The East Egg Team

Only the sorts of die-hard Mets fans who run what's left of the baseball desk at the NY Times could take yet another pineapply deGrom defeat and turn it into a reason for hope.

But here was Jay Schreiber today, with a major analysis piece headlined, "Surprise!  The Mets Might Actually Be Getting Better."

Because, you know, since that 33-48 they are playing .500 ball, and the starting rotation is real good, and "an argument can be made—perhaps with some wishful thinking sprinkled in—that in Conforto, McNeil, Rosario (who is 22) and outfielder Brandon Nimmo (who is 25), the Mets have the beginning of a core.  All four have contributed to the Mets' mini-resurgence."

There are enough caveats and hedges in that one sentence to drive a religion through—the religion of the Mets.  It goes on and on like this:  'if maybe, only Rosario can do a little better like he has of late, and Conforto can heal some more, and Nimmo continues to improve, and Bruce and Cespedes come back..."

Yes, and "tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...and one fine morning—"

Maybe it's their location, on the site of the former Valley of Ashes that featured so vividly in The Great Gatsby, but the Mets have always struck me as the Gatsby team, staring out at that little green light from East Egg and wishing on "the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us." Hoping for another miracle year, like it was in 1969, or 1973, or 1986, or 2000, or 2015...

Somehow, never realizing that the whole outfit was long ago acquired by the Tom Buchanans of the sporting world, who see the team just as a real estate dodge.

But the thing is...they're right.

The Mets may never reach that orgiastic future.  But they have a better chance of getting there than these Yankees do.

They have indeed solved the Rubik's Cube that Brian Cashman never has been able to align.  That is, they have built a solid, and potentially overwhelming, starting staff.

The fundamental flaw in the Yankees ever since Coops took over the team is that he has never been able to duplicate, in the starting rotation or the bullpen, the incredible depth and professionalism of the staff he inherited from the Holy Trinity of Stick, Bob, and Buck.

He's tried again and again, acquiring his vaunted "young power arms," switching to grizzled veterans, even, at last, resorting to growing his own.  All to no avail.  And now, we've gone to Happ and Hapless, with no real hope of building a good young staff anytime soon.

So much for orgiasms.