It will take more than a 1-5 road trip to rattle Mets GM Jim Duquette and manager Art Howe.
You can’t blame Mets fans and neutral observers for being a bit unnerved by the team’s interleague excursion through Minnesota and Kansas City, which became a whitewater rafting trip to also-ran status.
Heading into tonight’s game with Cleveland, the Mets (29-33) own the 12th best record among 16 National League teams. However, the GM and manager are taking a longer view, preferring to see the trip as a speed bump rather than a high-speed crash.
Duquette told The Post over the weekend that the front office is still anticipating a playoff push and hopes to obtain hitting and/or pitching help before July 31. And Howe noted the team is still within 5 ½ games of first-place Florida and only lost two games in the standings on the trip.
Duquette added: “If you compare the team certainly to last year, we’re definitely on the rise.”
The optimism of Duquette and Howe is shared by others. One GM told The Post he and his talent evaluators are convinced the Mets could steal the NL East because of their solid pitching and numerous question marks elsewhere in the division.
That would be quite a worst-to-first turnaround. On the morning of June 15, 2003, the club owned a last-place, 30-36 record and trailed Atlanta by 15 games. GM Steve Phillips had already been fired, and Mike Piazza and Mo Vaughn were out with injuries.
In comparison, the 2004 Mets had reason to feel good after Tom Glavine applied a tourniquet to a five-game losing streak on Sunday. Howe was characteristically upbeat even before the 5-2 victory gave his club some momentum.
“The thing is, you can look at it two ways,” Howe said. “The bad thing is if we were winning at this point, we’d be right there.
“But I like to look at it as if it’s a good thing. Sooner or later you’re going to have a streak like this during the season. Not losing a lot of ground is important if we’re going to turn it back around and have a good stretch.”
For his part, Duquette hopes to improve the team and said the club’s “most glaring” need is another run-producing bat. Alfonso Soriano, Richard Hidalgo and Bret Boone are among the hitters the Mets reportedly have interest in. Duquette also will look at pitching help, with the bullpen more a priority than the rotation. Seattle’s Freddy Garcia remains the reported top attraction.
Howe flatly stated that his players “gave away” three games on the road trip and he blasted his team in a post-game tirade after Saturday’s 4-3 loss to the Royals. The six-game stretch that begins tonight against the sub-.500 Indians and Detroit is the continuation of a pivotal part of the schedule.
“We have to take advantage of it,” Howe said. “We haven’t. We made our bed and now we have to lie in it. . . . We’ve got to find a way to get things to start clicking.”