Back-to-back days, back-to-back game winning home runs for Carlos Santana, and a half game lead in the AL Central for the Indians . . .

Don’t look now, but the Twins’ runaway train has hit an obstruction on the tracks. The obstruction came from Cleveland. Whose Indians have been—unexpectedly but just as profoundly—baseball’s second-hottest team since the All-Star break, just behind the self-resurrected Mets.

The Twins were bludgeoning their way to the American League Central title, no? The Indians were an injury, inconsistency, and sometimes indifference-addled mess who were lucky to be tied with the rebuilding White Sox eleven and a half games out in second in the Central, no?

While baseball world paid closest attention to what looked like the self-imploding Mets turning into a self-resurrecting surprise after the All-Star break, and the Twins and their thumping boppers sending home runs flying at a volume unfathomable by even this season’s supposed Year of the Big Yank, the Indians took more than a little advantage of the chance to sneak back into the thick of things.

So the Mets jerked themselves right back into the National League’s wild card picture? With a chance to make the National League East a race of it again while they’re at it with a three-set in Atlanta starting tonight? Don’t look now, but the Indians jerked themselves right back into the AL Central race.

And, a half game beyond.

That’s the Tribe sitting in first place this morning. They followed a weekend taking three out of four from the Twins by taking advantage of a Twins off day Monday and walking it off against the Red Sox—the defending World Series champions now staggering their way through a season looking more lost as the days go by.

Well, specifically, switch-hitting smasher Carlos Santana walked it off. He led off the bottom of the ninth in Progressive Field Monday night, after Xander Bogaerts tied it at five in the top with an RBI double to blow a save for Indians reliever Brad Hand. Batting lefthanded he saw a 2-2 slider from Red Sox reliever Marcus Walden coming right into his wheel house. And he wheeled his 200th career home run over the center field fence.

That was one day Hand blew a two-run lead in the bottom of the ninth at Target Field. Leaving Santana to bail him out in the top of the tenth. With the bases loaded and nobody out against Twins reliever Taylor Rogers. Rogers fed Santana batting righthanded a 2-1 fastball that didn’t elude the middle of the zone entirely, and Santana sent that one into the left center field bullpen.

On the far, far, far other side of the power coin there were the beyond hapless Orioles. While Santana bombed the Indians to a half game lead over the Twins Monday, the Orioles set the record no team wanted to set, the most home runs surrendered by a team on a season. They had the Yankees to thank for that on Monday, the Yankees—somehow continuing to possess the American League East despite resembling a season-long M*A*S*H post-op population—hitting seven out to make it 248 at the Orioles’ expense this year.

The Indians appreciate what Santana—a prodigal son returning to the Tribe after a 2018 with the Phillies—is doing lately. “Right when you get punched in the stomach he takes a swing like that,” said manager Terry Francona after Santana hammered the Red Sox Monday. “I mean, that was a gorgeous swing. I know the last two days, but he’s been doing it all year.”

They just hope the next time Santana hits one out it won’t be solely to save Hand’s hide after another blown save. Hand hadn’t blown one until 25 June; he’s now blown four including that one.

“You guys know Carlos is a damage guy, a really dangerous guy,” says Indians outfielder Franmil Reyes, who’s been an Indian for two weeks, “and you have to watch out every time he is up there.”

Especially when it’s late in the game this year. Santana’s 26 bombs on the season include twelve putting the Indians into the lead, and five of them have been hit in the seventh or later. That puts Santana second to Reyes’ former San Diego teammate Hunter Renfroe’s six seventh-inning-or-later lead-taking homers this year.

And to think that it was only yesterday (figuratively speaking) when talking about the Indians meant reminding yourself which pitcher(s) occupied the injured list and which bats were missing in action a little too often. Corey Kluber, their ace of the recent past, is due back this month. Carlos Carrasco is still working through his leukemia diagnosis. Hunter Wood left Monday’s game with a calf contusion and is day-to-day. And that’s just a cursory look.

Just as the Indians might have been better than their first half results showed, the Twins may not have been as powerful as their looked. “Finally, some relative normalcy,” wrote The Athletic‘s Grant Brisbee after Sunday’s game. “The Twins aren’t a super team. They’re just a well-constructed group of sluggers and starters who have a chance to make some October noise. If they can ignore those heavy, clomping footsteps coming from behind them and . . . ”

Aren’t a super team? The Twins are 23-23 since they had baseball’s best record and a ten-game AL Central lead on 18 June, and they’re 15-14 since the All-Star break. And, since the trading deadline?

