The New York Mets need a fast start this season, and they have a soft schedule that should allow them to do it.
Fast starts in baseball don’t usually matter much, but the New York Mets are in a unique situation this season. They’re coming off one of the worst collapses in team and MLB history, and as Tim Britton of The Athletic noted, a good start would “cleanse the vibes” from last season’s finish.
It would also reduce the pressure on the new acquisitions, especially since there are a lot of them. They’ll all hear boos at some point, but the collective negative energy could hinder the acclimation process of infielders Bo Bichette, Jorge Polanco, and Marcus Semien, pitchers Freddy Peralta and Devin Williams and outfielder Luis Robert Jr.
Reducing the pressure on manager Carlos Mendoza is another benefit here. He lost his entire coaching staff after last season, and a poor start could easily push Mendoza off the cliff and into the unemployment line.
So how soft is that schedule? Think knife meets warm butter. There are six teams that lost at least 90 games last season, and the Mets play 18 of their first 40 games against them. They also have 22 of their first 40 against teams that won less than 77, or 32 of their first 59 if you extend a little further out. They also have 15 in a row against that 22-of-40 subset of teams.
If you want team names, think Washington Nationals, Colorado Rockies and the Los Angeles Angels, just to name three. The schedule toughens up in a hurry after the numbers Britton provided, and of course it all evens out over the course of a long season.
But the Mets really don’t have the luxury of waiting to start playing well. One of their trademarks last year was playing down to their competition, especially down the stretch. They came up short in series agains the likes of the Nationals and Miami Marlins, and by the last week of the season it almost didn’t matter who the Mets were playing. They were just putting a lot of bad baseball on the field, and ultimately it came back to haunt them.
What could help the Mets in this scenario is the way their starting rotation lines up. They’ll go into some series with Peralta and Nolan McLean as the 1-2 punch in their rotation, and pitchers like that should help the Mets beat up on bad teams. This detail might not matter as much in a normal season, but this Mets season isn’t normal in any way, shape or form.