Mets' Opening Day roster projection: What happens at DH? Which pitchers make the cut? (2024)

Earlier this week, Buck Showalter lamented the perils of spring training evaluations.

“You make a lot of mistakes if you overbook negative or positive stuff in the spring,” he said. “The track record usually wins out.”

And then, moments later, he continued.

“What else do you have to evaluate by, though? It’s not like we can all go forward six months,” he said. “We have some people with (a) track record and some guys trying to develop one. You can’t get a track record unless you get a chance, right?”

These are the difficulties in hammering out the last few spots on the Mets’ Opening Day roster.

Look, year after year, every beat reporter in America pumps out Opening Day roster projection after Opening Day roster projection as if that roster is etched in stone instead of scribbled in pencil on a Post-it. Some guys who make the Opening Day roster don’t make it to the home opener.

However, what’s interesting about the Mets right now is what their Opening Day roster will reveal about their longer-term thinking. Specifically, Brett Baty is making a case for big-league playing time at third and Mark Vientos is making a case for big-league playing time at designated hitter.

The Mets could opt for youth in either spot, pushing Eduardo Escobar to the bench and Darin Ruf to the side. Those can be hard moves to undo if things go poorly.

The Mets could opt for experience in either spot, sending Baty and Vientos back to Triple A and seeing how well Escobar and Ruf can perform, recalling the prospects should a problem arise. That could waste time in building the best roster possible in the big leagues in a division that doesn’t permit much room for wasted time.

The Mets will spend part of their Saturday discussing all the different permutations of their roster. With Opening Day on the horizon Thursday in Miami, let’s take one last guess at who will be on the Mets’ Opening Day roster. For fun and to rile everyone up (more so) in the comments, I’ve included Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for each player (accounting for projected playing time). Again, these are not my projections; I majored in English. Most projection systems tend to be more moderate than extreme.

Catchers

Omar Narváez
Projection: 327 PA, 7 HR, 32 RBI, .248/.328/.369, 1.9 WAR

Tomás Nido
Projection: 230 PA, 4 HR, 20 RBI, .222/.265/.321, 0.6 WAR

The Mets’ decision to option Francisco Álvarez on Wednesday made official what the club had made clear from the start of spring training: Álvarez never had much shot of making the Opening Day roster. The Mets want their 21-year-old catcher to grow more defensively, and the best place for that will be at Triple-A Syracuse to start the year. Álvarez didn’t make the decision particularly hard, given his 3-for-28 performance without an extra-base hit thus far this spring. This can seem like a disappointing outcome given Álvarez’s presence on the postseason roster last October; however, only one 21-year-old catcher this century, Brian McCann, has received as many as 200 plate appearances in a regular season. And Álvarez didn’t light Triple A on fire offensively last summer. There’s room for growth here, and thankfully plenty of time as well.

While Narváez was getting only a handful of plate appearances for Team Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic, Nido has had an excellent spring back in Port St. Lucie (.378 with three homers in 38 plate appearances). The playing time distribution between the two has never been set in stone, and it would not register as a surprise if Nido receives starts against right-handed pitchers early in the season.

For what it’s worth, the projection on Álvarez is 104 PA, 4 HR, 13 RBI, .220/.318/.411 and a 0.6 WAR.

Infielders

Pete Alonso
Projection: 665 PA, 39 HR, 115 RBI, .261/.349/.515, 4.4 WAR

Jeff McNeil
Projection: 609 PA, 11 HR, 67 RBI, .289/.353/.419, 3.8 WAR

Francisco Lindor
Projection: 672 PA, 26 HR, 92 RBI, .255/.328/.440, 6.1 WAR

Eduardo Escobar
Projection: 441 PA, 17 HR, 57 RBI, .232/.292/.417, 1.4 WAR

Luis Guillorme
Projection: 294 PA, 3 HR, 23 RBI, .259/.345/.334, 1.3 WAR

Unlike Álvarez, Baty has definitely made it hard for the Mets to decide on an everyday third baseman. Baty has hit .325 this spring while Escobar is at .138 after playing for Venezuela in the WBC. At the moment, the guess here is Escobar still holds on to the job to start the season while Baty goes back to Triple A. When I talked to Billy Eppler about his prospects early in the spring, I was struck by the importance he placed on a player’s experience in Triple A.

