This Week in Mets: Quantifying the impact of the Mets’ depth

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“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half-owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
—“Middlemarch,” George Eliot

Last week at Citi Field, David Stearns was asked what lesson he took away from the New York Mets’ remarkable turnaround in 2024.

“You tend to learn in this job over and over again that you have to plan for the unexpected or leave room for the unexpected,” he said. “You try to put yourself in the best position you possibly can as an organization every day and guys will step up. We had that last year. I couldn’t have predicted the particular names that were going to do it on Opening Day. We had a lot of guys do it and ultimately had a fun year.”

We’ve talked a lot about the value of depth here — the way Stearns had prioritized it in the past, the way it showed up in 2024, the way it manifested itself just last week. But taking one step back shows just how meaningful that accumulation of quality baseball players has propelled the Mets to the best record in baseball, one month into the season, Sunday’s unpleasantness aside.

To wit:

In spring training, the Mets lost two of their presumed top three starters in Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas. Without them, they entered Sunday well ahead of the pack for the league’s best rotation ERA. Tylor Megill and Griffin Canning, the starters who replaced Manaea and Montas, have compiled a 2.37 ERA in 11 starts.

Griffin Canning’s strong early performances are helping keep the Mets’ rotation afloat. (Vincent Carchietta / Imagn Images)

This is not normal, and a cursory look around the league reveals what an achievement that really is. The Yankees lost Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil in spring training. They entered Sunday 22nd in rotation ERA, with fill-ins Carlos Carrasco and Will Warren combining for a 4.67 mark.

Atlanta started the year without Spencer Strider and then lost Reynaldo López early. Its rotation ERA was 24th in baseball entering Sunday, with its two fill-in starters producing a 5.19 mark.

The Orioles lost Grayson Rodriguez in spring and Zach Eflin early in the season — an unforeseeable occurrence according to general manager Mike Elias. (He’s been criticized enough, justifiably, for that remark.) Baltimore entered Sunday with the third-worst rotation ERA in baseball, ahead only of the Marlins and Rockies. Its two fill-ins have a 5.35 ERA, which is actually better than the rest of the group.

Those are not three bottom-feeders. Those are three teams built to win in 2025. And while the Mets are 7-4 when their substitute starters pitch (even after Sunday’s bullpen debacle behind Megill), the other teams are all below .500 with their fill-ins.

The Mets haven’t been as stunningly successful at other positions where they lost manpower in spring training, but their depth acquitted itself at both catcher and second base.

Without Francisco Alvarez for 25 games, New York ranked 16th in wins above replacement behind the plate, its subpar offense (68 wRC+) mitigated by outstanding defense from Luis Torrens and Hayden Senger. Torrens has thrown out nearly 50 percent of opposing base stealers, and Senger ranked second in the majors at turning borderline pitches into strikes in his small sample of work.

The two played at the pace of 2.6 wins above replacement over 162 games; that would have been the best season for Mets backstops since 2016.

At second base, despite horrid offensive starts to the season from Brett Baty and Luisangel Acuña, the Mets entered Jeff McNeil’s first game back on Friday ranked 10th in the big leagues in wins above replacement at the position. Acuña’s offensive about-face, in particular, could make the daily lineup decisions intriguing for Carlos Mendoza at the keystone.

Megill and Canning probably aren’t going to produce a low-twos ERA all season. Eventually, Torrens could cool off and Senger’s bat might prove difficult to play on any kind of regular basis. Acuña might not be this offensive player consistently. You don’t necessarily project those depth pieces to be every bit as good as they have been to this point.

But that’s not the point of that depth most of the time. The point is to be as good as you can be when it’s needed. The point is to come up and start six straight wins for a team that made the postseason by a game last season, as Megill did. The point is to fill in for Francisco Lindor and basically play like him for a week, the way Acuña did last season. That performance is banked, in April as in September, for a team where every game matters.