They added nothing big at the deadline but settled for Sam Dyson as a bullpen boost. Dyson got torn for three earned runs each on 1 and 2 August, against the bottom-feeding Marlins and Royals.

They lost two out of three to the Braves before the Indians hit town, and about the only positive the Twins took out of that thumping was manager Rocco Baldelli—who’d looked like a Manager of the Year candidate in his first-ever season commanding from such a bridge—managing somehow not to burn his bullpen in advance of the Indians’ arrival. If you’re a Twins fan and you saw that set as an October preview, it wasn’t exactly encouraging.

But if you’re an Indians fan, you’re sitting with dessert in your mouth practically every day. They didn’t hurt their rotation when they dealt talented but mercurial Trevor Bauer to the Reds in the three-way swap that bagged them Reyes and Yasiel Puig, a pair of fun lovers who are now good for clubhouses regardless of what they do in the field or at the plate. Puig’s hit .333 as an Indian so far with six runs batted in and five scored; Reyes is beginning to find his stroke again.

All-Star sophomore Shane Bieber (a Twins fan of my acquaintance refers to him as “Chained Beaver,” swearing that’s how it sounds when announcers say his name) has been a continuing pleasant surprise with his walks/hits-per-inning-pitched rate under 1.00. Rookie Zach Plesac has been a plain surprise on the mound even if he’s depending a little too much on his defenses. Veteran Mike Clevinger came off the injured list in June and has a 3.13 ERA since.

And Jose Ramirez, the third base mainstay, has shaken off that grotesque first half slump at the plate. He has a .328/.354/.681 slash line in his past thirty games, and when you bring that back to a lineup already featuring Santana, Puig, Reyes, Francisco Lindor, and rookie surprise Oscar Mercado, all you need is for one and all to hit and play the way they’re capable of hitting and playing.

If so, these Indians are no pushovers. And these Twins should have known better than to think they’d turned their division into the proverbial walk in the park.

Who’s going to have it worse over the final 44 games?

With the Brewers and the Red Sox reeling more than a little bit, the Twins have only one bona fide contender to deal with down the stretch, when they have three home dates with the somehow-self-revived Nationals 10-12 September. And those are sandwiched by a pair of three-game sets with the Indians.

The Indians have another pair with the Red Sox starting tonight. But then they get to test themselves with a very long week in New York—against the Yankees and the Mets, one after the other. It’ll be a big test for the Mets, too, depending on whether they can make a solid stand against the Braves this week. If they make it, this coming weekend against the Royals will be target practise. If they don’t, it’ll be time to re-charge.

Like the Mets against the Braves this week, the Indians need to make a solid stand against the Empire Emeritus this weekend. But if the Mets prove they’re still the real second-half deal by the time the Indians visit, the Indians may have a real battle on their hands.

They still have to be careful. For all Santana’s heroics. Kluber has to return to his ace form when he returns. Bieber and Plesac need to be handled adroitly enough not to exhaust themselves down the stretch. Puig and Ramirez can’t afford to be too streaky. And that mostly soft schedule for the Twins could mean the northern thumpers getting their groove back for keeps.

Will it be a treat or a soul sacrifice for Santana and his Indians?

Any resurrected inconsistency on their part and their current overthrow of the Twins will turn into a pleasant memory before its time. But let’s just savour the pleasant part, for now. We’ll know soon enough whether it’s singing winds or crying beasts.

Can you remember the last time the Mets lost a game this year and Mets fans didn’t come away from that loss feeling as though the proverbial roof fell in on both again? Well, perhaps you can. From among several.

Maybe 23 June in Chicago. When beleaguered manager Mickey Callaway let a less than well armed Seth Lugo work a second inning’s relief, which let Javier Baez on 0-2 hit a three-run homer that proved the game loser.

And, when both Callaway and then-Mets pitcher Jason Vargas started a war with a Newsday reporter doing what only every damn reporter in the clubhouse did: ask why Callaway let Lugo go to work for a second inning when he’d been run to back-to-back full counts and needed a double play to bail him out in the first inning’s work.