“You want to make sure that you test them,” Eppler said in mid-February, recalling a conversation he once had with Brett Gardner. “One of the things I took away was Double A really physically tests you. You saw pitchers that threw with a lot of velocity and hitters that can impact the baseball. You saw major-league-caliber tools. You maybe didn’t see the consistency of it.

“When you get to Triple A, you see players with two, three, four, five years of major-league service, and they’d throw a 2-0 changeup or pitch in different ways. It was a little bit more of a mental test. So you really want to feel good about a player satisfying those development objectives, satisfying the performance and all that development criteria before you bring them up to the big leagues.”

Eppler isn’t alone in feeling this way; most organizations still shy away from jumping players from Double A to the majors. But that answer stood out then because, in Álvarez and especially in Baty, Eppler had two players who hadn’t garnered the full Triple-A experience yet. Baty has just six games at Triple A (to go along with his 11 in the majors), and thus my expectation would be that New York lets him marinate more in Syracuse. If nothing else, though, Baty has narrowed the margin for error by Escobar and any of the right-handed designated hitters; if any of them struggle, he has positioned himself to be the answer.

(The projection on Baty is 266 PA, 10 HR, 38 RBI, .253/.331/.424 with 1.6 WAR.)

Outfielders

Brandon Nimmo
Projection: 595 PA, 13 HR, 60 RBI, .270/.371/.419, 5.0 WAR

Starling Marte
Projection: 575 PA, 15 HR, 71 RBI, .266/.327/.415, 3.2 WAR

Mark Canha
Projection: 546 PA, 15 HR, 59 RBI, .242/.360/.390, 2.4 WAR

Tommy Pham
Projection: 406 PA, 10 HR, 40 RBI, .224/.318/.351, 0.5 WAR

Tim Locastro has had an outstanding spring (.310 average with seven extra-base hits in 50 plate appearances), and presents a different skill set for the roster than any of the outfielders ahead of him. Unfortunately, Locastro’s much larger data sample in the majors leagues doesn’t forecast much offensive success, and therefore he remains on the outside of the Opening Day roster looking in.

Nimmo has expressed confidence that he’ll be ready for Opening Day. Marte has looked like the vintage version of himself despite coming off surgery on both groin muscles last fall. Pham has had a rough spring in terms of results, but the veteran has a unique approach to this time of year. Because of keratoconus, an eye condition that thins the cornea, Pham often spends spring training trying out a series of contact lenses before deciding which are the best for the upcoming season.

Designated hitters

Daniel Vogelbach
Projection: 315 PA, 12 HR, 41 RBI, .216/.348/.399, 1.0 WAR

Darin Ruf
Projection: 133 PA, 5 HR, 16 RBI, .222/.323/.400, 0.4 WAR

I’ll be honest: I filed two different versions of this story, one with Ruf here and one with Mark Vientos. I think it’s an even tougher call for New York than the one at third base.

Ruf is hanging on to a roster spot by a single ply at this point. Working through wrist issues this spring, he has five hits in 27 at-bats. His offense has perked up the past couple of days, but overall, he has not proven that the final month of last season was just an anomaly.

Unlike Baty, Vientos has spent the time at Triple A and has come pretty darn close to “mastering the level,” as Showalter calls it. It’s harder to make the case that Vientos needs the everyday reps the way Baty or Álvarez do.

Showalter, though, has mentioned track records a fair amount this spring — the same way he did last October before the Mets opted not just to carry Ruf on the postseason roster but to start him in Game 2 against lefty Blake Snell. He also said on Thursday that Ruf has been getting far more comfortable in his at-bats on the back fields, as the club waits for that to translate to the main ones. (Ruf did sting a double on Thursday off Atlanta lefty Jared Shuster.)

