3 bad NY Mets streaks that failed to destroy the team

The 1973 New York Mets were hard to believe in, but you had to in the end

What fan doesn’t know that the Mets made it to the post season with only 82 wins in 1973? And the whole “Ya Gotta Believe” mantra came about because the Mets WERE so far behind, buried in last place in August. So that means, just considering it mathematically, that the Mets HAD to have had one or two or three bad streaks during the course of the season…at least into August, right?

The Mets still had a good number of the core from the ’69 team but injuries took a lot of the key players out of action, basically repeating what occurred in 1972. When you have a starting rotation that includes Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Jon Matlack, it’s hard to imagine that you could have a team with a losing record. But they did.

The Mets limped out to a 12-8 record for the month of April. But it all fell apart after that. One by one players went down. The month of May started with a five-game losing streak and it just got worse from there. After losing 8 of 10 games, the Mets found themselves at 23-29, six games under .500 on June 11. After another horrific streak of losing 10 of 13, they were at 31-39, eight games under .500. But still not at their bottom point.

After losing 7 of 8 at the beginning of July, they were 12 games under .500 at 34-46. Another four-game losing streak would push them further to 13 games under .500 by July 31 with a record of 44-57.

On August 17, they would again be at their low point of the season, 13 games under .500 at 53-66. And that’s when the Mets began to make their move.

They would go 9-5 the rest of the way in August and then 20-8 the rest of the way to eke out the Eastern Division title. How many teams could have as many bad streaks as the Mets did in 1973 and still make their way to the World Series?