Mets are done, so Sandy must make over this mess

THIS WAS in spring training, before the sky fell on the 2017 Mets, and I was working on a story about how Sandy Alderson had built what looked like a sustainable winning ballclub.

I asked assistant GM J.P. Ricciardi, a former GM himself, what makes Alderson a good baseball executive. He rattled off several qualities, from his ex-Marine toughness to his high intellect to his willingness to consider the opinions of others in the organization, and then there was this:

“The thing that always stands out to me,’’ Ricciardi said, “is that when the (bleep) hits the fan, he never panics. He has an ability to see through all the BS. So when all hell is breaking loose, as it can in New York, to me that’s when he’s at his best.”

If that’s true, and Mets fans can only hope it is, Alderson better be at his best beginning right now, because indeed all hell has broken loose on his best laid plans, and there is no quick fix that can save the season.

Instead he has to commit to being a seller — there’s not even room for debate on that anymore. All the potential free agents should be up for grabs, most notably Jay Bruce, Lucas Duda, Addison Reed, Neil Walker, and Curtis Granderson.

None of them are going to bring back a haul, but if nothing else the Mets need to deepen a farm system that is thin at the top levels. So Alderson needs to at least acquire a few prospects and then get creative in re-shaping his team for the future.

For not only has the ballyhooed starting pitching failed to live up to expectations, it has been embarrassingly bad at times, especially in serving up home-run derby gopher balls to the Dodgers on Monday and Tuesday nights.

And that’s really the root of problem for Alderson: after building a team around power arms whose high strikeout totals were expected to diminish the Mets’ obvious defensive flaws, he has to change course now and look toward next year and beyond with a different mindset.

Namely, get more athletic and better defensively, especially up the middle, from catcher to middle infield to center field, without sacrificing too much offense.

No easy task, obviously, for a team light on top prospects.

At least Amed Rosario will fill the bill at shortstop, whenever Alderson finally decides to call up his blue-chipper. Of course, it’s not such an urgent matter as it was even a week ago, when there was still hope the Mets could gain ground against the Nationals and keep hope alive.

No, reality has set in now, after the Nats flaunted their superiority at Citi Field over the weekend, and the Dodgers took it a step farther in the first two games in L.A., pummeling the Mets by a combined scored of 22-6 in what amounted to a celebration of their young talent, primarily Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger.

So there can be no pretending the Mets are still in any type of race. At a season-worst eight games under .500 as of Wednesday, they were 11½ games behind the Nationals and 12½ games out of the wild-card race, with five teams between them and the second wild-card spot.

In short, there is no season-saving run coming. Even with Steven Matz and Seth Lugo adding depth to the starting rotation, the pitching isn’t nearly good enough to put together the type of long winning streak needed at this point just to get into semi-contention.

Zack Wheeler, who looked like he had hit the Tommy John wall, went on the 10-day DL Wednesday with biceps tendinitis, and Robert Gsellman’s inconsistency raises questions about how much the Mets can count on him for the future.

Matz has to prove he can stay healthy for more than a month or two at a time, and though Lugo has been a godsend, as a 34th round draft choice, for an organization thin on pitching prospects, he’s probably not more than a back-ofthe-rotation starter.

And who knows about Matt Harvey, other than he’ll be pitching for the Mets in his walk year in 2018 because he’ll have no trade value this winter.

That leaves Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, whose torn lat muscle shouldn’t have lasting ramifications, as the only sure-thing studs for the immediate future.

As such, the hope for an all-time great starting rotation, which everyone from John Smoltz to Pedro Martinez predicted for the Mets, almost surely isn’t coming to fruition.

And there appears to be no Next Big Thing on the horizon.

Thomas Szapucki, who scouts regard as the Mets’ best pitching prospect, is in low Class-A, meaning at least a couple of years away, and Justin Dunn, last year’s firstround draft pick out of Boston College, is pitching to a 1.570 WHIP in Class A St. Lucie.

All of which reinforces the need for Alderson to make some deals in the coming weeks and push the reset button. In Bruce, Duda, Reed, Walker, and Granderson, the Mets will have some $64 million coming off the payroll, and Alderson will have to figure out how to spend wisely, as Rosario and first baseman Dom Smith are the only sure things coming out of the minors, if indeed Smith qualifies as such: with only seven home runs in 72 games in the hitters’ paradise-Pacific Coast League, he hasn’t proven he can hit for power yet. s for free-agent signings and off-season trades, there will be plenty of time down the road for that. After all, it’s only June, which is really the point here.

Somehow a win-now season has turned into a lost cause already, and it’s on Alderson to start drawing up a new blueprint pronto.

The bleep surely has hit the fan, as Ricciardi would put it, which at the moment means one thing: he better be right about the Mets’ GM.

A