A Mets Nostradamus

The return of spring training can mean but one thing – a chance for me to make some spectacularly wrong predictions based on the information coming from Port St. Lucie. So when the Mets win the 2009 world series with a perfect game from Livan Hernandez, and grand slams from Tatis (two, off the same pitcher in the same inning), Murphy, Anderson and Castillo, remember, you read it here first.

Luis Castillo to be Lead Off Hitter

While Luis Castillo may possess the skill set (high OBP, high speed, low power) of an (aging) lead off man, the Mets already have a much better, much younger lead off hitter in Jose Reyes. Is making Reyes bat third so that Castillo can lead off really a good idea?

Firstly, if Castillo bats first, he gets the most ABs of any Mets player, which seems a bit of a waste. Secondly, the last thing Reyes needs is to think he is there to drive in runs; that can only lead to him taking more of those horrible home run cuts at the ball that drastically reduce his effectiveness. Finally, remember all those early inning leads from last year where Reyes got on base, stole second, then was brought home by Wright or Beltran? Do you really think Castillo can do that as effectively? No? Good. Next question.

If you really are enamoured of Castillo’s lead off skills, then bat him 9th, where he can be a quasi-lead off hitter in front of Reyes, without taking away at bats.

Daniel Murphy to be every day left fielder

Declaring Murphy to be your every day left fielder so early in Spring Training seems a tad premature. While I am all in favour of giving the kids a chance, in this case, I think the Mets are overestimating how good Murphy will be in 2009.

Does the phrase ‘unsustainably high BABIP’ mean nothing to Jerry Manuel? While Murphy hit .313 with a .397 OBP last year, he benefited from a .386 BABIP (compensating for his high strike out rate). Even with a more realistic BABIP in 2009, Murphy is far from useless. However, Murphy doesn’t really have the power associated with left field (PECOTA prediction of .263/.327/.405 with 12 homers), and would be far more valuable to the Mets as a second baseman.  More time at AAA seeing if Murphy can play the position could prove a better long term investment.

Not that I expect Tatis to be any better – One of Minaya’s greatest skills appears to be finding washed up old veterans and getting one last good, league minimum wage season from them. His greatest weakness is believing these players will repeat their success once they’ve been signed to a big shiny new contract.

Expect Tatis to be this year’s Jose Valentin/Jorge Sosa/Marlon fucking Anderson (Tatis PECOTA numbers .245/.325/.402 with 6Hrs)

Playing Murphy full time in left field seams to mean that Tatis and Church will share right field duties. But why? If Church still hasn’t recovered from his concussion, he’ll be almost as useless as Marlon. If he has recovered, then his plus defence and pre-concussion hitting suggest he deserves to play full time.  (respect to Church for the I Heart NY T-shirt; Church PECOTA of .254/.335/.421, 10 Hr, although no idea what impact his injury last year has on PECOTA)

Sanchez to be odd man out

As one of the few Mets relief pitchers in 2008 to make a positive contribution (if barely) Sanchez should feel aggrieved if he were released to clear room for some unknown quantity in the All New Mets Bullpen. While trading Sanchez for the right (younger) player is worth considering, the idea that he should be released if a trade can’t be made is ridiculous.

Oh Omar, and your weakness for washed up, useless ex- expos.

Livan Hernandez is old and rubbish. I don’t think I need to show any stats to support this.

How good is the All New Mets Bullpen TM?

Despite the tone of what I’ve written previously, there has been some good news this offseason, with the arrival of the All New Mets BullpenTM. Unfortunately it is more fun to complain than praise, but here I think Omar deserves some credit. JJ Putz should be endearing himself to all Mets fans with his antics; I am more excited by his arrival than that of K-Rod – there is a pretty good chance JJ is the better pitcher, despite that saves record.

But it isn’t all about pies in the face, numbers also tell you something about how good a pitcher is. So with the help of fangraphs, I did a spreadsheet to answer the question “how good is the All New Mets BullpenTM?” (spreadsheet online once I work out how to upload it).

There are probably many ways to judge how good a player is, and how much they will benefit the team. I’ve chosen wins above replacement player (WAR), using 2008 performance as a metric of how good/bad a player is. By comparing WAR for the actual Mets ’08 bullpen vs. how it would’ve been if K-Rod, JJ Putz and Sean Green had been in New York last year instead of Heilman, Schoenweis and Joe Smith, we can get some idea of how good a job Omar has made of rebuilding the Mets bullpen.

