The Mets begin trade deadline day at 56-50, in a virtual tie for the second Wild Card spot. That’s a pace for an 86-win season. But there’s a reason to believe the team is better than that. They’ve done a bunch of shuffling to get the team they have now. Of the 26 players on the Opening Day roster, only 13 remain.
While there’s still shuffling to go – perhaps a deadline deal or two, along with three relievers currently on the IL – it’s likely that the turnover in August and September won’t be as drastic as what’s come before. And in the team’s last 47 games, the Mets are 32-15. That’s a .681 winning percentage. That’s 29% of the season and it’s not easy to luck your way to a 110-win pace over that many games.
Everyone’s worried about the pitching and it’s not that those concerns are unfounded. But in these last 47 games, the team’s pitchers have a 4.07 ERA, which is the 10th-best mark in the majors. And it’s not because everyone has been doing great. The Mets have used 23 pitchers in this stretch and nine of them have ERAs of 5.00 or greater. The rest are pretty good and that’s where the Mets are drawing most of their pitchers moving forward.
Things are going so well on the pitching side that the Mets DFAd Adrian Houser – who had a more-than-respectable 3.86 ERA in these last 47 games – and no one batted an eye.
And the hitting has been better than the pitching.
In these last 47 games, the Mets lead the majors with a 133 wRC+ and are second with an .817 OPS. In this stretch alone, Francisco Lindor has a 3.5 fWAR. Five other players have an fWAR of 1.0 or greater. The weakest hitter still on the team is Jeff McNeil, who has a 99 wRC+ in this span. And in his last 11 games, McNeil has a 1.152 OPS, with nine of his 14 hits going for extra-bases.
The Mets completed a stretch in July where they played 18 straight games against teams under .500 and they went 11-7 for a .611 winning percentage. That was followed up by nine straight games against teams with a winning record and the Mets are 5-2 so far. Conventional wisdom is that you want to clean up against the bad teams and play .500 against the good teams. Maybe you would have liked to have seen an extra win against the bad teams but that’s been more than made up by how they’ve performed against the good squads.
It feels like the pitching is a little light. It feels like the hitting can’t be this good moving forward. There’s never been a team that couldn’t improve at the deadline and the Mets are no exception. But maybe the team, as currently constructed, is better than we think. Do you think any team sees the Mets on their schedule and immediately thinks – series win and possible sweep?
Me neither.
An answer to your last question, I think most teams if they are cognizant of what has been going on in the last two months, would not be thrilled to see the Mets on their schedule. Even though they know our starters generally don’t go much past five innings, they also know that we have the ability to score a lot of runs. Amazing how much of a turnover this roster has had. Credit goes to David Stearns, who is not afraid to make a change even at the expense of getting rid of a player under contract where there’s money owed. Actually credit for dumping mom performing players goes to Steve Cohen because the last ownership would never have done anything like that.
Hoping for a few more deals before the trade deadline and always makes me crazy to see other teams making deals while we wait to see what happens. Certainly don’t think we should mortgage the future for this one year, but since we are so close, we should have some youngsters are not afraid to move.
Excellent recap of the now team…pretty solid quad but still light on high end pitching.