{"id":2163,"date":"2012-07-02T11:52:10","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T15:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/?p=2163"},"modified":"2012-07-02T11:52:10","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T15:52:10","slug":"hit-the-break-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2012\/07\/02\/hit-the-break-running\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit The Break Running"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Mets have six more games before the All-Star Break. \u00a0It&#8217;d be great to see them hit it on a high note, and not coast against two bad teams in the Cubs and Phillies. \u00a0(Yes, the Phillies count as a bad team. ) They&#8217;ve seemingly had a habit of playing down to their competition a bit this year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They are currently six games above .500 at 43-37. \u00a0 They will not go into the All-Star Break with a losing record, but you&#8217;d like to see them finish the unofficial first half strong. \u00a0Winning four of six would put them eight games over at 47-39. \u00a0That should be the goal. \u00a0The Mets have two starts by Jon Niese and one by everyone else, and Niese has been cruising for a while now. \u00a0 His 3.55 ERA is good for 24th of 62 qualifying NL pitchers, and a good .41 better than league average.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately the goal is to keep pace with the division leading Washington Nationals. \u00a0They play on the road at San Francisco and Colorado. \u00a0It&#8217;d be awesome if the Mets could gain a game on them to be within three of first place at the break. \u00a0They&#8217;ll play the Nationals six times in the second half of July, as well as the Braves three times. \u00a0As baseball pauses, it&#8217;d be nice to take stock of the Mets and see them within a broom&#8217;s length of first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mets have six more games before the All-Star Break. \u00a0It&#8217;d be great to see them hit it on a high note, and not coast against two bad teams in the Cubs and Phillies. \u00a0(Yes, the Phillies count as a bad team. ) They&#8217;ve seemingly had a habit of playing down to their competition a &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2012\/07\/02\/hit-the-break-running\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Hit The Break Running&#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":[1248,19,3],"tags":[193,49,2964,14,190],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163"}],"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=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2164,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions\/2164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}