This time last year, the expectation of most was that the Mets were going to top 95 wins. That didn’t happen and this year those expectations are considerably lower. Here’s a sampling of views of the 2024 Mets from national sites: FanGraphs: 81-81 CBS Sports: 81-81 The Athletic: 80-82 USA Today: 78-84 Gambling site FanDuel [...]
The small sample sizes and the questionable level of competition are two things that make Spring Training stats not a particularly good barometer of how a player will do once the regular season starts. People love to point out how Player X did great/poor in Grapefruit League action, only to turn around and do poor/great [...]
One day after writing about preparations for Luis Severino’s 1/$13 to be the largest move of the offseason for the Mets, they ink Sean Manaea to a 2/$28 deal with an opt out after the first season. My first thought after hearing the move was to recall he didn’t look good when the Mets first [...]
The Mets were never seriously linked to Aaron Nola so it’s no big deal that he’s re-signed with the Phillies. But the Nola signing means that we can now seriously expect the big free agents to ink contracts at any time. And we still don’t know what to expect the Mets to do this offseason. [...]
Max Scherzer posted 8 IP, 1 ER, 1 BB and 8 Ks last night versus the Astros. This is the type of start most fans envisioned from him this year. Perhaps not quite this good but in this ballpark. And not only from Scherzer but Justin Verlander, too. And fans hoped that other pitchers would [...]
It’s been my opinion that the Mets made a big mistake by having their final three bullpen spots be (essentially) a competition among relievers with options remaining. My preference would have been to have more stability among the back end of the pen with pitchers who have successfully performed in the majors. But that ship [...]
The 1966 Dodgers utilized a four-man rotation, one that featured three future Hall of Famers and the fourth, the black sheep, pitched for 18 years and was a two-time 20-game winner. That year, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Claude Osteen and Don Sutton combined to make 154 of the team’s 162 starts. You don’t see rotations [...]
There’s a story on SNY with the headline, “Darling says Correa deal would be ‘centerpiece’ of Mets offseason.” Carlos Correa is a star who’s on the young side of 30; it’s not an outlandish statement. Keith Law had him ranked as the top free agent available this offseason. Still, it struck me as odd with [...]
Omar Narvaez is likely better than either James McCann or Tomas Nido so the Mets signing him yesterday is probably a good idea. But it makes it harder for Francisco Alvarez to make the Opening Day roster. Not impossible - just harder. There have been rumors that the club has been shopping McCann and maybe [...]
Rich Calder of the New York Post had an excellent piece on Steve Cohen trying to land a casino in Willets Point. There will be three casino licenses issued and two of them are seen likely to go racing establishments in Acqueduct and Yonkers. Cohen's group is likely to be in a battle with a [...]
Prior to the 2015 season, my top 10 list had Rafael Montero #1 and Noah Syndergaard #2. That one hasn't worked out very well, as Syndergaard has posted 21.0 fWAR in his career to date while Montero has just a 3.7 mark. Both are free agents this year and Montero just inked a 3/$34.5 million [...]
If you’re honest with yourself, you realize you hold a lot of beliefs about the Mets that turn out not to be true. And put me at the front of the line. Each year I have a preseason predictions column and at no point has there ever been more right than wrong. And there are [...]