Tom Brennan - The Mets Always Need to Get 20% Better

 

  HOW MANY MORE WINS DO THE METS NEED?

 

HOW MUCH MORE PLAYER SHOPPING IS NEEDED?

THE METS ARE USUALLY 20% SHORT

20% is a nice round number fraction.  But it fits for this article.

In real life, little fractional things excite me.  Like getting a peel-off discount card from Kohls and finding out I get 30% off!  Sometimes, the peel-off is just 15% or 20% off, not as exciting, but not bad.  It's still bucks off, after all.  Of course, almost everything I buy there is also buy one at full freight, and get 50% off on the second of the same item, and I rarely need two of them, so it is simply annoying to shop at Kohls.  

Also, I switched employers once in the mid-1980s after having just gotten an 8% annual raise, and the switch added 20% above that 8% to my salary. That was really nice.  But I digress.

At the end of the 2021 season, simply said, the Mets needed to get 20% better.

20% more wins than the 77 they won would have brought them to 92-93 wins, a significant enough total to win the division with some margin to spare.  

The "20% more" scenario also applied to prior seasons.

In 2020, they went 26-34, which over the course of a normal 162 game schedule would have been 70 wins. 20% more would have been 84 wins.  84 is probably not enough wins to win a division, but certainly enough to throw them into the mix.

In 2019, the Mets missed the playoffs but corralled 86 wins.  20% more wins would have had them at 103 wins, way more than enough to win.  

They did not fall short by 20% in wins that year for one very big and unexpected reason - the incredible, un-Metlike, rookie and near-rookie explosions of Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil, who combined for 68 doubles, 72 HRs, and 195 RBIs and .285 in 1,107 at bats.

It was reminiscent to me of the fabulous Red Sox duo of Fred Lynn and Jim Rice essentially arriving in the bigs together in 1975 and totaling 76 doubles, 43 HRs, 207 RBIs and .318.  The essentially simultaneous arrival of two guys exploding like that only happened once in Mets' history - in 2019, with McNeil and Alonso.  McNeil arrived successfully for a roughly 60 game debut in 2018, but that was a short cameo and most pundits at the time expected a regression, not a 2019 explosion as McNeil pulled off.  

Prior to 2019, I cockily predicted 40-45 HRs for Alonso in 2019, when no one else was projecting close to that, based on his stunning 46 HRs and 146 RBIs in 159 minor league and Arizona Fall League games in 2019, and his drive to get better.  But he even well surpassed my seemingly crazy projections with 53 wall-clearing drives and 120 RBIs.  The Alonso/McNeil duo were simply amazing - a perhaps once-every-60-years phenomenon - but not enough for the Mets to ascend to the playoffs, anyway.

Likely, at a minimum, that duo's aberrational explosion added at least 9 wins.  Without their unexpected brilliance, nine fewer wins would have had them at 77, needing once again to be 20% better to truly be in the playoff mix.

In 2018, the Mets won 77 games - same deal.  20% better would have gotten them to a division-contending 92-93 wins.

In 2017, the Mets won just 70 games, matching the 162 game win projection for 2020.  They finished a whopping 27 games behind the Nats.  Add 20% and the Mets still fall short, but the Mets were 6-13 against the Nats that season, and if they had a 20% better team than they did, they probably are 9-10.  

So the Mets would not have won the division regardless, but they would have been competitive with the Nats right into late September.  When you stay close, you never know when serendipity arrives, as happened in 2015. 

Daniel Murphy, playing for the opposition Nats, instead of for the Mets, was a key and decisive factor in the huge 27 game gap between the two squads.  Had he remained a Met playing AGAINST the Nats, who knows if that 27 win gap might have been no gap at all?

In 2016, the Mets snagged a Wild Card, in a year where the loss of Matt Harvey, who had been instrumental in 2015's World Series run, was huge.  But also huge was losing Murphy to the division rival Nats, and Murphy was simply brilliant in 2016 and tormented the Mets in particular.  

The real reason the Mets snuck into the Wild Card was the highly improbable trio of Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman, and TJ Rivera being called up and, seemingly out-of-nowhere,  performing brilliantly late in the season.

After struggling mightily in Las Vegas throughout 2016, with a combined ERA far north of 5.00, Lugo and Gsellman remarkably went a deGrom-like 9-4, 2.50 down the stretch for the Mets. When they were called up, given how they pitched in AAA, if someone told me they'd rack up  13 Mets decisions, I would have guessed 4-9 - at best - not 9-4.

Meanwhile TJ Rivera got called up, suddenly got pressed into duty much more than anticipated due to injuries, and hit a scintillating .333 in 105 at bats in his rookie debut.  My guess is that trio added 7 wins to the Mets more than expected, yet they missed the division title by 8 games even with those unexpected 7 wins included which got them to their final 2016 total of 87.  

They had without the brilliant trio been on pace for a playoff-missing 80 wins - but 20% more than 80 wins would have been 96, and probably won them the Division title.  

Of course, even their unexpected heroics were only good enough to result in a single Mets game (and loss) in the 2016 playoffs - if you blinked, you missed it.

The loss of Harvey, and the brilliant Murphy going crazy for the arch-rival Nats over 2016 and 2017, left them essentially 20% short in both those years.

Hence, the theme of the Mets annually needing 20% more wins.  

No doubt, the Mets (and the Wilpons) going into 2016, through 2020, and then under the ownership of Steve Cohen in 2021, probably always pretty much, kinda felt they had enough to compete for the division.  

Reality, though, was that without the aberrational play of the Rob-Seth-TJ trio in 2016 and the Pete/Jeff duo in 2019, the Mets were always essentially 20% short of wins needed to win or very strongly compete for the division title.

The Mets are going into 2022. They probably seem to have almost enough to win 20% more than the 77 they won in 2021, after recent off-season moves they've made.  After all, injuries in 2022 should be less than the crazy rate of 2021, and the team-wide hitting slump of 2021 (think especially Lindor, McNeil, Smith, Conforto, and McCann) should result in a bounce back year offensively.  

But facts are facts - similar "we've done enough" logic in that regard has proven to be wishful thinking, essentially, in every year since 2015.  They never really did enough.

I think the Mets have made up a decent amount of 2021's 20% win shortfall gap going into 2022.  Perhaps they've made up half.  They now have to figure out where to find the other 10% (or 8 more wins above the expected bounce back and increased quality of already-added players).  In other words, they need to do a good bit more work, most likely, to get to 93 wins for 2022.

I hope you've followed me at least 20% of the way here in this article.  Essentially, the Mets' assumptions of having enough to compete have repeatedly been faulty.  They need to be realistic and load up more for 2022 to not repeat 2016-21.

I think the plan is to try to build the team to win 100 games in 2022, which is 30% more than they won in 2021.   Then, when injuries and other obstacles present themselves, they will have won at least 20% more (say 93 wins) than the 77 they won in 2021.

Mack, I have to go there once again and add the following....

The crosstown Yankees have long understood that, and operated that way.  Their results prove it.  

Excluding truncated 2020, over the last 25 full seasons starting in 1995, the Yankees have won over 90 games 19 times, with 7 of those seasons being 100 or more win seasons.  In the 6 seasons that they won fewer than 90, they still averaged an enviable (for Mets fans) 86 wins, and had a low of 84 wins, still 6 games over .500 in their worst year in 25 seasons!  Playoffs missed just 4 times in that stretch. 

Remarkable success, compared to Mets' remarkable mediocrity.  

The Yankees truly get it.  I think that Steve Cohen gets that, too.

Have a great day.  One that is 20% better, at a minimum, than yesterday.