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Going way back into the pre-metrics days of the 1980s when we only used traditional totals like batting average, home runs, RBIs and stolen bases it was a bit simpler to make personnel decisions. Where fantasy leagues differ immensely from the major leagues (at least until there is a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) achieved after the 2026 season ends is the salary cap. That wrinkle made it much more interesting to examine how people filled out their rosters.
Without going into an excruciating level of minute detail, suffice to say that a squad full of 20 HR/80 RBIs hitters is not in aggregate very expensive and is a valid approach compared to the folks who dumped 25% or more of their salary budget on each superstar who might or might not deliver what is expected (or might not remain healthy). As a result, you had many folks who got the best of the best for say two of their offensive openings and then filled out the rest of their roster with hopeful projects or Nth level performers as it was all they could afford. If you still used these simple metrics it was pretty easy to multiply 20*8 to get to 160 HRs for the former approach as well as 20*80 to get to 1600 RBIs. The flip side might get 70-80 HRs from their two superstars as well as potentially 200 RBIs but then the rest were major question marks.
wRC+ = (((wRAA/PA + League R/PA) + (League R/PA – Park Factor* League R/PA))/ (AL or NL wRC/PA excluding pitchers))*100
Some clarity:
wRAA — Weighted Runs Above Average — Weighted Runs Created/Runs
League R/PA — League Runs/Plate Appearances
Park Factor — a value given to the ease or difficulty of performing in a given stadium
Using this mathematical formula it is theoretically possible to evaluate the run producing capability of one player versus another taking into account his work and factoring in the effects of his ballpark. Colorado Rockies players, for example, often have inflated numbers whereas Seattle Mariners players often see them skew in the other direction.
A slightly less sophisticated but equally valid measurement for a player’s production capability is OPS — On Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage aggregated into a single number. This simpler statistic is valid but like the one above really tends to value power hitters and high RBI hitters more than speed demons who add value with their legs nor contact hitters with high batting averages who don’t necessarily put the ball over the wall or drive in a lot of runs.
All of this discussion brings us full circle back to whether the 2026 Mets are a better offensive tam than the disassembled one from 2025. Big power and RBI numbers left with Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo. Potential high batting averages left with Jeff McNeil and Starling Marte.
Now think ahead to what Bo Bichette and Jorge Polanco provide compared to the middle-of-the-order hitters no longer here. On a simple level Alonso and Nimmo combined for 63 HRs and 218 RBIs. That’s a lot to match.
Using their best-ever season (which don’t account for the Citifield Park Factor) you would have Bichette and Polanco providing 62 HRs and 200 RBIs. At first glance it doesn’t seem that far off from what has gone, though Alonso’s HR numbers were a bit down for 2025 and Nimmo’s RBI total was an all time best.
Then it gets interesting. Jeff McNeil and Starling Marte combined for 21 HRs and 88 RBIs. Neither were full time 550 AB players but they are indeed the best of who left.
Now the Mets have added Marcus Semien who in an injury plagued 2025 provided 15 HRs and 62 RBIs in fewer than 500 ABs. The as yet unknown right fielder should be able to provide similar or better numbers so that combined they provide more than the former Mets they replace.
To be fair you could factor in the unknown DH role with Brett Baty or Mark Vientos as current possibilities. While there are certainly some great unknowns for 2026 (particularly on defense) it may be that the current roster is a bit more competitive with the former one than originally surmised.
13. Wandy Asigen
GROK
–
Wandy
Asigen is the big news
for the New York Mets right now!
Today
(January 15, 2026) marks the official start of the 2026 international free
agent signing period, and the Mets are set to officially sign the 16-year-old
Dominican shortstop, who's widely regarded as one of the top prospects in the
class—often ranked No. 2 overall by MLB Pipeline and praised for having
arguably the most advanced offensive profile among his peers.
He originally
had a verbal agreement with the Yankees (common in IFA dealings, though
technically not binding), but after New York parted ways with their
international scouting director and reportedly declined to meet a higher price,
Asigen backed out and flipped to the Mets.
