Justice: Perseverance key to Mets’ season

The New York Mets are the most dangerous kind of postseason team. Sure, the regular season has been a crazy ride. At this point, that’s irrelevant. Besides, is there anything these playoffs can throw at the Mets that they haven’t already overcome?

That’s what the Mets celebrated on Saturday afternoon with a 5-3 victory over the Phillies. They did more than simply clinch a berth in Wednesday’s National League Wild Card Game at Citi Field. They left every team in every sport with a blueprint for handling tough times.

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You just keep going. That sounds a lot simpler than it is. Even when David Wright and Matt Harvey go down. Even when Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz and Neil Walker join them.

The Mets kept plugging replacements into their lineup, and pretty soon they started figuring out ways to win games. Rookies saved the starting rotation. Veterans transformed the bullpen.

And the offense ended up better and deeper than almost any in the game. Here’s the really interesting part of this whole thing: The Mets have been baseball’s best team for the past five weeks (27-12), and they are playing their best baseball at the most important time of the year.

The Mets’ 3.40 staff ERA during this stretch run has been the best in the Majors. Offensively, they have averaged 5.4 runs per game over the past nearly quarter of the season. Only the Braves have scored more runs in this time frame.

So who knows how long this thing will last? There’s the NL Wild Card Game to play against either San Francisco or St. Louis, and then possibly a Division Series matchup with …

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