The Mets began their season with a record of 13-3, winning 11 straight games before the Yankees snapped their streak on Friday night at Yankee Stadium.
While it’s still early – the Mets have played just over ten percent of their regular season games to date – history suggests the Mets are trekking towards the postseason, Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal writes.
According to Diamond, 70 percent of the teams who have started their season 13-3 have reached the playoffs since 1945, and 73.3 percent of teams who started 13-3 since 1961 (since the implementation of the 162 game schedule) have won 90 games or more during the regular season.
In addition, Diamond provides a chart by Stats, LLC, which says only two teams have started the season 13-3 and missed the playoffs in the Wild Card era, and only two of those teams finished with fewer than 90 wins:
The Mets recognize it’s early, but they remain confident in themselves as they successfully navigate a portion of their season in which 27 of their first 31 games are against National League East opponents despite missing key components of their roster due to injury.
“We feel comfortable that we’re good,” Michael Cuddyer told Diamond. “What you mean by, ‘It’s early,’ is the wins and losses. You can’t ever guarantee wins and losses, but you can guarantee how you play the game. We’ve played the game well, and we have the wins to show for it, as of this moment.”
As I wrote yesterday, even if the Mets play modestly well – say they go 77-68 the rest of the year – that puts them at 90 wins for the regular season, which should be enough for a postseason berth of some kind. The second wild card helps those chances, although that’s not to say they can merely be a wild card team. Based on the start, they could be better than a 90-win team at the end of the year, and there is certainly a margin for error for these Mets when the schedule gets tougher in June and July.
The Mets are 13-4 through 17 games, matching their start from 1986.
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