Benjamin Grimm

I noticed that Wilmer Flores has been batting 8th in the lineup lately, and I wondered if by doing so he had set a club record. Had any Mets manager ever previously penciled a player into the 8th lineup position who had, going into the game, as many as 16 home runs? The answer is yes. The record is actually 18. Which prompts this quiz. I'm going to list each lineup slot, and the number of home runs that represents the most, at the start of the game, that any Mets player has had who batted in that position. (I hope I'm explaining this well.) Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to guess which player holds each of the nine records and in which year the record was set. (There are a couple of ties, which I'll indicate.) Here's a hint: One player holds the highest home run total for three of the nine positions, and all three records were set in the same season. I'll let everyone post their guesses for the next 24 hours and I'll post the answers around this time (4:30 p.m.) tomorrow. 1. (29 home runs) 2. (36 home runs) 3. (41 home runs) 4. (41 home runs) 5. (37 home runs, 2 players) 6. (34 home runs) 7. (36 home runs) 8. (18 home runs, 2 players) 9. (11 home runs)

I don't know, but I love how he predicted that Daniel Murphy would run off and marry Ruben Tejada! If he knew then what we know now...

Voting for Tuesday night's amazin' win in Washington will close on Friday morning some time after 10 a.m. Is it possible that only four people care to cast votes for this game? Schaefer POTG 9/8/15 - Mets 8, Nationals 7

Count me as a fan of Wilmer too. Going into this season I was worried that he was going to be booed, the scapegoat for another disappointing season. Thankfully, no part of that scenario has come to pass. I hope Wilmer sticks around for a long while.

Thor (and d'Arnaud) tie back to Dickey. Speaking of Dickey, here's a Throwback Thursday thread: The Dickey-to-Toronto Trade

Good point. I forgot about that.

Milwaukee and Cincinnati had previously been eliminated, and Colorado is on the brink.

I would like to see Conforto get starts against lefties, at least occasionally.

Yeah, if Cespedes vanishes they'll need to import a bopper. Conforto playing regularly will, I think, offset some of the loss of Cespedes, but I still think they'll need to bring someone in. And trading Matt Harvey may be the way to do it.

For the past couple of weeks I've been looking ahead to the morning of September 10, using this date as a touchstone that would allow us to contemplate the task ahead once the three-game series in Washington was behind us. The verdict: things look awfully good right now. My unofficial (and fairly modest) goal for the Mets is to get the magic number reduced to 13 or less by the end of Sunday's action. Baseball Prospectus update: The Mets odds to win the National League East are now at 97.6%. Odds for the wild card are 0.0%, but the Mets overall playoff odds, which is usually the sum of the two, is at 97.7%. (This is, I'm sure, due to rounding.) World Championship odds for division leaders: Dodgers 18.5% Blue Jays 16.2% Astros 14.4% Mets 10.3% Royals 9.4% Cardinals 8.8% NL East Tragic Numbers: [crossout]Phillies[/crossout], Braves 1, Marlins 4, Nationals 17. The Mets, by the way, are guaranteed to wake up in first place on Thursday, September 17. Upcoming schedule for Mets and Nationals: MetsNationalsSeptember 10At AtlantaSeptember 11At AtlantaAt MiamiSeptember 12At AtlantaAt MiamiSeptember 13At AtlantaAt MiamiSeptember 14MiamiAt PhiladelphiaSeptember 15MiamiAt PhiladelphiaSeptember 16MiamiAt PhiladelphiaSeptember 17MiamiSeptember 18New York (AL)MiamiSeptember 19New York (AL)MiamiSeptember 20New York (AL)MiamiSeptember 21AtlantaBaltimoreSeptember 22AtlantaBaltimoreSeptember 23AtlantaBaltimoreSeptember 24At CincinnatiSeptember 25At CincinnatiPhiladelphiaSeptember 26At CincinnatiPhiladelphiaSeptember 27At CincinnatiPhiladelphiaSeptember 28CincinnatiSeptember 29At PhiladelphiaAt AtlantaSeptember 30At PhiladelphiaAt AtlantaOctober 1At PhiladelphiaAt AtlantaOctober 2WashingtonAt MetsOctober 3WashingtonAt MetsOctober 4WashingtonAt Mets

"I'll have some! A nice cold glass eliminate!"

He totally should have done that.

I vote to rest d'Arnaud, Granderson, and Wright.

Strasburg was really looking incredible for the bulk of the game, but I was keeping an eye on his pitch count. It remained fairly low for a while (I can't find an inning-by-inning breakdown) but it eventually creeped up to the 100-pitch mark. I was hoping it would get to 100 before the 8th inning so that we'd see the Washington bullpen all the earlier. That didn't quite happen, but the end result was what I was looking for/hoping for. I was just about certain that Cespedes would hit a home run. I haven't had that feeling about a Mets player, I don't think, since Darryl Strawberry during some of his hotter streaks.

Cespedes 2 Conforto 0.75 d'Arnaud 1.25 deGrom 3.6 Duda 0.75 Familia 0.4 Johnson 1.25

"Kill Kill Kill" is the official CPF catchphrase of 2015. Maybe we can get all of those stupid Tom Koehler jerseys that seawolf ordered converted into Kill Kill Kill shirts.

Frayed Knot wrote: 7 game lead. If we can maintain this and whittle the games down to say around 17 or so then I'll start to feel safe. I see what you did there!

Things were starting to look a little dicey a few days ago. The Mets had lost two of three in Miami as the Braves were sweeping a four games series against Atlanta. As this series in DC was about to start, the Mets were 4 games ahead of the Nationals and, by today, could have had their lead shrunk to a single game. But that didn't happen. At all! With the conclusion of this invigorating sweep of the Nationals on their turf, the lead has grown to a season-high 7 games, the magic number has dropped to 17, and the NHOP, which was at .442 at the conclusion of Sunday's action, has quickly plummeted to .370. DateMets RecordNationals RecordMets LeadMagic NumberGames RemainingNHOPAugust 356-5054-501571140.500August 457-5055-501561120.500August 558-5055-512541100.491August 658-5056-511.5541090.495August 759-5056-522.5521070.486August 859-5157-521.5521050.495August 959-5257-531.5511030.495August 1060-5258-531.5501010.495August 1161-5258-542.548990.485August 1262-5258-553.546970.474August 1363-5258-564.544950.463August 1463-5358-574.543930.462August 1563-5458-584.542910.462August 1663-5558-594.541890.461August 1763-5558-594.541890.461August 1864-5559-594.540870.460August 1964-5660-593.540850.471August 2064-5660-60439840.464August 2165-5660-61537820.451August 2266-5661-61536800.450August 2367-5662-61535780.449August 2468-5662-615.534770.442August 2569-5663-615.533750.440August 2670-5663-626.531730.425August 2771-5664-626.530710.423August 2871-5764-636.529690.420August 2971-5865-635.529670.433August 3072-5866-635.528650.431August 3173-5866-646.526630.413September 173-5966-656.525610.410September 274-5967-656.524590.407September 374-5968-65624580.414September 474-6069-65524560.429September 575-6070-65523540.426September 675-6171-65423520.442September 776-6171-66521500.420September 877-6171-67619480.396September 978-6171-68717460.370

Killed Killed Killed!

That was a good run to tack on. Fasten your seatbelts!

Leadoff double for Duda. Advanced to third on grounder.