PORT ST. LUCIE — So much of spring training is a con job.
The weather is generally beautiful in Florida and Arizona. Everyone has shown up in — let’s say it all together — the best shape of their lives. All the injured guys are way ahead of schedule to full health. The pitchers are all perfecting a new pitch, the hitters are all removing the defect from their swings. No team has a loss. All possibilities lay ahead.
This is the recipe for hope and optimism. If not now, when?
The aura is so strong that you can talk yourself into Jason Bay bouncing back or that Jon Rauch and Frank Francisco can handle the final six outs of a game or that Ike Davis is just one more tinker away from being a persistent power hitter.
This is the baseball equivalent of being talked into buying the Brooklyn Bridge or believing the final couple on “The Bachelor” will live happily ever. This has pretty much been what the Mets offered up in Sandy Alderson’s first four years running baseball operations — a cocktail of what-ifs that began an inevitable fade come the harsh realities of April and May and …
That was then, this is now.
So much of recent Mets springs have involved the desperate — and futile — search to concoct reasons the Mets could be good. Now, we are looking for the opposite — reasons they might be bad. You know why? Because they are good.
It might be difficult to see the backhand compliment in that. But, trust me, it is there. For a lot of the past 20 years I showed up at Yankees camp trying to figure out a way they wouldn’t win 95 games. Because they were probably going to win 95 games.
“Inevitably you have to decide if the glass is half full or half empty,” Alderson said. “And if you believe it is more than half full, then you put more concentration into what would make it evaporate.”
What would make it go away? We can always be surprised. There was a general consensus that, for example, the Red Sox were going to be good last year and they finished last. Still, for this version of the Mets to go rotten would seemingly take several dramatic underperformances and/or more than the normal injury/attrition rate.
They have the majors’ best rotation. They have a deep lineup. They have a strong bench. Terry Collins admitted some concern about how to get the ball from starters to his closer, Jeurys Familia, but if you are worrying about your seventh-inning reliever, it is a sign you have far less to fret about than most.
David WrightAnthony J. Causi“There are proven guys all around the room,” David Wright said. “But I still don’t feel like we have completely earned that [no-doubt-they-are-good status] yet. That is what we are aiming for, not just to have this be one year, but to be like the Cardinals where it is every year, to bring that consistency. But, yes, the potential is in this room.”
The feeling is infectious, transfused to a fan base. The Mets sold out their spring home opener last year. But that was mainly about having Matt Harvey back on the mound after Tommy John surgery. It was about hope and optimism tied into one player and what he could mean.
This year just about every seat at Tradition Field was filled well before the home opener Friday. There was buzz and adrenaline and, yes, some of that is tied to one person again — Yoenis Cespedes. The cheers for him were loudest, even when he was simply returning to the dugout following a pre-game stretch.
But his re-signing felt like the cherry on top of what already was a contender, something that as a clarion call that now is the time, that the Mets were finally different. It was the transaction of a team going for it, not a team assembling an unlikely equation of what-ifs and hopes and best scenarios.
“The Cespedes move was so huge for us,” Collins said. “We don’t have to say, ‘if he hits homers and drives in runs.’ He does hit homers and drive in runs every year. He will take the weight off of someone like [Lucas] Duda, and suddenly you could see the middle of our lineup becoming something special.”
Collins, in fact, pointed out that he does not yet know who will hit seventh and eighth. In years past, that would be about considering unattractive candidates. Now, it may turn out to be Travis d’Arnaud and Neil Walker. It is about good options. It is not about a con job, the fake-out optimism that can come with spring.
The Mets are good enough now that we are looking for what could go wrong.