Maybe 26-27 June. Back-to-back walkoff losses to the Phillies. The first courtesy of erstwhile Met Jay Bruce doubling home the game-winner in the bottom of the tenth; the second, which really hit where it hurt, courtesy of two homers in the bottom of the ninth, including Jean Segura’s three-run winning shot—after the Mets took a lead in the top of the inning with a two-run homer and a run-scoring ground out.

Maybe even 18-21 July, when they could win only one of four against the Giants, and all three losses were walkoffs. And, at those times, the Phillies were still factors in the National League East race while the Giants still looked as though they’d yanked themselves back from the dead and into the NL wild card hunt.

The Giants polished them off after they’d taken two of three from the Marlins and swept a pair from the then-American League Central-leading Twins. But then the Mets got even crazier: they took two of three from the Padres, swept the Pirates and the White Sox back-to-back, took two of three more from the Pirates, swept four from the Marlins.

And everyone wondered whether these resurgent Mets were anything resembling the real deal. If you include the Giants going from a 19-6 July to a 4-7 August that may have sent them back out of the wild card run, the Mets hadn’t really beaten anyone significant until this weekend with the Nationals—holding second place in the NL East and the lead for the first NL wild card—coming to town.

Then the crazy Mets got downright insane. They beat the Nats at the last minute or next to last minute Friday and Saturday nights. Losing Sunday, leaving the Mets 21-7 in the second half so far and still baseball’s hottest team, didn’t send Mets fans looking to stick their heads into the nearest oven.

Maybe the most disheartened among either the Mets or the much-put-upon faithful was first baseman Pete Alonso, their Rookie of the Year candidate. “If I make that play,” he said after the 7-4 loss, “we’re probably still playing baseball. Tough pill to swallow.”

“That play” was on a bases-loaded, two-out grounder to first by former Met Asdrubal Cabrera, whose bases-loaded two-run double in the seventh broke a three-all tie and proved the game winner, in the top of the first. Instead of the third out it meant three unearned runs. And it wasn’t exactly Alonso’s entire fault.

He made a sharp snag of Cabrera’s sharp enough grounder. He threw to Mets starting pitcher Jacob deGrom running over to cover. Inexplicably, deGrom hesitated a step. By the time he reached the pad the ball flew just past his outstretched glove. Alonso was charged with a throwing error but the charge probably should have gone to deGrom for that inexplicable hesitation.

Then it went from crazy to rubber room time. As two Nats scored on the error, deGrom ran the ball down in foul ground toward the Mets’ on-deck circle. With Juan Soto trying to score a third unearned run, deGrom threw home and Soto was a dead duck. Except that Mets catcher Wilson Ramos dropped the ball as he was turning to tag Soto, who should have been out by two and a half feet on the play.

Instead, the game opened with the Mets in a 3-0 hole. DeGrom steadied from there, keeping the Nats scoreless, though the Nats did their best to keep running up his pitch count to get him out after five innings. But a 6-1 homestand including two of three from the almost-equally-resurgent Nats—like the Mets all but left for dead in May and June—is nothing to mourn.

Especially when your next opponent will be the Braves, in their playpen, starting Tuesday night, after a weekend in which they split a four-game set with the Marlins. Leaving the NL East leaders a mere 16-13 in the second half so far and 6-5 for August.

The Braves’ newly retooled bullpen isn’t as sharp as advertised. Shane Greene has gone from lights out in Detroit to lights flickering with the Braves. Mark Melancon had four consecutive solid assignments as a new Brave until Saturday night.

Handed a four-run lead to protect in the ninth, Melancon opened with a strikeout before surrendering four straight Marlins singles including one with the bases loaded. Snitker lifted Melancon and brought in Greene, and Greene promptly surrendered another RBI single and a two-run double, sending the game to extra innings. Where Sean Newcomb surrendered a game-losing sacrifice fly.

And on Sunday, a 5-4 win to gain the series split still felt almost like a loss. Neither team scored since the bottom of the sixth, but in the ninth Luke Jackson, the Atlanta reliever whose name lately strikes fear into the hearts of his own team’s fans, performed a perfect impression of postseason Craig Kimbrel: single (and the fortune of throwing out Isan Diaz trying to stretch), ground out, single, deep infield single, and a long fly out.

