KANSAS CITY, Mo. — You are a Mets fan, so you are suffering from the small-sample-size blues right now.
This is not something you are used to. You are used to being the King of Opening Day. You are used to being 1-0. The Mets have won 35 of the 55 openers they have ever played. Even with Sunday’s 4-3 loss to the Royals, the Mets are 35-12 on Opening Day going back to 1970.
So it takes some getting used to. There are plenty of items in your small-sample-size anxiety closet right now. You are wondering if the captain is cooked for good after watching David Wright flail at a few balls at the plate and lob a few more in the field. You are wondering what galaxy Yoenis Cespedes resides in when a fly ball is heading in his direction (actually, that problem is becoming a little bigger than small sample size …).
Matt Harvey, he didn’t exactly channel Sidd Finch on Sunday night.
So, yes, you can wallow in the SSS Blues, you can fret about what’s to come based on 8½ innings and the unfamiliar terrain of an 0-1 start to your season. So many .000 batting averages to worry about (and, in Cespedes’ case, a rare .000 fielding percentage). And there’s the small matter of old friend Daniel Murphy on pace for 162 home runs in Washington.
Or you can go the other way entirely, embrace the wonders of SSS instead of the woes, and if that’s the case, there’s simply no telling how high the ceiling of a certain Michael Conforto can be. He is, after all, hitting 1.000 after Opening Day, and that’s also his on-base percentage, and a quick check with Elias tells us that would be a record if he keeps that up. The 2.500 OPS isn’t so shabby, either.
“We know this kid can hit,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “He’s hit at every level he’s been at. He’ll hit at this level, too.”
Of all the things that transformed the Mets from break-even to bust-out across the final two months of 2016, nothing charmed Mets fans more than the promotion of Conforto.
Cespedes captured their imagination plenty during his raging-hot phase in September, when he carried the Mets on his back. The trade-deadline additions of Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson were greeted warmly. And, of course, the way the team as a whole performed is what truly energized the franchise and its fan base.
Still, nothing is quite as intriguing as a young player on the come, especially a young hitter. When the Mets were scuffling during May and June last year, there were a lot of people turning their lonely eyes to Binghamton, where Conforto was hitting line drives all across the Eastern League.
The team seemed firm in its desire to keep him in the minors — and then it wasn’t. Then Conforto was a Met.
He had a fine 56-game run with the Mets, hitting .270 with nine homers and 26 RBIs, mostly against right-handed pitching. He scuffled in the first two rounds of the playoffs but rebounded to hit .313 in the World Series, including a pair of home runs in Game 4 on Halloween night.
Because he was a rookie, with a clean slate (as opposed to Michael Cuddyer, in whom the fans generally had lost faith), there arose a loud desire among Mets fans to let the kid loose even against lefties — this despite his struggles against them (three singles and a walk in 15 plate appearances).
“I completely understood why I didn’t play much against lefties,” Conforto said during spring training. “I know they were looking out for me, trying to put me in situations where I could do my best. But I also know that I’m going to have to learn how to do that if I want to be an everyday player in the big leagues, which I do.”
Conforto will take his gaudy numbers into Tuesday’s second game of the regular season and will be in the lineup against Chris Young, against whom he hit one of those Game 4 home runs.
He will do so as one of the few Mets for whom SSS is a blessing right now. (The other is The Perfect Met, Jerry Blevins, who in two years has yet to allow a man to reach … although that encompasses only 18 hitters. Still, he hasn’t surrendered a base runner in 557 days.) Hey, ride the hot hand while you can, right?
