Paul Articulates – Are we there yet?

It has been a long journey from the disappointing end to the great 2022 season until now.  We have dealt with the suspense of what will happen with all the free agents, particularly from the Mets pitching staff.  Most of their destinations are known now, and many of the players have been signed who will replace them.

It sure has been an exciting off-season, unlike most of those Wilpon years when very little happened beyond the rumors.  This year there have been headlines aplenty!

• The first priority in the front office, and probably for most Mets fans, was to get the signature of  closer Edwin Diaz on a new contract.  That happened early, and the swiftness of the deal made us feel like Steve Cohen and Billy Eppler meant business.

• The departure of Jacob deGrom was painful and shocking, but not surprising.  We all knew that if someone wanted to pay a high price for a multi-year contract on the risk associated with deGrom’s health that we would lose him. 

• The signing of Justin Verlander soon afterwards helped ease the pain, as he was coming off a Cy Young season with a World Series ring.  He is older than Max Scherzer, but has a re-built elbow so we’ll just hope there is some kind of extended warranty associated with that.

• Many other pieces moved about on the board.  We lost Taijuan Walker to the rival Phillies, lost Chris Bassitt to the Blue Jays, and signed touted Japanese pitcher Kodai Senga.  Several other players have been added to the roster, and when the smoke cleared after the winter meetings, the Mets had a pretty hefty payroll and a whole bunch of new entries in the contact list.

After this flurry of activity, and with a record setting payroll for 2023, one would assume that things are going to slow down.  But the Mets were not the only ones with their checkbooks out – the Phillies were doing some pretty big moves of their own.  

The Braves were a little quieter, but made some very crafty moves including the very recent three way trade that netted them promising young catcher Sean Murphy.  It seems like the very competitive NL East is going at it in the off-season as well as the regular season.  So to answer the title question “are we done yet?” we have to look at where we stack up with our NL East rivals.

Here is a look at the Mets, Braves, and Phillies pitching staff as it stands today.  There are inevitably several more minor moves that will happen, and all players will have to show up to spring training to vie for a spot on the April roster.  So I took what looks like the top ten hurlers for each team and compared their numbers from last season.

All three teams stack up with very similar WAR for their top ten, although it is worth noting that Senga doesn’t have a WAR for last year that I could find, and with his very impressive numbers it is likely that he would have been good for around 4-6 WAR.  

A closer look at the starting pitching seems to give an edge to the Mets, but it’s close.  The top two starters for each team are capable of shutting down the most potent offenses on any given day.  The Mets and Braves go deeper with talented 3 and 4 starters while the Phillies seem only 3 deep.  The Mets take the cake with their Cookie, who should prove to be the strongest number 5 starter in the group.  

At the back end, the edge once again goes to the Mets who have the premier closer in Diaz.  Both Atlanta and Philadelphia lost their closers to free agency and unless the sign a big name, they will have to promote from within or close by committee.  

With both Tylor Megill and David Peterson in long relief or spot starting assignments, I would offer that the Mets have more depth there too.  If Ottavino or Lugo come back, the pitching will be very strong.  If they get signed by one of these two competitors, it makes things much tighter.

On the offensive side, a comparison of the three batting orders does not favor the Mets as much.  Here is a preliminary look at the lineups for each team:

The first thing you will notice is that I have penciled in the Mets’ top two prospects in the starting lineup.  With Willson Contreras, his brother William, and Sean Murphy off the board, it is not likely that the Mets are going to splash with a big catcher signing this off-season so that signals to me that they are ready to promote their young stud Francisco Alvarez.  

He will certainly have to earn his stripes in spring training, because gold glover Tomas Nido will be back and James McCann will presumably be healthy.   Baty is worth a shot at third, as Escobar’s late season surge was not enough to justify the horrible numbers he turned in on both offense and defense in 2022.

The Mets will have a difficult time matching their rivals in the batter’s box.  The Phillies and Braves lineups are packed with powerful, fence-hunting bats that can do a lot of damage in a ballgame.  In head-to-head matchups, the Mets’ pitching staff may be able to neutralize those lineups on good days.  

But the problem is that other pitching staffs cannot, and that can mean a lot of wins.  Last year both the Braves and Mets put up 101 wins, and the Phillies got on a late roll that propelled them past both into a World Series.  

It looks like we are in for a battle, so back to the title question; I don’t think we’re done yet.  I think there is room for the acquisition of a big bat for the DH position that would give us a little more punch.