First things first. Had the Mets trotted out replacement level pitchers being paid league minimum instead of Heilman and friends, the Mets would’ve been 0.2 wins worse off in 2008. Wagner was by far the best pitcher in the bullpen in ’08 (1.2 wins above replacement). Joe Smith at 0.3 WAR was next best. Sanchez was worth 0.1 WAR – hopefully it is true that pitchers are better 2 years removed from surgery, but that sounds a bit like wishful thinking to me. A few more guys were just above replacement (Vargas, Stokes), and most of these guys will be back in 2009.

So why did the bullpen suck so much in ’08? I think we all know the answer. The main culprits were Sosa, Randolph’s reliable long man (Lucky he was cut after only 21.2 innings despite his $1.8M salary), and predictably, Schoenweis and Heilman (-1.3 wins between the three of them). Other pitchers like Muniz, Wise, Kunz and Rincon cost the Mets 0.5 WAR (Feliciano was -0.2 WAR, so another LOOGY* might be in order).

So how much better is the All New Mets BullpenTM?

Comparing 2008 WAR for the real Mets bullpen (0.2) vs. the All New Mets BullpenTM (3.2), the 2009 Mets, with 3 extra wins, are going to the playoffs! Obviously, it isn’t that simple. To a certain extent there should be some ‘addition by subtraction’. And the 3 big acquisitions brought in to replace Wagner, Heilman and Smith look like big upgrades to the back end of the bullpen. It isn’t really fair to use WAR to compare pitchers as WAR is dependent on the number of innings pitched. Instead, for each pitcher I’m going to use a stat, runs above replacement per innings pitched (RIP; exactly what it says on the tin, the number of runs per innings piched a pitcher didn’t give up compared to a replacement player).

This tells us that:

K-Rod is basically the same pitcher as Wagner (RIP of 0.25 vs. 0.26). JJ Putz was much better in ’08 than Heilman (0.13 vs. -0.07; and ’08 was a down year for Putz so he should be better in ’09). Sean Green looks a great pick up and could be the unsung hero of the All New Mets BullpenTM (0.9 WAR, RIP of 0.12 vs. 0.05 for Joe Smith). With a bit of luck, these 3 guys are going to be able to lock down the ends of games, and prevent the Mets blowing 29 saves in 2009.

There may still be a bit of work left to do. In ’08 the All New Mets BullpenTM described above threw ~100 less innings than the real Mets ’08 bullpen, so the ’09 Mets need to find ~100 replacement level innings from somewhere. Some of these innings should come from starters being able to go deeper into games (especially Garcia/Redding compared to the Pedro of ’08). And it is likely that Rocky Cherry (-0.4 ’08 WAR) and Conor Robertson (-0.1 ’08 WAR) will get a chance to show they are better than replacement level. More promising is Rule 5 draft acquisition Darren O’Day (0.3 WAR, 0.08 RIP), assuming he recovers full fitness, and the Mets don’t send him back to LAA like they did last year with Stephen Register. A quality arm could put the All New Mets BullpenTM over the top, and Will Ohman, at 0.9 WAR (0.16 RIP) over 58.2 innings in 2008 would be a great acquisition.

So there you have it. With the All New Mets BullpenTM, Omar has, judging by past pitching performance, carried out a sensible and effective overhaul of the Mets biggest weakness. 2009 playoffs here we come.  DISCLAIMER this might not happen.

*Although I am against having any LOOGY’s/ROOGY’s – they tempt managers like Manuel and Randolph to do the one-pitcher one-batter match-ups, and there is nothing more annoying when watching a baseball game than seeing a pitcher come in to face a single batter. This then taxes the rest of the bullpen more, as each pitcher has to get more outs. It is better to be able to rest bullpen arms as much as possible, and have 6-7th inning guys who you can use on alternate days. The number of guys you can give a rest each night is reduced if some of your pitchers can only get one out. If you have two LOOGYs like the Mets last year, then you are putting strain on all the other bullpen arms to get more outs.

New Stadium, New Name

If citibank are forced to renege on their naming deal for the new stadium, can I suggest that citifield is renamed to celebrate Mets history, and honor a legend of the game.

Clearly, the new ballpark should be known as ‘Strawberry Field’

…….I’ll get my coat.

