It’s amusing how whenever a team approaches the winning percentage you predicted preseason, they’re “right where they should be.” A week earlier, or a week later and you could be completely wrong. A week ago the Mets were four games over .500. Were the people that predicted .500 so completely off base last Friday? Of course, maybe the Mets were playing over their heads. But why is them winning four games in a row over their heads and losing four isn’t under their feet?
It was pretty easy to see the Mets were capable of being a winning team with a couple of things breaking right, and a losing team with some key injuries or bad luck or under-performing. Every season for every team is like that. If you predicted the Mets to be at .500, which it’s still not guaranteed they’ll do when it’s all said and done, did you predict it with a healthy David Wright? Did you think Jason Bay would be this bad? Carlos Beltran that good? That the Mets would trade Beltran and K-Rod? That Murphy would hit .320? That Josh Thole would take a step backwards?
Right now the things that went right have been balanced with things that went bad. But all it takes is a lucky bounce, or a Jon Niese injury, or a couple more home runs from Jason Bay for that prediction to look way off. 18 games into the season the Mets looked like a bad team, and those that predicted them to be in last were excited to be right. A week ago the Mets were flying high four games over .500 and predictors that guessed 88 wins were starting to feel excited about the return of David Wright and the emergence of Lucas Duda propelling the team to those heights. Now they lost a couple and the .500 guessers are out in full force, citing how the Mets keep returning to .500 like a yo-yo because they’re just not that good.
So stop applauding yourself for roughly guessing how many wins the Mets will finish with, or any other team. Likewise, you’re not “smarter than the experts” because you selected an already really good pitcher to pitch really well and contend for a Cy Young. Some guesses are certainly better than others, but at best they’re just guesses. This same rule applies to radio hosts and sports show analysts as well. So stop gloating.
