I remember when the sports pages used to contain frequent images of pitchers icing their arms after a start. Hey, Mets?

With the last spot in the 2013 baseball playoffs decided last night — congratulations, Tampa Bay Rays, your prize is a series with your AL East rival Boston Red Sox — it’s time to ruminate one more time on my New York Mets.

The Mets kept my interest this season, down to the end, despite finishing way back in the NL East again.

They played hard.

I’m glad management decided to bring back manager Terry Collins. He’s a no-nonsense clubhouse director who seems to have the ears of his players, no easy feat in this day and age. The farm system is starting to feed a steady flow of good, young players to Citi Field. GM Sandy Alderson gathered some impressive arms in trades the last couple of years, and out they are marching to the big league pitching mound.

Of course, my Mets have had to go deep in arms.

The injury bug hit the pitching staff hard.

As Dillon Gee recovered from last season’s arm surgery, Jonathan Niese took months off to rest a shoulder tear. Jeremy Hefner hurt his arm, with surgery on the line. And, biggest woe of all, phenom Matt Harvey had to call it a season because of a
partial tear in his elbow. For now, the decision is for Harvey to rest it, to hopefully heal that valuable right arm instead of going under the knife for Tommy John surgery.

We shall see in spring training if that works out.

And, by the way, the black cloud of no-hit man Johann Santana’s frequent and serious left arm troubles still hovered over the team in the beginning of this season before the realization set in that he was done.

I think we need some bats to help out captain David Wright. (And the third baseman had to sit because of a hamstring injury for more than a month, by the way.) Daniel Murphy had his best season at the plate and performed well at second base. Maybe Lucas Duda will turn a corner at first base, where I’ve given up on Ike Davis.

But for 2014, I figure pure math is catching up to us.

There are 15 teams in the National League. (How did you enjoy that record-awful first year in the AL, Houston Astros?)

It should follow that every team gets to the World Series every 15 years.

Here’s the Mets’ statistical variance. They’ve been to the World Series four times in 51 years — 1969, 1973, 1986 and 2001. That’s once every 12.9 years.

It’s our turn.