PITTSBURGH — The All-Star Game tomorrow night at Citi Field must be the start of Turning-Point Time for the Mets.
This is a franchise that has finished in fourth place the past four seasons and enters the break in fourth place once again with a 41-50 mark following yesterday’s 4-2 victory over the Pirates at PNC Park.
The Mets had two pitchers start yesterday’s Futures Game at Citi Field, Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero. Matt Harvey almost certainly will start the All-Star Game.
The Mets must show themselves and their fans this is the start of something. For the future of the franchise, the Mets have to begin to turn it around now.
“I don’t think there is any question about it,’’ manager Terry Collins told The Post after yesterday’s win. “Sandy [Alderson] is the leader of the plan and we’ve been preaching, ‘Hey, it’s coming.’ We have to fix our minor leagues, we have to find some players, and they’ve done that. And here they are, three of the young pitchers are pitching over these three days with Syndergaard, Montero and Matt Harvey.
“If Matt doesn’t start the game, he’s going to get into the game and that’s what we planned on.’’
Then Collins said these key words: “The future is here.’’
Starting now.
“You have a star at third,’’ Collins said of All-Star starter David Wright. “You have a star on the mound in Harvey and you have another one coming in Zack Wheeler. I plan on seeing a lot more games like the one [Wheeler] pitched the other night in San Francisco. The more confidence he gets, the better he is going to be because I’ve had too many people tell me Zack has Matt Harvey-type of stuff.’’
“We’re not by any means happy where we are,’’ Collins said of his fourth-place club. “We know we have to get better.
“We went into spring training with all the negativity that surrounded our club: ‘We weren’t going to be very good. We didn’t have R.A. [Dickey] back. We didn’t sign anybody of note.’ All the stuff and you work your [butt] off to try to get the players to convince them that they are good enough, that they are major league players. That’s all we talked about in spring training.
“We got off to a good start (7-4) and then we hit a stinking bad patch. It was all of us. I managed bad, we coached bad, we hit bad and we pitched bad. It was not just one area. It was frustrating for the players, the coaches, me, the front office, but you know what you have to do. You have to go out and play, you have to show up every day and play, inning by inning, pitch by pitch.’’
That’s what Wright told his teammates during a locker-room meeting in June, and the Mets have been better since then. They are 14-7 in their last 21 road games and have the fourth-best ERA in the majors since the end of May.
The big problem remains first baseman Ike Davis and shortstop Ruben Tejada have gone backward in their development. Essentially, the Mets improved as a team when their starting first baseman, shortstop, left fielder and center fielder lost their jobs.
The addition of leadoff hitter Eric Young Jr. and the strong play of right fielder Marlon Byrd have helped the Mets improve, but they continue to be atrocious at home. They are 17-27 at Citi Field.
“Nobody wants to be in fourth place, but I’m pleased with how much better we’re playing now than earlier in the season,’’ Wright said. “I don’t play GM, but it’s well-documented that we have good, young arms. Obviously, Mets fans and players alike can kind of sense the positivity and just see exactly kind of first-hand what this organization is going to kind of build around.’’
This is the time for the Mets to start to move forward. This is Turning-Point Time.