New York could opt for a middle way here, placing Ruf on the injured list as he works through the pain management issues with his wrist while giving Vientos a more extended major-league look.

While Vogelbach’s contributions to the 2022 Mets are consistently overlooked in our comments section — he posted a 139 OPS+ after being traded from Pittsburgh — it’s fair to wonder whether the Mets could have upgraded here and thus the middle of their order. Vogelbach is one of a few hitters on the roster with the chance to exploit the reconfigured, closer fence in right field at Citi Field.

Starting pitchers

Max Scherzer
Projection: 13-6, 3.06 ERA in 181 IP, 4.3 WAR

David Peterson
Projection: 6-6, 4.08 ERA in 102 IP, 0.9 WAR

Justin Verlander
Projection: 15-8, 2.84 ERA in 178 IP, 4.0 WAR

Kodai Senga
Projection: 13-9, 3.46 ERA in 176 IP, 3.2 WAR

Carlos Carrasco
Projection: 10-10, 4.35 ERA in 140 IP, 1.1 WAR

I wrote earlier in the spring about the Mets’ plans to occasionally deploy a six-man rotation this season. The team is still kicking the tires on starting the season with a six-man rotation that would include both Peterson and Tylor Megill (projection: 5-4, 3.97 ERA in 81 IP, 0.7 WAR).

At the moment, though, the Mets are leaning toward a normal five-man rotation, with Scherzer on Opening Day, either Peterson or Megill in the second game, and Verlander, Senga and Carrasco finishing it out. Peterson was better than Megill last season and has been better than him this spring; it would be awfully tough to go the other way on that roster call right now.

Placing Senga fourth gives him an extra day of rest after each of his first two starts and — if the Mets sprinkle in a sixth starter like I outlined — would mean he could pitch on regular rest as few as two times all season.

Relief pitchers

David Robertson
Projection: 24 saves, 3.70 ERA in 62 IP, 0.2 WAR

Adam Ottavino
Projection: 6 saves, 3.21 ERA in 64 IP, 0.6 WAR

Drew Smith
Projection: 2 saves, 3.61 ERA in 59 IP, 0.4 WAR

Brooks Raley
Projection: 3 saves, 3.77 ERA in 62 IP, 0.3 WAR

Stephen Nogosek
Projection: 3.70 ERA in 50 IP, 0.2 WAR

John Curtiss
Projection: 4.40 ERA in 56 IP, 0.0 WAR

Tommy Hunter
Projection: 4.15 ERA in 52 IP, 0.0 WAR

Zach Muckenhirn
Projection: 4.22 ERA in 49 IP, -0.1 WAR

The loss of Edwin Díaz reverberates throughout the bullpen. Robertson is about as qualified as a pitcher can be to replace Díaz: He has a lot of closing experience, he has closing experience in New York for a winning team, he has closing experience in New York for a winning team trying to fill impossibly large shoes. But even in the best-case scenario where Robertson works just fine in the ninth inning, the Mets would have to backfill his role — especially his success against both righties and lefties — earlier in the game. Díaz’s injury threatens to make the Mets a little bit worse in every inning out of the pen.

Curtiss has had a very strong spring, and he’s been a late-game reliever for a pennant-winner with Tampa Bay. With Sam Coonrod going down with a lat strain, Hunter stands to win a war of attrition for one of the last spots in the pen; he offers more of a known quantity than the other candidates. Let’s pencil in the lefty Muckenhirn for the last spot. With Robertson likely needed more for the ninth inning, the Mets could use another option against lefties earlier in the game, and Muckenhirn had a terrific spring. The other options include righties Dennis Santana, Jeff Brigham and Jimmy Yacabonis.

(Top photo of Eduardo Escobar and Pete Alonso: Rich Storry / USA Today)