As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had my eye on this Mets road-heavy August since April.

Partly because it looked so daunting.

Partly because sandwiched in the middle of two long road trips was the only homestand of the month for the Mets.

Partly because, knowing that I’d be going to the last game of the homestand, I knew that game would essentially mark the end of summer vacation. (Well, for the kids. I have entered busy-work time. The first couple of days of the Olympics was essentially the end of vacation time for me.)

In a baseball season, a lot of the mental picture is all about how you slice up the calendar.

I already had August sliced up for a long time.

The problem with living and dying by every game is that the focus can be too small for a 162 game season.

Sometimes - often, in fact - you need to zoom out and look at the larger picture. This is one of the few Mets seasons in my life where I’ve done a healthy job of that. (Well, maybe not in May. I died a lot in May.)

The larger picture in this case is the full scope of the Mets’ 10-game road trip, which ends this weekend in Seattle. They’re 4-3 so far. In Seattle:

2-1 means the Mets finish with a winning road trip, which is a great accomplishment.

1-2 means they break even on a very difficult ten games, travel-wise, which is OK.

Being swept by Seattle would be bad news on a few fronts.

But even an 0-3 final three games could be immediately corrected if the Mets swept Oakland and Miami when they come back home.

That’s kind of what I mean here - in the moment anything can seem like a disaster…until the next thing comes along that can make everything seem OK.

The Mets went west after a loss to Minnesota, which came off two straight wins over the Twins…but those two wins were quickly forgotten when the Mets lost two of three to the Angels. Suddenly the Mets had lost three of four.

And then the Mets won in St. Louis, and took two of three from the Rockies in Colorado. So the Mets have now won three out of four, and everything is OK.

One problem that clouds everything is that San Diego and Arizona have been winning at clips like the Mets did in June, so the Mets, even though they’ve been playing well, have actually lost ground in the wild card standings.

(But Atlanta has been playing so poorly that the Mets have jumped back in front of them and are in the third wild card spot heading to Seattle.)

So there’s a lot of different ways to slice up a portion of the season: How the Mets are doing in their current series, their current road trip, their current month….and then there’s measuring it all up against the opponents.

As I wrote in the monthly roundup last week, if the Mets can manage to keep their heads above water in August, they’ll be in great shape for September.

And that’s when every game will deserve the scrutiny that it’s so hard to not give every other game the rest of the season.

Notes

*The Mets should match up well against the Mariners. Seattle has great pitching but trouble scoring…and the Mets seem to have rediscovered their offense the past few games. Seems like the arrows tilt towards the Mets in the matchup…and even though the Mets took two of three from the Mariners last season it’s hard to forget the Mariners took two out of three in a series of one-run games in 2022 that felt like the Mets should have been swept. We’ll see how this goes - it’s been a while since the Mets have played in Seattle.

*Even though San Diego and Arizona both passed the Mets with their hot streaks, the Mets have the chance to catch them again as their next road trip - the one that closes out August - goes through both cities. (It will take just one win against San Diego for the Mets to clinch a tiebreaker over the Padres too. They went 2-2 against the D-Backs in late May/early June.)

*The other thing that makes a situation like the Mets losing two of three to the Angels tough to swallow is the fact that the Phillies haven’t been world beaters. The Phillies played well against the Dodgers (which is another story - the Dodgers are on the verge of being in the wild card picture because the Padres and D-backs are hot on their tail in the division), but they’ve left the door open for teams to gain ground on them. (Side note with the Phillies: Remember leading up to London when I observed how maybe there wasn’t as much separating Philadelphia and the Mets as it appeared because Philly had beaten up on a lot of bad teams in the early part of the year? Well, that has started to catch up to them. They are still 8 games better than the Mets, so this is still moot for now, but it’s worth keeping an eye on. The Phillies are in Arizona this weekend, so the Mets have a chance to pick up games on one of those teams, at least.)

*I had a hard time staying up for the 8:40pm starts in Colorado this week, so the outlook for Seattle is not great for me. 10:10 Friday, 9:40 Saturday…and then the ESPN Sunday night game, which is better but still not ideal. Busy work time plus late night games the majority of the month means I am missing a lot of Mets August baseball.

*Am I getting excited about the Jets season? I guess. It’s hard not to after the way last year turned out. But unlike most other years at least the Mets have me excited heading to September. I will say the start of college football season leading into the start of the NFL season is always a fun time of year for me. Remains to be seen if I’ll be doing any writing about the Jets.

*What I am doing is marathon training. You can click the Instagram link below to follow along with that. And if you’d like to make a donation to the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation and support my marathon fundraising, you can do that at this link. We’re about 33% towards my goal!