Buster Olney, in an article exclusive to ESPN Insiders, concluded his offseason Top 10 feature by ranking the best lineups in major league baseball heading into the 2017 season. The ranking was based on input from executives representing all 30 MLB front offices. This latest entry in this series is entitled: Top MLB Lineups: Which Batting Orders Provide the Most Pop?
I knew right away this was going to be a fun read, one because I would get a comprehensive review of MLB’s top lineups, but also because I expected to see the Mets somewhere in the Top 10. After all, the New York Mets did finish 5th in MLB and 2nd in the NL with 218 home runs. If we’re talking about “pop” that ought to count for something, right? Wrong…
The Mets’ projected lineup for 2017 failed to make the Top 10 and didn’t even get any shade among the six Honorable Mentions.
MLB Top 10 Lineups
1. Boston Red Sox
2. Colorado Rockies
3. Chicago Cubs
4. Houston Astros
5. Seattle Mariners
6. Cleveland Indians
7. Arizona Diamondbacks
8. Washington nationals
9. St. Louis Cardinals
10. Detroit Tigers
Honorable Mentions: Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays, Pittsburgh Pirates
Did I miss something, where are the Mets?
I understand that lists like this are all subjective, but I still find it difficult to believe that 30 MLB executives and Buster Olney couldn’t fit the Mets offense in what essentially is a Top 16. Are the New York Mets really a bottom tier offense?
The Mets head into 2017 with essentially the same exact offense they ended the 2016 season with, and that was an offense that finished the year ranked 26th in Runs Scored, 17th in Slugging Pct., and 17th in OPS.
However, those ranking were greatly impacted by a slew of injuries to 7 of their 8 players in the team’s starting lineup. Only Curtis Granderson was able to avoid the disabled list in 2016. Yoenis Cespedes, Asdrubal Cabrera and Jose Reyes all had a DL stint, while David Wright, Lucas Duda, Travis d’Arnaud and Neil Walker missed huge swaths of time and three of them were shutdown for the season.
If you were to look at the Mets’ MLB ranking in Runs Scored by Month, it tells the story of just how impacted the team was by all these injuries, but it also illustrates just how good they were in April, August and September when they were essentially at 80 percent or better strength.
April – 10th
May – 28th
June – 30th
July – 20th
August – 8th
September – 5th
After Cespedes, Reyes and Cabrera all returned from the DL, there was a five week span that began in mid August and lasted through mid September that the Mets were the number one ranked MLB offense in runs scored.
Now I’m pretty certain that injuries were not projected in compiling Olney’s 2017 Lineup Rankings given their unpredictability. So given that, exactly why were the Mets so easily overlooked, especially when you consider how strongly the team performed in the last two months of the season when they were relatively healthy?
Again, I understand that all these lists are very subjective, but give me a break, the Mets deserved a far better showing than what these guys came up with. In my opinion, if the Mets are healthy they are undoubtedly a top ten offense.