Why must they always do it the hard way now? you could hear the Tomahawk Choppers moan.

The Mets don’t exactly have a steady bullpen themselves, of course. They may even have to throw in the towel at last and do something drastic with Edwin Diaz. His early season misusage has led to confusion between his ears and command issues on the mound. After he surrendered Victor Robles’s two-out two-run homer in the top of the eighth Sunday, he retired the side, but back in the dugout he looked as though he’d been told of a death in the family before he got there.

It may turn out to be his. Jim Bouton once described players being sent down to the minors as deaths in the family. (“I died tonight,” he wrote in Ball Four, after the Seattle Pilots sent him down to their Vancouver farm for a spell.) With Lugo now the arguable best reliever on staff, and likely to claim a formal closing job, the Mets may consider sending Diaz to AAA Syracuse to help him right himself.

On the threshold of meeting the Braves, the Mets can’t afford to wait for Diaz to regain his once-formidable command. And this week’s set with the Braves, even more than the weekend with the Nats, will show what the Mets are really made of. Especially, whether their young turks and the now-best rotation in the league, if not the game, can keep overcoming the dead weight of too many of their veterans.

But it may be a set in which the Braves have to prove once and for all what they’re really made of, too. Especially if it turns out to be a contest of whose bullpen is going to play with more matches.

The good news for the Braves: they don’t have to worry about facing deGrom or Noah Syndergaard this week. The good news for the Mets: They can still throw Zack Wheeler, Steven Matz, and then Marcus Stroman—coming off a splendid showdown against Stephen Strasburg Friday night—at the Braves, who counter with, in order, Max Fried, Dallas Keuchel, and Julio Teheran.

Fried has a winning record but he’s prone to inconsistencies now and then. Keuchel isn’t the pitcher he used to be anymore even if he eats innings and provides a veteran steadiness to the Braves’ staff; more and more, his Cy Young Award winning season resembles a fluke. Teheran’s faced the Mets three times this year with mixed results: one earned run surrendered 14 April, six surrendered 18 June, two surrendered 29 June—the third when he threw 50 pitches in three and a third before rain delayed the game an hour and ten minutes.

Wheeler’s gone from trade deadline speculation subject to something resembling his better self since. Matz has begun trusting his breaking, off-speed stuff a lot more and become a formidable foe once again. And Stroman, thought an inexplicable trade deadline period acquisition, is now invaluable to the Mets.

After this set, the Mets get one of their absolute few breathers the rest of the way when they spent next weekend in Kansas City. The Braves have the Dodgers to deal with next weekend. The Mets still want to prove they’re for real. The Braves still want to prove they’re the same team who had the kind of lights-out June that the Mets have had since the All-Star break.

Neither will be confirmed without a good, solid battle. And to think that, before the Nats hit New York for the weekend now done, Alonso thought, “We are now in crunch time.” He ain’t seen nothing yet.

Getting what they needed from Stephen Strasburg Friday night wasn’t enough for the Nationals in the end.

The Friday night loss by itself had a deep enough sting. Nationals manager Dave Martinez, without meaning to, delivered a deeper one to Nats fans post mortem. A sting that carried the venom of Nats collapses past.

Apparently, Martinez was asked the near-inevitable question—why did he stick with Sean Doolittle, after the third of three consecutive bottom of the ninth-opening Mets was a three-run homer re-tying the game at six each, courtesy of Mets third baseman Todd Frazier?

“He’s our closer; that’s what he does,” the manager said. “It was unfortunate, but come tomorrow, I’ll see how he feels, and he’ll be right back out there.”

Be a little afraid, Nats Nation.

Be a little afraid when the Nats—whose bullpen most of the year rivaled the Mets’ for arson charges—reshuffled the pen, added three new pieces at the trade deadline, then had none of them on standby at the first sign of trouble Friday night.

They got what they needed from Stephen Strasburg: seven strong enough innings, including three perfect to open, with Strasburg becoming the franchise’s career strikeout leader while he was at it. And it went for nothing in the end.

Be a little afraid with Doolittle once again at the mercy of the Mets, during a season in which Doolittle entered Friday night’s game having surrendered as many earned runs to the Mets (nine) as he’d surrendered to all his other opponents.

