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The New York Mets never did get their dream rotation together last year, but it's worth remembering their season ended because they couldn't score a run.

The Mets will go to spring training hopeful that dream rotation has recovered from various surgeries and hopeful they will be able to score a few runs in 2017.

As easy as it is to say the health of their starting pitchers is the biggest key for the Mets—four of their five young aces are still on their way back from one surgery or another—they can't win if their offense doesn't take a big step forward.

It's amazing they even made the playoffs in 2016, when they scored the fifth-fewest runs (671) in the major leagues. No other team in the bottom 10 in runs scored made it, and just one of the other 10 (the New York Yankees) finished with more wins than losses.

The Mets' pitching was good enough, even with Matt Harvey limited to 17 mostly ineffective starts, Zack Wheeler unable to return from Tommy John surgery, and Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz shut down to deal with elbow issues.

The offense wasn't good enough, even with Yoenis Cespedes putting up an MVP-type season and Asdrubal Cabrera and Neil Walker contributing impressively.

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The rotation could be great in 2017—if everyone comes back as expected. The Mets let Bartolo Colon leave as a free agent, but last season's injuries helped them discover depth they weren't sure they had in Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo. With even a little bit of luck, they should be fine.

But what about the offense? Will this team have enough of it to win as big as the potentially brilliant rotation says it should?

It's the same question that's been asked about the Mets since deGrom showed up to join Harvey and Wheeler in the rotation in 2014, with Matz and Noah Syndergaard arriving the next year. This was a group that could win, win big and win for a while, and it was up to the Mets to take advantage of having what other teams didn't.

It's not fair yet to say they haven't taken advantage. The Mets went to the World Series in 2015, and they made it back to the postseason in 2016 despite a run of injuries that probably should have wiped them out. There's no shame in losing to Madison Bumgarner in October, even though it's true the Mets never did score a run in that 3-0 National League Wild Card Game loss to the San Francisco Giants.

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The only problem is it's another year gone by, another year closer to the time when this special rotation will inevitably break up. Harvey will be a free agent after 2018, and few expect him to stay in Queens.

The Mets control the others for longer, but the super-talented and super-cheap rotation will quickly get more expensive. DeGrom's salary zoomed from $607,000 in 2016 to $4.05 million in 2017, his first year of arbitration eligibility.

The Mets paid their four-man World Series rotation just a little more than $2 million combined in 2015. Those same four pitchers will cost more than $10 million this year and even more in 2018, when Syndergaard becomes arbitration-eligible for the first time.

The time is now, with now defined as more than just this season but not too far into the future.

The Mets obviously understand. It's why they agreed to pay Cespedes $110 million for four years, knowing he was almost irreplaceable in the middle of their lineup. It's why they traded for Cespedes in July 2015, why they followed that up by trading for Jay Bruce last summer and why you can already pencil them in as buyers on this July's trading market.

The lineup still isn't good enough. Not unless David Wright makes a miracle recovery from the back and neck injuries that destroyed his last two seasons. Not unless Michael Conforto and Travis d'Arnaud rebound from last year's drop-offs. Not unless Walker and Lucas Duda's back issues were temporary.

The pieces don't entirely fit, either, which is why the Mets have spent much of the winter trying to trade Bruce. They have too many corner outfielders and could use an upgrade in center field.

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The Mets have some reason to hope last year's run drought won't repeat, even though the lineup they'll take into 2017 doesn't include a single addition to the group that struggled in 2016. Better health would help, but better clutch hitting would be just as significant. The Mets were last in baseball with their .225 average with runners in scoring position last year.

Was that real or just a one-year blip?

Curtis Granderson hit just .152 with runners in scoring position in 2016 (in 105 at-bats, second on the team behind Cespedes). Granderson was a .297 hitter with runners in scoring position just a year earlier. D'Arnaud slumped from .277 to .127 with runners in scoring position.

James Loney, an injury fill-in for Duda (and a .200 hitter with runners in scoring position), had too many at-bats in the middle of the lineup.

It can all change quickly, as the Mets know better than most. They were 28th in baseball in runs scored at the 2015 All-Star break. They picked up Cespedes at the July 31 trade deadline and finished third in the majors in runs in the season's second half.

They haven't added a Cespedes this winter, but at least they didn't lose him.

They didn't lose any of that young pitching, either, and the winter gave them time to heal. The rotation could be one of baseball's best again in 2017.

It's up to the Mets to find the offense to turn that into a championship.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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