At least we had a nice time at a game in June.

Gotta be honest, this has not been the most fun month of Mets baseball.

When June started, the Mets got to fifteen games over .500 and I made a mental note of it because it felt significant.

I don’t remember if they were the first team in baseball to do so or if it was one of the earliest points in team history they did so or what. Gary Cohen said something on the telecast about it. Maybe it was just the fact that they did it in early June when they didn’t do it until September last year.

But the crazy thing was by June 12th they got that all the way up to 21 games over .500.

And then the wheels came off.

They were swept by the Rays. But that still felt OK because the team was still good and they were going into Atlanta and then Philadelphia with a chance to bury those teams in the standings.

And then they got swept in 4 games in Atlanta and lost two out of three to Philadelphia and lost their grip on first place.

They came back home to split with Atlanta (a huge two wins following two more losses to the Braves), and then had another disastrous series last weekend in Pittsburgh, getting swept by the lowly Pirates.

As fun as the 2024 season was as a whole, April and May were zero fun.

And June (or at least the end of June) felt a lot like last April and May.

The nice thing about all of this is because of where the Mets were at when the slide began, they are still in great shape - 11 games over .500, leading the wild card standings, and only a couple of games out of first place.

But things are not getting easier:

July begins with series at home against the Brewers and Yankees, then they go to Baltimore and Kansas City before the All Star break.

I have no idea what is about to happen.

The pitching has not been great - the bullpen in particular has been shaky, but that’s partly because the starters aren’t going deep into games and the arms are all tired (just like the formula that added up to a lot of losses early last year) - but the really concerning thing is the Mets just aren’t scoring runs.

So we have to hope that turns around here.

The Mets are not alone in going through a long, bad stretch: The Phillies have had similar slides, thus the narrow gap in the division. It’s been a weird season. It’s been a weird few seasons for a lot of teams when you consider the depths from which teams have surged to make the playoffs.

The Mets should be a playoff team. They have shown us how good they can be this season. It’s a lot of fun to watch them when they’re playing that well.

Hopefully July is a lot more fun than the end of June has been.

The Mets through June: 48-37

Standings: 2 games behind Philadelphia, 9 games ahead of Atlanta (38-45)