Long before Daniel Murphy’s bat took off and he was asked what planet he is from, and before Wilmer Flores showed his devotion to the Mets and became America’s shortstop, they were part of the biggest questions that the Mets had.
In the winter of 2014, the question of how the Mets would take advantage of the brilliant young power arms like Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard with suspect middle-infield defense was the elephant in the room.
Through some heavy-duty positioning by infield coach Tim Teufel — along with some twists and turns, like the Mets moving Flores out of the starting shortstop position in June and putting Ruben Tejada there — the Mets managed take advantage of that pitching just fine.