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Keidel: Mets Need To Make The Most Of This Rare October Opportunity

By Jason Keidel
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Maybe the Mets are still wiping the Moet from their red eyes, drunk from their first division title since 2006. They earned it and you deserve it.

But now it's time to close the curtain on the party and don their hard hats for autumn baseball. It's officially October, a wilderness for these Mets, who so often look like Halloween characters long before the end of the month. Now it's time to act like they belong.

If they want this enchanted season to be more than a five-minute mating dance with the playoffs, they need to throw their three aces at the Dodgers, two of them preferably pitching in Flushing. Empty every drop from the tank because next April's personnel could look hauntingly like this April's.

Here's a list of the main Mets who could be elsewhere next year:

Bartolo Colon, Bobby Parnell, Juan Uribe, Kelly Johnson, Tyler Clippard Daniel Murphy

Contract talks with Lucas Duda, one of their few, pure power hitters, dissolved during the spring. He's still arbitration eligible, but who knows where he will be if they can't agree on a deal.

And, of course, there's Hercules.

Yoenis Cespedes will surely slide a surreal contract demand under Sandy Alderson's door, which will surely make the Mets faint.

Imagine life without those seven Mets (eight if you include Duda), the guys who helped turn this team into something other than an afterthought, and pulled them from the sewers of Big Apple baseball. Flushing became more than the last stop on the 7 train. It's no longer a baseball wasteland, the last laughable image as people landed at LaGuardia, constantly reminded of their more refined cousins on the other side of the Harlem River.

The Mets have always been a bit of a paradox. They had the quid to build the nicest ballpark in the city. Then they don't have money to sign players. They build a sparkling yet old-school salute to their team, then dedicate it to the Brooklyn Dodgers. They celebrate their 1980s behemoth, then almost erase Doc Gooden's autograph from their walls.

They have the instincts to trade R.A. Dickey fo Travis d'Arnaud and Noah Syndegaard; have the foresight to sign Matt Harvey. But you get the resounding sense they will blow it, assuming their trinity of young bucks don't blow their arms out. Two of the three studs have already endured Tommy John. Forgive the cliche, but tomorrow isn't promised to anyone.

And, of course, you get the somber sense they borrowed Cespedes with no intent to buy him. If the electric Met is indeed a rental, they better get as many miles out of him as possible.

So there can be no limitations this October, no pitch counts, no innings firewall, or video loops of an incensed Harvey brooding his way off the mound, yanked by Terry Collins after 70 pitches. There's no algorithm that can explain or defend a carbon copy of Harvey's exit from the diamond against the Yankees. It made the entire city feel a little dirtier, a little dumber. It was a classic case of the Mets patronizing us, as fans of the the sport, the team, or the town.

Pundits tell us that Harvey should wait until Game 3, on the road, in Hollywood. Give the less-seasoned Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom the comforts of Queens, assuming, of course, the Mets make this one game lead over Los Angeles with four to play stand up.

Some of us respectfully disagree. You want your best players on the diamond as much as possible. And shelving Harvey until the series is halfway over ensures he won't pitch more than once. Sending out Harvey to start the NLDS sends a statement and gives the Mets the best chance to win, which should be the goal. Of course, if the Mets gag their lead over the Dodgers and are forced to begin the NLDS at Chavez Ravine, then it's all moot. But Harvey should throw the first pitch no matter the location.

Harvey can't he a part-time superhero, his Dark Knight outfit returned like a tuxedo after the regular season. If the Mets have learned anything from their pinstriped tormentors, it's that legacies are spawned by the postseason, in long sleeves under red leaves. And the Nationals taught all of us that easing off the gas allows the rest of the sport to speed past you.

This is no time for perspective or patience or platitudes. If the Mets give the public sense that they held back this October in the name of next October, then they could lose fans for good. For all his guarded, corporate cliches, his low baritone down to a soporific whisper, Sandy is not stupid.

A Marine officer, lawyer, and Harvard man, Alderson's understatement is a vocational tool, which helps him hurdle the inherent land mines of New York media. Sandy had to know he had to make a move, or else risk a full-blown revolt, a fan stampede that the team could not survive.

Now that his moves have opened a rare, playoff portal, it's time for the Mets to storm through it, not stroll through it. This isn't a double-decker tour bus. The Mets can't approach the playoffs as tourists, here for the foliage. New Yorkers can live with failure. We can't live with failing to try.

The Mets have the talent to make a run. Prove you have the temerity.

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel

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