Baseball is funny. There was about a four month stretch where watching Mets baseball was a tedious and frustrating exercise. It was about as painful as watching Yoenis Cespedes try to play on an injured quad. 

Speaking of pain, seemingly everyone got hurt. Of all the people in the Opening Day lineup, only Curtis Granderson and Michael Conforto didn’t wind up on the disabled list at some point. With Conforto making two trips to AAA, that left Granderson as the only Met starter available all season. 

We saw something similar last year.  However, we saw last year that a team can make it to the postseason with some big trade deadline moves, a weak schedule to finish the season, and tremendous pitching. 

Well, the trade deadline wasn’t the boon it was last year. Jay Bruce would struggle mightily until the last week of the season. 

The starting pitching we all expected wasn’t there. Matt Harvey was never healthy and needed season ending surgery. Zack Wheeler had multiple setbacks during his Tommy John rehab, and he wouldn’t pitch this year. Both Steven Matz and Jacob deGrom pitched with injuries until they couldn’t anymore. Both had season ending surgeries. 

Speaking of season ending surgeries, the Mets also lost David Wright to cervical fusion surgery and Neil Walker to discectomy. Speaking of bad backs, Lucas Duda was nowhere to be found for most of the year with him suffering a stress fracture in his back. 

Still, the Mets made it back to the postseason. They did take advantage of that weak season ending schedule. Since August 20th, the Mets have the best record in baseball. How did we get here?

Well, Noah Syndergaard and his 95 MPH slider had a Cy Young caliber season. Bartolo Colon had his best season as a Met. Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia were the most dominant 8-9 combination in all of baseball. Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman became not only unlikely contributors, but also reliable starters in the stretch run. 

Offensively, Asdrubal Cabrera became the best hitter in all of baseball the final month of the season. Cespedes got healthy, and Granderson regained his stroke. Wilmer Flores and Kelly Johnson combined to reasonably replicate Walker’s production until Flores got hurt and Johnson regressed. At that point, T.J. Rivera took complete advantage of the opportunity with the 27 year old undrafted rookie playing solid defense and spraying line drives all over the field. And yes, Jose Reyes returned to the Mets after his domestic violence issues to play better than anyone could’ve reasonably expected. 

That coupled with the Giants and Cardinals playing sub .500 ball, the Mets had their 1973 window, and the Mets took full advantage. All they needed to do was win one more game. 

Fittingly, Colon got the start (pun intended). He’d get a 2-0 lead off a pair of RBI singles from Rivera and Reyes. As he has seemingly done all year, Reyes scored Travis d’Arnaud from second. As usual, it was a questionable send by Tim Teufel as the ball beat d’Arnaud to the plate. Fortunately, the throw was to the first base side of the plate, and d’Arnaud made a nifty slide to just avoid the tag. 

That’s when ghost of Phillies past Ryan Howard tried to put a damper on the party by hitting a game tying two run home run. Up until the Howard home run, he was cruising and showing no ill effects from his tendon injury. 

In the sixth, James Loney would do his best Dave Magadan impression:

He also had a Cabrera impression with an impressive bat flip. 

Of course, Cabrera would be heard from with an RBI single in the ninth. Cespedes would also be heard from, but in a completely different way altogether:

Yoenis Cespedes got himself tossed out of the game by dropping an F bomb. Apparently it could be heard in the dugouts.

— Marc Carig (@MarcCarig) October 1, 2016

Reed and Familia locked down the eighth and ninth inning for the 51st time this season, which is by far the most in the majors. 

The last out was recorded by Conforto making a sliding catch in left. The last time a left fielder with the number 30 caught the clinching out was Cliff Floyd in 2006.  Hopefully, these Mets can have a long playoff run like that team. Honestly though, we’re hoping for more than that. 

With that, the 2016 Mets completed their 1973 Mets regular season run. Now comes the hard part. That begins Wednesday with Syndergaard taking the mound against either the Giants or Cardinals in the winner take all Wild Card Game.