Finally, the New York Mets are playing regular-season baseball again after getting delayed because of COVID-related issues with the Washington Nationals. Unfortunately, the first series of 2021 against the Philadelphia Phillies included movies we’ve become way too used to seeing: leaving small countries of runners on base and a less-than-stellar showing from the bullpen.

Are those things to be mindful of moving forward? Yea, you bet they are. But at the same time, it was just three games after an unexpected layoff, so it wasn’t all that surprising (even if it was still frustrating).

One of the old adages for good baseball teams when it comes to wins and losses is they must do what’s possible to at least split the difference on the road while taking care of business at home. Obviously, if the Mets are going to contend for a playoff spot this season, they’ll have to excel in at least one of these situations. With this in mind, though, I looked back on the Mets’ home/road splits since the 2000 season to find out how much a significant winning record in Flushing impacted their overall outcome.

Performance at Home

In the below table, you’ll see a handful of records bolded, as I wanted to single out the occurrences where the Mets were at least five games over .500 when playing in front of the home fans.

Now, this doesn’t feel like earth-shattering news. If a team generally takes care of business in its home ballpark, good things tend to happen. As we can see for the Mets, though, there’s a high correlation between playing well above average in Flushing and having an overall winning season. Since 2000, the Mets have registered a winning record on nine different occasions. They’ve also produced a record of at least five games above .500 at home on nine different occasions. Those two occurrences have overlapped eight times, with 2010 being the lone outlier in this particular sample.

While just four of these nine winning seasons have resulted in a playoff berth, it’s not at all surprising to see that the Mets’ three highest home win totals are within that group (2000, 2006, 2015).

Performance on the Road

When searching for road records of at least five games over .500 since the 2000 season, this occurrence is obviously much less frequent. It’s only happened four times during this period: 2006 (47-34…man, I miss this team), 2007 (47-34), 2011 (43-38), and 2016 (43-38). So, the Mets haven’t exactly experienced significant success throughout the course of a season as a visiting team in nearly 15 years.

The roster went through a substantial makeover during this past winter and FanGraphs is still giving the Mets more than an 80.0% chance of reaching the postseason despite a 2-2 start. However, expecting them to suddenly flip the script and become a dominant road team doesn’t seem to make much sense. Hoping they’ll play significantly better at Citi Field is a much safer bet for a couple of reasons.

First of all, New York has accomplished this more frequently in recent years. After producing a home record of at least five games over .500 six times between 2000 and 2014, the Mets have done it three times since 2015. In addition to that, they’ve produced this type of record at home more than twice as often as they have on the road.

Moving Forward

So, what’s the most likely outcome we can expect while tempering expectations? After all, the National League East is going to be tough from start to finish this season, and while it was only one series, the Phillies are proving that to be correct.

Obviously, everyone would love to see a repeat of 2006, where the Mets were elite in virtually every situation imaginable. Knowing how tough the division will likely be this year, looking back on New York’s 2015 results would be a good example to follow. They reached 90 wins thanks to taking care of business at home with that 49-32 record, along with essentially splitting the difference on the road with a 41-40 record.

Each year takes on its own personality with regard to how a team performs in certain situations. But if recent history is telling us anything, it’s that the Mets must dominate at home in order to compete for a spot in the postseason as the calendar flips from August to September later this year. Thursday’s dramatic win serves as a good start.