Be a little afraid when one of the Nats’ new bullpen toys, Roenis Elias, turned up with a hamstring tweak just over a week after they’d added him. And, after fellow new toy Daniel Hudson kept the Mets from mischief in the eighth, the third new bullpen toy, Hunter Strickland, wasn’t even a topic.

Be a little afraid when the only Nat bull on standby in the ninth was ancient lefthander Fernando Rodney, who’d actually been pitching well since 25 July, when he blew a save into a loss to the Rockies, going from there to work five games without surrendering a single run, earned or otherwise.

As a matter of fact, since becoming a Nat in early June, after the Athletics released him with a ghastly 9.42 ERA and 5.58 fielding-independent pitching rate, Rodney’s been as close to lights out as at any previous time in his long career: as a Nat, he has a 2.87 ERA and a 3.15 FIP.

But Doolittle is the official closer. And even though the Mets have rather bullied him all year long, Martinez wasn’t going to take his job away after re-claiming a three-run lead in the top of the ninth. Especially after the way they did it, catching Mets reliever Luis Avilan and catcher (and ex-Nat) Wilson Ramos half asleep on a wild pitch when they might have had a shot at bagging Trea Turner shooting home from third.

At that point the Mets looked as though they were going to waste a mostly brilliant start from their new toy Marcus Stroman in his Citi Field debut plus that staggering three-run-deficit closure in the fourth, off Strasburg, after Strasburg manhandled them perfectly through the first three.

So, after Hudson bridged from Strasburg effectively enough, shaking off a one-out double, Doolittle went to work in the bottom of the ninth. And J.D. Davis sent a 1-1 pitch to the back of left field for an opening double, right before their old buddy Ramos shot an 0-1 service like an arrow up the pipe for a single with Davis gunning it to third.

Up came Frazier, the Mets’ elder third baseman. Doolittle started him up and in with a four-seamer. Then, Frazier swung and missed on a four-seamer tailing away from the zone. Then, Doolittle missed high. Then, Doolittle threw something right down the pipe. And Frazier sent it sailing just fair past the left field foul pole and into the second deck.

Coming back from one three-run deficit is enough of a challenge. The Mets just did it twice in the same game, and the second threatened to send the game to extra innings. And Rodney, who’d been loosening up since the bottom of the eighth, still stood in the bullpen, waiting. For the call that never came.

The newest Met, Joe Panik, stepped up. He’d been signed earlier Friday, a few days after the Giants finally parted ways with their veteran second baseman, and after space-choking veteran second baseman Robinson Cano—who’d begun to hit of late but was still a slowed-down liability at second—went down for the count and maybe the season with a torn hamstring.

Wasn’t it true, Don Vito Corleone mused in The Godfather, the novel, that great misfortune sometimes led to unforeseen reward?

Panik isn’t much of a hitter anymore (his 2014-2015 seasons seem like flukes now) but he can still play second base with aplomb and smarts when he’s healthy. And the Mets now have enough hitting otherwise to be able to afford a guy who fits the mold of the old classic good field/barely hit middle infielder.

Now, Panik singled up the middle only to be thrown out on a followup bunt by Juan Lagares off left of the plate. Anthony Rendon, the Nats’ virtuoso third baseman and free agent-to-be, hustled in from third, speared the dead fish and, with Doolittle bending over in front of him, fired a perfect strike to Turner over from shortstop.

Then Jeff McNeil flied out to short right field. Yep. Going to go to extra innings, it looks like. Amed Rosario poked a base hit into left to set up first and second, and up came Michael Conforto, the Mets’ right fielder, a lefthanded swinger with formidable enough power but a sometimes maddening inconsistency at the plate.

Conforto was 1-for-4 on the night and had made the second out of the fourth before Pete Alonso and Davis cleared the fences back-to-back to tie things at three. Now, Doolittle fell behind 2-0 immediately. Conforto fouled off a pair immediately after that.

Time to start deciding who’s going to handle the extras out of both bullpens. The Mets hadn’t yet gone to either Seth Lugo, arguably their best relief pitcher of late; or, closer Edwin Diaz, whose talent couldn’t keep him from becoming an inconsistent mess much of the season, often through usage not entirely of his own making.