The deal is
reportedly worth around $3.9 million (up from an initial $3.8M expectation,
with a last-minute bump confirmed by sources just hours before the period
opened).
Scouting
highlights on Asigen:
Left-handed
hitter with excellent bat speed and plus power potential
(consistent 110+ mph exit velocities reported).
Quick-burst
athlete with plus speed (e.g., 6.5-second 60-yard dash) and solid arm.
Still
refining his defense at shortstop (learning to slow the game down), but the
tools suggest he could stick there long-term.
Very young
for the class (turned 16 in August 2025), so high upside as he develops in the
DSL and beyond.
This is a
major coup for the Mets' farm system, especially after landing another high-end
Dominican talent (Elian Peña) in the prior cycle. It bolsters their
international pipeline significantly, even with the Mets having one of the
smaller bonus pools this year (~$5.44M total).
1-11-2026
MLB
– 2016 IFA Prospects – By Rank
#2 Wandy Asigen
SS
AGE 16
BATS L
DOB 08/21/2009
THROWS R
HT 6' 0"
WT 175
Scouting
grades: Hit: 65 | Power: 60 | Run: 60 | Arm: 50 | Field: 55 | Overall: 65
Major League All-Stars Nelson Cruz and Tony Batista are some of the biggest names to call Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, home. Asigen, despite being one of the youngest players in the 2026 international signing class, already has the look of potentially being next in that lineage.
A standout performer during game
action despite consistently playing against some of the Dominican’s top talent
from a young age, Asigen has been heralded as having arguably the most advanced
offensive profile among his class. He trains with Jaime Ramos in the D.R., a
member of MLB’s Trainer Partnership Program.
The
excitement around Asigen’s prospect profile stems primarily from his special
left-handed swing. He has ripped off 110+ mph exit velocities and is repeatedly
able to find the barrel during in-game action. Asigen has a knack for creating
loft from his frame, something that should allow him to continue to tap into
his above-average power as he continues to fill out. The quickness of his hands
has evaluators excited about the future potential impact he can have with the
bat.
Defensively,
many of those same actions work in his favor. While his arm is merely average
at this stage, he performs many of the quick-twitch movements that evaluators
look for when projecting a young player’s ability to stick at shortstop. Asigen
has a nose for the ball and his wheels – which have been clocked at 6.5 seconds
on 60-yard dash times – allow him to cover tons of ground laterally.
Some inconvenient truths about pitching
From opening day to September 1st, no major league team can have more than 13 pitchers, half of the total number of players on the roster. On September 1, the numbers go up to 14 of 28. On average, teams end up using between 25-30 different pitchers over the course of season, split evenly between starters and relievers. Last year, the Mets used 46 different pitchers, thereby setting the major league record, roughly 3.5 times the number of pitchers allowed on a major league roster. Impressive, but not in a good way.
Math problem of the day: How many different combinations of 13 pitchers would 46 different candidates yield? And how many of the 46 can you name? How many do you think even Carlos Mendoza or Jeremy Heffner (without a cheat sheet) could have named once the season ended?
Interestingly, the Braves, Angels, Diamondbacks and Orioles managed to use 40 or more pitchers as well, and the Dodgers fell just short of doing so after having hit the 40 mark in 2024.
Pitchers experience more injuries than ever in spite of pitching fewer innings and appearing in fewer games. Tommy John surgery has become a right of passage. There seem to be more and more relievers and fewer and fewer effective starting pitchers. Fans invariably find themselves praying their team's staff can get the game in the hands of the closer, only a handful of whom are capable of reliably closing down the opposition, anyway. No doubt, position players on any given day find themselves in quiet prayer as well
It's unimaginable that a team would go through position players at anything approaching a comparable clip, even though position players play many more innings and appear in many more games.
