The Mets won't win anything...

...because...Mets.

But realistically, they have more of a chance than the Yankees to to take home the MLB Bronzed Flag Collection, in this our brave new, four-rounds-of-playoffs, one-third-of-the-teams-make-October, baseball world.

Submitted for your consideration, on this 60th anniversary of the first Twilight Zone episode:

Despite a solid month of stinking worse than the bay outside its ballpark, the Flushing team is only about 6-7 games out of the Selig Game, playing in an unsettled division, full of better-run teams that are probably about to zoom past the Mets for years to come—but aren't quite there yet.

Like many teams, their core 4-5 hitters—say, Alonso, McNeil, Ramos, J.D. Davis, and Todd Frazier—are roughly as productive as the Yankees' core.  If Conforto and Cano were to get going—far from beyond the realm of possibility—and if Dominic Smith and Rosario were to keep progressing, and someone like Nimmo were to get healthy, they'd be easily the Yanks' equivalent at the plate.

Then, were they to make the Wild Card, all they would need would be for 3 of their starting 5 pitchers to get hot—3 guys like, say, deGrom, Syndegaard, and Matz, who have all pitched in very big games before—Diaz to pitch like he did tonight and his last time out, and maybe one more guy to get it together in the pen.

And, voila!  A modern-day Series champion is born.

Not saying any of this is going to happen.  As I mentioned at the beginning, these are your New York Mets.

You can bet that they will sustain some awful injury, have some noodnik in their clubhouse run amok, fail some drug test or what have you, and fall on their collective, Flushing faces.

But should they make the playoffs, those pitchers would give them the shot we don't have, and that we will not have for the foreseeable future because—oh yeah—we forgot to pick up any pitching!

This is what I find amazing.

After all the sturm und dang, all the wheeling and dealing, and building and emptying of the farm system—not to mention repeated proclamations of his own divinity—Brian Cashman is not as close to winning a ring as one of the most sloppily run franchises in baseball, managed by an idiot, and owned by a couple of real estate sharpies who barely pay attention to it.

Sure, dismiss this out of hand.  But just wait until you see those Metsies jumping for joy and popping the champagne corks this October.  Somewhere, in the twilight zone...