The First Place New York Mets (11-4) entered Saturday with more wins and less sleep than anyone in the majors. Their +31 run differential trailed only the Dodgers’ +37. They’ve won at home and on the road and against good teams expected to make the playoffs. Through 15 games, there is practically nothing more the Mets could do to prove to the world that they are, in fact, a pretty good team.

But these are the First Place New York Mets we’re talking about, and understandably, there are some trust issues surrounding the question of whether or not they will remain the First Place New York Mets when the wins are counted up. Last season, they held that pole position through more than 100 days before limping to the finish line as the Third Place New York Mets. Plus, it’s April. Three players entered Saturday with a batting average of .400 or higher. As a rule, try not to trust anything you see on a baseball field before the window AC units are installed.

But if we were going to grasp for signs to hope during the Small Sample Theater months, Friday night’s gasping, 10-inning 6-5 win over the Diamondbacks would be a sensible place to start. After all, the Mets had a miserable run in one-run games down the stretch last season, going 2-15 in them at one point and 31-35 overall. The team did its share of losing in two-, three-, four- and 10-run games over that same stretch as well, so it wasn’t a total aberration, but a 2-15 record in one-run games, which tend to be more random than usual, is unthinkably bad luck by any definition.

So it was nice to see the Mets acquit themselves well on Friday night, bringing their record in such games to 2-2 this season. Performance in these games tends to be random from year to year, making them one of the main ways for a team to out-perform (or underperform) its overall talent level. Since the Mets are, indeed, a pretty good team, finding a way not to leak wins in the close games is one way to avoid another late-season tumble down the standings.

But while one-run games have received a lot of attention around this team, mainly due to that unthinkably bad run last year, they’re also a bit of a red herring for team performance. The Mets went on that terrible run last year, but still finished with the exact same record as their Pythagorean expectation: 77-85.

Which brings us back to that +31 run differential.

If a team’s record in one-run games is only the bit of luck that takes it above or below expectation, then the run differential is what sets that expectation. Right now, the Mets are right where they’re supposed to be, according to the aggregate and reliable ol’ Pythagoras: 11-4. If the Mets continue to play at anything approaching their current run of form, it would take nothing short of a calamity in the close games for them to collapse.

Then again, it’s only April. And as we’ve already seen, the First Place New York Mets are capable of just about anything.

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