{"id":1510,"date":"2011-08-30T08:45:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T12:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2011-08-29T22:45:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T02:45:55","slug":"the-math-optimism-for-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2011\/08\/30\/the-math-optimism-for-500\/","title":{"rendered":"The Math: Optimism For .500"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/lh\/photo\/MDx3RvLRKaoXjTntCYK2wA?feat=directlink\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Mets Win\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-KRB9Fovb_P8\/TBGlEu9XWZI\/AAAAAAAAI9I\/JlTbTMOOWBg\/s912\/IMG_1155.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"246\" \/><\/a>The Mets struggled a bit and saw their good season start to crumble as they lost game after game to fall well below the .500 mark. \u00a0Now they&#8217;ve picked it up again, it&#8217;s worth taking a look to see what they need to do to finish at 81-81.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There are thirty games left. \u00a0The Mets are 64-68, and need to go 17-13 the rest of the way to hit .500.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There are good reasons to expect that the Mets can do just that. \u00a0One is that Jose Reyes is back. \u00a0Having him in the lineup at the expense of either Tejada or Turner will make a big difference, especially once he&#8217;s got a game or two under his belt to get warmed up. \u00a0It&#8217;s not just Reyes; Duda has been hitting the ball well and making a case for 2012. \u00a0Nick Evans has put together a nice little stretch here. \u00a0They haven&#8217;t been scoring a ton of runs, but they&#8217;re getting the job done and most everyone is contributing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Another is that rosters expand on Thursday. \u00a0If you look closely at this season, you&#8217;ll see that the biggest stretches of losing coincided with the bullpen pitching poorly. \u00a0Usually that was closely\u00a0correlated\u00a0to the bullpen being overworked. \u00a0With an expanded roster and a couple more relievers floating around, that shouldn&#8217;t be a problem.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Mets have stumbled a couple of times, but for most of the season they&#8217;ve played slightly above .500. \u00a0 All it takes is a little bit of a streak, a couple of hot bats, and some timely hits. \u00a017-13 is certainly doable. \u00a0 The competition is certainly not going to be a problem. \u00a0The Mets have a lot of games against some sub-par teams that are as far out of it as they are, and there is no reason they can&#8217;t win those games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mets struggled a bit and saw their good season start to crumble as they lost game after game to fall well below the .500 mark. \u00a0Now they&#8217;ve picked it up again, it&#8217;s worth taking a look to see what they need to do to finish at 81-81. &nbsp; There are thirty games left. \u00a0The &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2011\/08\/30\/the-math-optimism-for-500\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Math: Optimism For .500&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1133,1248,19,3,1247],"tags":[2964,2217,2218,1639,2219,2221,1382,2220,14,1211],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/1511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}