The Mets were 40-50 at the All-Star break and closer to last place in the National League East than first. They were six games ahead of the last-place Marlins at that point in the season. They were 13 1/2 games behind the first-place Braves. Through Thursday night’s rain-shortened 2-0 win over the Indians, which completed a three-game sweep and extended their latest winning streak to five games, the Mets had the best record in baseball since the break, 27-10. Every year there are a handful of teams who remind us how long the baseball season really is. The Mets aren’t just reminding us of that right now. Aren’t just telling us. The Mets are shouting at us.

Here is what Jeff Wilpon, the team’s chief operating officer, said about his team on Thursday:

“The baseball season is always a marathon. Guys have gone down, other guys have stepped up, but this is the kind of team we thought we had coming out of Spring Training. We’ve given ourselves a chance and stayed true to our plan -- to set ourselves up to win now and in the future. We got to five games over .500. Now we want to see if we can get to 10, and take our chances in September.”

Wilpon is the one who had the most to do with hiring Brodie Van Wagenen, formerly a CAA agent, to be his team’s general manager. It is not the first time a professional sports team has done this. Bob Myers, the general manager of the Golden State Warriors, is a former agent. So is Rob Pelinka, the general manager of the Lakers. The jury is still very much out on Pelinka. Not on Myers. The Warriors won three titles on his watch and who knows what would have happened this year if Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson hadn’t both suffered catastrophic injuries -- Achilles for Durant, ACL for Thompson -- in the NBA Finals against the Raptors.

Wilpon took a very big swing with Van Wagenen when he replaced Sandy Alderson, the GM who had the Mets in the World Series four years ago. Then Van Wagenen took a big swing himself, trading for Robinson Cano, who missed half of last season because of a drug suspension, and Edwin Diaz, who had 57 saves for the Mariners last season. And when the Mets were 10 games under at the All-Star break and Cano hadn’t hit and Diaz looked like he’d forgotten how to close a game, the trade looked like as much of a disaster as the Mets did at that point.

Van Wagenen famously told everybody, “Come and get us” at the press conference where they announced the signing of Jed Lowrie. Then in July, when it was looking like another lost season for the Mets, Van Wagenen ruefully admitted, “They came and got us.”

Then Van Wagenen threw everybody a much better breaking ball than Diaz had been throwing:

He didn’t give up on his team.

Van Wagenen didn’t give up on his season, he wasn’t the seller at the July 31 Trade Deadline that everybody demanded he be. He didn’t trade Noah Syndergaard. He didn’t trade Zack Wheeler. Instead, he traded for Marcus Stroman. He stayed true to his messaging and Wilpon's. He believed the Mets could do something now and in the future. And suddenly, the Mets began to make the same kind of run they did three years ago, when they were 60-62 and finished 27-13 and got themselves into the 2016 National League Wild Card Game against Madison Bumgarner and the Giants. It was only one night of October baseball. The Mets ended up losing when Conor Gillaspie hit a three-run homer off Jeurys Familia in the top of the ninth. It was still some night. Ask anybody who was there whether the Wild Card run was worth it.

Are the Mets going to make it this time? Who knows? The Wild Card race in the National League right now looks as crowded as a Queens-bound 7 train on a big baseball night at Citi Field. But six weeks ago, there wasn’t a Mets season. Now there is. Diaz still hasn’t come close to being the pitcher he was in Seattle. Cano tore his left hamstring at the beginning of August -- at a time when he had started to get hot -- and may play again this season, but is hardly a sure thing to do that.

But Van Wagenen also deserves a world of credit for making the January trade with the Astros that brought J.D. Davis, who has hit like a star this summer, to the Mets for three Minor Leaguers: Ross Adolph, Luis Santana, Scott Manea. And after all the talk early in Spring Training, even when Pete Alonso was trying to hit balls out of the state of Florida, that Alonso might start the season late so the Mets could keep control of him for an extra year down the road, Van Wagenen wasn’t having any of that. At the time he described the prospect of Alonso not just making the Opening Day roster but staying in the big leagues once he did as “a high-class problem.” Indeed. Now Alonso has hit more home runs than any National League rookie ever has and been one of the most valuable players in the sport.

Alonso got hot again after the break. So did Davis. So did the kid shortstop, Amed Rosario. The starting pitchers began to pitch the way everybody thought they would all along. The Mets are making their run.

“This isn’t about us not giving up on this team,” Wilpon said. “Our players didn’t give up on themselves.”

Meet the Mets. Sprinting at the end of a marathon.