Well, Opening Day is a week away, and Mets fans are getting excited for Mets baseball.  Whether this will turn out to be 2015 or 2017 again remains to be seen.  Depending on your point of view, you could argue the Mets winning the World Series just as competently as you could argue them having to once again sell at the trade deadline.  With this season really up in the air, we turned to our Roundtable, and we asked them what they expect the Mets to do in 2018:

Roger Cormier (Good Fundies & Fangraphs)

What do I expect? I expect hope. Pain. Happiness. Sadness. Great tweets. Bad tweets. Excitement. Anger. A reminder of the second half of 2015. A reminder of #thatssomets moments. “Payroll flexibility”. Health. Injuries. Complicated high fives. Announcers giggling. Anxiety. Feats of power. Feats of nonsense. And I dunno, 83 regular season wins?

Mark Healey (Gotham Baseball)

I know I am being optimistic, but I actually think Mets will be in contention for a wildcard all year, and if the rotation is healthy, could push the Nats for the NL East. I don’t say this as a Mets fanboy (and I think my record is very clear on how critical I can be), but as someone who believes the new on-field regime can take this club to whole new level. A competent manager who understands pitching, a bench coach who clearly knows what he’s doing, and a pitching coach who’s proven he can do more with less, for the first time since Bobby V and Bob Apodaca changed the culture in 1997, this team has the right guys in place. 90 wins.

Joe Maracic (Loud Egg)

It may be my lack of sleep from having a 1 year old, but I believe the Mets will win the East. Before the past few seasons started if the Mets were predicted to win, they lose. This year looks good for us, especially if at least 3 out of the 5 starting pitchers stay healthy.

Michael Mayer (MMO & MMN)

I expect the Mets to contend for Wild Card, though if the rotation returns to health and productivity we could see them at least hang around late in the season for the division.

I believe the Mets left side of the infield defensively is going to give the pitching staff a little boost as well.

If that rings true, the key to the season could come down to what Sandy Alderson does at the deadline to fill needs.

Metstradamus (Metstradums Blog)

For your latest, my expectation is 84 wins, factoring in reasonable injury expectation. This bullpen has the ability to make a lot of starters unhappy and that will keep the win total down. Come back to me if they sign Greg Holland.

Greg Prince (Faith and Fear in Flushing)

The Mets’ general creakiness at several positions concerns me, as does their tendency toward fragility, but what fun is pessimism? The Mets will compete better and longer than they did last year, and let the wins pile up from there.

James Schapiro (Shea Bridge Report)

I can’t answer these questions, because I’m a Mets fan, and I’ve always – literally, always – been convinced that we’re a few pieces, at most, away from being a pennant-winner. Look at this team – we’ve got what could be a very solid rotation, a lineup that could rake if the dice fall the right way, and a guy who has the potential to be a top closer in baseball when he’s healthy. Are things going to go that well? You tell me (the answer is no). But what fun is it to go through all the nightmare scenarios and predict which one will happen? For now, I’m sticking with the optimistic scenario: we come out of nowhere and shock the world. Doesn’t it sound both desperately far-fetched and surprisingly realistic?

Mets Daddy

Like most Mets fans, I’m an optimist on Opening Day.  Right now, I expect Todd Frazier to be the 1999 Robin Ventura.  I foresee Matt Harvey putting his career back together.  I am all the more excited watching Michael Conforto healthy and already hitting homers.  If you ask me right now, I’m going to say World Series contender.

Putting my enthusiasm aside, I’ll say this – The NL East is a little more open than we originally believed it to be.  Daniel Murphy wont’ be ready for Opening Day, and who knows when he’ll come back.  For that matter, who knows what he’ll be when he returns.  No one can reasonably expect Ryan Zimmerman to produce like he did last year.  It was an outlier.  The Nationals are relying way too much on Michael Taylor having figured it out, and Matt Wieters isn’t good behind or at the plate.  Also, they lost Dusty Baker, who was a manager who seemed to resonate with that clubhouse.

We take for granted the Nationals will win the division because the Mets have so many question marks and because we have seen the Nationals have great year after great year.  They may very well have another one, but it’s far from a certainty.  Immaculately, I think this is a closer race than we may have originally thought it to be.

So overall, the Mets Bloggers seem to be a little more bullish on the Mets than many other places.  If you are curious why they feel this way, please click on the links next to their names to see their superb work which expounds upon their opinions about the Mets further.