You’ll have to trust me on this, there is a silver lining in this dark cloud that has hovered over Mickey Callaway’s Mets and rained injury and bad luck and too often bad baseball on a championship-starved fan base.
His name is Amed Rosario, and he is beginning to make the hearts of Mets fans race the way Gleyber Torres has made the hearts of Yankees fans race.
That is what The Phenom does. The Phenom breathes hope into a fan base, and boy, if ever a fan base needed hope, it is the one that treks out to Citi Field, aka Heartbreak Hotel.
The Phenom who plays shortstop for the Mets is the plum harvest from a farm that bears too little fruit.
Alas, Amed Rosario cannot pitch. He could not come out of the bullpen in the fifth inning against the Cubs Thursday night to relieve a terrific Seth Lugo. He could not catch the two-run Ben Zobrist homer over the right-center field wall off Hansel Robles that sparked a 5-1 Cubs victory, or replace Jerry Blevins or Buddy Baumann on the mound after that.
He is a foundation piece on a team clearly lacking a sturdy foundation, even if he found himself in the same hitless fog on this night that shrouded his flailing teammates not named Brandon Nimmo.
Torres has been the talk of the town over in The Bronx, but here comes Rosario, and we all get to ogle them both when the Yankees swagger into Citi Field June 8-10 for the Subway Series.
“He is a good friend, and I feel happy for him,” Rosario told The Post before Thursday night’s game with the Cubs. “He’s a young, talented, gifted player that is doing very well right now.”
Rosario entered Thursday batting .350 with three homers and six RBIs over his previous 12 games to hike his average to .265, slashing .350/.381/.650 over that period, before he grounded into a game-ending force for an 0-for-4 night that dropped him to .259 with a .671 OPS.
“I think everybody in here wants to be a superstar in the sport,” Rosario said.
Not everybody in the Mets clubhouse can.
But everybody is convinced Rosario can.
“If you see him play, 22 years old, he plays like he’s been here forever,” mentor Jose Reyes said. “He can go 0-for-100, 100-for-100, he’s the same kind of guy. For a young player, you want to see that. The talent’s there. He just needs to put it all together on the field, and he’s going to do that.”
See Rosario drive the ball. See Rosario race around the bases with breathtaking racehorse speed for a triple. See Rosario make a diving stop of a ground ball up the middle and glove-flip it to Asdrubal Cabrera for a game-saving double play.
That was Wednesday night in Atlanta.
That will be plenty of tomorrows in every ballpark.
“He’s got range, he’s got speed, he’s got nice footwork when he’s going after groundballs, he attacks the ball well,” Jose Bautista said. “He’s got good arm strength. He’s got all the tools that he needs to do his job at an elite level at this level.”
Rosario is a different player than the young Reyes.
“I think they had different style, in personality and as an athlete,” Bautista said. “Reyes is more electric … game-changing speed … just flat-out burner when he came up. I think Amed has the chance to be a different type of player. He’s a little bit more smooth, he’s a little bit more graceful with some of his moves, not to take anything away from Jose. You can be extremely effective and elite at both styles. And I think Amed has a chance to hit for a little bit more power as well.”
Asked if Rosario could be a 20-home run guy, Bautista said: “It’s hard to put numbers on it, but you could tell by the way he swings the bat during batting practice that there’s power in there. It’s just a matter of not trying to hit for power and just allowing it to happen and making the adjustments, but also picking and choosing the moments where you kind of let it fly instead of trying to do it all the time. He can disrupt the game with his speed. A lot of other guys don’t have that going for them.”
Rosario hit four homers in 165 at-bats in 2017 and had three in 170 at-bats entering Thursday night. A surge in power would make Rosario that treasured five-tool player.
“If you watch his batting practice, he’ll hit the ball as far as anybody on this team,” Michael Conforto said, “but I think it goes back to being able to control the strike zone and game-planning and understanding how pitchers are going to try to get him out and how he’s gonna stick to his strengths. I mean, he’s almost so gifted hand-to-eye that it hurts him because he can hit balls that are way outside the strike zone. If he can hone that skill, he’s gonna be an unbelievable player.”
Jay Bruce understandably does not like drawing comparisons, because once upon a time in Cincinnati everyone was calling him The Next Big Thing. But Rosario has certainly opened his veteran eyes, as well.
“The athleticism is second to none,” Bruce said, “and the strength that he has, it’s a rare combination.”
Rosario spent a long time hitting in the cage before the game.
“The key difference between this year and last year has been the consistency that I’ve had with my approach,” Rosario said.
A star grows in Flushing, a lonely shining star, so easy to spot in the dark sky.