That’s why, more than anything else, the Mets own baseball’s best record through a month.

The exposition

The Mets have lost two of the first three in Washington, both losses coming after holding a lead through eight innings. New York still enters Monday’s finale at 19-9.

The Diamondbacks snapped a four-game losing streak and avoided a home sweep with a Sunday win over Atlanta. Arizona is 15-13.

The Cardinals couldn’t complete a sweep of the Brewers on Sunday. St. Louis is 12-16 and travels to Cincinnati for four before hosting the Mets on Friday.

The pitching possibles

at Washington

RHP Griffin Canning (3-1, 3.12 ERA) v. LHP Mitchell Parker (3-1, 1.39 ERA)

v. Arizona

LHP David Peterson (1-1, 3.29) v. LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (1-2, 4.40)
LHP Brandon Waddell* (1-1, 1.54 ERA for Triple-A Syracuse) v. RHP Corbin Burnes (0-1, 4.05)
RHP Kodai Senga (3-1, 1.26) v. RHP Zac Gallen (1-4, 5.57)

at St. Louis

RHP Clay Holmes (3-1, 2.64) v. RHP Sonny Gray (3-0, 3.60)
RHP Tylor Megill (3-2, 1.74) v. RHP Erick Fedde (1-3, 4.68)
RHP Griffin Canning v. RHP Andre Pallante (2-1, 4.05)

*Waddell is an educated guess to start or pitch bulk innings for the Mets on Wednesday. Two other potential options, Justin Hagenman and Blade Tidwell, pitched in Triple A on Sunday. Waddell is the pick over Brandon Sproat because Sproat has struggled a fair bit while Waddell hasn’t, and because the Diamondbacks have been much worse against lefties than righties.

Injury updates

Red = 60-day IL
Orange = 15-day IL
Blue = 10-day IL

• A.J. Minter hit the injured list on Sunday after leaving his Saturday outing prematurely. Minter had pitched pretty well in his first month with the Mets after hip surgery, and as of Sunday night, the Mets weren’t sure how long to expect Minter out.
• Stearns said Jose Siri’s absence should be about 8-10 weeks from the time of injury, which places a return sometime in June. That’s more optimistic than I had been based on other players who fractured their tibias and typically required 4-5 months to return.
• Ronny Mauricio started his minor-league rehab assignment with Single-A St. Lucie on Sunday, going 1-for-3 as a DH.
• Stearns said Dedniel Núñez’s post-spring ramp-up is complete and that Núñez can be recalled to the major leagues whenever there’s a need.

Minor-league schedule

Triple A: Syracuse v. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (New York, AL)
Double A: Binghamton at Erie (Detroit)
High A: Brooklyn v. Wilmington (Washington)
Low A: St. Lucie at Palm Beach (St. Louis)

Last week in Mets

A note on the epigraph

Few novels are as deliciously quotable as “Middlemarch,” which I’ve used a few other times for an epigraph — though not the same line, because it offers so many to choose from. It’s as well-written a book as I’ve ever read on the sentence level, and its use of an intimate yet omniscient narrator to invite you inside some perspectives while delivering tongue-in-cheek scorn on others feels novel and entertaining. Really, my only qualm with the whole novel is that, in a story containing characters named Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy and Humphrey Cadwallader, one of the main characters of the final section is a John Raffles, often referred to just as “Raffles.” I couldn’t get over it. “Raffles” doesn’t sound like a villain. It sounds too much like it would be Borthrop Trumbell’s dog or horse — and yes, “Borthrop Trumbell” is another actual name from “Middlemarch.”

Trivia time

The 1969 Mets were the first team in the divisional era to finish April with a losing record and go on to win the World Series. In fact, six of the nine teams to have pulled off that feat called the NL East home at the time. Three of them have done it this century — the last three teams to win a championship despite a losing April. Can you name them?

(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)

(Top photo of Tylor Megill: Elsa / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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