By now, we’ve all heard the rundown. Of the Mets eight starting position players, five of them are suffering with some form of injury, and one of the supposedly healthy is Moises Alou. Of the Mets five projected starting pitchers, one is hurt, and another is Pedro Martinez. Of the 12 bench players and bullpen members, at least four are dealing with injuries. All this, and we’ve got four solid weeks before the games start.

“I’m sure they will all be fine,” my colleague Matt Cerrone writes over at MetsBlog. I wish I could share his optimism. Carlos Delgado, Luis Castillo, Ryan Church, Brian Schneider, and Carlos Beltran, the five nicked-up starters, have an average age of about 31 and a half. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that one or more of them will have trouble staying healthy throughout the season, given that they’re hurt already. Then of course, Alou is 157 years old, and a mortal lock to visit the DL at some point in the near future. With the bench players almost equally banged up, and the AAA replacement options mostly traded away, and two-fifths on the starting rotation taken up by frail old guys, we’re on very thin ice here.

It gets scary when I start asking myself the what-ifs. What if Marlon Anderson actually has to play first base for the entire season? (I assume everyone saw the collision in right field, yes?) What if Church really can’t hit lefties, and no one on the bench can either? What if John Maine or Oliver Perez can’t repeat their successes of last season? And, heaven forbid, what if Jose Reyes or David Wright is actually not as good as we think he is?

We are the clear favorites in the NL East, but anyone who’s treating this season as a celebratory march into the playoffs is out of his mind. It’s easy, ridiculously easy in fact, to envision a scenario where we win between 83 and 87 games and have to endure another offseason of hand-wringing.

So, everyone please get healthy. Everyone please get ready. And please guys, get all the wins in April and May that you can. We may very well need them in September.