Five Bold Predictions for Mets’ 2023 Season

Will the New York Mets win the World Series in 2023?

Nah, I’m not going that bold, sorry.

But it’s time for some bold Mets predictions.

It’s kind of hard to be bold without making some outrageously overconfident or hyperbolic statements, but I’m going to try.

Here are my five bold predictions for the Mets’ 2023 season.

5. Mets will go further in the playoffs than the Phillies

This might not have seemed like such a bold prediction heading into last year’s playoffs. It may also not seem so bold because the Mets lead the Phillies in most preseason power rankings.

Still, Philadelphia is the reigning National League champion. New York is the reigning NL East choker who was bounced from the playoffs after one three-game set. The Phillies signed Trea Turner. The Mets replaced Jacob deGrom with Justin Verlander.

Both teams have lost vital pieces in Rhys Hoskins and Edwin Díaz. Both have questions about their bullpen.

The Mets went 14-5 against the Phillies last season, which begs the question of what might have happened in a head-to-head playoff matchup.

Ultimately, I’m not ready to say that the Mets will be better than the Braves or will go deeper in the playoffs. But I do think the Phillies will take a step back after a very unexpected postseason run despite their big-ticket free-agent addition.

4. Francisco Lindor will have a 30-30 season

Francisco Lindor has hit over 30 homers in a season three times in his career, each season 2017-19. He has never stolen 30 bases in a year; his highest total was 25 in 2018. He stole 16 bags last season.

That’s an awful lot of stretching for a 29-year-old player. So why do I think this is a strong enough possibility to make it a bold prediction?

Two reasons: One, I believe that the Mets will add more of a home-run emphasis to their approach this offseason. Mark Canha bulked up with the express intent of hitting more homers. Pete Alonso, Brett Baty, Jeff McNeil, and others displayed clear upper-arm strengthening work under their jerseys this spring training. It wouldn’t shock me if Lindor sacrifices a bit of contact for some more power.

Regarding the stolen bases, the rule changes answer it all. The Mets kept Tim Locastro on their roster over Darin Ruf largely due to Locastro’s speed, which is important considering the rule changes. I suspect that the Mets will try to make use of whatever speed they do have on the basepaths. Although Lindor is not a burner at this point (55th percentile among MLB players in sprint speed, per Baseball Savant), he still has base-stealing savvy.

Give me the 30-30 season for Lindor.

3. Drew Smith will determine the fate of the Mets’ 2023 bullpen

Come now? After the Mets lost their best reliever for the season, it’s not going to be his replacement who is the most important reliever?

Of course, this may be too vague in and of itself to qualify as a true prediction. Does any reliever make or break the quality of his team’s bullpen? As great as Díaz was in 2022, the Mets still had an often-shaky bullpen because they often struggled to get the ball to him.

Where was that shakiness, though? It was primarily in middle relief. Adam Ottavino had a very strong year that did not get its due attention because of Díaz’s dominance. While there is no guarantee that either Ottavino or David Robertson will continue to perform well in their late 30s, they both still have enough of a track record of success to at least moderately trust them.

Perhaps Brooks Raley deserves this title as the Mets’ lone bullpen lefty. However, it would be difficult to be as inconsistent and often terrible as Joely Rodríguez was in that role last season. Rodríguez was a perfect example of the limitations of analytics, as he was unreliable despite high strikeout numbers and low hard-hit rates. Raley, meanwhile, also put up a strong season along with well above-average strikeout and hard-hit rates.

However, given that Raley is the lone lefty, he will likely be used as more of a specialist With the three-batter rule, the “lefty specialist” role has been modified, but pitchers like that are still usually reserved to face key lefty batters in big spots or multiple lefties in an inning.

That leaves Drew Smith as the primary non-specialist in the middle of the bullpen. Behind the three aforementioned pitchers, he was the only other lock for the Mets’ bullpen. The team likes John Curtiss, but he is coming off Tommy John surgery and is still an unknown commodity.

Tommy Hunter has been shuffled back and forth from the IL and the minors in recent seasons. Stephen Nogosek will make the major league team because he’s out of options and the Mets don’t want to let him go; furthermore, his underlying metrics suggested that he got a bit lucky in his short 2022 stints with the team.

