Eleven months ago, Mickey Callaway’s Mets were 11-1.

They were not just the talk of baseball in New York, they were the talk of baseball everywhere.

A lot has happened since then.

As fast as the Mets started last season, the bottom fell out even faster. By the end of June, they had gone from first place in the National League East to last place; from 10 games over .500 to 16 games under .500. The team that started 11-1 managed to lose 10 of 11 games to fall behind the Marlins the night they did drop into last place.

New York would end up with a new general manager in Brodie Van Wagenen, a former agent at CAA. Van Wagenen made a big trade for Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz, the Mariners’ star closer, and said his team was going to win the East -- where Bryce Harper is now in Philadelphia and the Nationals, Harper’s old team, don’t seem to be going anywhere and the Braves are still loaded.

Callaway, a former pitching coach with Terry Francona -- who was one of the best stories of last season until he wasn’t, is smart enough to know that he is now working for a GM who did not hire him. 

It was April of 1998 when the Yankees -- who would end up winning more baseball games that year than the Red Sox won last year, but who were coming off a first-round playoff loss to the Indians -- got off to an 0-3 start and I happened to run into Yogi Berra.

I asked if he had any advice for manager Joe Torre.

“Yeah,” Yogi said. “Tell him to win some games.”

“The mission is always to win,” Callaway said on Saturday morning, on his way to the Braves’ ballpark near Disney World. “It doesn’t matter who you’re working for. The mission statement is being the best team you can be. The plan remains the same. It’s just that a more aggressive [management] style is in place now. We’re getting things to where they need to be with our organization. But the ultimate goal is to win.”

He paused and added, “There’s always pressure on everybody.”

Callaway got a lot of on-the-job training last season -- including the day in Cincinnati when he made a mistake with his own lineup card and the Mets batted out of order in the first inning and cost themselves a scoring opportunity against the Reds.

I asked him a question about things he knows now about being a big league manager that he didn’t know a year ago, when the 2018 season was all ahead of him.

“There’s no one thing,” Callaway said. “I just think you have to go through it to get better at it. I’ve said this before: The best managers are not the guys who have been doing it for a year, the first timers. The best ones are the ones who have been through it, and one of the reasons is that they HAVE been through it.”

The prominent exception to Callaway’s rule, of course, is Alex Cora of the Red Sox -- who did not act like a rookie manager for five minutes last season, then had as good an October as any manager has ever had in the postseason.

I asked Callaway about his relationship with Van Wagenen.

“He has been supportive since Day 1,” Callaway said. “I think we’ve had an excellent dialogue from the beginning. Now, it’s my job to get our players to perform to their highest ability.”

And then I asked what he liked best about his team this spring, with Opening Day less than a week away -- and before the Mets would score 12 against the Braves on Saturday afternoon:

“We have raked,” said Callaway.

The Mets have raked this spring. Cano, one of the best hitters the team has ever had, was batting .404 through Saturday. Peter Alonso, an exciting kid, has hit four spring home runs. Michael Conforto, who will be the heart of the batting order along with Cano, has hit five home runs. Amed Rosario, the shortstop, sported a .350 mark, while Wilson Ramos, the new catcher, was at .324. Dominic Smith, a first baseman who is still just 23, has hit .362.

Of course, none of it matters if they don’t come out swinging next week. Everybody knows about the starting pitching, with Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler at the top of the rotation. But coming off a season in which the Mets couldn’t hit, they have hit the ball hard this spring. In that way, they have been as aggressive as their new general manager.

“I honestly think that being in the best division [in baseball] will make us better,” said Callaway.

A year ago, Callaway was the guy, and a good guy, who in a decade had made it from being a pitcher-coach with the Laredo Broncos of the Independent United Baseball League to managing the Mets. Then, he had his historic start before an equally historic fall by the end of June. Now, he’s gotten some of the managing experience about which he spoke. He says all managers want to win. Maybe no one is under more pressure to do that this season than he is. Callaway is the one who needs to win some games.