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Well, here we are at the beginning of August. The Mets have a 3 game lead over the Phillies and are 3.5 ahead of Atlanta.
In the Wild Card race, if it should come to that, the Mets are 2 games ahead of the current leader, the Dodgers. They're 2.5 ahead of the Wild Card runner-ups, the Cubs and Padres. Even the Colorado Rockies are only 4.5 games behind the Mets.
The Mets have a lot of competition for those two playoff spots that they're eligible for. By the time this month ends, the situation could be vastly different, for good or for bad.
Right now, the Mets have a Magic Number of 54 for the NL East and 55 for the Wild Card. Hopefully on September 1 these numbers will be roughly halved. (Hopefully, they'll still have a Magic Number on September 1.)
The Mets have 28 games scheduled for August. Four are in Philadelphia, 3 are at Shea against the Braves, plus one in Atlanta on the last day of the month. Two more games in Milwaukee. Three at Wrigley Field. A six-game homestand where the Mets play three each against the Padres and Dodgers.
That means that 19 of the 28 games this month are against teams with a real shot at the playoffs. (The other 9 games are three at Shea against the Marlins, and three games each in Washington and Pittsburgh.)
It's do or die time. What happens in August will go a long way towards determining how interesting our October will be.
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