JUPITER, Fla. — The trick, at this point, is swimming through the muck in order to reach the cooling waters, clawing through the clouds in order to find the sun, tip-toeing through the trip-wires of grimness in order to find something . . . else.
It isn’t easy. Just walk into the Mets’ clubhouse at Tradition Field, and over in a corner you can talk to Francisco Rodriguez, whose exercise regimen the past week consisted of playing catch with (and spreading pinkeye to) his brother, Edward. His mere presence here ahead of schedule had a few Mets officials spying him like Typhoid Mary.
Or you can take a look at Kelvim Escobar, whose troublesome right wing looks so debilitated now you wonder if he could properly buckle his belt. Or you can take a walk to the far side of the room, where Jose Reyes’ locker sat empty and silent while its star tenant was back in New York City having his thyroid tested. Or you could just wait for Oliver Perez to wander by and offer a flatulent critique of yesterday’s back pages critiquing him . . .
Yes, there are days when if you choose to view the Mets through the prism of a half-empty glass, it isn’t all that hard to do.
The wonder of spring training, of course, is that there is also an alternative, if you want to seek that path. There are always journeymen like Chris Carter, who hit a couple of home runs in the ninth inning yesterday in the Mets’ 11-2 pounding of the Marlins, and meteors like Ike Davis, who had two more hits and raised his spring training batting average to a robust .588.
There is Jenrry Mejia, playing the best spring-training part of all, the kid pitcher with the electric arm who falls out of the sky, throwing three more scoreless innings, pushing his manager over the moon with puppy love, looking and talking like a big leaguer already.
“I can start, I can close, I can relieve, I can do whatever it is they want me to do,” the 20-year-old Mejia said.
“He wears No. 76 and K-Rod is No. 75, if you know what I mean,” Jerry Manuel said, and if you have no idea what Manuel means (and don’t feel bad if you don’t), he meant he could envision 76 setting up for 75 soon. Very soon.
All of that stuff is nice.
None of it may be as meaningful as watching John Maine throw 12⁄3 innings and 39 pitches of sharp and pain-free ball. The Mets’ most pressing question mark, painted in bright phosphorescent colors, is the meat of their rotation. And after watching Mike Pelfrey and Oliver Perez get hammered for two straight days — no matter how happily the Mets tried to spin those outings — it was especially encouraging to see Maine look as he did yesterday, allowing two hits and a walk, recording four of his five outs via strikeout.
“It’s very important for us to stabilize that 2-3-4 part of our rotation, there’s no question about that,” Manuel said. “Everything we do hinges on that for us. And we can’t afford to be getting into a depth situation with them early.”
Which means Pelfrey, Perez and Maine have to approximate their optimum past performances, which for the first two means channeling 2008 and for Maine means pitching as he did for much of 2007. Remember, it was the next-to-last day of that ‘07 season — a borderline All-Star year for him — when Maine nearly no-hit the Marlins in a do-or-die 161st game, a performance every bit as epic and heroic as the one Johan Santana turned in during No. 161 a year later.
“I know the kind of pitcher I can be because I’ve seen it,” said Maine, whom the Mets are still bringing along slowly but whose fastball popped as it hasn’t since before his arm woes started. “But now it’s about getting that performance for six months solid. I know what this team needs from me.”
It is small. But it is something. Especially at a time when the Mets so badly need to find some way to keep their glass filled — or at least half-filled — with optimism.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com