The Mets Positionally
- INFIELD: Pete Alonso and/or Dominic Smith, Jeff McNeil, Francisco Lindor, J.D. Davis
- OUTFIELD: some combination of Brandon Nimmo, Michael Conforto, Smith, and Kevin Pillar
- CATCHING: James McCann
Gone is Robbie Cano and his steroid-enhanced 2020 season. Gone is Yoenis Cespedes and his … “interesting injury”, let’s say.
The majority of their offensive firepower consists of players right around their prime years, including Braves-killer McNeil. Despite the personnel losses, they will score runs.
The bigger question may be whether they can catch the ball well enough. Pillar would be an upgrade, no doubt. Lindor is too, but not as much.
Basically, if teams can keep their batted balls toward the foul lines, they may find good hunting grounds. Up the middle? Not as good for them.
It’s still a bit of a surprise that the Mets did not get a center fielder like Jackie Bradley Jr. He would not have been a huge offensive presence, but still would have been better than Pillar.
The real trick that manager Rojas will have to deal with is in juggling players like Davis, Smith, Nimmo, Conforto, and Alonso since there are too few positions on the field for all of them at once… this is a team that clearly was hoping for a Universal DH rule to be employed.
Mets Outlook
PROJECTIONS
I’ve added a few more entries for the Mets here:
- DraftKings Nation: 90.5 wins
- Superbook.com: 90.5
- VegasInsider.com: 90.5
- OddsShark.com: 89.5
- PECOTA: 93.4
- Fangraphs: 92.0
Now first a word about Las Vegas betting odds (ignore the bottom pair of projections for this discussion). The Vegas soothsayers are interested in accuracy, of course, but they are more interested in balancing the betting.
If the same amount of dollars is being bet on the “over” as the “under”, then the bookies are happy… and their odds are adjusted to ensure that they still make money with either outcome. So these win predictions are actually based on the betting trends that the public is guessing will happen.
New Jersey has one of the largest volumes of dollars spent on sports betting in the country — which certainly brings in New Yorkers, so my conclusion here is that Mets fans really like their chances in 2021, but they don’t love them… yet.
In baseball terms, the Mets depth is very good for their bullpen and outfield, but not so much in other places — chiefly the rotation (at least in the absence of Syndergaard).
I came into this review expecting that Mew York would be the chief rival for the Atlanta Braves in the NL East this year… and that’s still more likely to be the case than not. But I don’t see them running off and posting anything like 95+ wins, either.
Assuming normal wear-and-tear on their players, an outcome of 87-90 wins seems more likely. On paper, they are better than the Marlins, Phillies, and Nationals but either Philly or Washington could sneak up on this club.
For the Mets to reach that 90+ win total, a lot of things have to go right while they stay healthy. An early surge could help, but we’ll have to wait to see how that goes.
I still think they make second place with a solid likelihood of traveling to San Diego for a Wild Card game, but a combination of sketchy defense, light depth, and health issues should keep them from successfully challenging the Braves.
All that could change with a major trade deadline acquisition, but it could be too late to catch Atlanta by then.