If the Mets have had a better-timed three-game win streak in the last 10 years than the one they enjoyed over the weekend, I can’t recall it. Nor can I recall at any time the Mets looking so unconvincing while winning three games, which they needed to win very badly. The Mets will kill you. This weekend, they tried.

Since the team’s latest collapse against the Phillies, the biggest issue hasn’t really been Willie Randolph, the bullpen, Omar Minaya, bad fortune, or anything else. Really, it’s been that this isn’t an exceptionally likable team. What’s frustrating is that they certainly aren’t unlikable, either. The young players are lively, enthusiastic, and preternaturally aware. The gray veterans are stoic and respectable, and play well in the clutch. Everyone works hard, plays in pain, and plays to win. There’s nothing to dislike about them at all — which is probably why the apathetic feelings of the fans festered through most of the year, and were only expressed after the team just plain died for a solid week.

Mets fans are accustomed to cheering on teams worth cheering. When the Mets have been lousy, they’ve aroused everything from outright moral disdain (as they did in Vince Coleman’s day) to fatalistic hopelessness (as they did in the Todd Zeile years). When they’ve been good, though, they’ve been worth loving. Since 1969, all winning Mets teams have been impossibly interesting, filled with phenoms, swashbucklers, maniacs, pseudo-intellectuals, buffoons, and dandies, all somehow playing above their talent. These teams had great moments, and even the bad ones were part of their mystique and essential rightness. Benny Agbayani giving a live ball to a kid in the stands after forgetting how many outs there were; Todd Hundley cringing in horror as fly balls rained down on him in left field, and Kenny Rogers walking in the winning run against the Braves are all part of the story of a great team, one that didn’t have to win it all to win the adulation of the faithful.

This year’s Mets aren’t that kind of team. They seem less than the sum of their parts, and even when they win, sometimes it’s like they’re going down without fighting. Every lead they take just makes you wonder how they’re going to blow it, and they always do. Yesterday, for instance, with the Mets down by one, Randolph brought in Guillermo Mota, who these days is giving up more than a run per batter faced. He managed to not give up a run, and in the Mets’ next turn at bat, they managed to score four, with Carlos Delgado getting a much-needed big hit. Since Mota had managed not to blow things, it was clear someone else would, and of course he did: Aaron Heilman walked the first two batters he faced and hit another while giving up two. Then, Billy Wagner surrendered a home run to the first batter he saw.

A team that wins after playing like this has not so much won as not lost. The Mets did the same on Friday, when they scored eight unearned runs in a game they won by three. Every good moment seems a bit tainted. Yesterday, David Wright scored a game-tying run, speared an eighth-inning line drive to get out of a jam before Heilman imploded, and drove in the game-winning run to cap a series in which he’d gone 9-for-18. All of this, though, just made up for Thursday’s game, in which he inexplicably threw away a routine grounder that should have ended the game, which the Mets went on to lose. Saturday’s win, behind a brilliant Oliver Perez start, was a great one. But then the Mets went out the next day and blew up once again.

What matters, though, is that the Mets win, and not just in the sense that an ugly win counts as much as an elegant one. Fans (and sportswriters) can’t expect a team to win on style points every time out just because they’re good. And a team doesn’t have to be especially admirable just because they’re good. Not every team needs some involved narrative or cast of colorful characters; not every team needs to reel off a series of dramatic and improbable successes, and not every team needs to have a singular identity. Teams can just be teams.

It’s been a long time since the Mets won a World Series. Babies born the day Bill Buckner booted the famous ball are just a month away from legal drinking age. Ever since then, every Mets team has been under enormous and increasing pressure. Years of frustration are starting to weigh on the fans. Still, it’s almost as if everyone has forgotten the team’s whole history. Every time they fall apart, they somehow come back stronger. Wright throws away a ball to blow a game. Then he goes out, and for three days proves that he deserves the MVP award. It’s a perfect Mets story. One more win, and they just might get to be likable again.

tmarchman@nysun.com