The explanation of the difference lay in the nature of the workload involved and especially the toll pitching takes. Pitchers are involved in every pitch in every inning in which they appear which means that their workload is not best reflected in the number of innings or appearances they make, but in the number of pitches they throw and the conditions under which they do so. The effort and toll on the body each pitch requires is enormous. From the point of view of impact on the body, there is no such thing as low impact pitching All pitches are high impact, on the body if not necessarily on the outcome of the game.
There are no doubt a number of ways of answering this question. Managers invariably think of their pitching staff in terms of innings. They need their pitchers to cover innings. Asking pitchers to cover too many innings risks injury. Having pitchers cover too few innings runs the risk of overusing other pitchers and thereby also risking injury. When they are not discussing covering innings, managers typically speak about the need for the staff to keep the team in the games as often as they possibly can.
As constructed, far too many pitching staffs are finding it difficult to meet these goals. The Mets needed 46 pitchers (in addition to a couple of position players) to cover the required innings. It is not be surprising that digging as deeply as they did into the pool of pitchers (and beyond) that they were unable to stay in enough games to catch the break that would have led them to a playoff appearance.
This problem is not unique to the Mets. Something is amiss with how teams in general construct their pitching staffs. In my view, the problem begins with an inapt idea of what teams are building a staff for: what problem they design the staff to solve.
Another way of thinking: A pitching staff is designed to create strategic advantages
I am playing around with a different way of thinking about a baseball team and its roster construction. That overall idea is incompletely developed, but goes like this. Arbitrarily, perhaps, let's divide the roster into offense, defense, and pitching. At some level, I think you want to think about each of these three areas as having the same goal, but with different strategies for achieving that goal.
The overall goal is to efficiently create exploitable strategic advantages over the course of a game, a series, and ultimately a season. Obviously, Stearns looked at the Mets' overall capacity to prevent runs and determined that it was a strategic liability. Run prevention is on the defense and the pitching. So the question is, how to turn a strategic disadvantage around, and ultimately into a strategic advantage.
I think Stearns is thinking in effect along the lines I am proposing. I'm just focusing here on what would be the natural questions he would ask himself about pitching and a pitching staff. They are (1) How can a pitching staff, taken as a whole create a strategic advantage; (2) How would one organize a pitching staff around the goal of securing strategic advantages.
Because pitchers throw pitches to batters, one at a time, one batter at a time, the focus on innings is inapt to this way of formulating what the goal of a pitching staff is.
The goal must have more to do with pitches than with innings. And it must have something to do with creating a competitive advantage wherever possible of the pitcher to the hitter he is facing, and turning that competitive advantage into a strategic one, that is, one that has positive outcomes in (1) at bats, (2), innings, (3) games, (4) series of games, and (5) over the course of a season.
Making sense of the idea that pitching staffs are designed to create strategic advantages
The basic idea is pretty simple and straightforward. Pitchers throw pitches. And what we want from them as a staff is for them to throw the maximum number of quality pitches over the course of a season, distributed over games and innings within games. Ultimately we are looking to the data to determine which pitches, when, by which pitchers leads to the most favorable outcomes.
What do I mean by 'quality pitches'? Quality pitches are those that in sequence give the pitcher the competitive edge in an at bat. The competitive edge if realized would result in more at bat pitching wins, which translates into an overall strategic advantage. Ideally, you would want every pitch to be the best version of the pitch that the best strategy would call for at that point in the game.
Practically speaking, the best any team can hope for is that taken as a whole its pitching staff will maximize the opportunities to have a strategic advantage as often as possible -- in at bats, across innings, games and seasons.
That's the goal, now the question is, what plans can one plausibly implement to move in the direction of achieving it?
Here's my idea, my defense of it, and why I think it may prove to be a reasonable alternative approach to the ones that have evolved within the existing pitching paradigm. It's easier to make the idea concrete by using an illustration.
Since last year's Mets serve as the most vivid and painful example of what can go wrong under the existing paradigm, let's use the current Mets projected staff (I'm obviously making some assumptions about its make-up) as an example of how thinking in terms of maximizing strategic advantage would influence the construction of the staff and the use of the pitchers on it.
