Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

If the MLB lockout has made you starved for any kind of baseball content related to the New York Mets, you’re in luck today, my friends.

Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs is in charge of the ZiPS projections, and he started this week off by laying out what the systems had to say about the Amazins for the 2022 season. Before the official write-up dropped on Monday morning, he gave us a bit of a teaser on Sunday night:

While you can read the article itself — which we highly recommend — and pour through all of the statistics on your own, we’re here to point out some of the highlights.

Hitters

Szymborski shared a mostly an optimistic view for this area of the roster. We all knew that the acquisitions of Eduardo Escobar and Mark Canha weren’t exactly blockbuster moves, but they’re projected to be solid contributors to the bottom line for New York. Escobar is slated for an OPS+ of 108 with 27 home runs and 84 RBI, while Canha is projected to slash .237/.356/.418 with 18 homers and 60 RBI. Judging by his projected fWAR, Starling Marte is expected to also be an asset to this club in the form of a .273/.333/.422 line and 31 stolen bases.

Pete Alonso is projected to have another solid season, with that 4.4 fWAR of his being powered by 41 homers and 110 RBI. Meanwhile, there are a couple of projected bounce-back performances in the cards, one for Francisco Lindor (.263/.337/.467 with 25 homers and 74 RBI), and another for Jeff McNeil (.282/.346/.426 line with 12 homers and 52 RBI).

The biggest problem spot in the everyday lineup? At catcher, of course. James McCann is expected to get the majority of playing time — 420 projected plate appearances, according to ZiPS — and the numbers don’t look pretty.

Pitchers

As we can see above, the individual player projections regarding fWAR for the starting rotation are quite good, but Szymborski asks the obvious question about these guys staying healthy. That’s especially the case for Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, to varying degrees. For right now, those two hurlers are both projected to toss at least 130 innings each, which is necessary for this area of the roster to be productive.

ZiPS is giving deGrom a 2.28 ERA and Scherzer a 3.08 ERA, but none of the others in the above tweet have a projected ERA below 4.00. When it comes to the bullpen, this projection also seems solid, but the production is expected to mostly come from three relievers: Edwin Díaz, Trevor May, and Miguel Castro. For those wondering, Seth Lugo is penciled in to mix between relieving and starting, but let’s hope the rotation woes don’t get that desperate, right? It’d be much better for him to just stick in the bullpen and help shoulder the load with the aforementioned three hurlers.

Work is still needed to be done for the Mets once the lockout is over. However, it looks like the offense is expected to be in a good spot regarding both production and depth. The pitching staff, on the other hand, needs more love.

What do you think about these projections for New York in 2022, Mets fans?