Predict the Mets '14

[bmfc1]

(I can't find the thread for 2013. If anyone remembers the names of the co-winners, please mention them.)

Just the Mets, just the Mets. Step right up and predict the Mets:
1--Mets record for 2014
2--Where the Mets will finish in the NL East
3--Whether the Mets will make the playoffs and if so, how far they will go.

As always, don't be a J.J. Putz and write "162-0."

[bmfc1]

1--78-84
2--3d
3--No.

[seawolf17]

92-70
1st
WORLD SERIES CHAMPS MUTHAFUCKAS

[Benjamin Grimm]

83-79. Third place. No playoffs.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Constitutionally unable to be less than thrilled with our chances this and every year, knowing that much must go right...
93-59
first!
Surprise sweep of the equally shocking Seattle Mariners

[Ceetar]

89-73
First Place
Heartbreaking 5-game NLDS loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates on a Marlon Byrd Walk Off sac-fly to center.

[Gwreck]

82-80
Third place
No playoffs

[Zvon]

89-73. My logic is simple. They are supposed to win 90. They will tease us with that until the last pitch and then they won't.

We let em slid because they cruise thru the post season to the World Championship.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

1) 80-82
2) 3rd
3) No

[Lefty Specialist]

77-85. The second half will be better than the first half.
4th
Well, no.

[HahnSolo]

73-89
4th
No.

[Guest themetfairy]

82-80

Ya Gotta Believe!

[TransMonk]

81-81
3rd
No

Vying for their first .500+ season in years will give us "meaningful" games in September...and hope for 2015.

[G-Fafif]

78-84
Third Place
No playoffs

I'm fighting off my biennial impulse to believe the Marlins are legitimately on the rise. See the Mets as a 78-win team (as if that's a thing) and can see them falling behind Miami given Fishy pitching but also can't believe a 78-win team wouldn't finish third in this division unless Braves are fractured by injuries.

Mets will seem less awful, which isn't an inconsiderable upgrade. Won't be enough offense to generate necessary wins but there will be tangible all-around improvement before it's all over.

If nobody's lost to TJS by September, 2015 will look legitimately better.

[Edgy MD]

102-59. That August 18 game against the Cubs will be called after HOURS of trying to wait out the rain. It won't be necessary to make it up as the team will finish nine games ahead of Braves. The Nationals will be a depressing also-ran that will provoke pity from all of baseball. They will never stop hearing about sitting Strasburg during the 2012 post-season. Never.

The Mets will win the championship in an epic seven-game struggle over the Twins. Terry will begin transforming down the stretch, and then in the post-season we'll see it, the hyper-competitive dick that he was reputed to be but hasn't been for three years. Then, in the celebratory interview, he'll go so far out his way to praise Gardenhire --- there'll be actual tears --- that you'll wonder if he's Gardenhire's father or something.

The Yankees will be awful, but fans will spin it as part of a brilliant re-organization strategy.

[ashie62]

88-74
First
Yes

They will excite us with a run at some point... make the playoffs and get left behind in the NLCS...

[nymr83]

75-87
3rd in the NL East
no playoffs

[batmagadanleadoff]

2014 NL East Preview

The East is a two-team race, but ample young talent will keep things interesting for the cellar dwellers
by Jonah Keri on March 26, 2014