And for the Nats Rodney was warm and prepared, just in case. Except that, if the Nats got out of the ninth still alive and didn’t get to pry something out of either Lugo or Diaz in the top of the tenth, Alonso—the Rookie of the Year candidate, whose fourth-inning two-run blast sailed right over the heads of the Mets’ broadcast team stationed just behind the left field fence—would be the first Met to hit in the bottom.

Just in case never came. Doolittle tried coming inside, and Conforto drilled it on a high line just past Nats right fielder Adam Eaton and off the fence to send Lagares home. It took Doolittle only 26 pitches, getting only two swinging misses, to blow up a certain 6-3 win. When the Mets got aggressive Doolittle had no viable answer.

“I don’t have a lot of answers right now,” said Doolittle, the lefthander who has one of the most accommodating personalities in the game today, and who’s unapologetic about riding the “let the kids play”/”make baseball fun again” train. “I’m kind of searching, going over the inning in my head.”

The Mets were so jazzed by that second comeback and win that Stroman popped into the dugout from the clubhouse in nothing but his boxers and Conforto didn’t make it far past first before he was stripped of his jersey and given the Gatorade bucket ice shower topless.

“I absolutely love the way the guys played,” said Martinez to the Washington Post after the game. He had reason enough to love it. “We did everything right until the ninth inning. Just got to keep pounding. Like I told them before, ‘Hey, we come back tomorrow, we got 1-0, and move on’. ”

But he’s not dealing with pushovers in New York anymore. And the Mets’ post All-Star performance now has them nipping close to the second National League wild card. The Nats are a game and a half ahead of the pack for the first card; the Mets are only a game and a half back of them. This weekend is as close to D-Day as both teams can get so far.

If the Nats want to live through this weekend—especially with Noah Syndergaard looming Saturday against Patrick Corbin, Jacob deGrom against Anibal Sanchez Sunday, and these Mets in no mood to roll over and play dead the way they were once supposed to do—Martinez had better come up with a better bullpen plan.

Martinez needs Corbin and Sanchez to pin the Mets’ ears back if that can be done against these suddenly rampaging, suddenly rapacious, suddenly relentless Mets. If they could say thanks large, bud, to Strasburg for three perfect innings with a couple of game-tying, back-to-back bombs off him in the fourth, maybe no Nats starter is entirely safe.

Maybe not even Max Scherzer if he was healthy. And he isn’t. Scherzer cancelled a planned Friday bullpen session as a precaution while he continues trying to recover from back trouble that culminated in a rhomboid strain. A Strasburg conquest Friday night would have gone long to inflate the Nats’ New York morale.

Now even Corbin goes to work Saturday with the proverbial hand tied behind his back. And Corbin’s history against the Mets isn’t that encouraging, either: they’ve beaten him five times while he’s beaten them twice with five no-decisions and a 4.58 ERA against them in twelve lifetime starts.

Corbin and Sanchez might find ways to throttle the Mets, but there’s almost no way Martinez can keep running Doolittle out to face a team that treats him like a burglar caught dead to right trying to lift the jewels and the cash out of the safe.

The Mets have treated Strickland over his career like almost as much of a pinata as they have Doolittle this year. Strickland’s been battered for a .343 lifetime average against him by the Mets. Elias’s hamstring tweak came at a deadlier time than the Nats could have imagined. Rodney’s jacket against the Mets is only slightly more encouraging—they’ve only hit .259 against him for his career. Except that he hasn’t faced them since 2017. And those Mets aren’t these Mets. Not even close.

Both teams’ revivals removed their formerly embattled managers’ necks from the guillotine braces. But Friday night Martinez looked like the guy who was one tick from the blade dropping and Mets manager Mickey Callaway was made to look like the smart guy, if not necessarily a heretofore-undetected genius.

The Nats’ bullpen has been an improved product since May, but they’re not completely resurrected just yet, and they still have their vulnerabilities. The Mets bullpen, formerly virtuosi at incinerating games the Mets either led or looked like they’d have a clean shot at winning, has suddenly quit playing with matches most of the time. Most.

They said coming into the set that the Mets and us were about to find out what they’re  really made of, after they reheated to nuclear level after the All-Star break, mostly against the bottom crawlers. But it’s not unfair to say that the Nats and us may be about to find out what they’re really made of, too.