Opening Day is for Mets fans — all fans, really — to indulge in some wishful thinking

There’s something cleansing about Opening Day — the way the previous year’s sins fade away with the first pitch. Players who were booed in September get cheered when they line up along the baseline in March, and no matter how dire the projections, there’s always that little bit of hope that makes baseball so unique.

You have 162 games — an eternity in this world — and your job is to make them count come October.

It felt that way last year, when the Mets entered the season with expectations as high as their exorbitant payroll, but we all know what happened. The worst team that money could buy fumbled away their year at every opportunity, and the hope that buoyed them in the spring ended up taunting them in the fall.

And so, they got stripped to the studs.

Their dual Cy Young Award winners were shooed away at the trade deadline, their manager was let go and the expectations were tempered. Owner Steve Cohen was no longer promising a World Series within the first three to five years of his tenure, and new president of baseball operations David Stearns routinely said that their goal this season was to be “competitive.”

“Competitive” — as in, have a chance to win (but just a chance).

To which we say: Nah.

Look, is the ceiling lowered from last year? Absolutely. And does it look like the Mets have even the slightest prayer of catching Atlanta? Absolutely not.

But that’s not in the spirit of Friday’s Opening Day. The first game of the season is for optimism, and there’s good, logical reason for that. This sport is fickle and strange, and rife with opportunity. We saw it last year with the Diamondbacks and their highly improbable World Series run and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we saw it right here in Flushing, where the Mets stole defeat from the jaws of victory, upsetting every prediction that had them as favorites in the NL East.

“Our expectation is to win,” rookie manager Carlos Mendoza said. “We’re here to win. That’s no secret. This is New York and I’ve been saying it all along — outside projections and things like that might say differently but we do believe that we have a really good team.”

Of course, Mendoza has to say that. It does no one any good to say "uncle" before Jose Quintana has even thrown a warm-up pitch. But the statement also doesn’t strain credulity like it used to.

Their rotation will suffer as it waits for Kodai Senga to return from his shoulder injury, but that staff was also among the best in  spring training. And sure, that counts for a whole lot of nothing, but even the dourest pessimist must concede that Luis Severino looked pretty good out there, and that Tylor Megill wasn’t too shabby, either. With the acquisition of J.D. Martinez, the Mets finally (finally!) have a legitimate DH, and a power threat to protect Pete Alonso in the lineup. Edwin Diaz is back, and if he’s anything like the Diaz of old, the Mets have basically shortened their games to eight innings.

What will Francisco Alvarez’s sophomore season bring? Will Stearns’ much-lauded bullpen construction skills surprise some people? Will the general populous  finally realize that Francisco Lindor is one of the best shortstops in baseball?

We don’t know the answers to those questions, and that’s the entire point.

There’s that old "Family Guy" sketch that gets trotted out every year: It's the youngest son, sitting in the stands at a Mets game. “Opening Day and here’s the first pitch,” the announcer trills. Then, there’s the crack of a bat, followed by “ . . . and the season’s over.”

It’s a joke, but it’s certainly one that resonates with fans who have had their hopes dashed for the past 37 seasons (and counting). But it doesn’t have to be that way — at least not yet.

“We’re in New York,” Lindor said. “There’s no ‘less outside pressure.’ But it’s a good pressure. If you compare it to years before, yeah, there’s not as many names, there’s not as many players making that much money. So, in a way, we’re not on the top of the list for everybody, but we are the New York Mets. Every time we step onto a new field or even Citi Field, they’re trying to beat us. They use their 'A' game. It’s something to look forward to because I know we’ve got to go out there and prove ourselves . . . You don’t go to a [news] conference and have 15, 20 media members and 10 cameras [and not feel pressure]. There’s always pressure.”

He added that there are going to be tough days and tough weeks, “but we expect to win.”

So, go ahead — hope a little. Grab that little bit of optimism and hold on tight.

That’s what Opening Day is about, after all.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.