There are a few ways to look at a Major League Baseball season.

One of the ways I’ve thought about it in recent years is by month.

The season is six months long.

If you play a game above .500 each month, that’s 6 games over at the end of the year - like an 84-78 record, essentially.

In April, the Mets did better than that.

March: 0-3

April: 15-11

I was really hoping the Mets would win the Monday night game against the Cubs so that they wouldn’t end April below .500.

But the reality is no matter what happened in the first two games against Chicago, the Mets had already clinched a winning April.

You can’t completely throw out March, but that’s one series against one team, and an entire month is a better indication of what a season might look like than three games. With Tuesday night’s win, the Mets finished April 15-11.

15 wins per month? That would play nicely.

What do we make of the first month? It hasn’t been great, it hasn’t been terrible. It’s about what you’d expect from a team hovering right around .500, at 15-14 overall.

We talked before the season about how the schedule offered some important series right off the bat - the Mets were bad against the Brewers, Tigers, and Cardinals, and great against Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

The pitching has had its moments. Jose Quintana showed on Sunday that he doesn't need to be a textbook ace but if the Mets need him to be a stopper he can be that guy. The starters are allowing too many baserunners, and if they don’t start going deeper into games the bullpen is going to be less effective as the season goes on.

The offense has similar room for improvement. When the bats are hot, the team wins. They haven't been winning lately, and they haven’t been hitting. But I am 100% sure Jeff McNeil, Brandon Nimmo, and Francisco Lindor are not going to struggle at the plate all season.

So I’m pretty confident about the next 5 months. Here’s another way to put it: I think this first month has given fans a lot more positive than negative.

Player of the Month: I honestly don’t know that I’ll do this every month, but I haven’t written about him yet and now is a good time to do so: I’m giving this nod to Reed Garrett. The funny thing is Garrett was warming up in the bullpen with Tuesday night’s game tied at 1 and it made me happy because he could have entered the game with a chance to win it again. DJ Stewart ended up homering to give the Mets the lead, so Garrett only qualified for a Hold, but he’s proving to be a lucky charm in any case.

Garrett has now pitched in 9 games - his first appearance was April 4, so they’ve all been in April - and he has 5 wins and a save. The Mets have 15 wins - he’s played a major role in 6 of them!

His wins haven’t been vulture wins where he gives up a lead and then the Mets come back either - he’s usually appearing late in tight games, pitching effectively, and giving the Mets the chance to win. (For what it’s worth, the Mets have won all 9 games in which Garrett has pitched, so he’s holding leads in the 3 games he has not won or saved.)

That’s a pretty effective month for a reliever. I’d argue he’s been as important to the Mets as anyone else in April.

The Month Ahead: After the Cubs series finishes, the Mets kick off May on the road against the Rays - not your typical dominating Rays team, so maybe the Mets are catching them at the right time. It’s a tough month - the Mets have to go to St. Louis and face a Cardinals team they just lost a series to, they have Atlanta again, their first series with the Phillies, the surprisingly good Guardians, and the Giants and Dodgers again, this time at Citi Field.

I feel good about the Mets moving forward…but I think May will give us a good idea of how the Mets stack up against the rest of the league.