A friend emailed me today and one of the things he asked me was if I thought the Mets would end up still winning the division. So now I’m going to blog my answer: My gut says they will still win the East for three reasons:

1. They are way, way better than this and I can’t believe they’ll continue to play this poorly for too much longer.

2. They are playing bad teams down the stretch.

3. They still have a 2.5-game lead with 13 games to go (the Phillies have 12 left). Certainly that sounds bad in the sense that the lead was seven games just a few days ago. But still, even if the Mets go something like 7-6 in the final 13 games — which isn’t great — will the Phillies be good enough to go 9-3 and tie them, or 10-2 and beat them? Maybe, but I’m not sure about that. Remember, Philly isn’t that good either.