Booms, Busts, And Teams Still Not Certain: National League

We are about a third of the way through the 2022 season, and Memorial Weekend is often considered a milestone in the season that marks when we can start to get a sense for which teams are for real and which ones are not. By now, the teams that started hot early have cooled off, and the good teams who scuffled have started to rise back to the top of their divisions.

With that in mind, this is a good time to check in on who might be legit, and who clearly is not, along with who we’re still wondering about. Here’s how the National League looks:

Boom: New York Mets (32-17, first place in the National League East)

Maybe the Mets jokes have all run their course. The franchise seemingly not able to get out of its own way since making it to the 2015 World Series finally looks like they are getting things together.

New York has a 8.5 game lead over the defending champ Atlanta Braves and the second-best winning percentage in the National League, and much of that has been because of their offense. Going into the Memorial Day games, the Mets had the third-highest batting average (.261) and the second-highest wins above replacement (10) in baseball.

That’s enough to cover for pitching that has been mostly average. The team’s 3.75 ERA ranks 12th in baseball. The addition of Max Scherzer on a three year, $130 million contract in December definitely helped, and good news might be on the way: Jacob deGrom is progressing nicely toward his goal of returning in late June or early July.

It’s possible that getting Buck Showalter at the helm was all the Mets needed to take all the talent they have had for years now to finally cohere into a winning team.

Bust: Atlanta Braves (23-25, second place in the National League East)

The Braves’ spot in the standings is more a product of a weak division than their having played all that well so far. It’s obviously difficult for World Series champions to repeat — no one has done it since the New York Yankees won three in a row from 1998-2000 — but the Braves are in danger of missing the playoffs altogether this year.

What’s gone wrong? Their hitting has been poor, for starters. Despite getting Ronald Acuña, Jr. back after he missed most of the 2021 season, the rest of the offense is scuffling. Dansby Swanson is the only other regular besides Acuña who is hitting above .250. They have the fifth-highest number of home runs (60) but without anyone doing much hitting, that power isn’t creating a lot of scoring. The Braves rank 18th in baseball with 198 runs scored.

Things could be looking up, however. The Braves are finishing May on a good note: In their last three series, they beat the Marlins on the road, split a four-game set with the Phillies at home, and the Braves just finished taking another series against the Marlins in Atlanta.

They have a tough hill to climb, but if the Braves are aggressive in the trade market again this year, don’t rule them out just yet.

Too Early to Tell: San Francisco Giants (26-21, third place in the National League West)

Last year, the Giants were one of the biggest surprises of the 2021 season. The expectation was that the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres would be the teams fighting for the top spot in the NL West, but instead it was the Giants who won 107 games and the division.

So far, things in 2022 seem to have reverted to last year’s expectations. The Dodgers and Padres are within just a few games of each other, and though the Giants have a winning record and would claim a wild card spot if the season ended today, it is still too early to tell whether they are good enough to hang in against the rest of their division over the next two thirds of the season.

The Giants have been one of the highest-scoring teams in baseball, but their pitching has held them back so far. They have scored 232 runs, good for fifth in the league, but their team ERA of 4.40 is 25th in baseball. That has left them with a run differential of just +19, which is 100 runs lower than the Dodgers.

There are still well over 100 games to be played, leaving plenty of time for surprises, but through the first third of the season, the Mets look like they could be for real while the Braves are likely not going to get a shot at repeating. As for the Giants? They are still one of the best teams in the National League, but their problem is that two of the better ones are in their division. Just good probably won’t be good enough.