There are currently 6 starting pitchers on the staff all of whom have shown a capacity to pitch very effectively for 3 or 4 innings, My first suggestion is that we match 2 of them in any one game, strategically, and that we do this for 4 of the pitchers on the team.
Now how should we match our pitchers with one another? What criteria should we use? For starters, I suggest pairing righties with lefties, as well as paring different pitching styles. pitch arsenals, or arm angles, etc. Anything that reduces comfort in the batter's box. These are suggested criteria. Think of them as a first pass, revisable upon new information. So how about:
* Senga and Manaea
* Peterson and Holmes
That would leave Peralta and McLean to pitch without an assigned mate, i.e as standard 'starters.'
Each member of a matched pair is expected to pitch 3-4 innings in a game. When they are successful at doing so, on average they would pitch through the 7th inning leaving only the 8th and 9th. Then one would have McLean and Peralta as traditional pitchers expected to go 6 innings each, which when they are successful, would leave the 7th, 8th and 9th to be covered by relief pitchers.
One obvious problem is that the best we can do with 6 pitchers is cover 7 innings of 4 games. We are one game short of the modern standard of a full rotation's collective workload. As an initial thought, I suggest that we increase the number of 4 inning pitchers to 8, which still leaves us with 5 so-called relievers on a pitching staff of 13. For the purposes of illustration only, let's add Tong as the righty and Thornton as the lefty to fill out our initial rotation of 4-inning pitchers. Now we have five games covered on regular rest for everyone. The relievers are: Williams, Weaver, Raley, Minter when he's back, Myers and Garcia.
The presumed workload of everyone is not only reduced, but much better defined. Every 4 innings pitcher is asked to pitch through the opposing line-up no more than twice and more likely less than that. In general, pitchers are most effective under these circumstances, which in my interpretation, means they win far more than they lose battles with hitters, thus exhibiting a competitive advantage and creating a strategic one.
In most games the reliever's tasks are extremely well defined and their workload appropriately distributed. There are fewer pitchers in the bullpen because there are fewer innings in fewer games in which they are likely to be called upon.
At the very least you have your best pitchers throwing in the circumstances in which they are most likely to perform well. Of course, they won't always do so.
All you can reasonably do is put them in the best position to do so.
I would add one 'in game' suggestion to the usage strategy set out above. If, say, the first pitcher on a day in which there is a tandem of pitchers, is having a rough outing and needs to be taken out of the game in the third inning, he should not be replaced by his mate, but by a reliever who gets the team through the 3rd or the 4th inning and is then replaced by the second pitcher in the tandem.
The second pitcher in the tandem is a former traditional starter and at least at the beginning will need more time and go through a different ritual to prepare for his outings than would someone who had been and continues to be a reliever.
So if Senga is having a rough go and needs to be replaced, he should be replaced by a reliever who one might even think of as a high leverage pitcher, or something of a competent if not elite 'closer' under the old paradigm. That pitcher, say Weaver or Garcia, closes, in effect, the first four innings, a mini game within the game. Then Manaea enters.
One objection and many unresolved issues
Let me anticipate an objection. I am claiming that I am offering an alternative way of thinking about the goal of a pitching staff and the problems it is designed to solve. Yet here I am talking about innings, and isn't that just the old way of thinking that I am criticizing?
Fair question.
I am re-introducing 'innings' but not as part of the goal of the staff, but as a proxy for being able to throw pitches creating a strategic advantage. The paradigms are different because the goals are different. Innings matter only to the extent that they reflect a pitcher's actual effectiveness in creating a competitive advantage and turning it into an exploitable strategic one.
Innings are a proxy because the data shows that pitchers are typically as good as they can be on a particular day the first and second time through the opposing line-up, while being considerably less effective thereafter. which is just another way of saying that they can no longer have a competitive advantage often enough, and their ability therefore to create an overall strategic advantage has decreased materially, so much so that it may, and often, does become a liability. Their ineffectiveness shows up in increased walks, hits and runs given up after the second time through a line-up.
