With anticipation for the 2021 Mets’ season rising by the minute after a winter of much-hyped improvement, the start of spring training games on Monday feels significant.
Obviously the results don’t count and sometimes it’s even hard to know how much stock you can put in what you’re seeing in the Grapefruit League games, but the live action at least offers the opportunity to get a feel for what’s ahead.
There won’t be much competition for starting jobs but there are plenty of newly-acquired players to see, and Luis Rojas does have his share of decisions to make about roster construction and ways to split up playing time, especially if there is no last-minute agreement by MLB to put the DH back in play.
With that in mind, here’s what to look for as the spring games begin:
1) Francisco Lindor
He’s an acclaimed superstar but there’s nothing like watching a player on a daily basis to zero in on whether he’s as good as advertised — or maybe better. Especially at a position as important as shortstop.
So watching Lindor should be great fun. Scouts say defense is where he excels most, noting that he likes to play a very deep shortstop, allowing him to range into the outfield grass, especially up the middle, and still make the play because of his strong arm and his flexibility in throwing from awkward angles.
2) Infield Defense
There’s a lot to watch here. Jeff McNeil played a solid second base as a rookie in 2019, so the Mets should be solid up the middle, and it will be fascinating to see how he and Lindor work together turning double plays.
Will J.D. Davis and Pete Alonso handle the corner spots adequately, and perhaps more significantly, will Luis Rojas replace them for defense with a lead in the late innings, as he did with Robinson Cano last season? It will be tempting for the manager, as Luis Guillorme would be a huge upgrade with the glove at third base, and moving Dom Smith in to first base from left field would allow the manager to improve the defense in two spots, since he could then insert Kevin Pillar in center field and move Brandon Nimmo to left.
3) Center Field
In spring training Nimmo has acknowledged that his defense in center field wasn’t good last season, but he also made the case that his problem was mostly the result of playing too shallow. That may be true, since his biggest weakness seemed to be in taking bad routes on going back on balls over his head, and Nimmo said he felt much more comfortable late in the season after Mets’ analytics’ people convinced him that he needed to play deeper.
The Mets are hoping that’s true so they can play him as much as possible in center, keeping left field open for Dom Smith, allowing them to use Kevin Pillar mostly as a late-inning defensive replacement and occasional starter against lefty pitching.
4) Taijuan Walker
There’s plenty of certainty in the with Jacob deGrom, Carlos Carrasco, and Marcus Stroman in the 1-2-3 spots, but the newly-signed Walker could make the Mets’ starting rotation one of the strongest in the majors if he builds on his strong finish with the Blue Jays last season and resembles the pitcher who was once hyped as a future ace with the Mariners.
At 29, Walker is still young enough to have upside, especially since he essentially missed two full seasons after Tommy John surgery. He pitched to a 1.39 ERA over his final six starts after being traded to the Blue Jays last season, though some of his underlying numbers during that stretch, including seven unearned runs, indicate the ERA might have been a bit deceptive.
5) Edwin Diaz
There’s no getting around it, Diaz will come under scrutiny again as soon as he gives up a home run or two this spring. He looked like he figured it out last season, at least to some degree, putting to rest his disastrous 2019 results, but scouts always make the point that his mechanics have the potential to “get out of whack” at any time.
A strong spring by Diaz won’t necessarily mean anything but it would at least avoid the inevitable panic that would come with some messy outings.
6) Dellin Betances
He’s something of a forgotten man in the Mets’ bullpen after his disappointing 2020 season, and perhaps he’ll never be the dominant force he was as a Yankee if he doesn’t recover his old high-90s fastball velocity. However, Betances is a year removed from the shoulder and Achilles tendon injuries he suffered in 2019, and if he can command the slider that buckled hitters’ knees over the years, he might get back to being a reliable piece of the late-inning bullpen.
7) Fifth Starter
David Peterson opened plenty of eyes last season when he stepped into the injury-riddled starting rotation and pitched well, particularly in showing the grit to pitch his way out of trouble. But he’s never thrown more than 128 innings in the minors, to go with 49 last season, and the Mets are going to limit his workload.
They acquired lefty Joey Lucchesi from the Padres and he’s sure to pick up some of the back-of-the-rotation innings. Perhaps the Mets will decide to open the season with Peterson in the minors to space out his innings early, but that could also be dictated by how he and Lucchesi look in spring games.
8) Bullpen Competition
The pen is mostly set, it would seem, as Edwin Diaz, Trevor May, Jeurys Familia, Aaron Loup, Betances, Miguel Castro, and Robert Gsellman have no major issues during spring training. Yet there are some interesting names who could push their way into the mix.
Most intriguing is Sam McWilliams, the career minor-leaguer the Mets signed to a $750,000 major league contract while outbidding other teams for him, who apparently re-invented himself while pitching at the Rays’ alternate site last year and had the video/analytical numbers on his phone to prove it.
Others to watch: Drew Smith, Jordan Yamamoto, Jacob Barnes (someone Rojas said on Sunday has stood out early), Franklyn Kilome, Tommy Hunter, Mike Montgomery, and let’s not forget old friend Jerry Blevins.
9) The Next Wave
The Mets’ blue-chip prospects are pretty much all too young to make an impact in 2021, but you’ll probably get a look at them in spring training games, and there is plenty of buzz building about some of them already.
Matt Allan is the great hope as their next home-grown starting pitcher; Francisco Alvarez is a highly-touted catcher; Ronnie Mauricio has earned raves as a young infielder; Third-first baseman Brett Baty is their 2019 first-round draft choice; and Pete Crow-Armstrong is last year’s No. 1 pick out of high school who scouts say could play a strong defensive center field in the big leagues right now.