New York Mets: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

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.

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.