The Mets have probably had the easiest schedule in baseball. That’s not to take anything away from them — it’s not their fault, and the Nationals have faced pretty much the same slate. It’s just a fact. Things have conspired to make the Mets’ schedule fairly soft. One notices, if you dig in, the Mets have really taken advantage of this. Against teams under .500, they’ve won 67% of their games. Against teams at least .500, they’ve won just 41% of their games. Against the Phillies, the Mets have gone 14-2; against the Pirates and Cubs, they’re 0-13. Their difference in record by opponent quality is the biggest in the game, edging out the Orioles and the Dodgers.

At the other end of the extreme, you find the Blue Jays. The Mets have mostly beaten up on bad teams. The Blue Jays have beaten everyone, but especially the above-average teams. Against teams under .500, they’ve won 53% of their games. Against teams at least .500, they’ve won 63% of their games. Their difference in record by opponent quality is the biggest in the game, in the other direction. They beat out the A’s and the Tigers.

With the playoffs looming, it’s easy to speculate. Once October rolls around, only good teams are left. It seems like the team that’s been better against good teams should stand a better chance. Does this mean anything for the Blue Jays and Mets? Below, I can provide not necessarily the answer, but certainly an answer.

I want to be straightforward with you: there are probably better ways to do this. There are certainly better ways to do this. This is going to be a little rough, but it’s also the way that the Baseball-Reference Play Index made really easy. So we’ll manage. Obviously, not all .500+ baseball teams are created alike, but an assumption here is that that sort of noise evens out. Ditto the teams under .500. You can take more liberties when your sample is decently large.

I decided to cover the newest era, the wild-card era, dating back to 1995. For every playoff team, I collected winning percentage against good teams, and winning percentage against bad teams. Then I folded in how those teams actually went on to do in the playoffs. It should be obvious there are a lot of variables here, messing with things, but it stands to reason if there’s any sort of strong effect, it ought to show up. Here’s a table. There have been 166 playoff teams, so I split them into four groups, two of 41 and two of 42. They’re grouped by their performance differences against good and bad teams. Group 1 was the strongest against good teams; Group 4, comparatively, beat up on the bad teams.

The columns should be easy enough to understand. Difference = win% vs. .500+ opponents – win% vs. sub-.500 opponents

Success by Opponent Quality and Playoff Performance Group Season Win% Difference Playoff Wins Playoff Games Playoff Win% Group 1 0.581 -0.009 150 309 0.485 Group 2 0.573 -0.085 168 338 0.497 Group 3 0.587 -0.133 185 360 0.514 Group 4 0.585 -0.210 154 307 0.502

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe you weren’t, either! And even here, for each group, we have playoff samples between 307 – 360 games, so it’d be super to have more data, but if this table is any indication, there’s no benefit from having beaten more quality opponents. Group 1 had the smallest difference between success against good teams and success against bad teams. It also shows the lowest playoff win percentage. Group 4, meanwhile, beat up on worse teams, relatively speaking, and that didn’t hurt them. Group 3 shows the most playoff success, but Group 3 also includes the best regular-season teams, as shown in the second column.

The 1999 Yankees did very well against good teams, and they won the World Series. But then you have the 2002 Angels — they won the World Series, too, after losing more than half their games during the season against .500+ opponents. They won three-quarters of their games against sub-.500 teams. The 2010 Giants won the World Series with a similar profile to the 2002 Angels. Of the four teams with the strongest performances against good opponents, compared to bad opponents, they won just two of 14 playoff games. It’s way too little to make much of, but you’d think if there were anything here, we ought to be able to see it.

Based on only this very limited evidence, Mets fans shouldn’t worry, and Jays fans shouldn’t get overconfident. We know the playoffs are pretty random, and this doesn’t look like a way to be able to see how they’ll go. I can even turn the tables around: while the Mets have struggled some against better opponents, they’ve throttled the crap out of weaker ones. And while the Blue Jays have crushed better opponents, they haven’t kept that up against weaker ones. It’s a lot like platoon splits and hitters — you don’t want to pay too much attention to the splits themselves, because you can probably get the most information from the overall performance. The Mets have done worse than some teams in one area, and better in the other. That which is encouraging and discouraging cancels out.

I can’t stress enough how rough this study is. The .500 line is somewhat arbitrary, and this says nothing about the timing of playing those .500+ teams and sub-.500 teams. And, record isn’t always the best indicator of performance. On, and on. I know where most of the flaws are in here. I also know this quick study in no way encourages me to dig deeper, because I’m not convinced there’s anything there. It’s true that the Mets have played a soft schedule. It’s true that the Jays have played a harder one. It’s true, presumably, that the Jays are better than the Mets are. But what you ought to care about is overall team ability. Don’t worry about how the performances break down by opponent.