Guest Blogger: The Mets Will Win the NL East in 2012

The Mets will win over 90 games this year and take the NL East.

Yes, I can assure you this is a serious blog post and not some kind of Swiftian satire. Now, I'll give you a few moments to stop laughing before we continue.

Reason 1: The Mets are far more talented than pundits give them credit for. I'm amazed that supposed baseball experts seem to think the Mets have such a  bad team. They have multi-time all-stars at third base and left field, up-and-coming stars with 30-hr potential at first and in right field, a guy who hit .320 last year playing second, a two-time Cy Young award winner and the greatest pitcher of all-time (RA Dickey.) Fun fact: The Mets scored more runs than the Phillies last year. It's true, you can look it up. And that's in a year where everything went wrong. Which brings me to my second point…

Reason 2: The Mets will have an awesome offense this year. Last year we had Ike Davis for 1 month, David Wright on the DL for two months, half a year of Beltran and a complete no-show from Jason Bay. Now, certainly there will be a dropoff from Reyes to Ruben Tejada (though not as big as people think) However, that will be offset by healthy seasons from the aforementioned players, plus (the big x-factor) the walls moving in at Citi Field. That decision will be the catalyst for Bay's upcoming 35-hr, 100-rbi campaign, and Wright's MVP season.

Reason #3: The Mets will have a very good pitching staff. People have already written off Johan Santana because of his injuries, but have you been paying attention this spring? Santana has been sharp, and reporting no ill effects due to injury. Santana will regain his place as one of the best pitchers in the league this year, winning at least 18 games. RA will be his usual stellar self, with an ERA between 3 and 3.50. And most importantly, Jon Niese will make "The Leap." He had some flashes of brilliance last year, but this year Niese will put it all together and become a bona fide #2. I believe Dillon Gee will win 12-15 games. Pelfrey will still be mediocre, but that's ok, because he is a number 5 starter and can be easily replaced.

Well, there you have it. The Mets will win the NL East this year and remember, you hear it here first.

Metsrospectus on C70

I recently participated in a discussion about the upcoming Mets season with the Cardinals blog C70 at the Bat. Check it out here.

The Break out Year Fallacy

I have seen a few people mention that for the Mets to contend this year they need to have player X (usually Duda, Ike, Santana or Wright) have a break out or come back year. This seemed right to me but I decided to put it to the test. Let me begin by noting that this is a not a scientific process, just an interesting way of looking at this prediction. To do so I am making a few assumptions:

1) That if everything goes normally and no one has a break out year, the Mets will win about 70 games. Could be a few more or less but 70 is a good baseline.
2) For the Mets to contend, they need to win 90 games. Again, could be more or less, but 90 is a fair goal for a contending team.

So then the question becomes, how do we reach 90 wins using break out stars or come back years? Let's look at the 4 players most people mention as the guys who need to have a big year for the team to win. We will use fWAR to judge the players. In all cases for the sake of argument, I am offering what I consider the best possible outcome for them.

Lucas Duda- Duda is a power hitter and people have been talking about his long balls in Spring Training. If he were to have an absolute break out year as a power hitter the best case scenario is he plays like Jose Bautista, the most recent phenom power hitter to have a breakout year. Bautista's fWAR in his break out 2010 was 6.8 so let's say 6.8 is a best case scenario for Duda.

Johan Santana- I think the absolute best case, dream scenario is that Johan plays as good as he used to. His best year ever in 2004 he earned a 7.7 fWAR, so let's sign him up for 7.7.

David Wright- Again for Wright I think the best we can hope for is a return to the his top form which had him at a career high 7.1 fWAR in 2008. He is still young though so lets give him room for being better than ever and you say he maybe can reach an 8.

Ike Davis-  Ike is a power hitting first baseman who put up a 3.5 WAR in 2010. Let's say that for an absolute homerun season his fWAR matches the current best power hitting first basemen in his first full year, Albert Pujols, who recorded a 7.7 in 2011. 

The best case scenario numbers are:

Duda - 6.8
Santana- 7.7
Wright- 8
Davis- 7.7

If anyone of these players can reach this level we still wont crack 80 wins. Any two of them we get about half way there and three puts us at 90. If all four play out of there minds it comes out to 30.2 over over 100 wins. I think this proves that the "single player break out year theory" is false. None of these projections are at all likely and it would require an amazing bit of providence for an unlikely scenario to happen three times in a year. More likely if those Mets are going to contend it will take everybody playing a little better, one break out star won't help.

Grapefruit League Standings

We all know that Spring Training wins and losses don't mean anything, but what fun is that? Baseball is a game and we want to know who is winning and losing. Below are the current NL East Grapefruit League standings.

MIA 5-2

PHI  4-5

WAS 4-3

NYM 3-5

ATL 1-9

To be honest it would not blow my mind if these standings are how the regular season shakes out. I think the Mets can do better than 4th, I think the Braves are overrated and I don't think the Phillies are a shoe in to win the division.

Met weight loss.

Deadspin did a study of MLB players with the top weight fluctuations in the off season, two Mets made the list. R.A. Dickey (what list of accomplishments isn't he on?) who lost ten pounds climbing Mt. Kilimnajaro and Jon Niese who also lost ten pounds, which he attributed to his nose job (seriously, he did). You can read the full article here.

The biggest weight gain? Joe Mauer (my #1 fantasy pick last year) up 30 pounds.

MLB Fan Cave Final 9 announced, nary a Met fan among them.

MLB announced the final 9 fans who will comprise the 2012 MLB Fan Cave. While 2 Braves fans, a Phillies Fan and a Yankees fan made it, neither of the Mets fans did. Apparently the Fan cave is very similar to the actual baseball season (it would have been better if a Met fan was a huge favorite but the collapsed during the last interview to make the finals).

You can see the full list here. Let's all just hope the Phillies kid gets kicked out first. But he probably won't.

My 100th post

Thanks for reading Metsrospectus, for my 100th post I hope you will indulge some self analysis and retrospection. I know that many blogs have hundreds of thousands of posts but for me getting to 100 feels like a milestone. I have been writing Metsrospectus for 119 days, so I am also very proud of the pace. You would think it would be difficult to write a daily blog during an off-season where the Mets didn't do much, but I found it pretty easy.

I want to take this time to thank Matt Cerrone and Metsblog for linking to The Dickey Report back in December. It was by far the most read article on the blog after that link and really helped the site take off and get some readers. It also felt like making the big time. Metsblog has been my # 1 source for Mets news, discussion and analysis for the last 5 years and being linked on the site felt pretty great. In many ways Metsblog inspired me to start my own website (as I am sure it has many others) and remains the best sports website in my opinion.

As I go forward I will strive to keep Metsrospectus interesting and original. I will to continue to offer unique stats based analysis, Mets thought experiments and find new ways to prove how great a pitcher R.A. Dickey truly is. As always I welcome your comments, criticisms and hate bombs. Ever upward!