There is so much more left unresolved of course: from metrics for compensation to the relative attractiveness of being a pitcher on a staff organized in this way.
One suggestion: the Spring Training and early season beta test
Of course, the problem with novel ideas, both grand and small, is that reality can get in their way, sometimes in predictable way, other times in surprising ways; some ways that are manageable, and maybe others that are not.
I would like to see whether this kind of thinking actually holds water in practice. And there is an appropriate time to give it a try in the next few months. In the later stages of Spring Training as the pitching staff takes shape, and pitchers are just beginning to stretch out a bit, why not devote a few games to 'pitcher matching' experiments. Indeed, if it is at all promising on initial testing, why not use it early in the season while pitchers are still being stretched. Not only would doing so provide useful information and perhaps result in more than the normal number of wins, it would also prevent overuse of the bullpen.
Next, treat the minor leagues as a testing ground.
At the end of the day, the current approach to constructing a pitching staff isn't working, not just for the Mets, but certainly for the Mets. There is always risk in thinking genuinely outside the box, but when it comes to pitching, and given the assorted problems pitching staffs face and their apparent intractability, perhaps the time for taking risks is upon us!
What do you think?
Shortly after the conclusion of a disappointing 2025 season, David Stearns and Carlos Mendoza took massive measures and completely overhauled the coaching staff. The team parted ways with longtime assistant coaches while trying to bring in fresh voices to revitalize the organization. The team brought in Kai Correa as its bench coach and Troy Snitker (former Atlanta Braves Manager Brian Snitker’s son) as the hitting coach. Those hires will be crucial if the Mets want to have a year that resembles more of 2024 than 2025, but the hire that could prove to be the difference is 35-year-old Justin Willard, the man in charge of leading the pitching staff.
The Mets finished the 2025 season below average compared to the rest of the league in ERA+ (100) and were in the bottom 10 in WHIP (1.323). The starting staff recorded fewer than five innings per start. Only the Colorado Rockies, Chicago White Sox and injury-riddled Los Angeles Dodgers were worse.
Willard comes from being the Director of Pitching for the Boston Red Sox. Before Beantown, Willard served as the pitching coach and coordinator with the Minnesota Twins from 2017-2023. His time as the team’s pitching coach coincided with the rise of Jose Berrios. Berrios enjoyed consecutive All-Star seasons under Willard’s guidance. Despite questions surrounding the Red Sox staff heading into the 2025 season, Boston’s pitchers were a top five unit in ERA for the year.
Although he wasn't the pitching coach in Boston, he oversaw the pitching operation and played an instrumental role in the development of the Red Sox staff. Willard was there for the transformation of Brayan Bello into one of the more promising young hurlers in MLB. In 2023, Bello’s first full season, his FIP was over 4.50. In the two seasons since Willard arrived, he lowered that figure by 35 points. Although his 2024 numbers might not be inspiring, Bello took a massive leap in 2025 with 3.35 ERA. He cut his WHIP by over a full walk and hit since Willard arrived.
Bello is currently the best example of pitchers who have taken that leap to the next level, but the Red Sox have quietly built a solid young pitching nucleus. Top prospects Connelly Early and Payton Tolle both made their debuts late last season. Early was even tasked with taking the rubber for the winner-take-all game against the New York Yankees last October. Even looking at the big league roster, Garrett Crochet always had the undeniable talent, but there were concerns about the former relief pitcher throwing a full season of work ( he had never thrown over 150 innings in a season). A lot of the credit goes to Pitching Coach Andrew Baily, but Willard deserves some credit for helping Crochet turn in a Cy Young-worthy season when the southpaw tossed north of 200 innings. Lucas Giolito also enjoyed a resurgence under Bailey and Willard. The former top prospect pitched to a fantastic 120 ERA+.
