John Flanigan/MMO

The Mets are not a good defensive team and they probably won’t be. Their first baseman was infamously thought to be a DH. Robinson Cano is 36 and is not getting faster. J.D. Davis is not a good defensive third baseman. Jeff McNeil is a third baseman but he’s in left field. Brandon Nimmo is a left fielder but he’s in center. Wilson Ramos is paid primarily for his offense. That is the bad news.

The good news is the offense is really good. On a night where they play their best lineup, their offensive is capable of putting up 6 runs easily. That is not factoring Jed Lowrie who would certainly improve matters. Cano also hitting like it’s Spring Training would help.

As a team, the Mets rank second to last in Defensive Runs Saved with -22. J.D. Davis is the biggest culprit on defense. He has -6 defensive runs saved in already in this young season. Amed Rosario has the second worst mark at -4, followed by Wilson Ramos with -3.

Davis is not really a third baseman. He has a very small range of balls that he can get to and he has problems throwing on the run. Rosario took a hit likely due to his misplays against Philly but his UZR is still solid. He seems like the candidate who is most likely to rebound from his early season woes. Ramos has already been worth -2 runs on his pitch framing and he just looks uncomfortable back there.

The sample is small and the rule of thumb is don’t look at defensive runs saved in a small sample. There is a small problem though. The Mets defensive efficiency ranks last in major league baseball and their ground ball defensive efficiency is second to last.

Defensive efficiency is the rate at which you covert batted balls into outs. So the Mets have not been able to do that, something that they were average at last year. The infield’s defense has not been very impressive and it seems unlikely to rebound aside from Rosario.

In the defenses’ defense (no pun intended), the Mets have allowed a lot of hard contact. Baseball Savant has them giving it up at the eighth highest number of barrels and solid contact. Both sides can point fingers but ultimately, the team is more likely to rebound with their pitching than they are on defense.

The Mets have made the playoffs in recent years with a bad defense and will likely be tasked with that once again. Some figures seem likely to improve but it’s tough to see guys like Davis or Ramos getting better. Getting guys like Todd Frazier back will help. Frazier is easily the teams best defensive third baseman and he is probably better off the bench than some of the guys now.

The pitching will need to rebound on its own and it is more than capable of that. Zack Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, and Noah Syndergaard are all very talented pitchers who have succeeded with a bad defense. At least now, they have a great offense behind them.