At first it was just a few guys back in November, right after the Mets signed Michael Cuddyer. The team jumped out of the gate and quickly signed the right-handed bat they were looking for. Suddenly you had David Wright, Terry Collins and Matt Harvey talking “October baseball.”
As the weeks and months rolled on others would chime in like Zack Wheeler, Lucas Duda, and Jenrry Mejia, even as the Mets offseason came to a complete standstill.
Yesterday Juan Lagares and Wilmer Flores got into the act as well. Travis d’Arnaud told Kevin Kernan of the Post, that the confidence level is high for everyone at Mets camp, and that he and his teammates are all planning on going to the postseason in October.
“One hundred percent,” the Mets catcher said. “I have my best friend’s wedding and I don’t know if I’m going to make it. Sorry, dude.”
Reigning rookie of the year Jacob deGrom didn’t back away from the playoffs discussion either. “It’s exciting. There’s a lot of hype around the team right now and we know that.”
“We definitely want to live up to it. We want to make the playoffs and win a World Series. So it’s going to be an exciting year.”
“What I’ve been impressed is the way our players are approaching this season and the confidence level they apparently have,” said Mets GM Sandy Alderson.
“Is the team capable of winning 89, 90 games? Yeah, I think the team is capable. I think it has that capacity, that potential. We’ve just got to go out and do it.”
The Mets are “absolutely,” a playoff team, Terry Collins said Saturday.
He cites the emergence of Lucas Duda, Jacob deGrom, Juan Lagares and Travis d’Arnaud last season, and believes that coupled with the healthy returns of Matt Harvey, Bobby Parnell and David Wright, the Mets should be playing well into October.
“We have very, very good pitching, so we should match up against a lot of teams. Now we’ve just gotta go play. It’s all about execution… If we play up to expectations, with the caliber players we have, we should be there.”
Time will tell if this team is as good as they think they are, but I don’t have a problem with seeing our players exude some confidence and project a little swagger as we head into a new and promising season. In fact, after years of negativity I find it rather refreshing. Let’s hope all this enthusiasm can translate into some positive results on the field.
