The New York Mets have gone from being demonized in December for their lethargic offseason to media darlings after a series of trades and signings. They’re now one of the teams that has “won the winter,” according to Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, who listed the Mets as one of seven teams to attain that vaunted status.
But is it really true? The Mets certainly have changed by turning over 30 percent of their 40-man roster, according to Feinsand. Most of the moves have made at least a modicum of baseball sense, with the signing of Toronto Blue Jays infielder Bo Bichette being the notable exception.
But this may not be a good thing, according to those who like to play devil’s advocate with this sort of thing (raises hand). The counter to the argument that the Mets are now built to make the playoffs and go on a deep run is that teams that make a lot of changes don’t usually improve all that much the next season.
Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer broke this down in a recent column, and he made some points that are well worth considering. Start with a stat from Roster Resource he used that has the Mets leading all teams in additions while ranking third in subtractions. He also quoted New York Post columnist Joel Sherman, who’s been covering the Mets for decades.
“All that is keeping me from really liking this Mets offseason is history,” Sherman wrote last week. “That generally the teams perceived as winning the winter so often follow by being among the biggest disappointments of the actual season.”
A deeper dive into the numbers reveals where Sherman might be wrong. According to Lindbergh, teams with turnover rates over 60 percent tend to improve their winning percentage by about 20 points, while teams that turn over less than ten percentage points decline by approximately the same amount.
What this amounts to for the Mets is that they still have some bad positional fits to go with a rotation that has a messy back end. The bad positional fits are Bichette at third given that he’s never played there before, and Brett Baty in left for the same reason. Right fielder Juan Soto says he’s going to get better defensively, but as of now he’s still one of the one of the worst defensive outfielders in baseball.
As for the rotation, there’s still some sorting out to do among the likes of starters Sean Manaea, Kodai Senga, Clay Holmes and David Peterson, all of whom failed to some degree down the stretch. The Mets haven’t “won the winter” until those issues are addressed, but they have put themselves within a move or two of being a pretty good baseball team.