Please note, this article was originally written, produced, and posted on December 2nd, 2021 after it was announced he was being inducted. 

You can sum up a large part of Gil Hodges’ Hall of Fame case with an argument that didn’t happen.

It was the bottom of the sixth inning of game five of the 1969 World Series. Hodges’ Mets, improbably leading the series 3-1, were losing the game 3-0; Jerry Koosman had allowed home runs to Frank Robinson and starting pitcher Dave McNally in the third inning. Cleon Jones led off the bottom of the sixth for the Mets. McNally’s first pitch was a curve, down and in. It hit the dirt near Jones’ foot and bounded sideways, towards the Mets’ first-base dugout. To all the world, it seemed that it had hit Jones in the foot. All the world except home plate umpire Lou DiMuro, that is. DiMuro threw McNally another ball and called Jones back to the batter’s box.

Hodges came out to contest the call. Gil Hodges Jr., watching the game at Shea Stadium, remembers it well.

“The presentation,” he said. “Walking to home plate calmly and slowly, and looking at the ball. Back then, all the spikes would be cleaned and polished for the following day. So all the spikes had shoe polish on them. When he walked out there looking at the ball, gave it to the umpire, and showed him the spot on the ball, there was no reason for the umpire to doubt him.”

Hodges was calm, cool, and collected. DiMuro looked at the ball and saw a small black polish mark. He sent Jones to first base. Orioles manager Earl Weaver, who was ejected 96 times in his career including the previous day in game four, was angry — but DiMuro’s mind was made up. Hodges, the quiet man, had won the argument without ever arguing.

“The Quiet Man,” the title of a 1991 biography of Hodges by Marino Amoruso, summed Hodges up perfectly, his son told me. Hodges wasn’t loud, brash, or rude; he communicated calmly and clearly, and never lost his cool.

“Otherwise, he would have run to home plate, screaming and yelling with the shoe polish, instead of walking casually to home plate and showing it to the umpire,” Hodges Jr. said. “The complete opposite of the spectrum from Earl coming out of the other dugout.”

Jones took his lead off first. A few pitches later, Donn Clendenon hit McNally’s 2-2 pitch over the left field fence to bring the Mets within a run. Three innings later, the Mets won the 1969 World Series.

Would things have worked the same way if anyone else had been managing the Mets? It’s hard to say, but — probably not? Consider, for a second, the absolute absurdity of what this moment tells us about Gil Hodges. Hodges came out of his dugout holding a baseball with a black mark on it. It might have come from Jones’ foot; subsequent reporting revealed that it might have come from Jerry Koosman’s foot, as Hodges, just to be safe, instructed Koosman to kick it before he left the dugout, although the entire park was certain that the pitch really had hit Jones; for all DiMuro knew, it might have been a different baseball altogether. Hodges walked up to DiMuro and showed him a black mark on a baseball that could have been anything — and DiMuro, in effect, said, “Sure, Gil. I trust you.”

Isn’t that absurd? Isn’t it completely ridiculous? Can you imagine any manager in baseball today, anyone at all, succeeding at something like that? Of course not. It could never happen, and might well never happen again, because we may never see another baseball figure like Gil Hodges.

What kind of man was Gil Hodges? He was an uncommonly hard worker, a pleasure to play with and to umpire, calm and respectful to what teammates sometimes thought was a fault. He was a leader of men, a peacekeeper on the field, a beloved father, son, teammate, and manager, and a U.S. Marine and Bronze Star recipient. His death in 1972 at age 47 robbed baseball of decades of his presence in the game.

It’s all that, plus the fact that he was the premier first baseman of the 1950s and hit 370 home runs and was an all-time great defender at his position, plus the fact that he managed the 1969 Mets to one of the greatest upset wins of all time and more than 50 years later, they still talk about him reverentially, that makes Gil Hodges a Hall of Famer. Taken individually, maybe each piece doesn’t quite get there. But consider the totality of Hodges’ career and the depth of his devotion and contribution to baseball, and it’s almost inconceivable that the Hall still hasn’t admitted him.

“He was such a noble character in so many respects,” wrote Arthur Daley of the New York Times in 1972, soon after Hodges’ funeral, “that I believe Gil to have been one of the finest men I met in sports or out if it.”

Hodges has earned more Hall of Fame votes than anyone else in history not to eventually be admitted. Soon, he’ll have another chance. On Sunday, the Golden Days Era Committee will consider Hodges along with nine other candidates. By one count, it will be the 35^th time Hodges is considered for induction. This time, the Hall must set things right. The Hall must end its long miscarriage of justice, and finally enjoy the privilege of having Gil Hodges among its ranks.

