It was the very first day the Mets had reconvened at Citi Field, back in April, when for the first time Terry Collins uttered with urgency the sentence that should have stood as the Mets’ mantra for this baseball season.
“Last year was a great ride,” Collins said, “but 2015 is dead.”
The problem is, these Mets have spent the first half of this season looking like a team that too closely monitors the day-to-day comparisons between this season and last season, between this time around and that time around, even if they are unwitting glances.
“It’s 162 games, man,” Curtis Granderson said with a smile on Sunday, after the Mets had dropped a third straight game to the Nationals, 3-2, heading into the All-Star break six full games behind their ostensible rivals (though they remain tied for the second wild-card slot with the Marlins).