Brian Tulloch 
New York Mets Fantasy Season Outlook
As a diehard Mets fan, bleeding Orange and Blue, there is nothing I look forward to more than seeing the Amazin’s back on the field and with an abbreviated season heading our way (fingers crossed), it means we get the return of my other love – fantasy baseball! So here is a New York Mets Fantasy Season Outlook!
For fantasy baseball players, when they think of the Mets, they are going to immediately turn to Jacob deGrom and Pete Alonso and rightfully so as consensus top 20 players even in an abbreviated season. There is nothing to say about deGrom or Alonso that hasn’t been said and drafting them inside the top 20, you will likely get a strong return on their value but there is one player right now that I think is not being hyped up nearly enough and could return elite fantasy baseball value in 2020 – Michael Conforto.Right now, Conforto is being drafted outside the top 25 OF’s and barely within the top 100 overall which seems like a mistake for a 27-year-old player hitting his prime after a season in which he knocked 33 HR’s and 92 RBI’s.The circumstances surrounding Conforto heading into this season could not be better, as the Mets will get one of the biggest boosts in baseball with the addition of a DH, swapping out a pitcher for the likes of Yoenis Cespedes. The Mets lineup heading into 2020 is strong across every spot and that day in and day out grind on pitchers without the “benefit” of facing an opposing teams SP in the batter’s box, I believe will make for inflated offensive numbers in the heat of the summer.
Last year, the most common Mets line-up included Todd Frazier and the pitcher’s spot in the line-up and now in 2020 you swap those out for a duo of Cespedes and JD Davis and well, you can start to see how there is simply no break for opposing arms facing this lineup.
If you look at Conforto’s splits, it won’t shock you to see that his K rate drops and his slugging % and ISO metrics jump materially when he is up in the count, specifically early in the count as we saw him generate well over a third of his HR/RBI output when he got up in the count 1-0. This is where the lengthened line-up and the addition of guys like Yo and JD behind him will pay massive dividends as he gets to take advantage of hitter’s counts with more threats around him and more high leverage, run-producing situations.
I also think the fact that Conforto will play 40 of the 60 games against the NL East gives him a familiarity with the parks and pitchers he will face for the large majority of the season, helping bring some continuity to 2020 in which any sort of normalcy will be a big boost to players in this new world.
One interesting note, the last two seasons Conforto has been a huge second-half player with a massive jump in 2018 as his ISO jumped well over .100 points to .266 and we saw a similar improvement in the second half of 2019. You could argue that resurgence comes with the weather warming up which in theory would translate to this year with all games coming in the heat of the summer or you can take the approach that he takes a while to get going – which in a shortened season could be an issue as every game on the schedule has a higher degree of importance.
There is one constant though in the numbers for Conforto – a consistent upward trend and sometimes as Mets fans, we may forget he is still just 27 years old. Heading into this season with McNeil/Nimmo ahead of him and Alonso/Yo/Cano/JD/Ramos right behind him – there is going to be some serious per game run production hitting in the middle of a lineup that showed it was a top 10 offense across every metric in the second half of last year, ranking top 10 in runs, RBI, team ISO and team wOBA. With the addition of a DH, and one as talented as Yoenis Cespedes, I want as many underrated pieces of this Mets offense as I can get!
And hey – LFGM!
Thanks for enjoying this New York Mets Fantasy Season Outlook! Make sure to follow us on twitter at @WinDailySports and me at @2LockSports! There is more FREE content over at WinDailySports.com and you can chat with our Fantasy Pros one on one in our Expert Discord Chat!
