How Mets stole NL East from Nationals

In a preseason poll of 88 ESPN experts, 85 of them picked the Washington Nationals to win the NL East. Two picked the Miami Marlins. Which means just one picked the New York Mets, who currently hold a six-game lead over the Nats (and, ahem, a 19 1/2-game lead over the third-place Fish). So what happened? And is the race over? Mets beat writer Adam Rubin and Nats beat writer Eddie Matz discuss how the East was won -- or at least borrowed -- and how the stretch run is shaping up for the two teams.

Pitching

Rubin: The Mets have had the more dominant starting pitching, even now with the team going to a six-man rotation. Yes, Matt Harvey won't take the ball every sixth day down the stretch, requiring Logan Verrett to make a few spot starts. But Jacob deGrom will finish among the leaders in NL Cy Young balloting, Bartolo Colon has tossed a career-high 25 straight scoreless innings at age 42 and Steven Matz is back off the disabled list after wowing in a pair of starts earlier this season. Noah Syndergaard is a dominant rookie, too. About the only weak link in the rotation right now is Jonathon Niese, who has allowed a five-run inning in each of his past three starts. But given the Mets' scoring output, the Mets won two of those three Niese starts anyway, including Monday by battering a very mortal Max Scherzer. As for the bullpen, I bet the Nationals may be regretting trading Tyler Clippard last winter. And how did that 96 mph splitter from Jeurys Familia look on Labor Day?

Matz: With the splashy signing of Scherzer in the offseason, the Nationals were supposed to have the best rotation in baseball, but let's face it -- it hasn't played out that way. Not even close. Since the All-Star break, only Dan Haren has given up more gopher balls than Scherzer, who served up three more bombs in Monday's loss to the Mets and has won just once in his past 10 starts. Stephen Strasburg has served two stints on the DL. Doug Fister, a 16-game winner last year, got demoted to the bullpen. Gio Gonzalez, whose increased reliance on the sinker was supposed to make him more efficient, has had trouble going deep lately while Jordan Zimmermann has posted his highest ERA and WHIP since becoming a full-time starter. Rookie Joe Ross offered hope after being lights-out early, but he's out of gas and has been moved to the pen. All of which means that Washington's relievers have been working overtime. As we saw during Tuesday's season-defining, seventh-inning meltdown, that's a recipe for disaster.

Injuries

Matz: Just how dinged up have the Nationals been? Skipper Matt Williams wasn't able to field his projected Opening Day lineup until Aug. 25, in the 124th game of the season. Ryan Zimmerman, who's hit more homers than anyone in a Nats uniform, missed six weeks with plantar fasciitis. Jayson Werth, who led the team in combined WAR the last two seasons, lost two months to a broken wrist. Anthony Rendon, who finished fifth in the MVP voting last year, has been out more than he's been in thanks to multiple boo-boos. But the biggest hit of all has been the loss of leadoff hitter Denard Span, the engine that makes the choo-choo chug. He was out for seven weeks, came back in late August for two days, then tagged out for the season. Oh, and let's not forget Strasburg, who's visited the DL twice this season and had his last start skipped after leaving the previous one early with back discomfort. Did I mention he's starting against deGrom on Wednesday? Yikes. But hey, everyone deals with injuries. In fact, according to the website ManGamesLost.com, which uses a metric called Time Missed Impact To Team (TMITT) to gauge injury impact, the Nationals rank eighth in TMITT, three spots behind ... yep, you guessed it ... the Mets.

Rubin: The Mets have withstood their injury issues well, including losing David Wright for four months with a major back issue. The jolts provided by the July additions of Yoenis Cespedes, Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson via trade and Michael Conforto's promotion from Double-A Binghamton mean the Mets no longer need to rely on Eric Campbell and Danny Muno types as starters. It's scary what the Mets' rotation may look like next season when Zack Wheeler returns in June or July from Tommy John surgery. The one injury that remains an issue is the loss of ex-Nat Jerry Blevins to a re-fractured left forearm, since Eric O'Flaherty has not duplicated Blevins' April success as a lefty specialist. Lefty batters were 0-for-14 against Blevins when he originally fractured the forearm. With Lucas Duda having been activated from the disabled list Monday after dealing with a herniated disk, the Mets are pretty much as healthy as they are going to be entering the postseason. The only issue right now is the strained left calf that reliever Carlos Torres suffered Monday.

