PORT ST. LUCIE — Ike Davis looked around the minor league clubhouse at the Mets’ spring training complex and grasped the situation the team is in.
“What this season is really going to be about is seeing which guys in here develop,” Davis said. “There’s a lot of potential in this locker room, and it’s going to be really fun to find out who excels.”
He’s right about one thing: The players in the clubhouse — where most of the major league players are based at this time of the spring — are going to have to produce in order for the Mets to avoid an ugly season.
General manager Sandy Alderson again said there would be challenges ahead this year in part because of a lack of offseason moves, but added better days were ahead.
“I think the future is going to be bright,” Alderson said on WFAN. “What’s the saying? ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn?’ ”
Whether dawn comes in 2013 or later remains to be seen.
“I’m very hopeful this is a temporary situation,” Alderson said of the team’s financial problems. “I didn’t come here to operate the Oakland A’s, and I don’t expect to have to do that on a long-term basis and am not doing it currently.
“[The franchise] will be revived in short order.”
A higher payroll would no doubt aid that cause, but so would the emergence of players like Lucas Duda, who surprised some when he became the regular right fielder after Carlos Beltran was sent to the Giants in July.
“I know what to expect now,” said Duda, 26. “I just have to be myself and not Carlos Beltran, which I’m not. I’m a totally different player than Carlos.”
Duda said he benefitted from an impromptu meeting with Mets great Tom Seaver at Citi Field late last season. The two both went to USC.
“He told me to not worry about doing too much and to take a deep breath, basically,” said Duda, who hit .292 with 10 homers and 50 RBIs in 301 at-bats a year ago and drew interest from other teams this offseason.
He hit all of his home runs after July 9, closing with a .322 average in his final 208 at-bats.
“It worked out,” Duda said. “When a player of that caliber talks to you, you listen.”
Duda put on an impressive display in batting practice yesterday, routinely blasting shots over the right-field fence that landed beyond where anyone else was hitting them.
“The wind was blowing out,” Duda pointed out. “And it’s Feb. 14.”
Manager Terry Collins said, “The guy can hit. I told him to just worry about right field this spring. Last year, we had him working at first base, left field and right. It definitely didn’t help his offense.”
The Mets hope Duda’s progress continues into the regular season.
“He has to try and tone down his movement at the plate,” hitting coach Dave Hudgens said. “He gets so geared up and tries to do too much.
“But he reminds me of [Jason] Giambi a little bit. He uses the whole field and has good discipline that will get better.”
That high praise might be a stretch, but Davis is a believer.
“We’re figuring this out together,” Davis said. “We’re the same type of hitter. He has so much potential, it’s ridiculous.”
But the Mets know they need more than potential this season.