After Nearly Bottoming Out, What Is Next for the Mets?

The bottom line, now that the bottom has fallen out, is that the Mets don’t seem to know which way to go next. It is not just that their season shattered high expectations, along with various ribs and wrists. It isn’t that it left Shea Stadium virtually empty and the club on the verge of last place instead of first. With the final pitch only one day away, there still is no way to say whether the Mets are a rebuilding team or a contending one.

After what was arguably the most disappointing season in their history, they can’t even call on hindsight. Looking back on the most flamboyant failure in recent memory, the club still doesn’t have any indication that the bold moves it made last winter were wrong.

“I can’t tell you how many times I have soul-searched, thinking about just that set of considerations,” General Manager Al Harazin said. “I thought about what my game plan was, and I have to say -- I don’t mean it to sound egotistical in any way, shape or form -- I don’t know what I would have done differently.”

So, given a chance to do it all over again, he’d probably do it all over again. Except he can’t, given a new fiscal restraint. Which only makes the outlook cloudier for a team that didn’t solve all its needs with its checkbook and dealing last winter. The Mets need pitching, defense, hitting, speed, chemistry and directions to get them out of limbo. It’s a spot worse than fifth place in the National League East.

“I’ve learned you just can never be certain about anything,” Harazin said. “I’d like to think if we ran the season over 20 times, this type of thing would only happen one time. Whether that’s right or wrong, it has happened and we have to go on.”

His club has more to be uncertain about than most. Several key players are coming off injuries, its budget has been cut back and it probably does not have a single Triple-A player ready to make the big-league jump. Its situation beckons for an overhaul, but as assistant vice president Gerry Hunsicker said, “It’s difficult going through a five-year rebuilding phase in New York because the city will just not accept that.”

Trying to rebuild instantly doesn’t work, either, as the Mets discovered this season. They went nowhere, even though they hired Jeff Torborg as manager, splurged on free agents Bobby Bonilla, Eddie Murray and Willie Randolph, and kept rolling up a $44-million payroll in a blockbuster trade for Bret Saberhagen. They delivered pre-fab hopes that put fans on long ticket lines in the cold.

But it was as if the club spent all its excitement before the first thaw. Not only were the Mets unsuccessful, they were dull. What’s more, they were victims of their own excess. By a long shot, they failed to reach their goals and, in some cases, they had trouble dealing with them. They learned that today’s headline is this afternoon’s radio-talk-show topic, then it’s a bigger headline tomorrow.

Torborg himself contributed to the cycle with a late-afternoon radio report, which he ultimately decided was too distracting to continue next season. “I think it’s a real baptism by fire. He’s kept his temper, maintained his dignity and handled it very well,” Harazin said.

It would be silly to place blame for the Mets’ malaise on the media (although that didn’t stop Bonilla). And it would be too convenient to pin it on the myriad and often freakish injuries that have cost the Mets Saberhagen, Bonilla, Randolph, Howard Johnson, Dave Magadan, John Franco and Dwight Gooden for long stretches. The Mets had the league’s lowest batting average well before their disabled list became crowded.

Operations and plaster casts only added a macabre touch to a season filled with contradictions, ironies and oddities:

-- Spring training was overshadowed by rape allegations against three players (no charges were filed).

-- The Mets staged a March media boycott, then were really silent during the late-summer pennant race.

-- Howard Johnson, a power hitter and run producer, didn’t hit.

-- Vince Coleman, the fastest Met, often couldn’t run.

-- Bonilla, having vowed not to stop smiling as he returned to his native city, hit poorly at Shea, became ensnared in controversies and lashed out at the New York media.

-- David Cone, the top pitcher for a club that still revolves around pitching, was traded for two little-known prospects.

It was all so much that, after Coleman challenged Torborg on the field Sept. 1 and Torborg was asked if that was the season’s low point, the manager gave the questioner a “You’ve-got-to-be-kidding” look before saying, “We’ve had a lot of low points.”

Now it’s too late to ask whether the Mets weren’t as good as many thought. A larger question is how the team can rebound.

“I certainly never said we’ll absolutely stay out of the free-agent market,” Harazin said. “What I have said is, it is highly unlikely we will spend an enormous amount of money on a very long-term contract for a pitcher. We’re going to lose three players to expansion and I don’t know where we’re going to be.”

They know they need a starting pitcher to fill Cone’s old spot. They know they need catcher Todd Hundley to begin paying off on his potential. They need Jeff Kent and Ryan Thompson to make the Cone deal look good. But they know they can’t do as much as they did in the last offseason. Mostly, they have to sit, wait and hope it’s not as bad as it seems.

“All I want next year is to have Bret Saberhagen give me a typical quality Bret Saberhagen year, to have Bonilla do that, to have Johnson do that and for Murray to do what he did this year,” Harazin said, “and I’ll take my chances.”