Unexplained Mysteries of the World, Pt I

Why do Mets fans love Jose Valentin so much? Even the sensible ones.

In 2007 he was no better than the mythical ‘replacement player’, worth less (0 wins above replacement player over 51 games/166 AB) than Luis Castillo (0.5 wins over 87 games/298 AB) in 2008. Admittedly Castillo was not much better, and Valentin’s mediocrity was better value for money, but not by much – he ‘earned’ $3.8M in 2007)

He is now 40. And has been out injured for over a year. There is no way he should be anywhere near the 2009 Mets team.

It must be the ‘tache.

Omar Minaya, an apology

I may have implied in these very pages that Omar Minaya was an idiot for thinking Oliver Perez was worth twice as much as Ben Sheets. This was clearly a misunderstanding, and I have now seen the error of my ways as a healthy Oliver Perez is clearly worth more than a broken Ben Sheets (although an injured Marlon Anderson would be worth more to the Mets than the fit one that made 87 plate appearances last year). 

I am going to therefore give Omar the benefit of the doubt, and acknowledge that the reason he preferred Perez to Sheets wasn’t because he thought Perez was a better pitcher, but because he’d seen Sheets medical reports. 

This doesn’t mean that Perez is going to be worth $12M a year, or that the draft picks wouldn’t have been nice, but now Perez is a Met I hope he outperforms all the projections and turns into a cross between Randy Johnson and Sandy Koufax.

Well done Omar, time to put your feet up

from today’s press conference via metsblog:

If Minaya makes any other signings, he explained, it will be for minor, bench players, etc., a process that continues through spring training and in the season.

Yes, team looks finished to me. Well done Omar, glad to see that you’ve worked to improve the Mets, and guarantee a post-season spot. Oh, sorry, my mistake. Isn’t this EXACTLY THE SAME OFFENSE and 4/5ths of the rotation that failed to make the playoffs last season?

Omar, if you must act in ‘win now’ mode season after season, sacrificing draft picks, trading prospects, and signing big name free agents, rather than building a great farm system, act like the Yankees and sign the best free agents available to upgrade whatever positions you can. That means sign Manny and make sure the 2009 Mets make the playoffs. You can’t bring back the same team that failed last year with just a little tinkering around the edges and expect success. Sure, the bullpen looks better, and without all those blown saves the Mets would’ve won the division last year. But what happens if Delgado returns to 2007 form, or Church doesn’t get over concussion or Castillo declines further, or Tatis falls back to earth or Pelfrey and Murphy regress, or Maine doesn’t return to full fitness or Perez doesn’t turn into Koufax, all of which are perfectly possible? Are the other offseason signings the difference makers? Are they even an adequate plan B? Right now, is there even any Major League ready talent waiting in AAA?

Or alternatively, why not plan for the future?

Minaya says he is ready for the start of the season, after spending the off season focused on pitching, speed and defense.

That’ll be the speed and defence that has been improved by trading Endy Chavez, then? Endy Chavez who is really good at defence and really fast at running? According to fangraphs, he was worth 0.9 wins last year because his stellar defence overcomes his really sucky hitting by a lot. (The easiest way to ‘focus on’ defence would be to release Marlon Anderson)

Maybe Omar thinks Jeremy Reed is a defensive upgrade over Endy. So back to fangraphs, and the data for 2008. Endy Chavez’ fielding was worth +14.2 runs to the Mets*. Jeremy Reed’s -4.3 runs (and negative for the last 3 years.

Maybe Alex Cora is getting the big bucks because he is Omar’s defensive upgrade? Well Cora fielded 386 innings for -0.8 runs. Admittedly, that is an upgrade on Damion Easley (-5.2 over lots of innings that I can’t be bothered to add up). But given Argenis Reyes, was +2.2 runs on defence, is Cora really a defensive upgrade? although at +0.7 wins in 75 games last year, he was marginally more valuable than Reyes (-0.2 wins/49 games) or Easley (0.3 wins/113 games); I’m aware that games is not entirely appropriate as it doesn’t take into account how much of each game each player played, but as all three were bench players, I think it is a reasonable guide.

So in summary, I see no evidence that Omar has done anything to improve the Mets defence.

*I’m not going to adjust this for total innings fielded as Endy seems to have + numbers, wheras everyone else is negative