I’m excited for 2019 as it should be a fun year for the Mets. They’ve made a lot of changes this offseason, and while they could’ve done, and still could do, more they trimmed a lot of the bad players off the depth chart and continue to have one of the best rotations in baseball.
This division looks to be pretty competitive. The Braves surprised and won it last year, and while they’re projected for third you could reasonably expect that to be unfair based off last year’s results. The Phillies showed some promise, and while they’re projected for 4th, you could argue that they have a lot of potential there that faded in the second half last year. The Nationals are still on top by a few games, but they’ve shown themselves to be underperformers.
The Mets come in at 85-86 wins in Fangraphs projections right now. PECOTA says 88, with the Nationals at 89. Both have the Mets pitching staff as top flight.
Whichever way it breaks, it appears that all four teams have a reasonably similar shots of winning the division. That means a lot of head to head matchups. Lots of scoreboard watching. Lots of tweaking rotations to get favorable matchups. Lots of battles for first place. Lots of competing trade deadline machinations. All that adds up to a rather fun season.