Benjamin Grimm wrote: The Mets only have to go 6 and 11 (a .353 pace) to clinch a playoff spot. They should probably, however, aspire to do a bit better than that. For their psyche (and mine) as much as anything else, especially so after leading the division for 120 of the last 121 days (or whatever it is). As far as I'm concerned, if a team makes the 'post-season' as a WC then immediately gets bounced in the 1st round then they've only "sort of" made the playoffs and in this era of an ever expanding field this only becomes more true. So, yeah, the only 'Magic Number' I care about here is the one that gets us ahead of the Braves. Braves are back home starting tonight following their lengthy west coast swing and the entire remainder of their schedule is against teams in the NL East: PHI x 3; WSH x 3; @PHI x 4; @WSH x 3; NYM x 3; @MIA x 3 Probably not smart to count on a lot of help from the Nats or Fish. The Braves & Phils have so far split their first 12 meetings which is semi- encouraging as most of those games came after June 1 when los Bravos got hot.