Mets show they can flip the script in a good way

WASHINGTON — Good teams have a knack of figuring stuff out, even the bad stuff. That’s part of the reason they’re good teams in the first place. There are few perfect pathways from March to October, no matter who you are.

The Red Sox won 119 games last year and got a total of 13 plate appearances from Dustin Pedroia, presumed to be a franchise cornerstone. The Dodgers were 16-26 after 42 games and got to the World Series anyway. You go with what you get, and grind through all of it.

The Mets had quite an interesting 48 hours as they closed up shop for the spring. They bused across Florida to play a game in Sarasota on Monday afternoon, then sat on a tarmac for 3½ hours Monday night, then flew to Syracuse to participate in a workout on a makeshift field in front of fewer than 5,000 fans.

Now, yes: You can play your tiny violins in lieu of feeling sorry for millionaire athletes forced to take a bus trip in a roomy coach, forced to take a chartered plane, forced to take batting practice and bullpen sessions in a city even Jim Boeheim would prefer to spend as little time as possible in March. Boo-hoo and so forth.

But you also have to admit: Noah Syndergaard was absolutely right. There aren’t a lot of major league clubs that would invent this kind of an itinerary for their players. Teams have been playing exhibition games against their affiliate clubs since the beginning of time but this, as Allen Iverson might’ve pointed out, was practice. Not a game. Practice.

In the Carrier Dome, where nobody ever plays baseball, even in the summer, with these mobile pitching mounds that look like incubators for sprained ankles.

Three words sprung to mind, of course:

Only the Mets.

A funny thing happened Tuesday, however. First, Mets fans awoke to the news that Jacob deGrom had agreed to a five-year, $137.5 million extension, meaning those fans can shift their obsessions from whether the Mets will pony up for deGrom to when deGrom’s shoulder will start barking (the early over/under had Thursday, fifth inning).

We kid, we kid. But this was an enormous play by the Mets, stepping up and paying their best player while simultaneously sending a message to their fans and, more important, their roster. So it was already a good day, even before you slabbed cream cheese on your bagel and stirred cream into your coffee.

Then a funnier thing happened at the Carrier Dome.

Nobody was maimed. No blood was spilled. The small crowd seemed delighted by the Mets, and actually let out a roar when Syndergaard, in a nice bury-the-hatchet moment, grabbed a Syracuse University flag and waved it while running toward the orange “S” at midfield (without spraining, straining or bruising anything).

Then Brandon Nimmo cleared his throat.

“That was some good team bonding and [during the flight delay] we were able to talk about some things that maybe we hadn’t had the opportunity to talk about before, between the pitchers and position players and how we wanted to approach the season,” said Nimmo, the Mets outfielder eternally bathed in sunshine, even inside a dome.

“Actually,” he continued, “now that it’s happened, I would say it was probably a better thing than actually leaving on time because a lot of guys got to express their opinions and kind of decide how we wanted to approach the season.”

Now, sure: Nimmo is the kind of person who could find the bright side of rush hour on the Cross Bronx Expressway. He could find good humor in the “Red Wedding” episode of “Game of Thrones.” But it’s also a fair question:

What if he’s right?

What if the Mets do as good teams do, and make chicken salad out of the other stuff? Even Syndergaard didn’t seem bothered by the delay, firing up a mostly hilarious Twitter Q&A in which he took aim at Mike Francesa and Mr. Met among others, and poked fun at the infamous “[a–]-in-the-jackpot” moment when he threw at Chase Utley and nearly immolated his old manager, Terry Collins.

What if Dom Smith wasn’t just speaking for himself when he said, “We felt the energy of the crowd and we loved it, we loved every second of it, we definitely enjoyed ourselves”?

We’ll know for sure starting here, Thursday, when Max Scherzer and the Nationals will be waiting for them and the games will finally count again and the grind begins anew. Good teams figure stuff out. And good teams make the most of good days. Tuesday qualified as a very good day for the Mets. They retained their ace in the morning, saved face in the afternoon, and reclaimed their senses of humor and purpose by nightfall. It’s a starting point.

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