Mets will win the division!

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Muck the Fets

All 5 NL East teams won today. Pretty good for the worst division in baseball!

I think it is very close between NYM and WAS, I don't see a whole lot of daylight. my instinct is to give the Nats the slight edge, but that may be my Met fan pessimism/difficulty in being objective.

the Nats rotation remains very good - Scherzer is a top-end pitcher, Strasburg just knocks on the door of the top end but seemingly has not 100% put it together yet, maybe he never will; and I'd expect Ross and Gio to be above-average starters.

the Mets have the 3 starters with evident top-end potential, as well as two higher-ceiling starters to round out (Wheeler only for 3 or 4 months).

I like the Mets position players everywhere except Harper. the Mets don't have a player that can touch what Harper did in 2015, but they do seem to have more positions where they have a good chance at guys being above-average starters: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, RF all, and the other 3 don't really project to be liabilities. I think the Mets have cobbled together a nice assortment of average to above average position players, in an attempt to make up for the lack of a superstar with lack of weaknesses.

Werth and, to a lesser extent, Zimmerman, concern me as collapse candidates. Turner has to be considered a breakout candidate, Michael Taylor a bit less so, but other than that there is lacking the higher-ceiling possibilities the Mets have (d'Arnaud, Conforto, the potentiality of high OBPs from Granderson and Wright)..

I don't bother to evaluate and handicap bullpens unless there is a pressing reason to do so. there really isn't in this case, though watching Papelbon and Harper evidently play on the same team should be fun to follow all season long.

so after thinking through it, my pick here on January 11th is the Mets by, about, 3 games. the Mets also have higher breakout/runaway potential; if the division is won by ten games or more, I would expect that to be the Mets, not Washington.

Miami does deserve a mention as a dark horse. there is always the possibility of Stanton and Fernandez putting up mega-seasons, and the Marlins do have some position player talent and breakout-potential talent. though if Ichiro and Mathis start racking up serious amounts of PAs they're in trouble. there is nothing to like about the pitching this side of Fernandez

at the end of the day, I would think every win over 84 or so for Miami would be a serious, serious struggle, and I think the odds of neither the Mets nor Washington hanging up 88 wins to be quite low, so I would paint the Marlins as an outside-looking in. (Philadelphia may actually be closer to the Marlins than the Marlins are to the Mets.)

EDIT JAN 23: I was all prepared to call this a dead heat or WAS +1 division when it appeared Washington was closing on Cespedes. instead, with the signings of Bastardo and Cespedes, I will upgrade the Mets from about a 3 win favorite to about a 6 win favorite over Washington -- ie, a pretty significant favorite.

Go Mets.

Only half a game, so it might not last. But in the meantime, New Yorkers can celebrate - it's time to change the sidebar!

The Braves have a three game win streak and are 2 1/2 games behind first. I hope they're starting on a roll.

Sorry Mets, I hope you enjoyed your time at the top.

Loris is gonna have 3 managers on the payroll this year. Woof. Sorry fish bros.

Braves thread

Phillies thread

Scherzer was 7 IP, 2 ER, plenty of K's, 102 pitches after 7 innings.

Nats learned the hard way something that they should have known already: that he is not a guy who can eat innings. (such is why he has 1 CG in over 200 career starts) he promptly allowed 2 baserunners and then a bomb to Stanton, leaving at 7+ IP, 5 ER.

Nats should win anyway, but there's some fodder here for the anti-Matt Williams crowd.

Stephen Strasburg left his start on May 5 against Miami very early. he grimaced a lot and indications are it is a shoulder problem.

we don't know where we are from there. Nats are downplaying it, he hasn't been DL'd but I don't believe they've definitively said he'll make his next start.

obviously, this has implications in the NL East race. the Nats have plenty of top-end pitching, as well as pitchers that could step into their rotation if necessary, but losing an ace-caliber pitcher is never something you wish for.

Braves thread

Phillies thread (will update when it exists)

Creating this since i don't see it.

Mets GDT

Nationals GDT

For the Nationals I'd say Freddie Freeman, no matter who we throw at him he's always poking hits through. Who is "that guy" for your team?

Good job, mods, or whoever did it, it looks really nice. Plus no blue and orange, yuck.

Both you and I know the Nationals are the bad guys in this division. They call people 'clowns' for asking questions, the red of their uniforms eerily looks like the shade of the U.S.S.R flag(coincidence? you decide!), and last and certainly not least, they are the incumbents who in the off season tried to buy themselves the division like a certain ^(Cough) ^Yankees Team we all despise.

Lets agree to support whatever team is facing them untill they are deemed irrelevant. Because at the end of the day, who wants to see this in October? The NLE Needs You!