Since MLB switched to the format of two Wild Card teams per league after the 2011 season, only one Wild Card team has won the World Series: the Giants in '14. So in seven years, only one team has gone all the way. For all the metrics attached to the probability of one of the teams in the Wild Card race achieving that feat this year, and with the odds changing for those teams each time they win or lose a couple games, the ’14 Giants are it. They’re the wish on which at least some of the contenders still build a dream.

Even the Wild Card contenders admit that it’s a pretty crazy dream, as close as the American League Wild Card-winning Yankees were to making it to the Fall Classic just two years ago. Put Mike Hazen, who runs the D-backs, at the top of the list of skeptics.

"The belief that a .500 team is going to win the World Series, get through the Wild Card format that we have and win the World Series is, I don’t think objectively ... a position we should be staking ourselves to," Hazen said not long ago.

Hazen is probably right. And speaking of teams on the bubble, I think the Mets were correct to not give up on their season. Entering Saturday's play, New York (53-56) was five games back of the second National League Wild Card spot with four teams between them and the Cubs and Nationals.

Here is why the Mets made the right call, even though they were supposed to trade either Noah Syndergaard or Zack Wheeler or both, and they were rumored to trade closer Edwin Díaz.

Three years ago, and deeper into the season than they are right now, the Mets were 60-62 in August and as much an afterthought in the NL Wild Card conversation as they are now. It was Aug. 19, to be exact. They were looking at a 40-game season from there, and they were 5 1/2 games out of an NL Wild Card spot at that time.

“We still have potential to do great things,” Curtis Granderson said at the time.

Granderson turned out to be right. The Mets went 27-13 down the stretch to earn themselves a Wild Card Game at home against Madison Bumgarner and the Giants at Citi Field. It was Bumgarner vs. Syndergaard that night, it was a scoreless tie going into the 9th, and it was a great baseball night until Conor Gillaspie hit a three-run homer off closer Jeurys Familia. All the life went out of the ballpark and the Mets' season.

It was worth it for the Mets to have made it that far, just one year after they had reached the World Series against the Royals. Mets fans know what it was like in that 40-game season that year, watching their team make its run. If they weren’t out of it then, why should they have become sellers and declared their season over now? Why should they turn themselves into a New York City version of the Royals, Tigers, Blue Jays or Orioles?

Instead of trading away starting pitching, the Mets traded for a starter in Marcus Stroman. Despite the disappointment of Diaz, who saved 57 games for the Mariners last season, they decided to hold on to the 25-year-old closer who still has a live arm and, by the way, is under their control next season. So is Stroman. So is Syndergaard. Does this mean the Mets weren’t considering moving one of their young starters? Of course not. If they had been bowled over with an offer, maybe they would have moved even a big, young arm like the one Syndergaard has, but they weren’t. Thor didn’t want to leave New York, and he didn't.

Over the final two months of the season -- and even knowing the Mets play the Braves twice and the Nats, Cubs and Phillies once each in August after a series against the Marlins next week -- New York will make whatever kind of run it can, and this time, with one of the best starting rotations in baseball.

Or the Mets will be out of it for good by Labor Day.

You know what team wishes it had a rotation as talented and deep? The Yankees. The Mets know that they can go into 2020 with all five of their current starters (if they make a qualifying offer to Wheeler this offseason). And they have a right to want to take their chances in '20 with that rotation and Jeff McNeil, Michael Conforto, Pete Alonso and even Dominic Smith, who is out until September, at the top of their batting order.

Everyone knows you can acquire great young talent at the Trade Deadline -- the Braves got John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander in 1987. A few years ago, the Yankees got Gleyber Torres from the Cubs. They also got Clint Frazier from the Indians. Frazier was going to be a star the way Torres has become a star. You heard that in the summer of 2016. In the summer of ’19, Frazier -- despite good numbers this season with the Yankees -- is in the Minors and the Yanks would have traded him with both hands to get a starting pitcher.

A lot has gone wrong for the Mets this season. Jed Lowrie hasn’t played a game. They gave up plenty to get Robinson Canó and Diaz. Now Cano is batting .242 and Diaz has blown five saves. They could have given up, period, but they didn’t, and that's good -- even five games out of an NL Wild Card spot, with four teams ahead of them, and sitting three games under .500.