{"id":235921,"date":"2021-04-26T21:03:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T18:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/one-surprising-reason-for-mets-hope-has-nothing-to-do-with-them-sherman\/"},"modified":"2021-04-26T21:03:08","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T18:03:08","slug":"one-surprising-reason-for-mets-hope-has-nothing-to-do-with-them-sherman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/one-surprising-reason-for-mets-hope-has-nothing-to-do-with-them-sherman\/","title":{"rendered":"#One surprising reason for Mets\u2019 hope has nothing to do with them: Sherman"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#One surprising reason for Mets\u2019 hope has nothing to do with them: Sherman<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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All hail the NL East, where the teams were trying to \u2014\u00a0at minimum \u2014 make the playoffs and even the one that wasn\u2019t putting its money where its October dreams were at was making history when the Marlins hired Kim Ng as the first female GM in MLB history.<\/p>\n

The forecast was for elevated play and a heated division race.<\/p>\n

Nearly a month into the season, the division is bunched, but the play is \u2026 meh.<\/p>\n

The weekend completed with just one NL East team over .500 and the 9-8 Mets had the fourth-worst run differential in the NL at minus-11. The third-worst belonged to the Braves (minus-12), the second worst was the Phillies (minus-15) and the worst was the Nationals (minus-24). Only the Marlins at plus-1 had an NL East positive and at 9-12 were tied with the Braves (9-12) and Nationals (8-11) for last in the division, all of whom were tied with the Reds (9-12) for the second-worst record in the NL behind the Rockies (8-13.)<\/p>\n

If the NL East contenders were not chagrined enough about their underwhelming start then the Dodgers and Padres the past two weekends did live up to their offseason expectations, showing what it is going to take to break into the top of the league. The teams played seven tight, tense April game<\/a>s worthy of October. The pitching, hitting, athleticism and competitiveness provided a Rob Manfred fever dream of what baseball could be.<\/p>\n

\"J.D.
J.D. Davis celebrates a home run on April 25, 2021<\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The National League goes through California \u2014 did you notice the Giants are in a golden state, nestled between the Dodgers and Padres in the NL West with the league\u2019s second-best record (14-8)? San Francisco begins a revelatory 22-game stretch Thursday in which it faces the Padres or Dodgers 10 times. But the Giants\u2019 strong start should reinforce that after all the offseason wreaths thrown at the NL East for trying in a time of inertia that the NL West might be better (even with Colorado) and that in a return to the standard playoff format of five teams per league, the only sure route into the postseason is by winning a division.<\/p>\n

Proviso alert: It is early, of course. But the first month should encourage the Mets that they can (and maybe should) win the NL East. Through the weekend, FanGraphs\u2019 predictive tool gave the Mets a 75.3 percent chance to take the NL East \u2014 the Braves were next at 16.4. Of course, a predictive model is based on what data is fed into it. Baseball Reference\u2019s tool, for example, had the Mets with the third-best shot at 18.5 percent with the Braves at 53.8 and the Nationals at 44.5 percent.<\/p>\n

If you like where the Mets are after a month it is because they have the best rotation in the division, and not only due to possessing the ace of the sport in Jacob deGrom. Marcus Stroman and Taijuan Walker are performing well, David Peterson is competent and Carlos Carrasco and Noah Syndergaard are trending toward returns. The Nationals rotation is not the same since its main men did overtime to help win the 2019 title. Stephen Strasburg is hurt again and Patrick Corbin has a 5.82 ERA and .886 OPS against spanning the last two seasons. The Phillies\u2019 front three of Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler and Zach Eflin is excellent, but they have one of the majors\u2019 worst rotation backend problems.<\/p>\n