With the vast majority of teams in Florida now on the Florida West Coast, the Mets end up playing a lot more games against their neighbors: the Marlins, Nationals and Cardinals. It has been like this for a few years ever since the Orioles moved the West Coast and the Dodgers just moved flat out west. When I was in college, so last year, I used to watch a huge portion of Spring Training games. Because of that, and the team breakdown around the Mets, I ended up learning a lot about the Marlins, Nationals and Cardinals, as if they were my own team because of the amount of times I saw their minor league players play. Outside of those three teams, the next closest teams are the Astros and Braves in the middle of the state and the Tigers slightly more east. Everyone else is lined up on the East Coast. Here is a list of the amount of times the Mets play their opponents this Spring:
Cardinals – 6 games
Marlins – 5 games
Nationals – 5 games
Braves – 5 games
Astros – 4 games
Tigers – 4 games
Yankees – 2 games (at the end of Spring Training)
So in the course of a month, the Mets will play 31 games against 7 teams. At first I was really against this, because I like variety but I started to think about it and there are two major benefits here:
1) It mimics a real month in the season where the Mets would play about this many opponents
2) (And this is the real reason) Until more teams move to the West (since the Mets have a lease right now until 2023, so they are not going anywhere) this is the least taxing situation for the players bodies.
Teams in Florida that the Mets will not play at all this Spring:
– Blue Jays
– Phillies
– Pirates
– Orioles
– Rays
– Red Sox
– Twins
