Peppermint, gingerbread, and egg nog are a few of the common smells you’ll experience this time of year. Freshly bloomed flowers? It may need to wait until New York Mets spring training is underway before the mere thought of daisies enters our minds.

Before we know it, spring training will arrive. We’re just a long January and a few weeks of February away from some actual baseball games being played. It’s amazing how much of the offseason is cut down when October includes meaningful baseball for your team.

There is plenty of offseason left to go. However, if you flare your nostrils and take a big whiff, you might smell these spring training battles already brewing.

1) Jose Siri vs. Tyrone Taylor

The biggest spring training battle where the loser gets a consolation prize of sticking around, Mets fans can already begin to ponder about who the starting center fielder will be in 2025. The team has Tyrone Taylor left from last year. They added Jose Siri in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays.

This isn’t an easy platoon situation with both hitting right-handed. Siri is the boom or bust type of offensive player with superior speed and defensive skills. Taylor is more down the middle. You kind of know what you’ll get from him.

Both players will be on the Opening Day roster. Picking a starter may take longer than a couple of exhibition games in St. Lucie. It should be a fluid situation.

On one hand, Siri makes sense to start because if he’s going to hit once every five at-bats, you want to make the most of those opportunities. Get the most innings from him you can defensively in center field. On the other hand, Taylor proved he can handle a starting spot in center field last year for the Mets. Reverse splits for much of the year as well, a continued trend of hitting righties well might help Carlos Mendoza further decide between which player gets the bulk of the starts.

Conclusion: Too close to call. Let’s see them play a little first.

2) Genesis Cabrera vs. Danny Young

The Mets bullpen could use another lefty. Even if they did bring in someone, we could see a battle brew between minor league free agent signing Genesis Cabrera and roster leftover Danny Young. Neither has minor league options in 2025. For Cabrera to win, the Mets would have to DFA or trade Young. For Young to be victorious, Cabrera would need to begin the year in the minor leagues. The only downside here is there could be something in his contract with an opt out date which is common for players of his experience level.

Young ended up having a very average year with the Mets, but there was a period when he made us all forget about the devastation Jake Diekman brought to our lives. Despite already being 30, he has only 52.1 innings of MLB experience. Of them, 37.2 came last year. He’s not a bad piece to have around. The biggest knock is he’s no longer someone they can easily shuttle to Syracuse.

Cabrera has far more experience and has regularly had better ERA seasons than Young’s last year. In fact, a 3.59 ERA posted by the 28-year-old lefty last year was close to a full run better than his fellow Mets southpaw. On the downside, he struck out batters at a significantly lower rate and had a horrific 1.46 WHIP. Cabrera has spent much of his career striking out too few batters for all of the walks he allows.

Conclusion: Cabrera will need to blow Young away in spring training to get an Opening Day roster spot. One possibility is they both make it and we see who falters first.

3) Griffin Canning vs. Tylor Megill

And our main event, Griffin Canning vs. Tylor Megill. A pair of sixth starters trying to spend this season to prove they belong on a big league roster, each is at a crossroads of their career.

Let’s start with Megill who we know best. This is his final year with a minor league option. It should be enough for the Mets to keep him around. After all, he’s coming off of a promising season featuring a 4.04 ERA and dazzling 10.5 strikeouts per 9. He’s one of those guys we’ve been waiting to see benefit from the pitching lab and working with Jeremy Hefner. At least last season, it seemed to get the most out of him even if he spent half the year in the minors.

Canning is new to our Mets coven. A career 4.78 ERA and an unsatisfying final year with the Los Angeles Angels that did manage to include a personal high of 171.2 innings but 99 earned runs to lead the league, he’s a depth piece for the Mets to try to mold into what the Angels couldn’t. Canning has gotten hit hard over the last two seasons. The troubling numbers from last year in a larger sample size than ever before are cause for great concern.

A major factor in this spring training battle is the fact that Canning has enough service time to refuse a minor league assignment. A conversation we hope the Mets had with him before the signing, there’s also the possibility of him being used as a reliever at times. This is a spring training battle more about an emergency start versus an actual regular spot on the team.

Conclusion: This is a battle with no real winner, but I’d bet they favor seeing what Canning can do as he was a choice by David Stearns while Megill is an inherited player.