With many inches (and, in some cases, multiple feet) of snow getting dumped on the northeast portion of the United States the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking for as many signs of spring as possible to distract myself.

Sure, baseball fields are under a bunch of snow up here right now, but they’re thankfully not in Florida or Arizona. The New York Mets (along with the rest of Major League Baseball) are preparing for the start of Spring Training within the coming days and weeks, which is a beautiful thought. Another sign of baseball getting closer to returning is the release of Baseball Prospectus’ preseason PECOTA projections. While there are plenty of reasons to be happy about what the Mets have done to improve over the past few months, nobody was likely prepared for what was waiting for us upon opening up these projections.

It was shocking to see them projecting the Mets for 95 wins. Despite that, I think what shocked me more was that the Washington Nationals were projected to place second in the National League East… a full 10 games behind New York. Then after noticing the Atlanta Braves were projected to finish slightly behind the Philadelphia Phillies, I had to get up and take a quick walk around the house because I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.

Expecting Too Much?

Projections — both team- and individual-based — are good to have leading up to a season. It gives us a rough sense of expectations for everyone based on past and anticipated production. However, as we all know, they should be taken with a grain of salt. Like, remember how the Kansas City Royals proved them wrong in 2015?

Months after winning the 2014 American League pennant, PECOTA projected them to go 72-90. They proceeded to go 95-67 during the regular season, and well, you know the rest — we don’t have to talk about it.

So, there’s already proof showing that the PECOTA projections should be nothing more than a blip on our respective radars at this point of the year. To further drive this point home, let’s look back at recent Mets teams and how they were projected to perform. Here’s a quick peek at their PECOTA-projected record, paired alongside with their actual regular season results:

While the projected 2021 record is head-and-shoulders above the rest listed above, this is now the third year in a row PECOTA has the Mets winning the NL East. One can imagine that such an inflated win total can be the byproduct of adding top-tier guys like Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco, along with adding some sufficient depth to places like the rotation and the bench.

As we’ve seen in recent years, though, these projections mean nothing once regular season games start getting played. There are many variables that come into play. While expectations for the Mets in 2021 should be higher than in previous years since their situation as a franchise has changed so drastically, we can’t now be expecting to see them win 95 games this year — that just wouldn’t be fair.

Looking Elsewhere For Confirmation

It’d admittedly be awesome, but until we see it happen, it’s also hard to believe that any squad is going to run away with the NL East to this degree. If we had to look at a projections system that just feels more realistic than PECOTA right now, it’d be FanGraphs. They’re still projecting the Mets to win the division, but this one doesn’t make me fall out of my chair:

There will be people who likely have a gripe about this projection system, too — I mean, they do have every NL Central team currently finishing below .500 — but these numbers are surely a little more digestible than what PECOTA released this week.

Why does PECOTA love the Mets so much? That’s anybody’s guess at this point. One would have to imagine it has something to do with their above-average starting pitching over the years. Don’t forget, New York’s rotation was among baseball’s best in 2018 and 2019. While many parts of it looked like a dumpster fire in 2020, projections were released when Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman were still part of the picture.

It’s certainly not a bad thing that PECOTA is high on the Mets — this just increases my excitement for the season. But the actual numbers released? I’m not buying it right now, especially because of what the last few years have looked like for New York. Call me a little jaded, but I also don’t want to jinx anything by expecting too much.

I’d be ecstatic to be wrong by the time Game 162 is in the books, though.