We’re as close as we’ve ever been to the 2020 MLB regular season getting underway. Grapefruit and Cactus League action is happening and Opening Day is now officially less than a month away. As we watch the New York Mets prepare for the 162-game marathon that lies ahead, it’s hard to ignore what some projections are saying about their potential future performance.

Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections already have New York registering the most wins in the National League East, but that’s kind of old news at this point. What’s newer and caught my eye are the projected standings and corresponding playoff odds from FanGraphs.

As of February 26th, FanGraphs is projecting the Mets to finish just behind the Washington Nationals in very tight NL East race. Washington, New York, and the Atlanta Braves are all currently projected to win between 86.2 and 87.2 games this season. So if everything goes according to projections, there will be a lot of exciting baseball to watch down the stretch (one can hope, at least).

Upon taking a peek at each NL team’s playoff odds at the time of this writing, the Mets are actually toward the top. The Los Angeles Dodgers easily have the best odds of making the playoffs come October with a 97.2% chance. Washington is a distant second on the list with a 62.1% chance of defending its 2019 championship.

Coming in third, though, is the Mets, with a 58.2% chance of reaching the postseason for the first time since 2016. When looking back at these projections at this time last year, it’s a substantial increase in confidence compared to New York’s 2019 squad (39.6% playoff odds).

What’s truly key for manager Luis Rojas‘ club to get itself back to October, though? There are plenty of things that must go right for New York to experience success in this respect. But if we want to make it incredibly plain and simple (like, really plain and simple), the Mets have to win ballgames.

That’s quite a concept, now isn’t it?

However, this idea goes a little deeper than simply winning ballgames, despite that being the overarching goal. The situations in which they win ballgames will also be important. For the most part, a winning baseball team does two specific things en route to reaching the playoffs: they dominate inferior competition and at least tread water against fellow winning teams.

If we look back at how each playoff team performed in the above situations over the past couple years, this thought process holds up rather consistently. Last year, the Minnesota Twins were the only October-bound club with a losing record against winning teams (32-37), while every other club had at least a .500 record. This was a more common occurrence in 2018, as the Oakland Athletics (33-40), Cleveland Indians (23-31), and Braves (38-40) all had a losing record against teams with a record above .500.

How have the Mets fared against winning teams over the past couple years, you ask? Not great, Bob. They posted a 40-57 record in 2018 before improving to 47-55 in 2019. This has at least been trending in the right direction since 2017, when the Mets struggled to a 17-49 record against winning teams.

Of course, this is easier said than done, but it’d certainly be a start. That’s especially the case since all the recent data shows the majority of playoff-bound teams have, at the very least, treaded water in this situation while mostly dominating losing teams to create distance between themselves and others in the standings.

When looking at the Mets’ early regular-season schedule, they’ll get a chance to show they can handle these kinds of teams from the get-go. New York will get an opportunity to get healthy against the Miami Marlins (six games), but it’ll also include six games against the Philadelphia Phillies, seven against the Braves, two against the Houston Astros, and seven against the Milwaukee Brewers.

So, Rojas’ club will not only get immediately tested against teams expected to be above .500 this season, but also potentially get a leg up against fellow divisional opponents. While starting off strong won’t guarantee that the final five months will be prosperous for the Mets, it’ll give them options heading into the dog days of summer and early fall.