I love this picture. The one I bought from a MLB poster store, you ask? No, I say. The picture I TOOK MY OWN DARN SELF. Impressive, right?

I’m sorry.

I can’t hold back any longer.

We have to talk a little bit about the Mets.

I was very wrong about how they’d look, at least to start this season, and I need to address that.

And I need to revise my approach to how we’re going to handle that here.

Because I can’t document my 2025 and not document a great Mets season, if things continue on this trajectory. (And it they don’t, I’ll just quietly let the baseball slip out of the write-up rotation.)

The funny thing is, this is coming after the worst stretch of games the Mets have played in this young season.

They’ve just dropped two out of three to Arizona at home, after a split with Washington that involved two walk-off losses. (One of those was compounded by some terrible umpiring - a triple play that was not a triple play was called against the Mets - but you can’t play the ‘what if’ game.)

That should not overshadow the fact that the Mets were the first team in baseball to 20 wins, and their starting pitching has been nothing short of amazing. (Notably Tylor Megill, who I’ve waited for a few years to see be able to get outs in the 5th inning, and now his stuff has been so good he’s approaching getting outs consistently in the 7th inning.)

The bullpen was great for a long time, but has started to show cracks lately…and right now they’re without any lefty reliever after Danny Young and A.J. Minter got hurt.

The good news is, they’ve played this well as a team with a slow start from a lot of key offensive players, like Brandon Nimmo, Mark Vientos, and even Juan Soto. I’m sure Soto will come around, I’m pretty sure the other two will contribute more (they both failed to get the Mets even or ahead in the final game of the Diamondbacks series, with the tying and go-ahead runs on base in the bottom of the 8th and 1 out).

Pete Alonso has been the exact opposite of his performance last year - not chasing pitches, coming through in big situations, and steadily marching towards the team home run record.

And Francisco Lindor hasn’t had the slow start he has had in his previous Mets seasons. It’ll be fun to see where he ends up with a better start.

It’s shaping up to be a special season in Queens, so we’ll have to check in at least once a month.

This will be the first of those check-ins.

The Mets through April (and one day in May): 21-11

Standings: 3.5 games ahead of Philadelphia (17-14), 6 games ahead of Atlanta (14-16)