OMG! Mets riding high with their June hot streak, but can they sustain it?
Jeff McNeil #1 of the New York Mets celebrates his sixth inning three run home run against the Houston Astros at Citi Field on Friday, June 28, 2024 in the Queens borough of New York City. Credit: Jim McIsaac
School was out.
The weather was perfect. Citi Field was mostly full. There even were fireworks!
Oh, and the third baseman performed a concert in the infield after the game.
So it went on Friday night, the latest is-this-real-life moment for Mets fans, this time a 7-2 victory over the Astros.
The Mets now are above .500 at 40-39, having gone 16-4 since June 3.
The big hits were a tying home run by Tyrone Taylor, a go-ahead homer by Pete Alonso and a three-run homer by Jeff McNeil.
No, really. Jeff McNeil. He had been struggling badly. On Friday, he was 3-for-4.
“He needed that,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Good to see.”
The Mets did all that against Astros starter Ronel Blanco, who entered the night with an 8-2 record and 2.43 ERA.
Oh, by the way, the Astros had won seven games in a row entering the night and had the second-best record in baseball in June — behind only the Mets, of course.
Then they ran into the same buzzsaw the Yankees faced earlier in the week.
As the T-shirts most Mets wore during batting practice said, “OMG.”
How serious are things getting around here?
When baseball boss David Stearns was asked before the game whether he could envision a scenario in which the Mets could be buyers at the trade deadline, he said, simply, “Sure.”
Yup, it is a good time to be a Mets fan, which now means supporting a team that against all odds has rallied to relevance on the cusp of July.
Perhaps it would be a stretch to call this a potential World Series preview, but the weekend series fairly can be called the World Series of June.
About the “OMG” thing: It is one of several fun wrinkles to the Mets’ memorable month. (Yes, we’re talking about you, too, Grimace.)
This time the Mets were celebrating one of their own, much-traveled infielder Jose Iglesias, whose original Spanish-language song, “OMG,” was released Friday after some celebratory recent test runs over the Citi Field loudspeakers.
Players wore T-shirts to advertise the song, complete with a QR code to access it, before the game.
On Thursday, many danced to it at a promotional event at Citi Field. Then, in a surreal moment on Friday, they joined Iglesias in dancing to it on the field as Iglesias sang postgame. He had entered the game in the eighth inning as a defensive replacement.
“I think it worked out perfect,” said Mendoza, who acknowledged the concert likely would not have occurred had the Mets lost.
“That’s a special moment,” Iglesias said of the concert afterward.
“This is all about energy; this is all about winning,” he told SNY on Thursday. “The guys loved it and I’m very humble to make this song. The fans were clicking with it.
“We’re on a roll, everything is right where it needs to be, and, oh my God, I’m so happy.”
Mendoza said he likes the song, and now Mets fans everywhere do, too. The home run hitters on Friday posed with a large “OMG” sign in the dugout.
The import of this June surge is that there will be more big games for the Mets through at least midsummer.
Stearns declined to tip his hand about trade-deadline strategy, not with this much time left. But his pregame smiles told a tale on what also was Pride Night at Citi.
“Clearly, our team performance has improved quite considerably over the past few weeks,” he understated.
“I think we’re playing much closer to the level of baseball and consistency of baseball that we envisioned throughout the course of the season. And now we have to continue it.”
Friday night’s game was an Apple TV+ exclusive, which presumably limited the local television audience or at least attracted a somewhat different audience than games on SNY.
But inside the stadium, the party atmosphere was evident from before the game to its aftermath, as it should be at this time of year when the baseball stuff is going right.
These next four weeks in advance of NFL training camps opening, baseball has a clear route to sports fans’ hearts, minds, eyeballs and wallets.
The fact that both New York-area teams now deserve such attention did not seem possible a month ago.
Or, to put it another way: OMG.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.