Meet these Mets: Baseball's biggest surprise lurking in 2018

Bob Nightengale | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption NL East preview: World Series or bust for Nats in 2018? SportsPulse: As Bryce Harper enters a contract year, the Nationals realize it's possibly now or never for a World Series run.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. - No one is talking about them this year.

They are nonchalantly being dismissed before the season even starts.

No one in the free world is giving them a prayer of winning the division title.

When you lose 92 games, finish a humbling 27 games out of first place and are not even mentioned in the same breath as the championship-ready juggernaut above you, it's easy to go unnoticed.

But the New York Mets are poised to spring baseball’s biggest surprise in 2018.

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They’re not publicly predicting it themselves, believing it may sound foolish considering how badly they stunk a year ago, but, oh, it’s going to happen.

Clip and save: The Mets are going to the playoffs in October.

They are going to give the heavily favored Washington Nationals fits. They may not win the NL East, but they’ll certainly grab one of the two wild-card spots, seizing advantage of being in a division where only they and the Nationals managed a winning season in the past four eyars.

In baseball's tanking-est division, the Mets have 54 games against the Miami Marlins, Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies. It may be grossly unfair to the rest of the contenders in the NL, who get to play those same teams only half as many times, but, hey, the Mets will take it.

“It’s great for us,’’ Mets third baseman Todd Frazier said, “but it’s not great for the game, to be frank with you. You want to be playing against the best.’’

It was just three years ago when the Mets were the best in the National League, winning the pennant before falling in five games to the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. Two years ago, Madison Bumgarner never let them up for air in the wild-card game. Now, they are back.

“People forget that just a couple of years ago we were going to the World Series with basically the starting pitching we have this year,’’ says Mets captain David Wright, who’s trying to beat the odds, make a comeback and contribute off the bench with his degenerative back condition. “If our guys are healthy, and get 25 to 30 starts out of them, I’ll put them up against anybody in the game.

“It’s pretty scary to think that if these guys are healthy what they can do. I’ll go 1 through five 5, or 1 through 8, with any team in baseball.

“Anyone.’’

Just in case you forgot, those starters are Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, Jason Vargas, Zach Wheeler, Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo.

They also have a deep bullpen led by Jeurys Familia, A.J. Ramos, Anthony Swarzak and Jerry Blevins.

There are former All-Stars lurking everywhere, from Frazier to likely first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, and outfielders Yoenis Cespedes, Michael Conforto and Jay Bruce.

“We understand the Nationals are probably the team to beat,’’ says Bruce, who returned after signing a three-year, $39 million contract. “But I like what we got going. I mean, you look at a guy like Adrian Gonzalez. People have kind of forgotten about him. This guy is a superstar when he’s healthy.

“If we can stay healthy, we got a damn good chance to beat anybody.’’

Ah, yes, the health.

The Mets had 18 players go on the DL last season. They had only one starter, deGrom, make more than 30 starts. Just one other, Gsellman, made more than 20 starts. The talented quartet of Syndergaard, Harvey, Matz and Wheeler combined for a 11-23 record and 5.67 ERA in just 276 innings.

Syndergaard, who looked like he was on his way to stardom when he went 14-9 with a 2.60 ERA in 2016, striking out 218 in 183 2/3 innings, came into camp looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger, trying to throw 200 mph. He looked good walking around shirtless, but was a flop with a uniform on, lasting just 30 1/3 innings.

So, what does he do in his first spring training start? He throws 100 mph in his first four pitches, hitting triple digits in 11 of his first 22 pitches, and then conducts his postgame interview shirtless.

San Francisco Giants veteran pitcher Jeff Samardzija, when told of Syndergaard’s debut, couldn’t believe he would want to come out red-lining his velocity, but then again, “He’s had a lot of rest. He’ll throw 200 innings one day.’’

Samardzija says he’s not throwing shade on Syndergaard, but merely pointing out that to be truly successful, you’ve got to stay healthy, and have a manager that permits you to pitch deep into games.

The point is valid, and the Mets completely revamped the way they do business. They hired a new manager in former Cleveland pitching coach Mickey Callaway, and a new pitching coach too in Dave Eiland from the Kansas City Royals. They overhauled their training staff. They hired a director of performance and sports science. They expanded their analytics staff.

“Everybody has injuries, I get it,’’ Mets GM Sandy Alderson says, “but not to the degree we had injuries last year. Now, it doesn’t mean that everybody else performed well and we only won 70 games because we had injuries. But at the same time, what I was looking for was the opportunity to see what these guys could do when healthy, as opposed to giving up on them and letting someone else find out.’’

This is why the Mets not only kept all of their pitchers, but signed Vargas to a two-year, $15 million contract, Frazier to a two-year, $17 million deal, and grabbed Gonzalez with the Atlanta Braves paying all but $545,000 of his $21.5 million contract.

Vargas, who led the American League with 18 victories last season with the Royals, adds valuable depth. Frazier gives them their first everyday third baseman since 2014 when Wright was last healthy. And Gonzalez, a five-time All-Star who averaged 24 homers and 99 RBI during a four-year stretch before last year’s injury-plagued season, supplies them with left-handed power.

“If I wouldn’t have had an opportunity with a team like this, and to a place that didn’t have this kind of talent,’’ Gonzalez says, “I would have gone back to the Dodgers.

“I just want to win.

“And I know we can win.’’

Right now - when people least expect it.

“I don’t think that success or failure is simply a mathematical equation,’’ Alderson said. “I never felt that from the time I was in the Marine Corps. You talk about professional sports and money and celebrity, but ultimately if you don’t really care about that guy next to you in the clubhouse, you’re probably as a team not going to be successful.

“Look, the Nationals have a good team and I’d expect them to be favored, but we beat them in ‘15 with a similar cast of characters.

“We can do it again.’’

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the surprise team in baseball: the New York Mets.

“All I know is that if we have everybody healthy, we’re going to be fine," says infielder Jose Reyes. "We’re going to be dangerous.

“We’ll be talking in October, you and me, just how we did it.’’

Come along for the ride. The bandwagon has plenty of open seating.

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