Trade Deadline

Rubin: The Amazin's were the big winner at the trade deadline, while the Nats primarily generated dysfunction by adding Jonathan Papelbon and disrupting Drew Storen's success. Cespedes won't win the NL MVP award because he's a rental, but I certainly can see a playoff impact like Carlos Beltran with the 2004 Houston Astros coming. Uribe and Johnson have provided multiple clutch hits already. And where would the Mets be without Clippard, who has provided an invaluable bridge to Familia with Jenrry Mejia serving a suspension and Bobby Parnell mightily struggling in his first season back from Tommy John surgery?

Matz: Contrary to popular opinion, the Nationals made more than one deal at the deadline. Besides getting a premier closer from the Phillies (Papelbon), they also acquired a new setup man from ... the Nationals. In the latter deal, they got fleeced. On paper, bumping incumbent closer Storen down to eighth-inning duty made sense. After all, the Nats had obvious need there and Storen was seemingly overqualified for the gig. But that doesn't factor in the whole chemistry thing: Tuesday's train wreck was final and irrevocable proof that, since being demoted, Storen has been a completely different pitcher. And the Nationals have been a completely different team.

Manager

Matz: Despite coming out of the All-Star break with a chance to align his rotation as he saw fit, Williams somehow allowed the Mets, whom the Nationals faced twice in the first two weeks after the break, to miss Scherzer both times. That didn't work out so hot, as Washington lost four of six games, including a sweep in Queens that was the beginning of all this Mets Madness. In that same series, despite two one-run games and a total margin of victory of five runs, neither setup man Storen nor newly acquired closer Papelbon threw a single pitch. Still, the four-game cushion that the Mets came to D.C. with could easily have been half that if the Nats had held on to two late leads in St. Louis last week. But they didn't, in part because Williams refused to use Papelbon with the game tied, insisting that he wanted to save his closer for end-game duty if the Nats took the lead. Which, um, they didn't. But wait, there's more. On Monday, with two on and two outs in the bottom of the fifth and his team leading 5-4, Williams let Scherzer, who hasn't been himself for a while now and was already at 89 pitches, bat instead of lifting him for a pinch hitter. Said the Nats skipper after the game: "He was our best option for the sixth." Oops. Needless to say, Williams won't be repeating as NL Manager of the Year.

Rubin: Terry Collins may actually unseat Williams as manager of the year, and deservedly so, although there is bound to be support for the Cubs' Joe Maddon and St. Louis' Mike Matheny. Even now, with all the Harvey stuff swirling, Collins has maintained a positive clubhouse environment where players want to be. Wilmer Flores cried when he thought he was getting traded to the Milwaukee Brewers on July 29. Wheeler similarly called GM Sandy Alderson asking to remain. Fans can quibble with Collins' in-game strategy, but he's looking a lot smarter now that he has a full complement of weapons at his disposal.

X Factor

Rubin: It's not like the Mets have extraordinary karma these days with the Harvey innings cap issue still swirling, but at least the players aren't faulting their fans for leaving early (like Bryce Harper on Monday). Mets fans have endured two collapses followed by six straight losing seasons since the last collapse. They deserve the team's first postseason appearance since 2006. They'll get it, too.

Matz: Nationals fans deserved what Harper said Monday. I don't care if the bullpen folded like a penny-pinching newspaper boy in a high-stakes hold'em game. Or that it was 6,000 degrees in the ballpark. The bottom line is that Monday was the biggest game of the year in D.C. (until Tuesday), and yet Nats fans thought nothing of punching out early. Maybe that's because they're finally coming to grips with what everyone else around baseball knows, namely that Wilmer, Inc., is this year's team of destiny. The Nats? They're this year's team of density -- as in the thing that causes stuff to sink.