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MLB’s lockout of the players still hasn’t ended, and while we can try to be as positive as possible, spring training is not going to start on time, which just stinks. To distract me from that sad fact, I decided to keep looking at the New York Mets’ 2022 individual player projections in comparison to past performances in winning seasons.

I recently dove into the details of the Mets’ last 12 teams who finished the season with a winning record since 1997, with a focus on the position-player projections vs. actual performances. As attention turns to the starting rotation, the idea will remain the same. After revisiting the individual ZiPS projections for the starters at the top of the depth chart, I’ll look to past seasons and tally up the number of 2.0-plus fWAR and 3.0-plus fWAR hurlers to see if there are any trends.

Current Projections for the 2022 Staff

There are a number of pitchers on the Mets’ rotation depth chart heading into this upcoming season. So to make things simpler, I’m going to take the top six and highlight them below. Obviously, Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer make up the majority of this unit’s projected production, but there are plenty of contributions expected among the rest. Here’s a look at each player’s projected fWAR and innings pitched, via FanGraphs:

Scherzer and deGrom have surpassed those projections rather easily in recent years, so as long as they each stay healthy, we can probably pencil them in for at least these kinds of numbers. Although they’re head-and-shoulders above everyone else — as they should be — having five of six hurlers with at least 1.0 projected fWAR and at least 80 innings pitched seems pretty good, right? After all, New York had just three pitchers reach those heights in 2021 (deGrom, Walker, and Marcus Stroman).

How often has the rotation been carried by a couple of hurlers, and how often has the production been spread out a little more evenly during winning seasons? Let’s find out.

Comparing This to Past Winning Seasons

As mentioned above, the Mets have produced 12 different winning seasons since 1997. Outside of 2001 (82-80) and 2005 (83-79), they’ve registered at least 86 wins the other 10 times, which includes eight seasons of 88-plus victories.

Going back through the individual starting-pitcher production for each of these squads, I tallied up the number of players with 80-plus innings pitched who accumulated at least 2.0 fWAR that year. I then took it a step further to see how many of those performances resulted in at least 3.0 fWAR. Here are the results.

The first thing that jumped out at me was how the two best regular-season performances in this small sample — 1999 and 2006 — had limited production from the rotation. Of course, if we go back to the position-player article I wrote last week, we’ll see that the everyday lineup more than made up for it with a number of standout performers.

From looking at these general results, though, there are a couple of other quick observations to take from them. While some of these teams weren’t nearly as productive in the starting rotation as others, all but one — that 1999 club — had at least two pitchers post 2.0 fWAR or more. And, six of them had at least three hurlers reach that mark. Watching hurlers post at least 3.0 fWAR in a season wasn’t as common. Multiple players hit that number on seven occasions, with three teammates doing it together just three times (2000, 2001, and 2019).

Looking Ahead to the Upcoming Season

What exactly does this portion of the exercise tell us? I guess that at first glance, having a rotation full of 2.0 and 3.0 fWAR performers can only take the Mets so far. Even with the occurrences of New York having three teammates with at least 3.0 fWAR in the same season, two of those three clubs didn’t make the playoffs.

We’ve seen recent examples of this come true, too. In 2018 and 2019, the Mets had one of the better rotations in baseball thanks to production from deGrom, Zack Wheeler, and Noah Syndergaard. Unfortunately, they have nothing to show for it.

After diving into the past a bit, it seems as though New York has had success with a couple of starters leading the way, and the supporting cast doing its job behind them. The 2022 rotation is set up perfectly for that, and the only thing left to do — outside of agreeing on a new CBA, of course — is to get on the field and get it done.

Having both Scherzer and deGrom stay healthy will be the most important thing because those two will set the tone for everyone else. Remember how good the 2021 rotation was during the first half of the season? Sure, deGrom was lighting the world on fire every five days, but there’s a trickle-down effect to the rest of the rotation, which was felt by Stroman and Walker, who each had a strong first half. If deGrom and Scherzer can do that this year and everyone stays reasonably healthy, it’ll be fun to see where these guys end up — especially if they get a little more consistent run support this time around.