Is the Mets rotation the best in baseball (including the Yankees)?

Brodie Van Wagenen said that he believes the New York Mets rotation is the deepest in baseball but is he right?

New York Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen is very confident in his team like he should be. But he may have ruffled a few feathers across town when he said that he has the deepest rotation the game on Thursday after signing Rick Porcello.

So, let’s see if he is actually right in this statement. The Mets’ first three starters rival the best 1-2-3 combinations in the league.

Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Marcus Stroman are elite pitchers and when they are all on their game at the same time, that is when the Mets have a chance to go on a pretty good run.

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deGrom won the Cy Young for the second consecutive season, which is impressive considering all of the great starters in the National League. Syndergaard was able to fight through all of the trade conversations by compiling over 200 strikeouts. Stroman seemed to energize the team and fans when he was acquired last season, and he will be in a Mets uniform for at least another season.

You could then argue that they even have the best back end rotation in baseball with Steven Matz, Rick Porcello, and Michael Wacha.

There are more questions among those three than the big three at the top. Matz hasn’t been able to stay healthy his entire career. Porcello is a former Cy Young winner but most fans remember his 2019 struggle when he had a 5.52 ERA. Wacha pitched great for the Cardinals in 2013 and 2014 but then the injury bug has kept up to him.

Van Wagenen probably referred to his rotation as the deepest in the league because it contains all big names but there are questions with nearly all of them.

New York Mets or New York Yankees?

Now the only rotations that I would go up against the Mets right now is the Nationals and the Yankees. The Nationals have a better big three than the Mets with Max Scherzer, Patrick Corbin, and new $245 million man Stephen Strasburg, but then it falls off after that so it comes down to the Yankees.

The addition of Gerrit Cole certainly boosts their rotation and makes it very less likely for a team to win a short division series against them in 2020.

Cole obviously is the best pitcher in the game, as he didn’t lose a regular-season game since May. Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka are very good when they are healthy and James Paxton pitched pretty well in the postseason.

But in the regular season, no pitcher that I just mentioned had an ERA under 4 except Paxton and nobody got even close to 200 innings.

So when you are comparing the Yankees and Mets rotations I would give the New York Mets the edge and say they are the deepest rotation in baseball because they have guys in the back of the rotation in Porcello and Wacha that definitely have the ability to pitch like mid-rotation arms.

Cole and Severino cancel out deGrom and Syndergaard so it came down to the back end of the rotation for me and the Mets have the advantage there in terms of depth.