It’s also noteworthy to point out the trend the Red Sox set when Willard and Bailey first came aboard. Right off the bat, Boston was known as a team that had dramatically stopped throwing fastballs. All of a sudden, the notion that one had to establish good old-fashioned number one was thrown out the window. Now, I’m not trying to prepare Mets fans to see fewer fastballs come the spring. Newly-acquired Freddy Peralta is known for his four-seamer, as he threw the pitch over half the time last season. I highly doubt Williard agreed to acquire the former Brewer with the intention to completely overhaul his repertoire. What his time and experiment with Bailey and the Sox show is that Willard is going to try new techniques. He is going to invent new trends to stay ahead of the curve.
Willard has been very outspoken with getting pitchers in the strike zone. It might be cliché in MLB, but Willard believes that’s how pitchers can maintain consistency at the highest level. As previously mentioned, New York’s rotation was one of the worst at working deep into ballgames. Meanwhile, Boston ranked in the top 10 in innings pitched per start. With the intent to throw more pitches in the strike zone, that can help the starters get quicker outs, keep their pitch counts low and work deeper into the ballgames while taking a lot of the pressure off of the arms and shoulders of their fellow relievers.
One of the biggest mysteries in 2025 was the decline of Sean Manaea. It’s very possible it can be attributed to his injury, but that most likely doesn't explain the entire picture. In 2025, Manaea threw his four-seamer 60% of the time, but that percentage was nearly cut in half during his standout 2024 season. It’s unclear why this change was made (maybe injury-related), but it will be interesting to see if Willard comes in and changes Manaea repertoire and sequencing to reflect more of his 2024 numbers. Even someone like Kodai Senga might be on a similar track. He only throws his fastball about a third of the time, but it’s still the most of any pitch for a guy who is capable of tossing a handful of other options. Opponents slugged almost .550 off of his fastball compared to barely over .300 on his sinker. Some of the batting average statistics look similar, but it does show opponents were not getting nearly as many extra-base hits against it. When it’s all said and done, there might only be minimal changes, but Willard will tinker to maximize the different hurlers on his staff.
If the Mets want to be playing in October, they are going to need to get more out of their pitching staff. They made the big move to acquire Peralta along with Tobias Myers in the offseason. They are hoping Chsitrian Scott returns at some point in 2026 and will be relying on Manaea and Senga to revitalize their careers. A lot of pressure sits on these men’s shoulders, and Williard, a 35-year-old former collegiate pitcher at Division II Concord and Division I Radford, will be tasked with getting the entire group to be at the top of their games when they toe the rubber.
With a re-designed core and many new players and a deep reserve of prospects, this year’s spring training will become an intriguing competition for spots on the opening day 26-man roster.
This series will take a look at the players that are in position to compete for a slot on that roster but are not a lock. We will look at the pros and cons of carrying them with the MLB team when they break camp with the alternative being depth and development pieces in the minor leagues.
Some players are very well established as MLB regulars that are not reasonable candidates for demotion, so for the purposes of this review the following list of players are considered locked down on the MLB Roster:
Infielders: Francisco Lindor, Marcus Semien, Jorge Polanco, Bo Bichette,
Outfielders: Juan Soto, Luis Robert Jr., Tyrone Taylor
Pitchers: Freddy Peralta, Nolan McLean, Clay Holmes, Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Devin Williams, Luke Weaver, Brooks Raley
Catchers: Francisco Alvarez; Luis Torrens
Given this list, and MLB rules that allow only 26 players on the active roster from opening day through August 31st, and that a maximum of 13 pitchers can be listed among the 26 players, there will only be room to carry five more pitchers and five more position players beyond what is listed above.
But the way the word is being used is doing too much work without enough precision.
Not all variance is created equal. Some of it is noise you expect; some is a signal you should worry about. Most importantly, some of it is structural—baked into how a roster is built before Opening Day.
If we want to understand the construct of the 2026 Mets, we have to clarify how they are looking to manage their "variance" risk.
1. Structural Variance: The Design of the Floor
What the roster allows to happen over 162 games.
