A Twitter poll of Dodgers fans says L.A. is still the favorite in the NL despite the Mets’ crazy spending spree. Remember, “fan” is short for “fanatic.”
Fandom is a heck of a drug, as they say. The Mets have gone on a crazy spending spree this offseason, signing Carlos Correa, Brandon Nimmo, Jose Quintana, Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, Edwin Diaz, Adam Ottavino, David Robertson, and Omar Narvaez to free-agent contracts. (And remember, this team won 101 games last year.)
New York’s 2023 payroll is nearly $100 million higher than the second-highest team’s and almost twice the Dodgers’ payroll. Still, in a Twitter poll, just over half of Dodger fans say L.A. is still the favorite to win the National League.
The Mets, with all their signings and huge payroll, come in second in the poll at 28.2%. Obviously, a lot of this is just blind fandom. But Dodger fans are also probably a bit jaded at the idea that spending money equals winning, simply because they’ve been among the top spenders every year for a long time and have just one World Series title to show for it.
On the other hand, L.A. has been to the postseason ten straight years, and they’ve won the National League three times in the last six seasons. So the spending obviously works, at least to an extent.
Whether it will work for the Mets in 2023 remains to be seen, but right now, on paper, New York is the team to beat in the NL. There are question marks, for sure — Verlander and Max Scherzer are both getting unsolicited mail from the AARP and Diaz has never put together consecutive outstanding seasons, for starters — but it’s hard to say the Dodgers are the favorites right now.
Still, the blind optimism doesn’t hurt anything. The players aren’t going to overlook the Mets, so it doesn’t really matter if the fans do.
