As the Mets took batting practice recently, a man named Jonathan Fader walked over to the cage, chatted with a few players and found a spot behind the batter, an area typically reserved for team dignitaries — veterans, coaches, executives and owners.

The Mets had just endured an emotionally draining loss to the Yankees, and if anyone wanted to talk, Fader was there to listen. He is the Mets’ team psychologist.

“He’s a resource,” said John Ricco, the assistant general manager. “You make that resource available to the players the same way you make a pitching coach and hitting coach available. So if they need help in a certain area, there’s a guy there that can help them.”

Sports psychology is hardly a new field, and teams in many sports retain psychologists to work with their athletes. But these are the Mets, in the psychotherapy capital of the world, a team whose players are not exactly experienced in the type of setting they now find themselves — division winners headed to the playoffs. They have, after all, made the postseason just eight times in their 54-year existence, they have not won the World Series since 1986, and their lineup is built on a young core that has never gone beyond the regular season.