Mets May Preview: A tale of two months lies ahead on the schedule

The New York Mets began their May 2023 schedule yesterday with a split of a doubleheader over the archrival Atlanta Braves.

But what lies ahead for the Mets the rest of the month with their schedule is two different types of opponents for them to face; the haves and the have nots will face the Mets over the next 30 days.

The Mets will welcome their aces back into the rotation as they begin a 13 -game stretch against sub-.500 opponents from May 2-15 against the Tigers, Rockies, Reds, and Nationals.

Max Scherzer will come off his 10-game suspension on Wednesday night to face his former team, the Detroit Tigers in a three game series in the Motor City, with Justin Verlander coming off the injured list to make his Mets debut on Thursday.

And this Tigers team is probably the team to start off against because of how offensively challenged they've been to start. Over their first 27 games, they've scored just 88- runs, or 3.2- runs per game, the worst such mark in baseball. Other than Matt Vierling (.288 batting average and .745 OPS), who was shipped to Detroit from Philadelphia, and Zach McKinstry (7 extra base-hits in 57 at-bats), the Tigers offense has not produced.

This is also the last time the Mets will see future Hall-of-Famer and nemesis Miguel Cabrera, as he will retire at the end of the season, and the first time the team will face Javier Baez since his tumultuous two months in Flushing in 2021. Baez is in the second year of a 6-year, $140 million contract he signed with Detroit in November 2021, and maybe beneficial for the Mets given his bad start there.

They'll then host the Colorado Rockies this weekend from Friday to Sunday. The Rockies finished April with the worst record in the National League, and they too have had issues offensively. Only one player, their catcher Elias Diaz, has an OPS+ better than 110, and the team has hit just .220 away from Coors Field so far.

The Mets will then travel to Cincinnati from May 9-11 to take on the Reds, a team ranked in the bottom third in the league in OPS+ and near the middle in ERA+, and their rotation is headlined by young starters in Graham Aschraft and Hunter Greene, who have both been outstanding to begin the season.

The Mets will have their second meeting with the Washington Nationals in a four-game set at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. as the team looks for a better result than the one last week, where the Mets lost two of three at home to the last place team in the division.

The Mets will host their first interleague games of the season from May 16-21 when they face two playoff teams from a year ago in the Rays and Guardians.

The Tampa Bay Rays have been an incredible story to start the 2023 campaign. What many pundits thought was a borderline playoff team going into the season is now one that is taking names and kicking everyone else around. They enter today's play at 23-6, three games better than the next best team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

As a team, they batted .281 and had an .879 OPS, and lead the majors with 61 home runs, 14 more than the next highest team total, 6.7 runs per game is the best in the game too, and it's a team approach too. With Randy Arozarena, Yandy Diaz, Josh Lowe, Harold Ramirez, and Taylor Walls all have OPS+ over 170 and 70 or more plate appearances.

Then their pitching is something else too. The hard-throwing Shane McClanahan is 5-0 with a 2.12 ERA in 34 innings pitched, and all bu one of thier relievers who have thrown more than 10 innings this year have an ERA under 4.00. It's a tour de force that's dominating baseball.

Then come the Cleveland Guardians, who were the American League Central champions a year ago. The Guardians got off to a slow start. There hasn't been much hitting, as they've scored 3.83 runs per game over the early going.

Cleveland's star pitchers in starter Shane Bieber and reliever Emmanuel Clase have been their usual selves, but the rest of the staff has not held up their end either. It'll be interesting to see where Bieber's turn in the rotation is when the Guardians visit Citi Field from May 19-21.

The weekend affair will also mark the return of Amed Rosario and Andres Gimenez to Citi Field as opposing players for the first time. Rosario, once the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball, and Gimenez, the once touted prospect who turned heads in 2020 with his contact and defense, were both traded to Cleveland in the Francisco Lindor trade.