Mets Opening Day lineup may only have one new name this year

The 2020 New York Mets Opening Day lineup may be a near-reflection of what we saw them put together to start the 2019 campaign.

During the 2010s, there were plenty of changes from year to year with the New York Mets Opening Day lineup. Last year’s Opening Day starters were all brand new except for Amed Rosario and Brandon Nimmo.

Even Nimmo deserves an asterisk as the starting left fielder when the year prior he opened the season in center field. In which case, eight positions changed from the year prior.

There won’t be the same difference from last year’s Opening Day lineup to the one we see take the field to begin 2020. If everyone is healthy, the Mets could conceivably only have one different player in this year’s opener.

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The infield should look exactly the same as it did last year. Wilson Ramos behind the plate, Pete Alonso at first base, Robinson Cano at second, Jeff McNeil manning third base, and Rosario comfortably over at shortstop.

The outfield is where we will see the change. Michael Conforto should be in right field yet again. It’s the other two spots with some tweaks.

In 2019, the squad opened the year with Nimmo in left field and Juan Lagares in center field. Lagares is no longer with the club and Nimmo is expected to take his spot in center—at least to start the year.

This leaves us with only one spot remaining: left field.

If everyone is healthy—the precursor we often need to go with for anything Mets related—the team can go with J.D. Davis or Yoenis Cespedes out there. I have my doubts about the latter much more than I do the former.

Whichever one it is, this team will probably have a different left fielder out there than they did a season ago. If it’s Cespedes, I guess we can say the Mets don’t have any new Opening Day starters in franchise history. He did, after all, open the year as the team’s starting left fielder from 2016-2018.

The bigger change we could see is with the lineup itself. I think McNeil will bat higher than sixth and whoever is in left field should slot somewhere in the middle.

Typically, the offseason is a time for teams to make changes. By the looks of it, Brodie Van Wagenen didn’t believe this team needed very many.

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He could be right. Based on what a lot of people and computers are predicting, the not-so-new-look Mets may have what it takes.