The optimism for the 2021 New York Mets has felt infectious throughout the duration of spring training. From watching players like Pete Alonso and Jacob deGrom get ready for the regular season to projection systems tabbing them as National League East favorites, it’s impossible to not be excited for Opening Day on Thursday (!!).

Even as we wait for certain players to sign long-term extensions (*cough* Francisco Lindor *cough*), it’s clear the Mets are officially about to begin a new era in franchise history. And, it’s one that appears to be much brighter than the one that just ended. With this lovely news in mind, we can also hope New York can leave a handful of recent team-wide trends in the past. Like, you know, the following three.

Succeeding More Often With Runners on Base

Over the past few years, it’s felt as though the Mets have struggled on offense with runners on base, and more specifically when those runners are in scoring position. FanGraphs’ advanced team statistics back up this feeling for the 2020 season. The Mets ranked within the bottom third of baseball with a team wRC+ of 99 in this particular situation. But if we continue going back to previous seasons, it doesn’t appear to be as much of an issue.

For instance, New York ranked eighth overall with a team wRC+ of 108 in this situation in 2019, 12th in 2018 with a 102 wRC+, and 14th in 2017 with a 100 wRC+. Not the best, of course, but far from the worst. So why does it feel like the Mets leave a small country on base each night? It’s because they do.

New York left an average of 7.50 runners on base per game during 2020, which ranked dead-last in baseball. They left 6.96 runners on base per game in 2019, which ranked among the bottom third of the league, and 6.81 per game in 2018, which ranked among the bottom half of baseball. So, as we can see, this problem has been getting progressively worse.

If we could pick out just one similarity the majority of New York’s projected every-day lineup can do well, it’s getting on base. Heck, it’s something they excelled at in 2020 — their team .348 on-base percentage was the league’s second-best mark, just barely trailing the Atlanta Braves (.349). The biggest difference between the Mets and the three-time defending NL East champs, though? Execution. Atlanta’s 348 runs scored were second best in baseball, while the Mets’ 286 runs settled in at 13th.

Not Collapsing in June

It was weird to watch Major League Baseball go through with a 60-game season, but for those who view the glass half full, there was some silver lining for the Mets. For starters, they didn’t have to play any regular-season games during the month of June.

The 2018 season included a terrific 17-9 by New York as the calendar flipped to May. That month wasn’t great — the club finished with a 10-18 record — but that was nothing compared to June when the Mets did a complete tailspin with a 5-21 record. At the end of May, New York was five games out of first place with a 27-27 record. Entering July, they were 32-48 and 14.5 games out of first place.

Their performance in June 2019 wasn’t as drastic as the year before, but when looking at month-by-month performances, it was clearly a difference-maker once the regular season was over. Here’s how New York’s win-loss record progressed through the year:

So, this seems pretty simple, but all the Mets have to do this upcoming June is not completely disappear and it’ll be an improvement over the last two times they’ve played games during that month. Just posting a .500 record would be a massive improvement.

Have a (Mostly) Fully Functioning Bullpen

In recent years, the Mets’ bullpen has garnered a fair amount of preseason hype. Unfortunately, this area of the roster has failed to live up to those expectations. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some bright spots, specifically thinking about Seth Lugo in 2019 and Edwin Diaz in 2020. The only problem about those performances, though, is that they’ve been the only real bright spots.

From the standpoint of fWAR, Lugo outperformed the rest of New York’s bullpen all by himself during the ’19 campaign, and Diaz did the same thing the following season.

The preseason hype for the bullpen is back for 2021, so now it’ll be up to the current cast of characters to make sure recent history doesn’t repeat itself. New York bolstered this area of the roster with the additions of Trevor May and Aaron Loup. However, it’ll also be interesting to see how Miguel Castro progresses and is used on a daily basis by manager Luis Rojas after looking impressive throughout Grapefruit League action.

Stopping all three of these negative trends and getting them to go in the opposite direction is easier said than done, of course. But with the type of roster New York currently has in place with Opening Day approaching, it’s difficult to not feel optimistic that this squad can do some things differently in 2021.