Structural variance is about architecture, not performance. It is the range of outcomes the roster permits before a single pitch is thrown. Think of this as your downside protection.
It comes from role redundancy, defensive range, contact depth, and innings coverage. In other words: How many things can go wrong before the system starts to break?
Low structural variance doesn’t mean a team is great; it means the team has a floor. It can survive the "biological warfare" of a long season—the inevitable injuries and slumps—without a total system collapse. High structural variance means small problems cascade into season-defining crises.
How to diagnose structural variance:
The Cascade Effect: Does one injury force three players to move out of position?
The Stabilization Test: Does the team still look functional during an ugly 2–4 week stretch?
The “Boring Win” Indicator: Can the team win a 4–2 game in June through steady, professional execution, or does every victory require ninth-inning heroics?
2. Executional Variance: The Human Element
How well players perform inside the structure.
Executional variance is what fans usually mean when they say “variance.” It’s the hot streaks, slumps, aging curves, and timing. It is the ignition phase of a season—where results can swing wildly based on individual output.
Every team has this. Even the Dodgers have stars who go 0-for-20. The key question isn’t whether executional variance exists, but whether the roster requires peak execution just to function.
Teams with high executional dependence are brittle; they need everyone to be an All-Star simultaneously. Teams with lower dependence can survive “good enough” seasons from multiple spots because the underlying structure absorbs the dips.
How to observe executional variance:
Contagion: Are slumps isolated to one player, or do they paralyze the entire lineup?
Redundancy: Do off-days from Juan Soto or Francisco Lindor automatically sink the game?
The Margin for Error: Are pitchers allowed to be imperfect without the entire game unraveling?
3. Interactive Variance: The Great Early-Season Deceiver
Where execution masks or exposes structure.
This is where fans—and front offices—most often get misled. Interactive variance occurs when temporary executional swings hide the structural reality.
A lights-out bullpen can mask thin rotation depth for a month. A power surge can hide a complete lack of contact ability. This is why April conclusions are so dangerous. A team can look stable because execution is running hot (the "ignition" is working), but once that heat fades, you find out if there is actual capacity underneath.
The question is always the same: What happens when the "good" breaks?
How to Monitor the 2026 Mets
Instead of asking, “Are the Mets good?” apply these diagnostic filters each month:
Failure Modes: Are losses coming from the same repeated flaw, or different isolated causes?
Optionality: When something breaks, does the response look planned or desperate?
The Boring Factor: Are they winning the games they should win through professional redundancy?
Recovery Cycles: Do losing streaks stall at three games, or accelerate into ten?
The Real 2026 Question
The Mets will experience variance in 2026. Every team does. That part isn’t up for debate.
The real question is whether this roster absorbs variance or amplifies it. Whether problems stay local or go systemic. Whether we’re watching a team that relies on miracles—or one built for Durable Survival.
That’s not something we’ll know in April. But if we watch the structure instead of just the box score, we’ll see the answer long before the standings reflect it.
With a re-designed core and many new players and a deep reserve of prospects, this year’s spring training will become an intriguing competition for spots on the opening day 26-man roster.
This series will take a look at the players that are in position to compete for a slot on that roster but are not a lock. We will look at the pros and cons of carrying them with the MLB team when they break camp with the alternative being depth and development pieces in the minor leagues.
Some players are very well established as MLB regulars that are not reasonable candidates for demotion, so for the purposes of this review the following list of players are considered locked down on the MLB Roster:
Infielders: Francisco Lindor, Marcus Semien, Jorge Polanco, Bo Bichette,
Outfielders: Juan Soto, Luis Robert Jr., Tyrone Taylor
Pitchers: Freddy Peralta, Nolan McLean, Clay Holmes, Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Devin Williams, Luke Weaver, Brooks Raley
Catchers: Francisco Alvarez; Torrens
Given this list, and MLB rules that allow only 26 players on the active roster from opening day through August 31st, and that a maximum of 13 pitchers can be listed among the 26 players, there will only be room to carry five more pitchers and five more position players beyond what is listed above.
