This season, the New York Mets have made a number of changes, including adding new front office and dugout leadership.
Will it, however, be sufficient to become the Mets champions once more? All of the Mets’ recent moves could work, according to Baseball Prospectus.
In an attempt to restock their farm system and get younger, the Mets sold away three pitchers in 2023—Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and David Robertson—and won just 75 games, falling well short of expectations.
The most recent PECOTA projected standings for the 2024 season were made available by Baseball Prospectus. Baseball Prospectus has a proprietary system called PECOTA, which stands for individual Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. It is used to estimate individual and team performance.
BP generates ranges of victories for each team based on multiple criteria by running hundreds of simulations. However, the standings are designed to predict each competitor’s finish position.
How much better will the Mets be, then? According to BP, the Mets should win 83.3 games. The Mets would then be the last NL Wild Card team.
Even though the Mets did not make a “marquee” signing this offseason, that would still represent a remarkable turnaround for the team.
Philadelphia is predicted to finish second in the NL East with 85.0 wins, behind Atlanta’s 100.3 victories.
Carlos Mendoza was appointed manager by the new president of baseball operations David Stearns, who joined the Mets. Buck Showalter was replaced by Mendoza.
The projects are still in jeopardy. The Mets, for example, are predicted to have a 48.1% chance of qualifying for the postseason, with the majority of that probability (45.5%) going toward the Wild Card round. The Mets’ chances of making it to the divisional playoffs and the World Series are just 1.3% and 24.3%, respectively, after that.
Nevertheless, as they say, “So you’re saying there’s a chance?”