NEW YORK — The Washington Nationals keep talking as if this is still all about them, as if the National League East will be theirs once they finally wake up and take it.
"Don't worry about us," Anthony Rendon told James Wagner of the Washington Post after one Nats loss this week. "Y'all worry about y'all selves. We'll be all right."
Don't be so sure of that.
The Nationals aren't the best team in baseball, the "Where's my ring?" club from spring training. No, the Nationals aren't even the best team in their own division.
Have you seen the New York Mets lately?
For months, the Mets were going to have a chance only if the Nationals let them have one. They were the team on the rise, but the team that was still a year or so away from being a true contender.
It's different now, and not just because the Nationals are underachieving again, just two games over .500 and 4.5 games behind the Mets after Thursday night's 3-1 loss to the San Francisco Giants. This is about the team that had the craziest trade-deadline week of all but came out of it with a club that looks more like a serious contender than it has all season.
When New York had an 11-game win streak in April, it felt like an early-season fluke. The Mets have won 11 of 13 now, after completing a four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies with a 12-3 win Thursday, and it feels much more serious.
The Rockies certainly thought so. They just got done with a trip to Washington and New York, and while they weren't into making comparisons, they didn't hide their admiration for the Mets and their young rotation.
"That's a big-time staff right there," Rockies manager Walt Weiss said.
A night earlier, Carlos Gonzalez called Mets starter Jacob deGrom "the best pitcher in the game, hands down."
What's happened with the Mets is that the young starters have grown up quickly (although not quickly enough to avoid innings limits). What's also happened is that general manager Sandy Alderson and his staff effectively remade the rest of his roster.
The trade for Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson gave the team a more professional look, and it gave manager Terry Collins more nightly options off the bench. The trades for Tyler Clippard and Eric O'Flaherty gave the bullpen more certainty.
And the Yoenis Cespedes deal, besides providing the bat the Mets needed in the middle of the lineup, seemed to flip a switch at Citi Field, removing the constant angst and replacing it with belief and excitement not seen around here in years.
Even the botched Carlos Gomez trade ended up as a positive, turning Wilmer Flores into a Citi Field folk hero after he cried when he thought he was being dealt away.
The Mets could still stumble, and the innings limits for Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard could yet prove to be a real problem. But the Mets expect to get Steven Matz back from the disabled list, giving the rotation more depth.
They still might get David Wright back, too, although that no longer seems as crucial as it once did. Wright is the Mets captain, and at one point he was undeniably their most important player. But nothing says as much about the change in the Mets as the fact that a Wright return now feels like a nice bonus rather than an absolute necessity.
The Nationals, by contrast, seem to badly need Denard Span, their one remaining injured star. Span has been out since early July with back issues, and his return keeps getting delayed.
The Nationals did nowhere near as much business as the Mets on the trade market, believing that with key players getting healthy, they'd have all of the additions they really needed. They did add Jonathan Papelbon to the bullpen, but he has had very little impact so far.
With 48 games remaining, the Nationals could still get themselves righted. But this isn't all about them—not anymore. Not now that they have a serious playoff contender to deal with in their division.
Whether or not the Nationals are going to be all right, the better question to ask is whether the Mets are going to be all right the rest of the way.
The script has flipped. Now, the National League East is just as much about them.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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