Mets September Preview: Many ways the Mets can spoil the pennant race

Now that the New York Mets are turning the page towards the future with the callups of Ronny Mauricio and Brett Baty, let us look at what the expectations should be for this team as the season enters its final stanza, the month of September. It will be a month where the Mets finally have their highly anticipated quartet of top prospects from the start of the season together in Flushing.

The Mets have plenty of chances to play spoiler down the stretch as their final 20 games of the season are against teams in the National League Wild Card hunt. But first, the Mets can make a possible impact on the American League West race.

The New York Mets open their September slate when they host the first-place Seattle Mariners for a three-game series before a five game road trip after Labor Day with visits to Washington and Minnesota.

No team in the American League has been better since the All-Star break than the Mariners, who have won 31 of 44 games since the intermission. They have pitched at a high level with Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, and Luis Castillo (the three starters the Mets are likely to see this weekend), and have hit a lot of home runs, particularly from Julio Rodriguez and Cal Raleigh.

The story with the Mets will be the presumptive debut of Ronny Mauricio, the No. 90 overall prospect on MLB Pipeline’s chart, who be challenged early on because of the pure strength of that Seattle rotation.

The Mets play a quick two-game set with the Nationals on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, and the Nationals have been very good since the All-Star break, going 26-1x in the second half, thanks to grinding out at-bats and putting the ball in play, as they are one of the toughest teams to strike out in the league.

Keibert Ruiz is finally showing why the Nationals raved about him after going to the Nats in the Max Scherzer-Trea Turner trade two years ago, and Joey Meneses is having a second half reminiscent of that of last year.

The Nats’ pitching, in comparison, has not been so great, and both of the starters the Mets may see next week, Patrick Corbin and Joan Adon, have ERA’s around 5 in the second half.

The Mets will visit Minnesota to play the Twins from September 8-10, a team in first place in the AL Central, and it’ll be their first encounter with Carlos Correa since he became known as the free agent signing that never was for the Mets as the Mets flagged concerns with his ankle in physicals. However, Correa has batted .222 and has struggled to live up to the contract he signed with the Twins.

But for Correa, no worries right now about his poor performance. And that’s because the Twins are hitting home runs (9 players with 10 home runs or more) and they're striking out their opposition (27.1 percent strikeout rate is the highest in baseball).

The New York Mets then return home to play the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Cincinnati Reds from September 11-17, with both of those teams looking for a Wild Card berth.

The Diamondbacks and Reds have been two of the surprise teams this season, and this is the first chance the Mets can play spoiler. Both teams, however, have been inconsistent over the past two months, and are vulnerable in different ways.

With the Diamondbacks, the Mets saw first-hand, as the Mets swept them in Arizona in July, which featured a dramatic comeback win with the team down to their last strike. The pitching has been problematic aside from their two aces, Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, and both are currently lined up to pitch in that four-game series.

Where Arizona succeeds is their offense, and they have four hitters with 20 or more home runs entering September, in Christian Walker, Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, and Lourdes Gurriel. This series will also feature the return of Tommy Pham, who overperformed in his four months in Flushing and netted the Mets a prospect at the trade deadline.

The Reds visit Citi Field from September 17, and their renaissance this year has been something, as it is one of the feel-good stories in baseball. The amount of young talent that they’ve been able to call up this season is something we haven’t seen from one team in a season in years, but no prospect has shined brighter at the plate, on the basepaths, and in the field than shortstop Elly De La Cruz. This infusion of young talent has led to people believing the future is very bright in the Queen City.

But they have been decimated with injuries on their pitching front for a couple of months now, and they failed to equip their pitching staff with enough arms at the trade deadline. They are currently on the outside looking in when it comes to the playoffs, and the Mets could take advantage of their lack of arms.