How many WAR do the Mets need?

Hardcore statistics readers, don’t let your heads explode. WAR is supposed to be a general, all purpose stat, so we are going to use it as such. By calculating the cumulative offensive and pitching WAR numbers for National League playoff teams the past two years, we’ll hopefully see just how far the Mets need to improve to realistically be in the running for October baseball in 2015. So let’s get started.

Here are the total bWAR (Baseball-Reference) numbers for the NL playoff teams this year and last:

2014 Playoff Team bWAR        2013 Playoff Team bWAR
Cardinals – 33.7                      Cardinals – 41.9
Pirates – 40.3                          Pirates – 42.9
Dodger – 46.6                          Reds – 43.8
Giants – 35.4                           Dodgers – 47.2
Nationals – 46.9                       Braves – 45.8

Average – 33.8                         Average – 36.9

Mets – 29.6                              Mets – 20.9

From this simple data collection, we can see that the Mets were quite far from being a playoff caliber team in 2013, but not so distant in 2014. We must remember that WAR, along with being a very general stat, is also highly subject to year by year biases. The Mets could total a 35 team WAR next year and still not make the playoffs, but that would at least put them in serious contention according to these estimates.

Where are the Mets going to see this improvement? For starters, Matt Harvey should offer a decent increase. As many of us remember, he was a 4.9 bWAR player with the glove and bat in 2013. While a repeat of that would be tremendous, a more realistic expectation of around 3.0 bWAR would still be nice. Jacob deGrom put up a 3.5 bWAR in 2014, and could do so again over a full season. A more tempered return of 2.5 bWAR would be nothing to sneeze at, though.

Zack Wheeler may have more impact than either as he technically had worse WAR numbers in 2014 (0.7) than 2013 (1.1), in large part due to his terrible hitting (-0.2), and unkind Runs Better Than Average (RAA) of -6. If he can continue to show improvement on the mound, and not be almost useless at the plate, he could become a 2 bWAR player. Maybe even better. Other incremental improvements will come from addition by subtraction. Jose Valverde, Scott Rice, and John Lannan all posted negative WAR numbers last year, and likely none of them will be returning for 2015.

Similarly, David Wright was a 5.8 bWAR player in 2013, and a 7.0 bWAR in 2012. It is a large question mark whether Wright’s mediocre (for him) 2.8 bWAR in 2014 was due mostly to injury, or if there was some serious regression going on as well. A comeback of 4 bWAR is certainly possible, maybe even pessimistic. Curtis Granderson too usually averages around 3.5 bWAR, not 1.3, so he should see a decent return to normal, despite getting older. There is also no reason to doubt Lucas Duda‘s breakout season won’t be repeatable next year.

We can see then how small improvements throughout the team will get the Mets closer to contention than most of us realize. The Mets shouldn’t be too hard-pressed either to find more productive outfield bats than the Chris Young, Eric Young Jr. and Bobby Abreu trio that posted a 0.3 bWAR combined, so there’s even more room to improve simply by getting rid of the non-functioning parts. We still haven’t seen what a full year of Wilmer Flores is like at the plate. And if the Mets can acquire just a decent bat, or smartly platoon their young players, the outfield should see a sizable jump as well. And we’re not even talking about adding an All-Star caliber player! If you factor in that the Mets are legitimate players in the Troy Tulowitzki sweepstakes, among others, the team could snag 5 WAR overnight and make that knocking on the door to the playoffs a lot more audible.