Mets Look at the Season: A Chat with SNY’s Steve Gelbs

We want to win the NL East this season. That’s a given. So obviously we chatted with Gelbs about how the Mets can and should go about doing this.

Unfortunately, coming up with a strategy is tough to answer for Gelbs, as it really is all about health.

"“More than anything though, and this is not a strategy you can employ,  but simply a statement of fact, if the Mets pitching staff is healthy, they’ve got a pretty darn good shot of winning that NL East.”"

Let’s just hope they stay healthy — I know, not too promising with Matz already going down. But is there anything else the Mets can do? Well, kind of, according to Gelbs:

"“We saw last year just how effective he can be when he (Flores) hit against lefties and got some regular playing time but we also saw how ineffective he was at the beginning of the season when his playing time was sparse.” “For Terry Collins and his coaching staff, if they could find a way in the infield to scatter Flores in while giving rest to Asdrubal Cabrera, Lucas Duda, and Neil Walker — guys that over the course of last season had their injury problems and especially in the case of the middle infield were a bit run down based on how much they played the beginning of the year — I think that the Mets would be in better position for it, if they could do that.” “From a strategic perspective, the only thing I could give you is trying to find a way to scatter the bench players on this team that probably wouldn’t be bench players a lot of other places…trying to find a way to engage as much of the talent as they have and keep everybody in a position to succeed and ready to succeed at all times.”"