It’s the wrong train for these two games, but it’s Subway Series time. You get the idea.

For the third straight road series, the Mets played four games (that’s another weird 2024 schedule quirk, now that I think about it).

And for the third straight road series, the Mets split the four games.

That’s 6-6 against the Nationals, Pirates, and Marlins.

Which isn’t terrible…but it’s not great, obviously.

And it has me thinking about .500 ball and the Mets schedule the rest of the way.

Let’s quickly address the just-wrapped series with Miami:

When the Mets lost Friday night I wasn’t shattered. They have tended to lose a first game before going on a tear. So I thought maybe a 3-game winning streak was coming. Instead, they won two of the last three, which is fine. I’ll say it again: Everyone says you aim to split the series on the road and win the series at home.

Jeff McNeil seems like he may be getting hot. That’s a plus.

Edwin Diaz had a shaky ninth on Monday night, but a dominant ninth on Saturday. I’ll put more stock into the dominance because there was a little bit of weirdness (umpire and defensive play) mixed into Monday.

So the Mets return to New York, but as the road team - they’ll play two games against the Yankees in the Bronx.

And again here, a split is kind of what you want.

Winning both games, like the Mets did last month, would be huge…but I don’t think you can go into the series expecting it.

But that’s kind of my point - what can you expect?

The Mets have been pleasantly surprising against teams with better records. I’ve mentioned this before - while the Mets are 20-11 against teams with records below .500 since June 3, they’re also 7-2 against teams with records of .500 or better.

That June 3 stretch where the Mets were playing the majority of their games against subpar teams is now over (31 vs 9, as evidenced by the records above)…so it’s time to see what the Mets can do against “good” teams.

After the Yankees, the Mets have Atlanta and then Minnesota at home (before going on that crazy August adventure that I’ve been talking about since April…and it’s only gotten crazier since then).

I was thinking about if the Mets just played .500 ball the rest of the season. They went into the All Star break at 49-46. So with 67 games left that means they’d have to be either 33-34 or 34-33, which is best-case scenario 83-79 (or 82-80 in the worst-case of this possibility).

With the Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Padres, and Pirates all in the mix right now for wild card positioning, I don’t think 83 wins is going to cut it.

Which means the Mets are going to have to break away a little bit and play better than .500.

So I’ll continue to divide the season into little chunks to see if these are attainable goals.

Let’s take the remainder of July: There are 9 games left - 2 against the Yankees, 4 against Atlanta, and 3 against the Twins.

This is a great opportunity to see what the Mets are made of - I think 5-4 would be a very good result here. Anything better would be encouraging. Especially when you consider that the Mets are currently 3 games back of Atlanta with those 4 games coming up this weekend.

I don’t think the Mets are going to be in a position where they fall out of any races before next week’s trade deadline and do an about-face on the season by selling off their assets.

So this next week isn’t make or break. At least not break.

What it could be, though, is a big ‘make’ week with some good play and the opportunity to distance themselves a little more from that .500 mark.

I’m looking forward to seeing how well they stack up.

Let’s Go Mets.