Ranking NL East's best players after another superstar joins the division
Another superstar joined the NL East this week in Francisco Lindor, who immediately becomes a top-five player in a division that was already loaded with top-end talent.Ranking the Top 15 players in the NL East was not easy. We approached this from a short-term perspective of, "Who would you rather have over the next three years?"(The list would have included J.T. Realmuto somewhere between 7th and 9th if he was signed.)
You can't go wrong with any of the top three players on this list. Soto gets the edge because he's done nothing but post insane numbers since debuting in 2018.
Soto led the majors in on-base percentage (.490) and slugging (.695) in 2020. He is a .295/.415/.557 career hitter with full-season averages of 37 doubles, 36 homers and 112 RBI. He’s walked almost as much as he’s struck out.
Soto turned 22 in October. Per Baseball-Reference, these are the five most similar hitters to Soto through age-21: Frank Robinson, Ronald Acuña Jr., Mike Trout, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron.
Freeman, 31, finally won NL MVP in 2020 after being one of the league’s best hitters for over a decade.
Freeman has never won a batting title or led the league in homers or RBI, but he kills you with steadiness. Over the last five seasons, he’s hit .306/.400/.557. Over the last three seasons, he’s missed a total of four games.
The way we used to talk about Chipper Jones is the way we talk about Freeman now. Jones was the better player but both made a living out of dominating the opponents they see most.
Freeman has hit .324 against the Nationals, .303 against the Phillies, .303 against the Mets and .302 against the Marlins, with an OPS higher than his career average against each team except the Phils.
Acuña is the NL East player who best fits the description of five-tool player. The 23-year-old has the speed Freeman lacks and the speed-defense component Soto lacks.
In 2019, Acuña led the National League with 127 runs scored and 37 steals, while also hitting 41 homers and driving in 101 runs. He should be a top-five MVP finisher for much of the next decade.
The NL East’s newest star isn’t far behind Acuña in overall value. Lindor does it all: hits for average and power, runs and defends well, is a positive clubhouse presence. He’s also played in 96% of his team’s games the last five years.
Lindor will really elongate the Mets’ lineup. He can hit anywhere from 1 through 4, creating a dangerous top-half of the order which includes Lindor, Jeff McNeil, Michael Conforto, Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo.
A free agent after the season, Lindor is a safe bet to receive, by far, the richest contract in Mets history, which is currently the $138 million deal David Wright signed.
The best pitcher in baseball. Some might put deGrom even higher on this list.
What he’s done three years in a row is absurd. It’s Pedro-esque. Since 2018, deGrom has a 2.10 ERA and 0.94 WHIP with 628 strikeouts in 489 innings. No signs of slowing down, between the consistently elite command and consistent high-90s fastball with disappearing breaking stuff.
He has allowed two runs or fewer in 59 of his last 79 starts. With a better team around him, maybe the Mets will actually win the games he starts this season.
Harper is not as productive as the players ahead of him on this list but he’s had two very good seasons in Philly, two of the top five seasons of his career in OPS.
In 215 games as a Phillie, Harper’s hit .262/.385/.518 with 45 doubles, 48 homers and 147 RBI. In the 60-game season, he walked more than he struck out.
Harper will play at age 28 in 2021. He is just entering what some would call his prime years. The Phillies can’t keep wasting ‘em.
Soto and Turner (27) are two dynamic offensive players any team would love to build around. Turner led the majors with 78 hits this season, batting .335/.394/.588 with 15 doubles, four triples, 12 homers and 12 steals.
There’s probably never been more offensive talent at shortstop league-wide than there is right now. Two of the best reside in the NL East.
This is the final year of Scherzer's contract with the Nationals. He showed signs of mortality for the first time in a long time in 2020, his first year with an ERA over 3.00 since 2014. He also had his highest walk rate since 2010.
Still, Scherzer has been insanely good these last six seasons in D.C., winning two Cy Young awards with separate second- and third-place finishes.
The criteria for these rankings was who would you rather have over the next three years. It will be interesting to measure Scherzer at ages 36, 37 and 38 vs. the four pitchers below him. You could make a case any or all of them should be higher, but Scherzer is a machine who might maintain his dominance for one more contract.
Nola has a 3.13 ERA the last three seasons, a number that feels just right. A reasonable over-under for his ERA the next three is something like 3.30.
Nola has become more and more of a strikeout pitcher. He’s always had a great two-seam fastball and breaking ball, but he’s also added velocity and improved his changeup through the years, striking out nearly 11 batters per nine innings the last two.
Nola doesn't get enough credit for his durability, either. He made 33 starts in 2018, 34 in 2019 and 12 in the 60-game season.
Another Phillies starting pitcher in his prime. Wheeler showed sustainable signs of growth in 2020, reducing his pitch count and walk rate and routinely opening his starts with four or five breezy innings. He traded strikeouts for soft contact early in counts and generated 13 double plays in 11 starts, the best rate in the majors. He also had the lowest home run rate in the National League.
In 2021, Wheeler needs to show that he can maintain that effectiveness over a six-month grind. He had remarkably good half-seasons in 2018 and 2019, and 2020 was even less than half a season.
I’m a huge fan of Albies so this might be a little higher than most would have him. He’s a dangerous player who can beat you with power or speed, and he plays with a swagger even against stiff competition.
The 24-year-old was the NL hits leader in 2019 and had two straight seasons with 24 home runs in ‘18 and ‘19. He played only 29 games in 2020 because of a wrist injury but hit for power, including in the NLCS against the Dodgers (9 for 30, 2 HR, double, 4 RBI).
Selected three picks after Nola in the 2014 draft, Conforto has also turned into a very good major-leaguer. This past season was his best — though again, it was only 60 games. He hit .322/.412/.515 and cemented himself in the middle of the Mets’ order.
Now, he has a lot more help around him with the additions of Lindor and James McCann. The Mets’ lineup is going to be deep and Conforto will be in the center of it. Coming off of Pete Alonso’s concerningly poor 2020, Conforto might be their most important power hitter next season.
Another guy who could play on my team any day. McNeil is a throwback player, a guy who swings at almost everything, makes a ton of contact and doesn’t base his approach around hitting balls over the wall.
At first, you wondered whether McNeil was a flash in the pan, a guy who’d struggle once opposing pitchers realized he was an unusual hitter with advanced bat-to-ball skills who would expand the zone to his benefit. But he’s done this each year now. Since debuting in 2018, McNeil has hit .319/.383/.501 in 1,024 plate appearances. He’s hit .303 against lefties.
McNeil could have major value in this deeper Mets lineup, whether he’s batting second or sixth.
Fried went 7-0 with a 2.25 ERA in 2020 and proceeded to pitch well in three of four playoff starts. He turns 27 next week.
Between Fried, Ian Anderson and Mike Soroka, the Braves have a promising rotation moving forward, bolstered by the one-year offseason addition of Charlie Morton.
Corbin, 31, gets the edge over Stephen Strasburg here just because of Strasburg’s lengthy injury history. Corbin, like almost every National other than Soto or Turner, took a step back in 2020 after the World Series year. He allowed 85 hits, the most in the majors, and had a 4.66 ERA.
The previous two years, Corbin had a 3.20 ERA in 66 starts with four fewer hits allowed per nine innings. It’s more likely he reverts to that level in 2021.
