The New York Mets: How Does the Rest of the Regular Season Shape Up?
The Mets entered the All-Star Break with a 58-35 record, good for the fourth best overall in baseball. Their season so far definitely hasn’t been too easy though. In fact, if you ask your average Mets fan, who’s been so beaten down by years of disappointment and heartbreak, impending doom always feels to be somewhere just over the horizon.
Mets fans have watched their division lead shrink over the past few weeks, from a once comfortable double-digit lead over the Braves and Phillies, to a margin where a sweep by the Braves against the Mets at any point could send New York hurtling back down to the depths of second place in the NL East. But is this cause for alarm legitimate? And how do the final 69 games of the season shape up for our boys in blue and orange?
A Brief Look Back
I always like looking at how a team’s doing on a monthly basis—so how have the Mets faired in each month of the 2022 Season thus far:
April: 15-7 (.682)
May: 19-10 (.655)
June: 13-12 (.520)
July: 11-6 (.647)
After storming out the gates to start the year, the Mets found themselves 17 games above .500 at the end of May. June was by far the roughest month for the team and things felt pretty stagnant. After 25 games that month, the team only added one more win to its above .500 tally.
Things have somewhat turned around so far in July, and the team now finds itself 23 games over .500. While a sweep of the Cubs before the break would’ve been fantastic, the team still has a 2.5 game lead over the Braves and is actually only 3.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for the No. 1 overall seed in the National League (despite how unlikely that might actually be).
The Rest of July (8 games)
The Mets will finish the month with five home games against quality teams, three against the Padres and two against the Yankees, followed by three games on the road against the Miami Marlins. This isn’t an easy stretch, so hopefully the Mets benefit from playing the harder games at home.
The Padres also haven’t been great lately, having lost 13 of their past 20 games, and the Yankees haven’t swept any series since mid-June.
August: This is When Things Get Hard AKA The August of Atlanta (30 games)
August will by far be the toughest stretch of the Mets season. When looking at opponents, I sometimes think it’s beneficial to not just say if a team is above or below .500, but to group teams that’re within 10 games of .500 together. These teams aren’t as good as the top teams, but a team that’s 5 games under (like Miami) will present a lot more of a challenge than a team that’s, say, 32 games under .500 (like the Washington Nationals).
With that said, August looks like this:
Opponent at least 15 games over .500: 13 games (ATL x9, @NYY x2, vs. LAD x2)
Opponent within 10 games of .500 in either direction: 11 games (PHI x7, vs. COL x4)
Opponent more than 20 games below .500: 6 games (vs. CIN x3, @WAS x3)
Nine of the Mets 13 games against a quality opponent will come against the Braves, five home and four away. The defending champs are definitely a solid team and how these nine games turn out will clearly have a huge role in where things in the division stand at the end of August.
Is the Braves record slightly inflated due to who they’ve played so far though?
Atlanta got hot at the right time, when it was playing subpar opponents and had a chance to really rack up wins.
Over Atlanta’s 14 game win streak at the start of June, they beat five different teams: the Rockies, Diamondbacks, Pirates, A’s, and Nationals. None of these five teams even has a remote chance of sniffing the playoffs this season. Overall the cumulative record of these five teams at the All-Star Break is 185-280 (.398).
Did the Braves still have to take care of business and beat these bad teams? Of course they did. And it’s still impressive, but the pressure should be more on Atlanta to catch (and even pass) the Mets in August than on the Mets to keep their lead. And, that’s because...
September and October: A Cakewalk to the Postseason for NY? (31 games)
The Mets only have five games in October, so I combined that with the 25 they’ll play in September. This is where things start to shape up nicely for New York:
Opponent at least 15 games over .500: 4 games (vs. ATL x3, vs. LAD x1)
Opponent within 10 games of .500 in either direction: 8 games (MIA x5, @MIL x3)
Opponent at least 15 games under .500: 19 games (PIT x7, WAS x6, vs. CHI x3, @OAK x3)
If the Mets can survive their rough month of August and be within at least striking distance of the Braves (if they fall into second place at all), this is their opportunity to rack up a ton of wins, over a period where only 22.5% of their games are against teams that have a winning record at the All-Star Break. Many of these opponents are only going to get worse too as we approach the trade deadline and they jettison their best players.
There’s still a lot of the season to go, but Mets fans have plenty of reason to be optimistic barring a complete collapse (which given the quality of the team seems highly unlikely) when looking at the games to come. If New York can tread water at the end of July and throughout August, a strong September should lead way to a postseason that sees the Mets with one of the top two seeds in the National League.