It was less than a week ago that Andy Martino of the Daily News opened his game story about the latest Mets loss with the now infamous "Blah blah blah blah rain blah blah blah Niese."
The futility of the team was such a given that Martino didn't even need to explain it because everyone understood just how little hope existed at Citi Field.
We're leery of talking about resurrections so close to Easter, but it feels like the best word for what's gone on in Queens over the last four days.
The Mets have reeled off four straight wins, culminating in Sunday's 8-4 thrashing of the helpless Diamondbacks. As with everything else in baseball, it starts with pitching and the Mets have finally seen their starters pile up outs faster than the other team scores runs.
They've averaged seven innings per start over the last six games, posted an ERA of 2.63 and they picked up wins in each of the last four contests. With Dillon Gee winning again on Saturday and Jonathon Niese finally looking good on Sunday, the Mets actually find themselves with one starter too many at the present.
It wasn't just the pitching that turned around, however. David Wright followed up his brutal 0-for-19 stretch by going 6-for-14 in the last four games.
Wright hit two home runs on Sunday and had another one on Thursday to do his best to give further lie to the notion that the Mets need to move in the fences at Citi Field to help his statistics look better. Marty Noble of MLB.com polished off that old chestnut last week and he should probably be wondering just what he did to tick off the baseball gods because they spent the weekend making him look like a dope.
The Mets homered three times Sunday, including one by the absurdly powerless Jason Pridie, and they went deep nine times during the last four games. Citi Field is yielding the third most home runs per game of any park in the National League so even if right field is a tough place to hit it out, it seems big league hitters can make do.
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Four games do not a season make, but they can do a fine job of reminding everyone that 18 games don't make one either. The Mets aren't as bad as they looked this time last week and they probably aren't as good as they looked this weekend.
The remaining 140 games will tell us where they fall on the spectrum and it is quite nice to actually find ourselves looking forward to them again.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
