BUCK & METS SLOW-ROLL EXPECTATIONS

Showalter not fazed by big payroll, will keep team on point

PORT ST. LUCIE — The Mets will have a payroll north of $360 million this season and will pay a luxury tax bill of nearly $100 million. There will be people citing this figure the first time the Mets lose more than one game in a row. There will be people writing this figure the minute something goes wrong.

But inside the confines of the Mets’ spring training clubhouse in Port St. Lucie, it’s not a factor.

“That’s just something to lead a paragraph with,” manager Buck Showalter said Tuesday at Clover Field. “It’s nothing that we look at.”

As camps open up across baseball, the Mets are one of the favorites to come out of the National League. Sure, the $360 million might just be a number but that number intensifies the pressure on the team and its manager. The Mets have a pitching staff headlined by two three-time Cy Young Award winners, the best closer in baseball and a lineup full of menacing hitters. They’re supposed to win, right?

But at the same time, Showalter has a point in that it’s not necessarily something for the team or the managers to bother themselves with once they get on the field. If anything, Showalter and the clubhouse leaders should be helping to manage the pressures that come along with being one of the early favorites to finish first in the NL East and win the National League.

“I try to slow us down a little,” Showalter said. “All of us. We’re all excited to see each other. These guys, they’ve stayed in touch. They’re a pretty close-knit group. And now you’ve got to try to blend in some new bodies and some new names. You can’t force those things, so you just try to slow down and remember where the end-game is.”

The end game is, of course, the World Series. Owner Steve Cohen wouldn’t be spending an amount of money that makes some of his fellow owners blush if he didn’t think the club had the potential to get there.

Last year, the Mets won 101 games and led the division throughout most of the season. But it slid out of their grasp late in the season. The Atlanta Braves were the best team in the league through the second half of the season and despite identical records in the end, the Mets ended up losing the tiebreaker and finishing second.

The Wild Card series against the San Diego Padres wasn’t much of a series, with the Mets’ bats going silent in three games. It was a disappointing end to a stellar season. Since the next one hasn’t started yet, it’s still sticking with the Mets, even if Showalter himself doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“We don’t talk about it,” Showalter said. “It’s one of those looks you give without saying anything. They know. Who in here likes talking about unpleasant things? It’s one of those things that we know about, but do you have to keep bringing it up? That’s what they’d say to me. But you can’t fast-forward to September or October. There are too many bridges to cross.”

While the Mets got better over the winter, so did the Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s not going to be an easy road in the division, but that doesn’t change the goal of winning it, especially since the club’s core appears to be healthy coming into spring training.

But even the healthiest clubs have concerns right now. Players will soon be leaving camps for the World Baseball Classic and teams around the league will worry about how their players are being used and whether or not they’ll get injured. However, in these early days of spring, the optimism is still strong and the line to the trainer’s room is short.

“I think that’s the best part about the spring — everybody is thinking best-case scenario,” Showalter said. “All the things you get going and the moves everybody makes or doesn’t make or whatever, it all starts on an even, level playing field and nobody cares about that stuff between the lines. We’ll see where we are and if we get a chance to roll the dice in October.

“Everybody is hoping for that opportunity. Expectations are always high in major league camps.”

Which is exactly why Showalter is downplaying them. It’s too early to be thinking about the World Series and it’s too early to predict how the season will unfold.

“In order have something finish then we’ve got to figure out a way to start it,” Showalter said. “We’re more interested in that part right now. We’re hoping we have a chance to have something to finish.”