What We Learned Through a Quarter of the M.L.B. Season

There is not any query that this season will go down in historical past because the one through which the pitch clock modified baseball. Whether additionally it is the season that saved baseball is simply too quickly to inform, however the pitch clock’s impact is actual: With round 1 / 4 of the season full, the common sport is 27 minutes shorter than it was final season and the share of video games lasting longer than 3 hours half-hour has fallen off a cliff, to 0.4 p.c, after having been increased than 10 p.c in 5 of the earlier six seasons.

But whereas everybody has been specializing in how shortly issues are shifting, there have been another notable developments.

Here is what we’ve discovered:

• The very costly Mets are in a large gap. It is comprehensible for Mets followers to be pissed off. The workforce made headlines within the low season with a Steven A. Cohen-powered spending spree that gave the franchise the very best payroll in main league historical past. Yet the Mets entered Monday’s motion at 20-21, in a tie with the Miami Marlins for third place within the National League East. Injuries have been an element, however you might argue that the workforce performed above its head final 12 months and didn’t enhance regardless of all that spending — it simply obtained costlier.

  The good news? Three wild playing cards in every league imply the Mets had been solely a half-game out of qualifying for postseason play. If Justin Verlander is full pace forward and Max Scherzer has regained his stride after a suspension and an damage, the Mets might simply get a kind of three spots — placing them in roughly the identical place they had been in final 12 months when every part went proper.