There was always a cold feeling in the Mets clubhouse last year. Players checked in for work, but there was no sense that this was a team that was in it together.
That has changed.
These 2010 Mets certainly have their flaws, and their margin of error is slim, but that makes team chemistry even that much more important. When last night’s game against the Padres was rained out at Citi Field, David Wright walked past Mike Pelfrey’s locker. As he passed Big Pelf, he gave him a friendly little slap in the face with his batting glove, laughed and jogged away.
Wright was not doing a lot of laughing or kidding around with teammates last season in this clubhouse.
“When you have a clubhouse full of guys that buy into the system of winning first and having each other’s back, you tend to go out there and be more unselfish,” Wright, referring to this year’s team, told The Post. “When you have guys who truly come to the park and their No. 1 priority is winning, then there is a different chemistry there than teams that come to the park and you have 25 individuals worry about getting theirs.
“We have guys when they walk in through that door, their No. 1 priority is to win that game that night.”
Chemistry is only part of the equation, but it’s a big part.
“The chemistry is so much better this year, absolutely,” Jeff Francoeur said.
Added Wright of the new and improved Team Chem: “We’re going to lose some games, but it’s not going to be because of the makeup and the guys that we have here and the preparation. We said early in spring, ‘We’re going to have fun. We’re going to play as a team.’ And it seemed like everybody clicked right away, whether it was new guys we brought in or the guys
coming back from last year.”
Adding new blood and team-oriented players like Rod Barajas and Ike Davis, while removing Carlos Delgado, who always seemed to be on the defensive, has made a difference.
It’s going to be interesting when Carlos Beltran rejoins the team and the role he takes. Beltran has never been a vocal leader, so chances are he will go with the flow. Beltran’s replacement, Angel Pagan, has been the perfect teammate in many ways.
Francoeur, Jason Bay and Jose Reyes participated in a fashion show yesterday as the new Players Choice Signature Series shirts they designed were unveiled. They had a good time doing it, too, joking with Reyes about his nickname, La Melaza, which he placed on the back of his T-shirt.
“It means something sweet like honey,” Reyes said of melaza, a sugar cane extract.
Francoeur designed a shirt with him catching a fly ball with a tiki bar in the background. “I tried to get them to put a Corona in the other hand,” the right fielder said with a laugh. “They wouldn’t go for it.”
Jerry Manuel’s Mets are as much a reality show as a baseball team, which makes them so interesting, but Wright said, as a team, they’ve made sure they are going to enjoy this season no matter what. So far, they are having a lot more fun at Citi Field, where they own a major league best 23-9 record, than the road, where they post an atrocious 8-18 mark.
“Go out there and have fun with it,” Wright said of this team’s approach. “Laugh, joke around, and I think we’ve been able to accomplish that.”
Manuel said the best thing about his Mets is “the character. It’s a good emotional feeling every day in the dugout. They seem to have that fight until the last out.”
They’ll need to fight. The division is a lot more difficult now with Stephen Strasburg firing bullets for the Nationals. Talent is always the difference-maker, but the Mets have learned that character counts, too, in a big way.
kevin.kernan@nypost.com