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It was still the month of March and teams were still in Spring Training when the New York Mets received the terrible news that Zack Wheeler would have to undergo Tommy John surgery. Quickly many people thought that the loss of Wheeler would have immediate impact to the Mets rotation and their chances to compete.
Not only did they lose Wheeler during the spring, once the season was underway, the Mets have also lost team leader David Wright, Jerry Belvins, and Travis d’Arnaud to injuries. Just when everything appeared to be falling apart for the Mets, they are off to a very impressive start and one of their best starts in recent memory.
The Mets are currently leading the NL East division with an 11-3 record, that includes an active 9 game winning streak and an 8-0 record at home.
Lets also not forget that New York also lost their closer Jenrry Mejia after he got suspended 80 games for testing positive for Stanozolol. So everything seemed to be going wrong for the Mets, but what have they been doing well that has translated to this team’s success?
First off , Bartolo Colon is pitching like he did in his Cy Young year. Colon has started the season with a 3-0 record, 2.25 ERA, and 18 strikeouts in 20 innings pitched. Colon was the Opening Day starter, but it has been his counterparts who have also been part of a great rotation. Matt Harvey finally got healthy and also has a 3-0 record to start the season, while last year’s NL Rookie of the Year Jacob deGrom has a 0.93 ERA.
With the loss of closer Mejia, it opened up a spot for a pitcher to take over the closer role, that pitcher became Jeurys Familia. Familia quickly got familiarized with his role and already has 6 saves in the season.
We can clearly see that the Mets success can be due to their abundance of pitching, even with injuries to key players, if they can continue to pitch well they should be able to play well. It is still very early in the season and it will be a tough task to continue to play without David Wright and Travis d’Arnaud, but if the Mets go on with their dominant pitching, they can stick around until their injured players get healthy.