Dennis Santana is the 2023 version of Rodríguez, the player who often has good underlying metrics but somehow can’t get the results, in part because of a very high walk rate (11th percentile in 2022, 4th in 2021).

Who else will take those big middle innings? It will likely be Smith, the guy they’ll turn to for more than one inning at a time. If Smith pitches well, the Mets could still have a solid Core Four in their bullpen. But if he doesn’t, then it comes down to a ragtag bunch facing many questions.

2. Omar Narváez will post a league-average OPS+

The MLB average for OPS was .706 in 2022, down from .728 in 2021, .740 in 2020, and .758 in 2019. .706 was the lowest value since 2014, and the second-lowest since 1993.

MLB may have tinkered with the baseball last season, although commissioner Rob Manfred denied it. There’s a possibility the league can do that again in the opposite direction, livening the ball in keeping with attempts to draw more eyes to the game via more baserunners, runs scored, and home runs.

Omar Narváez‘s career has taken some interesting twists and turns. From 2016-22, his OPS has ranged from .562 (2020) to .813 (2019), and his OPS+ has ranged from 53 to two consecutive years of 119 in 2018-19. Last year’s metrics of.597 and 71, respectively, were well below average.

However, Narváez posted a 101 OPS+ in 2021, and has a career average of exaclty 100. That was part of the reason the Mets signed him and traded James McCann; McCann had a 55 OPS+ last season and never seemed to figure it out in New York. Obviously, Narváez’s defense and left-handed bat were also factors.

Narváez’s has a .751 career OPS in 1,751 plate appearances vs. righties. However, his OPS was just .600 against righties last season in 239 PAs. Ultimately, the question comes down to whether Narváez can bounce back.

I’m going to bet that he will. A 100 OPS+ would be tremendous for the Mets. Just having that ninth spot not be an automatic out strengthens the lineup significantly. Tomás Nido will likely play more than just sparingly vs. righties due to his defensive prowess, but considering that Narváez can more than capably man the backstop, a bounce-back season from him would likely lead to increased playing time.

1. David Peterson will push José Quintana (or someone else) out of the rotation

Okay, this one is quite bold considering the way the Mets seem unwilling to give David Peterson a full-time rotation role. The signing of José Quintana demonstrated this pretty clearly.

Still, Peterson pitched very well for most of 2022 despite repeatedly shuffling from the minors to the majors, and even shuffling between the starting rotation to the bullpen. Despite that, numbers were more than adequate for a fifth starter.

Interestingly, Peterson’s 3.64 FIP was stronger than his 3.83 ERA in 2022, which implies that he performed well in baseball’s three true outcomes (strikeouts, walks, and home runs). Furthermore, his 3.31 xFIP was better than his actual FIP, and xFIP is considered more predictive of future performance than FIP itself. Interestingly, while Quintana’s 2022 FIP was quite a bit better than Peterson’s at 2.99, his xFIP was significantly worse at 3.72.

It would take a better performance than Peterson posted in 2022 for him to maintain his fifth-starter spot for good. However, given that Quintana is out until at least July, there is enough time for Peterson to give the Mets a good, hard look at why he deserves to stay in that position.

There’s also the possibility that Peterson could replace Carlos Carrasco at some point instead of Quintana. While Quintana is under contract for the 2024 season, Carrasco is a free agent after this season. If Peterson performs well and Carrasco struggles or suffers an injury, the Mets will have an interesting decision to make if and when Quintana is healthy enough to return.

Even for the Mets, who are seemingly obstinate about the levels at which replacement players must perform to push starters, it would be difficult to send Peterson down to Triple-A after three-plus months of above-average performance.

Of course, it’s possible, even likely, that another injury keeps Peterson in the rotation throughout the season and that this is more of a discussion about Tylor Megill. There’s a reason Peterson started 19 games in 2022, and the Mets’ starting rotation may be more brittle now than it was last season.

However, I think this is the year that Peterson finally proves to the Mets that he belongs. The team has not gotten enough pitching output from their pitching prospects in recent seasons (not that they’ve even had too many of those prospects to begin with). It would be a huge boon for them to have a true starting pitcher with two more arbitration-eligible years, particularly with the age of the rest of their rotation.

Peterson may not be an elite starter, but he’s more than capable of manning the back end of the Mets’ rotation in 2023.