Reason for optimism: Even Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Dwight Gooden and Jerry Koosman are impressed with this rotation.
Reason for pessimism: A hypothetical movie featuring the tortured history of New York Mets fans would run longer than a Ken Burns miniseries.
The cast of "Friends" famously turned the tables on NBC by adopting an all-for-one, one-for-all salary negotiation package that had the effect of transferring leverage from employer to employees. In baseball, of course, once free agency beckons, almost all of the leverage lies with the players. And in Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, four 27-and-under flame-throwing starters with a combined career ERA well below 3.00, the Mets have the most valuable quartet of arms ever assembled. How valuable are they?
Well, if I were New York, I'd modify the "Friends" approach to negotiating and do the following this spring: Put the four players in a room with a pallet of $100 bills for each of them to lie on -- like Huell in "Breaking Bad" -- and tell them, "We've got $1 billion for you guys. All you need to do is sign this seven-year contract running from 2017-2023. You'll notice the yearly figures are blank. You guys can fill them out any way you want, as long as they add up to $1 billion. But there's one catch: You all have to sign."
Think that's crazy? It's not, and a better question would be, Who says no?
With a marginal win approaching $10 million in salary outlay in the near future thanks to the continued influx of increased television rights, over the next seven years $1 billion should get you roughly 100 WAR; that's 14 WAR a year combined from the four starters. Harvey has averaged nearly 6 WAR per 30 starts, Syndergaard 4.0, deGrom nearly 5.0, etc. The point is this: as witnessed by the brouhaha created last August when Harvey started thinking about securing his financial future, this era of an extraordinary quartet of pitchers who carried the Mets to a surprise World Series berth last year, could end a lot sooner than anyone thinks. New York should take proactive, creative action to keep the window open for as long as possible.
If the Mets are to make another postseason appearance, run suppression is going to be the driver. For a team that was 49-48 shortly after the All-Star break and a surprise division winner in 2015, it might shock some that the Mets were every bit as good as their 90-win finish. The offense was much better than commentators, and oddsmakers, realized. Once again, using the away-games-only prism that puts all the teams in a league on much more level footing, the Mets were not only the highest-scoring team in the National League, but they were third in all of baseball. Citi Field doesn't have the reputation of AT&T Park and Petco for suppressing offense, but year after year it ranks as a pitcher's park.
Believe it or not, that balance on offense last year creates a bit of a problem this year because there are no easy areas of improvement. You might think the retired Michael Cuddyer was a liability, but he hit .259/.309/.391, not that dissimilar to the average NL left fielder (.257/.322/.413). Worse, there are three spots to be replaced, with only Michael Conforto replacing Cuddyer offering probable improvement.
The rotation got only average defensive support, and was backed up by just the seventh-ranked bullpen in the National League in terms of ERA. If there's not improvement in those two areas, regression tells us three-fifths of the rotation won't post sub-3.00 ERAs like last year. Given that, and a little bit of a step backward from an offense that was better than many realized last season, and the 90 wins of 2015 is not a floor for 2016, it's more like a ceiling.
With the market set at 89.5 wins, that makes this somewhat of a surprising "under" call. They might have comfortably won the division by seven games last year, but I think this year it will be the East division in the National League, not the Central, with the three-team race to the finish.
2016 projection: 86-76 (second, NL East)
Bet recommendation: Under