The Mets and Braves and their chances for a 100-win season

Recently, a commenter asked why the Braves were not as good as their recent 14-game winning streak implied. He followed up by saying, “No no… the Braves are for real and not going away. Both teams likely to win 100 games.”

It takes a special team to win 100 games. Are the 2022 Braves special? My opinion is that’s an aggressive take. In broad terms, you’re never as good as you look at your best or your worst. Atlanta’s 14-game winning streak was very impressive. But it comes with an asterisk, as all five teams they faced had a sub-.500 record. The five teams combined winning percentage translated to a 64-98 team.

The 14-game winning streak was snapped – by another sub-.500 team – and the Braves have lost two straight. They currently sit with a .561 winning percentage, which is quite good. If they kept that same percentage for the rest of the season, they would finish with 90 wins. While better than last year’s 88-win team, it’s short of a 100-win juggernaut.

Since MLB instituted the Wild Card in 1995, there have been 36 teams to win at least 100 games in a season. And one thing that almost all of these teams – 34 of 36 – do is that they have a winning record against teams with a .500 or better record. The 2022 Braves currently have a losing record against those clubs. Here are the 100-win teams and how they did against squads .500 or better:

Year	Team	Wins	vs .500 and up	Winning Pct.
2001	Mariners	116	48-23	.676
1998	Yankees	114	38-26	.594
2018	Red Sox	108	41-33	.554
2021	Giants	107	35-28	.556
2019	Astros	107	35-28	.556
2021	Dodgers	106	35-27	.565
2019	Dodgers	106	45-32	.584
1998	Braves	106	46-30	.605
2004	Cardinals	105	46-33	.582
2017	Dodgers	104	36-33	.522
2019	Yankees	103	43-32	.573
2018	Astros	103	41-38	.519
2016	Cubs	103	31-25	.554
2009	Yankees	103	52-35	.598
2002	A’s	103	46-38	.548
2002	Yankees	103	37-25	.597
1999	Braves	103	38-20	.655
2017	Indians	102	27-22	.551
2011	Phillies	102	37-25	.597
2001	A’s	102	42-32	.568
1998	Astros	102	38-33	.535
2019	Twins	101	32-37	.464
2017	Astros	101	18-15	.545
2004	Yankees	101	35-30	.538
2003	Braves	101	57-43	.570
2003	Yankees	101	47-37	.560
2002	Braves	101	39-22	.639
1997	Braves	101	36-38	.486
2021	Rays	100	48-42	.533
2018	Yankees	100	41-30	.577
2015	Cardinals	100	46-31	.597
2008	Angels	100	46-30	.605
2005	Cardinals	100	47-30	.610
2003	Giants	100	57-39	.594
1999	D’Backs	100	30-27	.526
1995	Indians	100	26-22	.542

Not only did 34 of the 36 teams (94%) finish with a winning record, 69% (25-36) had a .550 or better winning percentage against the good teams they faced. Currently, the Mets have a 25-15 mark against teams .500 or better, a .625 winning percentage. Compare that to the Braves, who are 12-14 for a .462 winning percentage.

One thing we’ve wondered in the past is if Baseball-Reference used records at the time the teams played or what their records were at the date you checked the stats. It certainly seems to be the latter. We know the 2022 Mets have the following records against these teams that were .500 or above when they actually played:

Dodgers: 2-2
Padres: 1-2
Brewers: 2-1
Cardinals: 5-2
Giants: 4-3
Total: 14-10

The Mets are 9-3 against the Phillies and 2-2 against the Braves. Add those to the totals above and you get 25-15, which is what B-R shows for the Mets’ record against teams .500 or better. So, neither the Braves nor Phillies were .500 or better when they played the Mets but they are now, so those results are included.

Is that good? Maybe, maybe not. One could argue the only reason the Phillies weren’t a .500 team earlier was because they had so many early games against the Mets. One can imagine that it’s easier to use “final” records instead of records at the time the two clubs played, which would necessitate more computational power to produce daily. Besides, if you played a team that was 4-1 at the time you played them but they ended up 70-92, should that really count as a .500 or better team?

Regardless, we see that most clubs play 60 or more games against .500 or better teams. The three exceptions were the 2017 Astros and Indians and the 1995 Indians. The 1995 squad makes sense, as that was a strike-shortened season where they played 144 games. The big surprise isn’t that they played only 44 games against .500 or better clubs – it’s that they notched 100 wins. Percentage wise, their .694 mark is the third-best rate in this sample.

The American League in 2017 only had five clubs finish .500 or better. The Astros didn’t have anyone else in their division and the Indians had just one. That’s not going to happen in the 2022 National League. Currently, there are eight teams .500 or better, including three in the NL East. Atlanta still has 15 games apiece against New York and Philadelphia to play, along with games against three other NL clubs above .500 and at least two AL clubs. They could have 45 games still to play against good teams.

Obviously, a lot will depend on if the Phillies are real or not. But even if the Phillies wind up an 80-82 squad, that still leaves 30 games for the Braves against real competition. Can they win 16 or more of those games to get to even or above against the good clubs? It’s absolutely possible but you wouldn’t bet on it by any means. We’ll get to see pretty soon. Next week, the Braves have seven games against the Giants and Dodgers, followed by three on the road against the Phillies.

What about the opposite side of things? There were two teams to reach 100 wins while having a losing record against the good clubs. Those were the 2019 Twins and the 1997 Braves. Both teams had exceptional records against teams with losing records and they played a bunch of games against them, too. The Twins had a .742 winning percentage against the sub-.500 teams and the Braves had a .739 mark.

The 2022 Braves, even with their 14-game winning streak against teams with a losing record, have “just” a .625 winning percentage against sub-.500 teams. They’re going to have to kick it into a higher gear to match the ’19 Twins and ’97 Braves in this regard.

Last year, the 77-win Mets went 9-10 against the 88-win Braves. Earlier editions of the Mets might have been intimidated by the Braves but that doesn’t appear to be the case with this year’s model. And it’s likely that most of these head-to-head matchups will come when the Mets are closer to full strength, as the two clubs don’t play each other until July 11. Max Scherzer should be back by then and it’s a possibility Jacob deGrom will be, too. Even if deGrom is not, he should be back for the final 12 games in the series.

The Mets are on pace to win 106 games. Their Pythagorean record shows a 97-win team. Five of their nine worst games with runs allowed were started by pitchers that will be replaced by deGrom and Scherzer. Hopefully games with the two aces the rest of the way will reduce the runs given up and boost the Mets’ Pythagorean record to triple digits.

The bottom line is that thru games of 6/18, the Mets are a legitimate option to win 100 games while the Braves are not. Of course, there’s more than half of the season remaining so a lot can change between now and then. Who thought the Braves could win 14 in a row? That terrific stretch gets them in the conversation for a 90-win team. They’ll need something similar again to get them in the 100-win conversation.

The Braves have a stretch where they play 11 games in a row against bad teams in late August-early September. Perhaps they can have another great span then. The problem is that they’ll play 31 games against known good teams plus eight games against the Phillies before they hit that soft stretch. In the first two-plus months of the season, the Braves played 26 games against good teams. Now, in a slightly smaller span, they’ll have to play 39.

We’ll certainly find out a lot about the Braves in the next little bit.