ZiPS 2021 Projections: New York Mets

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the New York Mets.

Batters

Robinson Canó’s suspension for the 2021 season may be a blessing in disguise from the point of view of the Mets, at least if we trust the second baseman’s ZiPS projection. Canó was surprisingly good in 2020, but there’s a great deal of gravity surrounding him; he seemed to be nearing the end this time last year and Nelson Cruz notwithstanding, the typical decline for hitters in their late 30s would be illegal for roller coasters. The Mets aren’t losing Canó’s 2020, they’re losing what they could have gotten from him in 2021, which isn’t necessarily the same thing. There’s opportunity here to get creative in the infield. Jeff McNeil becomes the obvious second base candidate with J.D. Davis moving back to third. ZiPS is into the former but not the latter, and it would be fun to see the Mets go after someone like Justin Turner at the hot corner.

Even if the Mets stick with what they have, there’s only one real glaring weakness in the starting lineup: catcher. Wilson Ramos looked like he aged fairly quickly in 2020 and the team no longer has much in the way of quality depth at the position, which used to be a necessity due to Travis d’Arnaud’s injury record. If new owner Steve Cohen wants a highly efficient way to splash some cash around, there may be no more efficient signing out there than landing J.T. Realmuto. At this point last year, I figured that the Phillies were certain to extend Realmuto, but now that they’ve lost $20 million, $2 billion, or whatever fictional figure sneaks past an editor, the Mets have an opportunity to poke a finger in a rival’s eye. And, of course, it’s a winning baseball idea!

So long as the team stays healthy, there aren’t any other huge headaches in the lineup. ZiPS isn’t the least bit worried about Pete Alonso despite a slightly disappointing sophomore season and though the computer isn’t fully on Team Giménez, it still sees the shortstop timeshare as adequate, if not terribly exciting. If the players don’t stay healthy, the Mets aren’t particularly deep, so there’s some work to be done this winter even if it’s not of the headline-making variety. There are a lot of solid role players on this projection list, but a very high percentage of them are free agents.

Pitchers

It would not shock me if the Mets have the best rotation in baseball. Jacob deGrom is a serious preseason favorite for Cy Young; I’m not sure I wouldn’t have taken him over Trevor Bauer and Yu Darvish if I had had a Cy vote this past season. Yes, wins aren’t a remotely good way of evaluating a pitcher, but the cosmic unfairness of deGrom never having finished a season with more than 15 wins remains incredibly frustrating. ZiPS projects deGrom to finish with 69 career WAR (cue the meme), but only 167 wins. The most career WAR for a pitcher with as few wins as that is Bret Saberhagen at 55.3. I would consider it karmic justice if deGrom snagged a few mediocre 20-win seasons at the end of his career.

And after deGrom, there’s a great deal of upside. The Mets were fortunate to get Marcus Stroman back with a qualifying offer; the calf injury that helped cost him 2020 isn’t expected to be a problem next year. Noah Syndergaard’s injury was far more serious, of course, but it’s much better for 2021 that he got his Tommy John surgery in March rather than the Mets playing “wait-and-see” until late summer. David Peterson looked solid in stretches in 2020 and ZiPS isn’t banking on a repeat of his higher-than-expected walk rate.

The team’s bullpen looks like a roughly league-average crew at this point. ZiPS was never an Edwin Díaz disbeliever and while there were reasons for some mild concern — his walk rate for one — he was a convincing example of why you shouldn’t panic about a spike in a good pitcher’s HR/9 rate. The good news is that in a world where other teams don’t want to take a year of Brad Hand for basically free, there are opportunities for the Mets to add a name brand arm or two. I’d love to see them go after Hand and someone like Trevor May or Blake Treinen.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2021 due to injury, and players who were released in 2020. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Finnish industrial death metal fourth-wave ska J-pop band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2021; if it does not, there will be widespread minor adjustments across the board come April.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter or something.