Mets and Yanks Must Swing for Fences Suzy Allman for The New York Times With the ace Matt Harvey being out for the 2014 season, the Mets face more pressure to bolster their offense. The Mets have fallen into a strange pattern lately. One player commands attention with a fantastic, must-see individual season - and then disappears the following year. In 2011, Jose Reyes won the first batting title in Mets history. Then he left for a lucrative free-agent contract. In 2012, R. A. Dickey became the first knuckleballer to win the Cy Young Award. Then the Mets traded him. In 2013, Matt Harvey started the All-Star Game at Citi Field and made every appearance a happening. Then he had reconstructive elbow surgery that will cost him next season. The constant for the Mets has been a losing record. They have shown "That 70s Show" for half a decade in Flushing, with the Mets producing win totals of 70, 79, 77, 74 and 74. Reyes, Dickey and Harvey offered captivating subplots, but none the Mets could market the next winter. Attendance has fallen each year at the new ballpark, dipping to 26,366 a game last season, the lowest since 1997. A marketing campaign built around Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Jon Niese and Dillon Gee, with the promise of more young arms by midsummer, might have won some fans over, but probably not too many. Winning is the best enticement of all, and the game is now set up for teams to avoid the kind of rut the Mets are in. Would you believe that only one other team in the majors, the woebegone Houston Astros, has had losing records in each of the last five seasons? That's right - baseball's longest active losing streak is a tie between the Mets and the Astros, who both had their last winning season in 2008. With pitching dominating the sport these days, teams with brawny offense stand out. It is no coincidence that the top three run-scoring teams - the Red Sox, the Tigers and the Cardinals - all reached the league championship series. The Mets ranked 23rd in the majors in runs with 619, their fewest in a nonstrike season since 1992. Their strength is pitching - always important, but now not as rare as it once was. The Mets are one of many teams needing power, an increasingly shrinking commodity, which is why they have been linked to the free agents Nelson Cruz and Curtis Granderson. General Manager Sandy Alderson has said that the Mets probably will not sign a $100 million player, which means no Robinson Cano and very likely no Jacoby Ellsbury or Shin-Soo Choo. David Wright's contract already exceeds that figure, and it should be noted that the Cardinals and the Red Sox are doing just fine with only one player apiece on a $100 million deal. Even at eight figures and below, the Mets expect to fill holes through free agency - they have met with shortstop Jhonny Peralta - and have depth in prospects and young major leaguers (Ike Davis, Lucas Duda) to make trades. So they have options, and it is up to Alderson to acquire at least two reliable position players and have more hits than misses on his low-budget additions. More Marlon Byrds, that is, and fewer Shaun Marcums. The Mets may not contend this season, but they need to demonstrate to fans that they are serious about trying. The Wilpons cannot be haunted by the crippling contracts - Jason Bay, Luis Castillo, Oliver Perez, Johan Santana - of the recent past. The Yankees still operate under Hal Steinbrenner's directive to bring their payroll below the $189 million luxury-tax threshold, to take advantage of significant incentives in the collective bargaining agreement. It makes sound business sense, but the Yankees have reversed course on past proclamations - remember when they absolutely would never sign Alex Rodriguez if he opted out of his contract - and some in the industry are skeptical. The Yankees have always held out the possibility of exceeding the $189 million mark if they feel they must do it to compete for a championship. If they do, it would be a stinging indictment of a farm system lacking in cheap, major-league-ready talent. Like Alderson, Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman has choices - Cano, Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann and perhaps Masahiro Tanaka from Japan. But in an industry flush with cash, there is greater competition for the free agents they covet. There is also little hope of a speedy resolution to Rodriguez's appeal of his drug suspension, leaving his exorbitant salary in the balance. The Red Sox showed last winter that diving into free agency can work. They signed seven free agents, none for more than $39 million guaranteed, and all seven succeeded. Those players complemented an existing core that was deeper than what the Mets have now, but possibly comparable to these Yankees. "Every team's decision-making is a little different because every team is a little different and every off-season is different," Boston's general manager, Ben Cherington, said during the World Series. I don't know if last off-season and what we did means anything other than it made sense for us at that moment. And, look, we got some luck, too, there's no doubt. I don't know about the performances, but we definitely got luck with health. The Mets and the Yankees had terrible luck with health last season, but no one wants to hear that anymore. The time for action is here, in a crucial and compelling off-season at two ballparks that were dark in October.