Last week the Nationals signed outfielder Rick Ankiel for just $1.5 million.  He can earn another $1.25 million in performance bonuses.  Not a bad contract in a rebuilding year for a team. Of course, signing Ankiel is not going to win any championships that’s for sure, but it would have given us some depth in the outfield which the Mets do need as Ankiel does play all three outfield positions.  Of course, he also has trouble staying healthy, but you can say the same thing about Beltran and Pagan. Besides providing depth in the outfield, signing Ankiel could help the Mets make a trade.

The rumor for months have been that the Tampa Bay Rays will be looking to trade starting pitcher Matt Garza this off season.  Starting pitching is something the Mets really need right now.  The Rays outfield lost a great player in Carl Crawford when he signed with Boston. They’re going to need to fill that hole. If the Mets trade for Garza you have to believe that the Rays are going to want Pagan as part of the deal.  While Crawford is a better player than Pagan, he would certainly fit in rather nicely there and the price is right. I have been a Pagan fan for awhile, but realistically we’d have to part with something of value to complete a deal for Garza. I doubt the Rays are going to want Beltran with his big contract and his bad knees. They certainly are not going to want to trade for Jason Bay and that bad contract either. Pagan is the obvious choice.  Sad to say because I really do like Pagan, but if he nets the Mets Garza then he has to go to Tampa.

Unfortunately, Ankiel is gone the Mets outfield depth is still limited.  Duda is not ready to be an everyday outfielder, and his defense is still somewhat questionable. F-Mart cannot stay healthy and has not produced anyway when he was promoted to the majors suggesting even more time in the minors.

I understand this is a rebuilding year, but couldn’t they have made some attempt to sign a player like Ankiel for one year and under $2 million guaranteed?

It could have enabled the team to have more depth and give them more options in trying to acquire a starting pitcher via a trade.

According to Mike Puma of the New York Post, the Mets have shown some interest in acquiring left-handed pitcher Tom Gorzelanny from the Chicago Cubs.

Alderson is believed to have inquired about the Cubs’ Tom Gorzelanny, who made $800,000 last season and wouldn’t break the Mets’ shoestring budget even if he were to double that number in arbitration. According to reports, the Cubs have been aggressively shopping the lefty, who went 7-9 with a 4.09 ERA last season. The Mets like the fact Gorzelanny would bring strikeout potential to a rotation — which includes Mike Pelfrey, R.A. Dickey and Jon Niese – that largely relies on opponents putting the ball in play.

Other Cubs pitchers Randy Wells and Carlos Silva are reportedly available as well.

Gorzelanny, 28, earned $800,000 last year and finished 7-9 with a 4.09 ERA. He is eligible for arbitration this winter and could double last season’s salary.

Matt Cerrone of Mets Blog gave a personal scouting report on Gorzelanny and said,

He’s a good pitcher.  He has a very good fastball, and a wicked slider.  He could be better if he walked less people, and learned to command the big inning.  To me, at best, he’s probably a third or fourth starter.

I don’t see Gorzelanny as anything more than a #5 starter at best, despite his wicked slider. I think the Mets are well stocked with these types of pitchers (#5 starters), in my opinion. It’s a top of the rotation pitcher we need, like the one in the next part of this post.

In another pitcher in the Mets news, and one that I found quite surprising, the Mets have discussed Tampa Bay Rays pitcher internally, but decided he is too high priced at what could be a $5 million dollar arbitration award.

Matt Garza’s name has popped up in recent organizational discussions, according to sources, but the fact the Tampa Bay righty probably will be awarded more than $5 million in arbitration makes him an unlikely fit for the Mets, who are looking to spend roughly half that amount, combined, on another starter and reliever.

But a source said Alderson has “wiggle room” within the payroll — he can appeal to COO Jeff Wilpon on a case-by-case basis — and Garza, who won’t become a free agent until after the 2013 season, might be worth pursuing. But the Rays’ asking price would be high, likely starting with prospects Wilmer Flores and Jenrry Mejia.

This is certainly a touchy situation. For one the Mets can desperately use a young arm like Garza’s who would be well suited for Citi Field, and probably would benefit with no DH and pitching in the NL. Even without those benefits he has proven to be better and more consistent than Mike Pelfrey in the last three years.

What the Mets would have to give up for him is unknown, Puma speculates it could be Flores who is 3-4 years away, and Mejia who is talented but unproven. But you never know what the rays really want until you pick up the phone and ask them.

If the Mets do have “wiggle room”, I would certainly explore that given the quality, youthfulness, track record, and upside of Garza in this particular case. However, that “wiggle room” sounds like “a big if” at this point.

With the odds of landing Cliff Lee or Zach Grienke fading fast, and a barren free agent crop this hot stove season, our new GM Sandy Alderson will have to be creative if the Mets are going to join the arms race.

There are enough reports circulating that the Tampa Bay Rays will most likely deal one of their starters; either James Shields or Matt Garza. While both could help the Mets, my preference is Garza, who turns 27 later this month.

Take a look at the following chart:

Matt Garza

When you look at Garza’s last three seasons, his WHIP and ERA are the first things that jump out at you. One other thing to take note of is the homeruns which I intentionally included in this chart to make one of my points later on.

