Camp sights: Mets, with healthy Matt Harvey, eye October

Note: Paste BN Sports' Paul White, via car, causeway, plane and rail, will reach every major league camp this spring. Follow his exploits on Twitter - @PBJWhite - as he makes his way through the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues before he imparts all you didn't know about every team right here.

Today: New York Mets

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- By the way, Matt Harvey is back in Mets camp and ready to pitch a full season.

Yeah, but so is Jacob deGrom. And he's upstaging his rotation mate, as least for now in the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of New York sports.

The Mets haven't done a lot for their fans lately, but Harvey and DeGrom are part of some serious swagger in camp.

Enough to make their manager reach back for a tabloid-worthy dose of bravado.

"Absolutely," says Terry Collins when asked if he has a playoff team. "We've been sitting around for four years asking everybody to be patient. It's time.

"Just because we haven't been a playoff team in the past doesn't mean we don't have good pitching," Collins says. "We have very good pitching. We should match up against a lot of teams."

Harvey is the 2013 marvel who missed last season after Tommy John surgery. But deGrom won as many games (nine) in 22 starts last season as Harvey did in 26 starts the last time we saw him.

Yeah, yeah, there are all those other numbers from Harvey, like 191 strikeouts, 31 walks and just 135 hits allowed in 178 innings. And he showed up this spring insisting, "I feel like nothing happened. There's no easing into it for me."

But he better ease into the line of lockers where the current Mets rotation sits. And literally right around the corner are the stalls for Noah Syndegaard, Steven Matz and Rafael Montero, the right-around-the corner next wave of Collins' "very good pitching."

There's no topping deGrom right now.

Harvey spent a boring winter completing his routine, setback-free rehab. You realize how many guys do that these days?

It's certainly a less exclusive group than the 19 pitchers who ever have gotten an NL Rookie of the Year award during their offseason.

The record books aren't clear on the rest of this, but deGrom's a pretty safe bet to be alone in getting married the same week as winning the award and postponing his honeymoon just so he could be on the MLB Network telecast of announcement.

No, he didn't know he was going to win.

"I didn't know how to react, whether to smile," deGrom says of hearing his name. "It took awhile to set in with everything that was going on."

No speech? No consideration of what he might do if he won?

"I really didn't think that much about it because I had just gotten married," he says. "That was a crazy week. I got married, moved to New York and learned I won Rookie of the Year."

For the record, the Hawaii honeymoon went just fine.

A fitting cap to what he calls a crazy year.

"Getting called up to be in the bullpen, then getting a chance to start and what happened was a really cool experience," he says. "I like the changes a lot in the past year."

And one more crazy thought, especially with Harvey back in the rotation:

"There's a lot of hype around the team right now and we know that, deGrom says. "We definitely want to live up to it. We want to make the playoffs, win the World Series."

***

Feeling all Wright

Maybe that wasn't a flat-out postseason guarantee from Collins. Even he knows it's a huge step from challenging the troops to step up their play a level and actually having everything fall into place.

Listen more closely and you can figure out where the real challenges – the internal ones rather than that potential NL East juggernaut in Washington – lie for the Mets.

"We have to get out of this camp healthy," Collins says.

Any negative perception of the Mets is directly linked to a sixth consecutive sub-.500 season and health was an issue.

"We didn't have our No. 1 starter," Collins says. "We didn't have our closer. Our third baseman played hurt most of the season."

While Harvey is back to lead the rotation again, Jenrry Mejia will remain the closer at least until Bobby Parnell proves he's past his Tommy John surgery sometime close to mid-season.

Third baseman David Wright has been working out at the camp well ahead of the official reporting date and by all accounts is past the shoulder problems that plagued him last year to the tune of career lows in homers and on-base and slugging percentages.

"I've seen him throw," Collins says. "I've seen him hit. I've seen his workout. When you walk up to him, you see the increased bulk he put on this winter. You couldn't do that if you arms were hurt, especially if your shoulders were hurt."

