A reasonable goal for the New York Mets this season is to win 90+ games and make the playoffs. It certainly seems achievable with the current roster, even if it's not something the Mets have done all that often. They've managed 90 or more wins only 11 times in 59 seasons leading up to this year. The first time was the Miracle Mets 1969 season. They didn't do it again until 1984, which was the beginning of the most successful era in Mets history. They were over 90 wins for the next 5 years, missed it in 1989, then did it again in 1990, the final year of Frank Cashen's tenure as GM. Manager Davey Johnson also departed 42 games into that fateful season.
That 7 year stretch from 1984-1990 was the only time in Mets history that they sustained that level of excellence. In the 30 completed seasons since then, they have only surpassed 90 wins 4 more times. Two of those were at the apex of the Bobby Valentine era in 1999 and 2000. The other two came in 2006 and 2015. As I sit here writing these words, it dawns on me how incredibly unsuccessful this team has been, particularly since the Golden Age of the Mets ended. Seriously, you almost have to try to be that bad to only surpass 90 wins 4 times in 3 decades. Mind-boggling incompetence.
Yet the mid- thru late-80s stretch shows that excellence can be sustained, even if it isn't easy. No matter how far the Mets manage to go in the playoffs this year, winning 90+ games and making it there is, I believe, important for changing the losing culture with this team. Anyone could quibble with individual moves the Mets front office did or didn't make this offseason, but they certainly put together a roster that can viably compete to achieve those two goals. Now it's truly up to the players.
Even a very good team doesn't surpass 90 wins by accident. You have to achieve and sustain a fairly consistent level of play across 6 months of a baseball season. While every team has some highs and lows during the year, it's important to maximize stretches of good play and minimize poor performance. The 2021 Mets currently struggle just to stay over the .500 mark. To win 90+ games, they're going to have to win at least 18 games more than they lose on the season. While I don't believe the 2021 Mets have shown us their best by any means to this point, they haven't shown a propensity to put any distance between themselves and break even.
To do that, they're going to have to put a winning streak together once in a while. They did have a 4-game winning streak early on, but their next best streak is two in a row against the Phillies this past weekend. As I'm sure you know, that streak ended last night against the St. Louis Cardinals, with the loss dropping them back to a game under .500. To add a bit of insult to injury, the 5 runs they put on the board last night would have won a game for them in 7 of their 11 losses this season.
The timing of firing hitting coach Chili Davis and his assistant seems a bit weird, with the 18 runs the team put up on the board in the last 3 games representing a virtual offensive explosion for this team. It makes me suspect that the current front office wasn't really sold on Davis as the hitting coach from the get-go. Sure, you could speculate that Francisco Lindor's continuing epic struggles at the plate weigh strongly in the decision. To me, this move screams about the Mets making a move that they wanted to make all along, to which I would ask, why wasn't it made before spring training?
I've been a baseball fan for a very long time, and I believe I understand the game at a fairly deep level. However, I'll never pretend to have any real understanding of the dynamic of coaching hitters and pitchers. I never played baseball at a high level. While hitting coaches are undoubtedly important, I lack the expertise to intelligently discuss why one coach might be better suited for the job than another. So I'm not going to sit here and champion either Davis or his replacement, Hugh Quattlebaum. Both Quattlebaum and his assistant, Kevin Howard, are much younger and presumably more in touch with modern hitting theories and the analytics behind them.
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