An interesting comparison to make when you look at Matt Garza, is that of fellow 2005 first round draft pick, Mets righthander, Mike Pelfrey. Pelfrey was selected with the #9 overall pick, while the Twins selected Garza much later at #25. And while many Mets fans still hold out such high hope for Mike Pelfrey  to improve, Garza has already proved to be the better and more consistent pitcher. The only things these two pitchers have in common is their age, and that they both have started 30+ games in the last three seasons. The similarities end there. Please observe.

Mike Pelfrey

If you were to simply ignore the ERA for one moment, and focus on Pelfrey’s WHIP and SO/BB, you will see a dramatic difference in their performances over the last three seasons. As a sinker-baller, Pelfrey does not allow nearly as many homeruns as Garza, but he has been shielded by the vastness of Citi Field and Shea. I also stumbled upon some interesting data that would make one wonder if Garza would enjoy even more success pitching at Citi Field than even Mike Pelfrey, especially where allowing homeruns are concerned.

Lately I find myself delving more and more into statistics, and my research for this piece took me on a trip to Fangraphs. I went there because I wanted to compare Pelfrey and Garza’s flyball rates, but while I was there I found an added bonus that I was not expecting to see, and it led me to the creation of a new stat which I was going to name after the founder, me, but decided to cal it XFB% instead. I’ll explain that in a moment, but first let’s look at the following.

Career Flyball Percentage

Mike Pelfrey – 30.2%

Matt Garza – 37.6%

That difference may not seem like much, but over the course of 200 innings and facing 800 or more batters in an average season, the ripple effect can be very dramatic. Still, looking at Garza’s flyball rate, he should still be able to reduce his homeruns allowed by about 10-15%, or the equivalent of 3-5 homeruns less, by pitching half of his games at Citi Field.

But then I discovered IFFB%, which is the percentage of flyballs that stayed in the infield.

Career Infield Flyball Percentage

Mike Pelfrey – 8.0%

Matt Garza – 28.1%

Aha… I believe I may be on to something.

I decided to take both numbers and recalculate them to give us what I will call an Extreme Flyball Percentage or XFB%. This new metric will give you a flyball percentage that gives you the net difference between FB% and IFFB%. Or in simpler terms, the percentage of flyballs that were hit beyond the infield. Why did I feel the need to do that? I felt it would be give you a better indication of a pitchers propensity of allowing homeruns, than FB% alone would give you.

So I take each pitcher’s flyball percentage and multiply it by the inverse of their infield flyball percentage. For example, Pelfrey’s  30.2 FB% multiplied by .92 would give you a 27.78 extreme flyball percentage.

So lets take a look at how these two pitchers stack up now.

Extreme Flyball Percentage

Mike Pelfrey – 27.8%

Matt Garza – 27.1%

Maybe this statistical stuff isn’t so lame after all. Judging by my calculations, and of course this is based purely on a sample size of their five year major league careers, Matt Garza would most likely give up fewer homeruns pitching half of his games at Citi Field, than Mike Pelfrey would.

This of course would make a dramatic impact on Garza’s ERA which even now is better than Pelfrey’s over the last three seasons despite facing a designated hitter 3-4 times per start instead of the reprieve of the pitchers spot in the lineup.

Garza is arbitration eligible and should get a substantial raise over the $3.35MM salary he earned in 2010, and that’s exactly why the Rays will be looking to trade him, opening up a big opportunity for the Mets to get that solid arm they crave.

With the impending loss of Carl Crawford, the Rays will most likely seek to plug that hole in the outfield which would suggest a strong interest by them in arbitration eligible Angel Pagan. Finding a replacement for Pagan would be far easier than finding a pitcher like Matt Garza. For those of you flinching, the point of all trades is not to help just one self but to help both teams, that’s how deals get done. I read some ridiculous mentions of offering Lucas Duda for Garza which of course the Rays would simply laugh at.

Now I’m not convinced that Duda has shown me enough to suggest that he could be an everyday player in the major leagues. But if the majority of fans believe Duda is up for the task, and is so valuable that he would be the prize in a Matt Garza deal, than I guess you should have no problem keeping Duda and making him the right fielder on opening day when Matt Garza faces off against the Marlins on April 1st.

Get it done Sandy.

Note: There may already be a statistic that gives you the net difference between flyballs and infield flyballs. When I say I invented it, it was purely tongue in cheek.

I know that at times my comments and points of view were not exactly agreeable, and sometimes were downright pessimistic, but I know that much of that stems from how passionate I am about the Mets.  I’ve been a fan since the early ’70′s and have lived through many of the ups and downs, which we all know includes lots of downs.

But I’m proud to be a Mets fan and I know we have some of the best, if not the best, fans in baseball.  This has always been a lovable franchise, win or lose, and we’ve had the opportunity to watch many world class players wearing blue and orange, and of course two championships.  We’ve also witnessed some of the greatest moments in sports history following our Mets–in particular in that magical ballpark known as Shea Stadium.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say how pissed off I was Monday night when I heard about Matt Garza’s no-hitter.  First no-no in Rays’ history, blah blah blah.  Really now?  No hitters have also become as common as complete games, but of course, our Mets still do not have one.  We’re fifty years in and still not a single no-no.  Somethings gotta give on that front soon.

With that, I thank you all for reading my work these past 15 months, and I wish Joe and all of you the best of luck.  And oh yeah, Let’s Go Mets!