New York Mets Vegas line: 75 wins Key additions: Bartolo Colon, Curtis Granderson, John Lannan, Jose Valverde, Chris Young Key losses: Shaun Marcum, LaTroy Hawkins Projected lineup: LF Eric Young Jr. (.243/.311/.332) 2B Daniel Murphy (.279/.318/.401) 3B David Wright (.280/.364/.469) RF Curtis Granderson (.226/.314/.422) CF Chris Young (.225/.309/.404) 1B Ike Davis (.233/.332/.427) C Travis d’Arnaud (.243/.306/.396) SS Ruben Tejada (.254/.309/.326) While the Never-ending Wilpon Financial Quagmire of Despair sometimes makes it tough to see, GM Sandy Alderson has quietly done a nice job of restocking the Mets with young talent. Zack Wheeler (acquired for a two-month Carlos Beltran rental) showed flashes of brilliance in his debut season last year, while Noah Syndergaard looks ready to become the third member of whatever we’re calling the trio of dynamic young righties Matt Harvey, Wheeler, and Syndergaard should form by 2015. (Generation L?) Alderson has also acquired some bats, and he needs Travis d’Arnaud to come through as much as he needs the pitchers to succeed. The 25-year-old catcher was the 37th overall pick in the 2007 draft, and he spent six seasons in the minors before finally reaching the Mets in August 2013. He posted lousy numbers (.202/.286/.263) as a late-season regular, though to be fair, 112 plate appearances during a player’s first major league stint aren’t much to go on. The real question is whether d’Arnaud can stay healthy. Despite a solid .286/.347/.476 minor league line that included some gaudy numbers in the high minors, he battled injuries for much of his time down on the farm. It’s tough to say whether that means he’s brittle or has simply suffered bad luck, and even the Mets can’t know for sure. What the Mets do know: 25-year-old power-hitting catchers who offer six years of largely cheap team control are extremely valuable. If d’Arnaud develops into a star as the Mets hope, this team could improve faster than many expect. Projected rotation: Dillon Gee (160, 4.15) Bartolo Colon (203, 3.63) Zack Wheeler (171, 3.98) Jon Niese (123, 3.72) Daisuke Matsuzaka (76, 4.93) Syndergaard might not be up until June, if the Mets want to give him some more seasoning and avoid starting his arbitration countdown too early. But since we’ve already talked about the impending Harvey-Wheeler-Syndergaard era, please allow this bit of frivolity: Bartolo Colon is going to hit this year! We got a taste of his sweet stroke on Saturday, and it was magical.... It’s impossible not to get excited about the prospect of a man as big as Colon running the bases. Jokes aside, though, his renaissance remains a genuinely amazing story, even amid past PED issues. He throws fastballs almost exclusively, so hitters know what’s coming, yet they can’t seem to square up and hit the ball all that hard or far. Colon is becoming one of my favorite players, and he’s a big reason why I’m optimistic about the Mets being decent this year, despite losing Harvey to Tommy John surgery. Bullpen, bench, and depth: The Mets’ extensive efforts to trade Ike Davis over the winter went nowhere, so for now they have two players with redundant skills and only one position in Davis and Lucas Duda. While that’s not great for the starting lineup, it is good for the bench. Throw in defensive ace Juan Lagares, who should arguably be starting over Eric Young Jr., and the Mets have some serious bench weapons. The bullpen, on the other hand, could struggle again this season. Jose Valverde projects as one of the top setup men, which bodes poorly. Best-case scenario: The kids all flourish, allowing the Mets to finish this season around .500 and emerge as contenders as soon as next year. Worst-case scenario: At year’s end, people are talking about the Wilpons’ money woes instead of the team’s top young players. Bold prediction: A season after batting .205, Davis finally breaks out and becomes a quality everyday first baseman, maintaining a .260 average while belting 30-plus homers.

http://grantland.com/features/2014-nl-east-preview/

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, I'm missing Shaun Marcum on a daily basis.

[batmagadanleadoff]

[fimg=433]http://www.biscom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/wsj-logo-2.gif[/fimg]

Brian Costa
The 2014 Mets: Starving for Relevance
Mets Are No Longer Above Vying Merely for Relevance in September

