The Mets scored five runs in the first inning Tuesday night against the White Sox, after scoring just 26 runs in their first 93 first innings this season.
You may believe that was just a statistical anomaly, especially on a night when 12 major league teams, including the Chisox, scored double-digit runs, the first time that’s happened since 1894.
Or you may believe in something else.
Like men who own golden touches.
“Had to get the Mets on the winning track,” came a tweet not long after that inning was done. “Brought the Johnnies out in Full Force — the Storm hit to start the game — 5-0 after the first inning! LGM!”
Under the text was a picture of the new-look St. John’s men’s basketball team, all gathered in a suite behind home plate at Citi Field.
The text was authored, of course, by St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino.
Apparently, all he needs to do is merely show up and lay hands on a struggling team.
Maybe Billy Eppler should take notes.
Or simply beware.
(We will ignore the fact that Pitino is a lifelong Yankees fan. He works in Queens now, after all. The man can read a room.)
Consider this all emblematic.
In his day job, Pitino has in three short months overhauled the St. John’s roster, importing 13 new players to build around one incumbent star, Joel Soriano.
Player No. 13 signed up Wednesday afternoon in the person of Chris Ledlum, a 6-foot-6 native of Brooklyn who starred at Harvard last year and was a prized graduate transfer target who initially picked Tennessee over St. John’s and Indiana.
But Ledlum changed his mind last week.
And on Wednesday he officially changed his colors from orange to red, and filled a need for the Red Storm at power forward, lengthening the roster and adding one more building block toward what will almost certainly be St. John’s first preseason Top 25 slot since 1999.
“He’s too big and strong to put a small guy on, too fast to put a big guy on,” an Ivy League coach told The Post’s Zach Braziller. “He rebounds everything, he’s aggressive, he’s tough.
“He finished second in scoring and first in rebounding in the Ivy League, and every team’s game plan was to stop Chris Ledlum.”
The Big East had already been put on notice by Pitino’s methodical disassembling and reassembling of the roster. This was an extra warning flare.
“Here’s what’s scary,” one coach who has known Pitino for close to 40 years told me yesterday. “You look at what he’s already done, OK? And he hasn’t even had a chance to coach these guys yet. And that’s what he does better than anyone.”
It is remarkable that Pitino, who will turn 71 in September, has so quickly adapted to the new normal of college basketball, which is this: Teams are built year-to-year now, sometimes month-to-month.
Plenty of coaches of Pitino’s generation spend a lot of time griping about the way things are and pining for how they once were.
Pitino just went to work and built himself a brand-new team, in about 15 minutes.
Yes, they have yet to play a game and are still 2 ½ months away from even practicing together.
There are lots of moving parts that will need to be coached up.
But as the man said: “That’s what he does better than anyone.”
Hell, if he can fix the Mets’ offense just by buying a ticket …