New York Mets: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

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A New York Mets batting helmet (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images) /

They’re a young team with a bad front office, but their roster is good enough to shock the world. Will the New York Mets be the Cinderella team of 2020?

It’s been a whirlwind for the New York Mets these last seven months mixed with extreme highs and gut-wrenching lows. But through a series of heartbreaking lows lies a scrappy team that’s hungry to prove everybody wrong once again, and 2020 might just be a surprisingly sensational season for the ole Metropolitans.

The Mets have been through a roller coaster of emotions dating back to 2019 when they closed on an impressive run in the dog days of August only to come up a little short of that final Wild Card spot. In the process of their over-performance, Pete Alonso had the huge rookie season he had breaking Aaron Judge‘s rookie home runs record and Jacob deGrom repeated as NL CY Young.

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But unfortunately, with those moral highs came the dredging lows as they hired Carlos Beltran in the offseason only to fire him not long after due to his involvement in the 2017 Astros cheating scandal. This left the Mets without a manager as Spring Training was rapidly approaching.

There was also the circus that was Fred Wilpon possibly selling the team with suitors like Alex Rodriguez throwing their hats in the ring, only to see the whole thing fall through.

And in most recent news, Noah Syndergaard will now require Tommy John surgery and won’t return to action for at least a year. This sets back a Mets rotation that was primed to break through this year with the additions the team made at the trade deadline last year and the following offseason with Marcus Stroman, Michael Wacha, and Rick Porcello.

Are we back to seeing the same old Mets being the clown show that they are, or will we be seeing a revitalized Mets team that comes into 2020 and absolutely smashes?

Probably to your bewilderment, I’m going to say the latter because I love so many aspects of this team. They might not be all that functional at the top, but the group they have in that dugout is a group with a chip on its shoulder that will surprise everybody with how much winning it can do.

Manager Luis Rojas #19 of the New York Mets (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images) /

New York Mets: 2020 Preview and Prediction

Starting with the manager, Luis Rojas has been in the Mets organization for the past few years as the Binghamton affiliate’s manager in 2017 and 2018, as well as the newly-appointed quality control coach last season for the big club. So, he’s a guy that knows a lot of these players very well, especially the younger guys like Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil who have spent time with him as manager.

He’s been in the organization for a bit, so he knows the lay of the land. Plus, he was part of the 2019 coaching staff that facilitated that huge run the Mets had post-All Star Break. To me, it seems like Rojas is a guy that’s going to go unnoticed for a bit, but as we see almost every season, there’s always one manager that comes out of nowhere and gets a team jelling (Dave Martinez last year; Mike Shildt in 2018, etc.). That could very well be Luis Rojas this time around.

There’s still a lot to love about this Met rotation, and there’s also a fair bit of questions surrounding it as well. First and foremost, maybe choosing Syndergaard over Zack Wheeler wasn’t the right decision. It definitely looks that way now since Thor is in for a year-long hiatus. Wheeler had been on a serious upward trend these past two seasons and this offseason was the time to lock him up. Now they’re left with neither Syndergaard or Wheeler for the 2020 season.

But even with those losses, they still brought in a solid crop of veteran arms to complement their back-to-back CY Young winner in Jacob deGrom. Bringing in Marcus Stroman last season and signing both Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha this offseason gives the Mets the depth they need in the rotation with veteran presences that know how to win games.

Porcello and Wacha are two big question marks, but the good news is Porcello is an even-numbered year pitcher and Wacha will now be able to get a nice sample size of starts now that Syndergaard is down. Porcello, for whatever reason, has consistently found more success in even-numbered years. He won the CY Young in 2016. Then he struggled in 2017. Then he came back and was a big part of the Red Sox’s World Series run. Then last year he was bad again. It’s 2020 now, so the pendulum is supposed to swing back in his favor.

As for Wacha, his role diminished year-by-year with St. Louis as the younger guys started to come up and find success. He was a big part of the Cardinals in 2013 and the next couple of season, but after a series of injuries and poor performance, the Cards wound up sticking him in the bullpen for the better part of 2019. I would look for him to bounce back this year in a new environment with a new role.

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The absence of Thor will give somebody else the chance to step up either in the rotation or in the bullpen. The last spot in the Met rotation was between Michael Wacha and Steven Matz, but now it looks as though both guys will have rotation spots. So, that probably means the bullpen gets an extra arm whether that be someone like a Corey Oswalt, Tyler Bashlor, or Chasen Shreve. It could also mean someone like Wacha or Matz still gets a bullpen gig and someone younger comes up to take that last rotation spot whether it be Oswalt, Walker Lockett, or Stephen Gonsalves.

Concerning the Mets bullpen, it looks to me like a slam dunk………if, of course, everybody can get their act together. Seth Lugo and Justin Wilson were very good for the Met bullpen last year, but Edwin Diaz had a nightmarish 2019 after his stellar 2018, Dellin Betances was injured for basically all of 2019, and who knows what Jeurys Familia and Robert Gsellman we are getting because they can be all over the place at times.

Hopefully, everybody can stay on track and perform because if they do, this bullpen is nails.

Yoenis Cespedes #52 of the New York Mets (Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images) /

New York Mets: 2020 Preview and Prediction

Finally, the Mets have themselves a very interesting lineup that looks to have gotten exponentially stronger from last season. We know what Pete Alonso is going to give you- high volume power with high volume strikeouts; classic power hitter. But what is going to be interesting is how will the return of Yoenis Cespedes effect this lineup.