On the rare occasions when Fred Wilpon speaks publicly, he has a tendency to say things that become punch lines for months. In 2002, the Mets owner said that newly hired manager Art Howe, known for his bland public persona, "lit up" the room during his interview. (Howe lasted less than two years.) In 2010, when asked if general manager Omar Minaya would keep his job, Wilpon responded simply, "Is the sun going to come up tomorrow?" (It did, but Minaya was fired anyway.) But on the long list of Wilpon's unintentionally hilarious comments, perhaps none drew as much ridicule as his definition of the Mets' goal for the 2004 season: "Meaningful games in September." As organizational mission statements go, it wasn't exactly "Play Like a Champion Today." And for a team with the fourth-highest payroll in baseball at the time, it seemed like a low bar. The Mets were less than four years removed from the National League pennant, and their fans still clung to the hope of reclaiming the city from the Yankees. But a decade later, as the Mets prepare to begin the 2014 season, Wilpon's mandate finally seems appropriate. It may even be a little ambitious. Eight years removed from their last playoff berth, six years removed from their last winning season, the Mets are no longer above vying merely for relevance in September. They're pretty much starving for it. And if they end up in a game past Labor Day that has meaning beyond the development of their young players, it will be cause for celebration in Flushing. Publicly, the Mets are aiming much higher than that. General manager Sandy Alderson has set 90 wins as an internal goal. Manager Terry Collins has started to reference that benchmark publicly. For an organization trying to snap out of its perennial malaise, that's nice to hear. I've never run more than five or six miles at a time, but I suppose there's no harm in declaring that I expect to win the New York City Marathon this year. In reality, though, the Mets don't appear capable of doing a whole lot more than what they've been doing for a few years now: biding time, building their base of prospects and trying to be at least mildly entertaining in the interim. With a healthy Matt Harvey and a fatter payroll, the expectations for 2014 would have been much higher. And to be sure, expectations should be high for 2015 and beyond. A starting rotation of Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard, Jon Niese and Dillon Gee—all of whom were either drafted by the Mets or acquired as prospects—is a tantalizing thought. But for the moment, this feels like a sequel to a movie that didn't draw rave reviews to begin with. Harvey, who is expected to miss the entire season coming off elbow surgery, plays the role of last year's Johan Santana: the ace in rehab. Syndergaard becomes last year's Wheeler: the dynamic arm whose arrival will be delayed by baseball's self-defeating financial incentives to keep top prospects out of the majors until midseason. Ike Davis, Lucas Duda and Ruben Tejada return as themselves, despite the Mets' best efforts. The questions about their ability to become part of the team's core group of position players are the same, if not louder, than they were before. Only now the three are a year older and the Mets' patience is wearing thinner. And at the center of it all, as usual, is David Wright, whose greatness the last two seasons has been obscured by the Mets' irrelevance. There are some new characters: Bartolo Colon, Curtis Granderson and Chris Young. But based on sabermetric projections of their value this year, in terms of the number of wins they will produce beyond what would be expected of a Triple-A replacement, those three will be lucky just to negate the absence of Harvey and the loss of Marlon Byrd and John Buck, whom they traded away last September. Presiding over all this is the Wilpons, who managed to spend nearly $90 million on free agents this winter without actually spending more money. The Mets will open the season with an estimated payroll of around $89 million, which ranks 22nd in baseball. Maybe this will be the year the Mets defy all expectations. Maybe this will be the year the randomness of baseball swings the season in their favor. Spring is the season of maybes. But considering how far the Mets have fallen, Wilpon's comment from 10 years ago doesn't seem so preposterous. He may even want to start with a more modest goal for 2014: Meaningful games in August.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303779504579465452328487182

[MFS62]

1--78-84
2--3d
3--No.

Later

[smg58]

81-81, third, no.

[Guest d'Kong76]

88-74
2nd
Will miss playoffs by one game on a called third strike and
the player (crystal ball can't quite focus on him) will be hated
and ridiculed until he is sent packing before ST2015.

[metsmarathon]

85-77
2nd
no, but it's damned close.

[batmagadanleadoff]

77-85. Wanna know what I'm guessing is gonna be the the Mets biggest hole this season? Not shortstop. Not Duda and/or Davis. Not the bullpen.

The outfield. It'll suck big time and Sandy'll be asking "What outfield?" again, by the all-star break. Of course, I dissed Marlon Byrd big-time around this time last year. So just ignore this post, unless it turns out to be correct.

[Benjamin Grimm]

With 72 games completed, we're now exactly four ninths of the way through the season and the Mets have won exactly four ninths of their games. They currently project to a final win total of 72.

[ashie62]

We have all overshot for the time being...

[Benjamin Grimm]

Thirty games left in the season. The Mets are currently 62-70, projecting to a final record of 76-86. The goal of 90 wins is still technically within reach; they'd have to go 28-2 the rest of the way.

One more win and the Mets will have attained the very modest goal of avoiding 100 losses.

[G-Fafif]

[youtube:11g7ql8p]vAfthQTqj24[/youtube:11g7ql8p]

[G-Fafif]

Mets are 76-80, with six remaining. Predictions that are still (recordwise, anyway) still valid:

Gwreck: 82-80
themetfairy: 82-80
TransMonk: 81-81
smg: 81-81
LWFS: 80-82
bmfc: 78-84
G-Fafif 78-84
MFS: 78-84
Lefty Specialist: 77-85
batmags 77-85

Too optimistic:

Edgy: 102-59 (+1 rainout on what turned out to be a sunny day)
JCL: 93-69 (typed 93-59, assuming this was what he meant)
seawolf: 92-70
Ceetar; 89-73
Zvon: 89-73
Ashie 88-74
Kong: 88-74
marathon: 85-77
Ben Grimm 83-79

Not optimistic enough:

Nymr: 75-87
HahnSolo: 73-89

Edited September 22, 2014 by Guest