Bay, Francoeur like Mets' situation

Second in a series

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. - If Carlos Beltran looking at a called third strike with two outs and the bases loaded in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, sending the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series, makes you misty with nostalgia . . .

If the epic collapse of 2007 feels like the good old days . . .

If the meltdown of 2008 is recalled with a contented sigh . . .

Then you might just be a Mets fan.

Because as disheartening and disappointing as those previous seasons might have been, they're Mardi Gras and New Year's Eve all rolled into one compared to the way the bottom fell out last season.

Injuries and front-office dysfunction and injuries and a fractured clubhouse and injuries and unexplained slumps and even more injuries resulted in a 92-loss debacle that shook the franchise right down to the brand new foundation of Citi Field. And now general manager Omar Minaya and manager Jerry Manuel are trying to pick up the pieces while also dealing with whispers that a slow start could push one or both out the door.

Manuel is doing everything he can this spring to put a happy face on the situation even though quicksilver shortstop Jose Reyes, who played in only 36 games last year and had offseason surgery to repair a right knee tendon, had a thyroid condition that disrupted his spring and centerfielder Carlos Beltran isn't expected to return to the lineup until May following his knee surgery.

"For some reason, I just feel that everything is going to be all right," Manuel told reporters during a postgame press conference.

It isn't all spin and crossed fingers, either. There are at least a couple of valid reasons to suspect that the Mets will at least be better.

Jason Bay, for example. Leftfield was a black hole for the Mets last year. Eight different players started games there. Bay, who hit 36 homers and drove in 119 runs for the Red Sox last year, signed a 5-year, $66 million free-agent contract to fill that void. And he insisted that it was more than dead presidents that persuaded him to commit to New York.

"It's a situation where you sometimes only get to be a free agent once in your career. And you don't want to get stuck in a place where sometime during your tenure you're going to get stuck in a rebuilding phase," he said, sitting in front of his locker at Tradition Field before an early spring exhibition game. "There are six or seven teams in the big leagues that don't have that luxury. That's one of the big draws. Every year, regardless of the transgressions that happened in the past, they're always going to spend the money and get the guys they need to win ballgames."

Bay is encouraged by the fact that the Mets were 39-39 and only a game behind the Phillies as late as July 2 before the lengthening disabled list took its toll.

"Everybody wants to know what it is, this and that. But we had a lot of guys get hurt," he said. "A lot of things went wrong. So the whole situation gets painted as pretty grim, but I think realistically even though last year was pretty grim it has no bearing on this year."

Another bright spot: Jeff Francoeur. Once the golden child of the Braves franchise, he was hitting .250 with five homers and 35 RBI in 82 games before the Braves traded him to the Mets. After that he went .311-10-41 in 75 games.

"I don't know what happened," Francoeur said. "I think a little bit was I just got back to having fun and enjoying myself. This is a fun place to play. I'm enjoying the team, I'm enjoying the coaches, I'm enjoying everything about it. It's a new place for me. I'm having a lot of fun."

By the time he got to Queens, he might have been the only one having fun. The Mets were in full freefall by then.

"You know what? Sometimes you need to enjoy yourself, even through the bad times," he said. "The best thing that could have happened to us last year was just to end the season and get it done with. And I think we all knew that. But now we're kind of moving on. We're going to the next step. We've got a lot of new guys. And I feel comfortable about it," he said.

Bay and Francoeur are both outgoing personalities. The hope is that they'll take some pressure off popular third baseman David Wright, who too often had to shoulder the burden of being the team spokesman last year.

Wright was a conundrum in 2009. His home runs dropped from 33 the year before to 10 and his RBI from 124 to 72. He also struck out a career-high 140 times.

Some of that can be explained by the generous dimensions of Citi Field and some can be written off as a natural result of having so much of his protection in the lineup stripped away by injuries to Reyes, Beltran and Carlos Delgado. But Wright believes the biggest problem was that he got out of whack mechanically and that he'll bounce back this year.

The Mets need to get off to a quick start and that won't be easy. Not only do they play 16 of their first 22 games at home, where the fans have been in a poisonous mood recently, 12 of the first 25 are against the National League's four playoff teams from last season: Phillies, Rockies, Dodgers and Cardinals. In that span they play only three games against a team that had a a losing record last season.

Still, the Mets should be better. It's just whether they will be any good that remains the question.