Tom Brennan - METS' WINS ABOVE REPLACEMENT STRATEGY FOR 2021

I tripped across a baseball page where it listed highest ever team Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in any given season.

The 1927 Yankees had the highest ever season WAR with a 68.1.

The 2001 Seattle Mariners a close 2nd at 67.2.

The Yankees, BTW, had 8 of the top 25 season WARs of all time.  Not surprising. 

In case you were wondering, the 1986 Mets had a 54 WAR (per Baseball Reference), which feels about right since they ended up a stellar 108-54 in their pinnacle season.

The 2020 Mets, though, were a different story.

Per Baseball Reference, an eye-opening observation was that a whopping 16 players (many used briefly) had a WAR < 0, and 12 others either had a WAR of 0 or 0.1.

Twenty Eight Guys With a 0.1 WAR or Less.

Is it any wonder they won only 26 of 60 games in 2020?

How did 1986 compare? Just 9 guys in 1986 with WARs of 0.1 or less, and only 2 negative ones, and none of those 9 guys played more than minimally.

No further exhaustive analysis of Mets WAR in this article, but very simply, that sort of "28 guys with 0.1 WAR or less" result cannot even come remotely close to happening again in 2021 if this team is to have any success.

Moves in this off season so far have stemmed that propensity for guys who produce WARs of 0.1 or less greatly, no doubt.  

May future signings and trades in 2021 end up with reducing the "0.1 WAR or less" list that to 9 players in 2021, as the Mets did in 1986.

Because, heck, I'd like the team to have a 50 WAR total, or higher, in 2021.

STEVE MATZ LEAVES:

I've said it before, but he had a Jekyll and Hyde career with the Mets...started out Jekyll and morphed to Hyde.

In his 2015 debut and 2016's first two months, he was Koufaxian.  11-1, 2.05 ERA in 101 innings.

From June 2016 through 2020, in 479 innings, he had a 4.83 ERA and went 20-40.  

That's 4 months of 2017, all of 2018, all of 2019, and the abbreviated 2020.  That's a heck of a stretch of bad road.

After May 2016, he went 2-7 that season from June to end.

2017? 2-7.

2018? 5-11.

2019? 11-10.

2020? 0-5.

For a team in a brutally tough NL East, where every win counts, can you blame the Mets for moving on, rather than gambling on a turnaround after the above?  I can't blame them.

You can't produce the wins above replacement that an aspiring team needs when you go 20-40.