OK, so it’s easy to go back and pick on some anonymous MLB scout now, with the Mets a game above .500, playing like offensive juggernauts, appearing extremely unlikely to wind up the worst team in baseball history. Tweets like this one and columns like this one were commonplace in April when the Mets looked terrible, and they seem awfully silly now that the Mets look decent.

But then that’s kind of the thing. The Mets looked horrible early in the season and they’ve looked downright amazing the last three games. In reality they’re something in between the two, and it’s kind of a scout’s job to recognize a team’s true ability. I imagine the conversation referenced above was a somewhat sarcastic one, and I hope if pressed any paid Major League scout would know better than to think a club that then had David Wright, Jose Reyes, Ike Davis and Carlos Beltran in its lineup was not, in fact, the worst ever. If he legitimately believed that, he should carefully consider a new field.

It’s a good lesson regardless. Eyeballs and small samples can deceive everyone — myself certainly included — and it’s easy to get caught up in thinking whatever we’ve seen happening over a handful or even a month’s worth of games represents something certainly meaningful, choosing to ignore the evidence we have that contradicts our conclusions.

I can point out right now that the Mets are 35-26 since their 5-13 start, and I suppose if I wanted I could chalk up those early-season struggles to a bad bullpen and a new manager and a variety of factors that all for some reason stopped weighing on the team on April 20. And if I run wild with it, I can say that if the Mets play just a couple games better than this new, post-April 20 clip for the rest of the season, well, hell, that’d be good enough to have them in the hunt for 90 wins and a playoff spot even despite the miserable start.

I hope that’s the case, because I’m a Mets fan. But that pesky 5-13 thing, that happened too. A lot of the faces have changed since then, but not all for the better. Some guys have played over their heads, some guys have underperformed. We have to look at the largest possible sample, and that shows a 40-39 team. That’s not the most thrilling or groundbreaking conclusion, I realize. But hey, at least they’re not the worst team ever.