Four wins.
The New York Mets have already won the franchise's first National League Championship in fifteen seasons this past Wednesday.
Now four wins separate the Mets from its first World Series title in almost three decades.
It's truly been an inspiring story for fans of New York's "second team," and it will reach it's conclusion by the start of next month, one way or another.
Just three months ago, the Mets were a team playing .500 baseball with no one giving them a shot to make the playoffs. Many may be wondering how a team playing average baseball for most of the year was able to make it to the World Series.
The team started off the season well, going 15-8 in April, but were nevertheless second to the Washington Nationals in their own division and still were looked over in favor of the Yankees. They lost their first series with all of the lowly Atlanta Braves, the Yankees in the Subway Series, and the struggling Miami Marlins.
Their May was awful, going 13-15 and dropping them to a record just above .500 after going 15-8 in April. They lost 1-3 in a four game series against the Nationals, were swept by the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates in their first matchups against them, and closed out the month losing another series to the Marlins.
June was not much better for the Mets, as the team went through its second straight losing month. They only won two of the eight full series they played that month, and got swept by the Braves, losing yet another series to a team that finished the year with a terrible record. With another losing month, the team started July only two games above the surface of an average record.
July only continued the subpar play of the Mets, finishing the month with a record one game above .500, and a record three games north of that record for the season. Credit another series sweep by the Cubs and series losses to the St. Louis Cardinals, Nationals and San Diego Padres for another month hovering around .500.
The team then traded with the Tigers to acquire former home run derby winner Yoenis Cespedes and immediately their season took off. Then the team runs through the division-leading Nationals and takes the NL East.
They ran roughshod over the rest of the league, finishing August with a 20-8 record and scoring double-digit runs in four games. The team went from three games above .500 to fifteen games above that record in the span of 31 days. After a solid September, the team finished with a 16-11 record for the month, putting them at 89 wins for the season. They finish the season with a 90-72 record, winning them their first division title since 2006.
They then knock off a 92-win Dodgers squad, outscoring Clayton Kershaw's squad 22-16 in the series en route to a close 3-2 win in Dodger Stadium in Game 5 to win the series 3-2.
Their next challenge came in the form of the Cubs, who defeated the league's sole 100-win team to make the NLCS. Given the fact that the Cubs had swept the Mets 7-0 in the regular season series, this matchup had the makings for an interesting series.
While some people may have expected the Mets to win the series, no one expected them to do it in the dominant fashion that they did. The team outscored the Cubs 21-8 in the series, with their two biggest wins coming on the road in Wrigley Field, 5-2 and 8-3, to close out the series in a four-game sweep. Cespedes played like his usually spectacular self, and Daniel Murphy is now being hailed as a god in the streets of New York after setting a record for most consecutive postseason games with at least one home run.
The Mets clinched their first NL Championship in 15 years and a date with either the Royals or the Blue Jays in the World Series.
After all these years, the Mets have finally graduated from playing second fiddle to the Yankees (for at least one season) and have made what some consider a Cinderella-like run to the championship round.
In a city like New York where fans have become accustomed to losing all around the sports world, it's nice to see some team lift the city's spirit up.
Ultimately, the Mets have made baseball entertaining to watch, and have also proven that someone in New York can win while donning the blue and orange.
