Bold predictions for the 2026 Mets, including Kodai Senga seeing stars
The cliched daring predictions come in numerous magnitudes. There’s Level 1, the place you basically level to one thing that is likelier than it just lately had been and predict it would come to go. There’s Level 2, the place you find one thing that is likelier than it feels it must be. There’s Level 3, the place you play out an extended time frame to a counterintuitive, if logical, conclusion. And then there’s Level 4, the place you expect one thing so outlandish and unlikely to occur that it might probably justifiably be accused of being engagement bait.
In considering by way of daring predictions for the 2026 Mets, I caught with the first three ranges right here, primarily as a result of I do not like predicting issues I do not really assume will occur.
Juan Soto is the solely Met with 30-plus dwelling runs
Last yr Soto, Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor turned the first trio of Mets to hit 30 dwelling runs in the identical season. But Alonso is now in the AL East and Lindor is getting back from a hamate surgical procedure that might briefly hinder his energy to start out the season — sufficient to make a distinction for somebody who’s hit 31, 33 and 31 homers the previous three years.
While the Mets added three gamers with 30-homer seasons in the previous (and a fourth who’s hit 29), gamers in that group are much less more likely to play 150-plus video games this yr.
Kodai Senga makes the All-Star crew
Just about each Kodai Senga story accommodates one sentence that begins “It’s easy to forget…”. That Senga was one in all the National League’s greatest pitchers in 2023, that even the dedicated model of himself was the Mets’ option to make abbreviated Game 1 begins in two playoff sequence in 2024, and, for our functions right here, that he was cruising towards an All-Star berth simply final summer season earlier than a hamstring damage derailed his whole season. Senga carried a sub-2.00 ERA into June final yr, and that is regardless of feeling off together with his mechanics by way of the first two months of the season.
He would not really feel off with them now. The right-hander is as outwardly assured as he is ever been in the main leagues, and his stuff by way of spring justifies that assurance. He was hitting 99 on the gun together with his fastball and slicing by way of lineups. There is all the time the likelihood {that a} well-placed groundball or errant throw modifications issues. But if Senga stays on the mound, he could make the journey to Philly in July.
The Mets advance to a minimum of the NLDS — and begin a pitcher not on the Opening Day roster as soon as there.
The Mets will carry six or seven conventional starters on their Opening Day roster, relying on the way you categorize Tobias Myers. But they do not have a transparent quartet you’d need getting into a postseason sequence. Sure, if the Mets are in the postseason, Freddy Peralta and Nolan McLean most likely had quite a bit to do with it, and we have already got Senga as an All-Star. But who’d be No. 4?
By September, Christian Scott or Jonah Tong — every of whom has been thought-about the group’s greatest pitching prospect at instances over the final two years — has a great shot of leaping into the combine. And each have a greater likelihood of showcasing the high-level, swing-and-miss stuff that the postseason requires than David Peterson, Clay Holmes or Sean Manaea.
