Amazin’s must stop living in the ‘past’

UNLIKE Mark McGwire, whom thenAthletics general manager Sandy Alderson popped with the 10th overall pick of the 1984 draft, the Mets are here to talk about the past.

Not the distant past; that constitutes more of a Yankees thing. The Mets, their season in serious jeopardy of getting ugly early, prefer to discuss what they have accomplished the previous two years.

The past, they believe, can be prelude to a third straight miracle(ish) revival. Alderson, now the Mets’ GM, and his manager, Terry Collins, preached this gospel Friday afternoon at Citi Field. Then, the Mets ended their seven-game losing streak and opened this important homestand with a crisp, 3-0 victory over Mike Trout and the Angels.

“I think we’ve been responsive in the past. Resilient. And I think we certainly will be again,” Alderson said before the game. “And that’s true not just this season, but in past seasons.”

“They’ll fight back,” Collins added. “They have in the past, and they’ll do it again.”

Such words, in the wake of a ghastly start (the Mets now are 17-23), raise some questions: Can you go to this well too often? Can you wear out the effectiveness of your message the same way a pitcher’s elbow risks fatigue from an abundance of split-fingered fastballs?

Can a team be too old and tired to dig itself out of another deep chasm?

“Maybe. There might be [risk in bringing up the past too much],” Collins said. “But we mentioned it the first day of spring training, when we had our team meeting about, ‘Hey, look, it’s going to be a long year, we’re going to have our ups and downs and we’ve gone through the downs before. So make sure you don’t get too high when things are good and you don’t get too low when things are bad.’ ”

That seems like a sensible enough message. However, things remain quite low, even after Jacob deGrom’s best outing of the season. The Mets have been plagued by injuries, underperformance and questions about their organizational culture concerning medical treatment and discipline.

This is not 2015, when Alderson had successfully stockpiled enough trade chips for a legendary July shopping spree that led to a World Series appearance. Nor is it 2016, when Collins and some minor league call-ups kept the group together despite an epidemic of injuries and somehow captured a National League wildcard spot. The Mets’ starting rotation has been largely awful, and that in turn has drained their bullpen. Their ace starter, Noah Syndergaard, and closer, Jeurys Familia, won’t be back any time soon, and their best player, Yoenis Cespedes, doesn’t have a timetable yet.

They do face a current oasis in the schedule, with the terrible Padres following the mediocre Angels into Citi and then a trip to Pittsburgh to face the lousy Pirates. If they can do some damage now, with their diminished roster, then some hope might exist after all. At the moment, they’re so fragile that Collins, who tied Davey Johnson for the franchise record with his 1,012th game managed, said afterward, “We needed a win, bad.”

As is his job, Alderson offered silver linings where he could find them. Matt Harvey’s two starts since his three-game suspension are “headed in the right direction,” the Mets’ GM said, and sure, that seems to be the case, although Harvey lingers far, far away from his previous peaks. Alderson added he already has changed some of the team’s medical protocol, including having daily conversations with the training staff. Eh. It will mean far more if the Mets act more cautiously the next time a big-name player gets banged up, rather than allowing that player to try to play through the injury.

“There’s a lot of the story to be written,” Alderson said. “Our goal is to perform better in the last three-quarters of the season than we did in the first quarter.”

Unfortunately for the Mets, the first quarter of this season stands as the only “past” that has any real bearing on their 2017 hopes and dreams.