs in June, they split the four-game series. Although a 2-1 series win this time around would be beneficial, a sweep of Chicago at Citi Field would be huge going forward.
“That was a pretty tough stretch for us and we felt like we were kind of starting to build momentum in that [Cubs] series and a couple of mistakes beat us late in that final game and we couldn’t end up rallying to come back,” Conforto said. “We just have to play the type of baseball we were playing against the Indians. We didn’t bring the bats against the Braves. We were one hit away from a different outcome in all of the games, but it’s not like we got blown out in that series. We were in all of them. We played the tough and didn’t do enough to win.”
The Mets go up against the Cubs starting on Tuesday night at 7:10 p.m. ET.