Wright and David Murphy carry the bulk of responsibility for a move up the standings. Also, Curtis Granderson, a disappointment last year but reunited with Kevin Long, his hitting coach for some good years across town with the Yankees. These guys are crucial.

"We don't have a ton of depth because our young players are our depth," Collins says. "To have back-up players who are young guys a lot of times is a lot to ask. And we need to make sure David gets some days off, that Murph gets some days off so we don't run 'em into the ground."

A crucial player is center fielder Juan Lagares, a Gold Glover last year but learning the rest of the game on the fly.

"Last year, there was a conversation that he needed to pull the ball a little more," Collins says. "He hits two homers in the next week. We told him he had some speed and he needed to start using it and he showed us he could. We have to work with him reading the pitchers.

"No matter what phase of the game, he gets better at it," Collins says. "You tell this guy anything and he executes it."

And if the Mets tell us often enough they can make the playoffs?

Ultimate LOOGY

Josh Edgin is different.

It's not because the Mets reliever has a red beard, which hardly stands out in a clubhouse where tinges or more of red can be found in the unshaven areas of skull and face on pitchers Vic Black, Bobby Parnell and Zack Wheeler.

His stocky body might even provide a hint he was a Pennsylvania high school wrestling champion as a 235-pounder in the 275-pound class and lost in the national semifinals to a guy who went on to become a UFC fighter.

That's until a torn labrum – in his right shoulder.

Irrelevant, as far as the pitching, which he wouldn't give up and thus skipped surgery and got up off the mat.

Edgin also is a LOOGY. That stands for Left-Handed One-Out Guy, the relief specialist brought in just a get a lefty hitter out in a key late-inning situation.

In fact, Edgin's 27 1/3 innings pitched for the Mets last season were the fewest in the majors for a guy with 40 or more appearances. Edgin and fellow lefties Randy Choate of the Cardinals and Marc Rzepczynski of the Indians led with majors with 23 one-batter appearances.

"I don't care what I have to do," says Edgin, who finished 2011 in Class A and was with the Mets the next July. "I'm here and I want to stay. I will play anywhere they want me to play, do anything they want me to do."

He's doing the lefty thing just fine, making a quantum leap to a 1.32 earned run average during the major-league portion of another season split with the minors last year

"You get drafted in the 30th round you say, 'They're giving me a chance, that's about all,' " says Edgin, who became a reliever at Ohio State after starting at Mercersburg (Pa.) Academy.

Sure, Edgin has added the fighter mentality to stay in the majors to his "happy-to-be-here" approach but this really isn't that bad a gig if you can get it – and excel at it like he's begun to do.

Choate, 39, was King of the Loogys last year, the lefty specialist on Paste BN Sports' Team 2014, which selects the best player for each roster role. In 56 games, Choate had 88 plate appearances against left-handed batters and held them to a .083 batting average and .351 OPS.

Choate was like Edgin once – just remarkably glad to be in New York. Choate broke in with the Yankees in 2000 and made 11 ½ one-way trips to or from Columbus, Ohio in his first three seasons (the half is for getting to West Virginia before the phone call that told him to get back to New York).

He was measuring life by the cost per gallon. Now he knows why the job is so good. He can measure it by cost per pitch: Choate threw 589 pitches last season, so his $3 million salary breaks down to $5,093.38 a pitch.

From that standpoint, Choate isn't the king. Nationals lefty Matt Thornton made $5,511.81 a pitch for logging 36 innings in 64 games and Giants specialist Javier Lopez's $4 million salary worked out to $6,677.80 a toss in his 65 appearances.

Want perspective? David Price led the majors last season with 3,730 pitches – and he was paid a mere $3,735.35 a pitch.

So, Edgin can accept his role, but there's still something to aim at for a guy plenty grateful for his time in the majors so far.

He made less than $700 a pitch once his major league minimum salary is prorated for the portion of the season he spent with the Mets.

"I came into pro baseball not thinking I was going to get a chance," Edgin says. "I got an opportunity."

And he can honestly say he's taking it one batter at a time.

GALLERY: Scenes from spring training