Mets’ Performance in 2021 Hinged On The Opponent They Faced

What makes a baseball team a playoff contender? One of the many ways is if they can at least tread water with a record around .500 against fellow winning teams, along with taking advantage of playing losing teams to pad their respective records.

The proof is the pudding for the 2021 season. Of the 10 MLB teams that made the playoffs, none had a losing record against teams under .500. What varied was their performance against other winning teams. Here’s a quick look at how each postseason club performed in these situations during the regular season.

Obviously, teams are at the mercy of their own schedule. It’s rather eye-popping to see the Giants, Dodgers, Brewers, and White Sox all finish with at least 63 wins against losing teams this season, but let’s not forget the divisions they’re in.

As for the Giants and Dodgers, they had the luxury of playing 19 games each against the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks. The Brewers had the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates, while the Astros had the Los Angeles Angels and the Texas Rangers within their own division. And then, there’s the White Sox, who were the only team in the AL Central to finish the regular season with a winning record.

The Mets had a similar opportunity since the Washington Nationals and Miami Marlins both finished 2021 with 90-plus losses. But outside of finishing with a losing record themselves, we already know they didn’t take advantage of these particular head-to-head matchups. Although they did take care of business overall against teams with losing records this past year, it wasn’t enough to negate the lack of success they experienced against winning teams.

When facing squads with a losing record this past year, the Mets posted a respectable 44-32 record. That would’ve been at the bottom of the barrel when compared to the above playoff teams, but good enough to be in the conversation. It’s the 33-53 record against winning teams that really did them in.

And heck, even if we wipe out that awful two-week stretch in August against San Francisco and Los Angeles where they went 2-11, they’d still be 31-42. New York’s performance against winning and losing teams was something I addressed last offseason since 2020 was the first time the Mets posted a losing record in both situations since 2011. They obviously avoided that with a full 162-game season back on the docket. Unfortunately, the difference between these two splits has rarely been this wide during the past decade-plus of Mets baseball. Here’s a look at how they’ve done in this situation since 2010.

The only other times the Mets have gotten close to being 20 games under .500 against winning teams in a single season came in 2013 and 2014. Meanwhile, 2017 was so spectacularly bad that I thought it was a typo when I saw it again. (Don’t worry, I checked and it’s not.)

There have been a few occasions where it’s simplified as to what it is a baseball team must do to be deemed as “good” when compared to others. Hitting fewer ground balls is a recent example, and the idea of playing better against winning teams certainly falls into that category, too. But still, while half of the teams who made the playoffs in 2021 owned a losing record against winning teams during the regular season, they were within shouting distance of .500. Two squads were two games under (White Sox, Red Sox) and another two were four games under (Brewers, Cardinals). The Braves were the only one further away at six games under, but we can see how little that means once the postseason tournament gets underway.

This isn’t necessarily something tangible the Mets can go out and acquire via the trade or free-agent market this winter, either, which can be a bit frustrating. However, it’s a particular mindset that’s instilled within the club itself starting on the first day of spring training. That thought of never being out of a ballgame and believing there’s a chance they can win isn’t something that just naturally comes to a collective group of guys.

If you ask any of the Mets players from 2021, they’d tell you they had this mindset, but it obviously didn’t work out. They lost a ton of one-run games to winning clubs, but in the end, it doesn’t matter because a one-run loss is still a loss. Can things get better for them if they’re in a similar situation next year? Well, yea, sure it can, but it starts with who is in the clubhouse and what the overall mentality is during the inevitable ups and downs of a season, as well as the on-field execution.

That’s why all of the expected changes in the coming months will be so crucial for New York. It starts with whoever joins the front office because they’ll decide on what most of the coaching staff will look like. And from there, that group will also impact how the active roster thinks and feels when times are easy and when they’re tough.

While it’s not this simple, it kind of is. To be among the best in the league, the Mets have to hang with — and actually beat — the best in the league more than they have in the recent past.