***

Initially, Hodges was a shortstop. Many people don’t know that, including me until these last few weeks. Most people also don’t know that on March 20^th, 1943, Hodges, then a student at St. Joseph’s College in Indiana, was leading a Red Cross fundraising drive. That’s not strictly related to his baseball journey, but I couldn’t resist.

“Allison Crippled In City Series,” blared a headline in the Indianapolis Star on August 26^th, 1943. The story continued:

Allison’s hopes of winning the Indianapolis Amateur Baseball Association’s city series were dealt a severe blow yesterday when Gil Hodges, regular shortstop, headed for Brooklyn to sign a contract with one of the Dodgers’ “farm” clubs.

There were already murmurs in the Dodger front office that Hodges would eventually have to shift positions. Indeed, Hodges made one appearance for the 1943 Dodgers as a third baseman in the last game of the season, going 0 for 2 with a walk. 11 days later, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served for two and a half years, and participated in the battle of Okinawa, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.

After his honorable discharge early in 1946, Hodges returned to the Dodgers, who sent him to their Newport News farm team in the Piedmont League. This time, though, something was different: they’d decided to convert him to a catcher. Hodges took the change in stride. He batted .278/.378/.436 for the season, and was named to the league’s All-Star team as a catcher. In 1947, he joined the big-league club. Then came 1948, when Roy Campanella came along. At the end of June, Hodges moved to first base. He would hold down the job for more than a decade.

His breakout began in 1949, when at age 25 Hodges batted .285/.360/.453 with 23 home runs. 1950, though, was when Hodges came into his own. He batted .283/.367/.508 with 32 home runs. For the rest of the decade, he didn’t slow down.

“I grew up in St. Louis, and watched him as a kid with those great Dodger teams,” Art Shamsky told me. “I saw what a great player he was, offensively and defensively.”

In the 1950s, Hodges batted .281/.369/.514, averaging 31 home runs a year. He won World Series titles in 1955 and 1959 and was a key part of both, driving in both Dodger runs in game seven of the ’55 series and batting .391 in the ’59 series. After a brief stint as the Mets’ first first baseman, Hodges was traded to the Washington Senators, whereupon he immediately retired as a player to become the Senators’ manager.

Some of Hodges’ Dodgers teammates couldn’t see him as a manager. “I was surprised that Hodges became a manager,” Carl Erskine remembers telling Tom Seaver. “We thought he was too passive a personality, he wouldn’t be tough.”

“Don’t worry about Hodges being tough,” Seaver responded. “All he has to do is give you that look. And if he gives you that look, it’ll singe your shorts off.”

“He didn’t have to say a lot,” Erskine told me. “He was a strong leader, and everybody knew it. He didn’t have to shout or throw the chairs or anything. He was totally respected. He was a strong person, but he wasn’t a loud person.”

Hodges managed the Senators for five years, and while his rosters were never strong, the team improved from 62-100 in 1964 to 76-85 by 1967. Then Hodges returned to New York. In 1967, the Mets had gone 61-101. In ’68, they improved to 73-89-1. In 1969, they won 100 games.

“The first thing he did with the Mets was teach them that it’s not okay to lose,” Gil Hodges Jr. told me. “Someone’s going to win and lose every day, but it’s not okay to lose. And when you put on that uniform, you should feel privileged, because you become special. There’s thousands of people who’d like to put that uniform on. So when you put it on, you need to give 100% at everything that you do, in every aspect of your job. That’s what he taught them.”

Shamsky remembers the first day of Spring Training 1968 — Shamsky’s first day as a Met, and Hodges’ first day as Mets manager. Hodges addressed the team, and no one had any doubt about what he expected of them.

“He said, ‘listen. From now on, you guys are not going to be the same old Mets,’” Shamsky said. “And you could see that he was serious.”

“He was a real tough guy,” said Rod Gaspar, who debuted for Hodges’ ’69 Mets. He didn’t have to say too much to get our attention. We didn’t have too many issues with that ballclub. Gil was in control, and our teammates respected him big-time and what he wanted us to do.”

What Hodges wanted them to do was work together to win. That’s exactly what happened.

“That Met team was 25 guys pulling in the same direction,” said Rene LeRoux, Executive Director of the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame, which inducted Hodges last year. “Gil was the reason why they won.”

Believing in the importance of righty/lefty matchups, Hodges instituted platoon systems at several positions, and never wavered. Shamsky, for instance, a lefty, batted .538 in the 1969 NLCS, but then didn’t start game one of the World Series, because Orioles’ starter Mike Cuellar was also lefthanded.

“Everybody on that team believed in him,” Shamsky said. Some players, he said, felt the platoon system negatively impacted their career prospects — “and I was one of them. But we believed in it. We believed in him.”

That, Shamsky said, was what made Hodges stand out as a manager. It wasn’t just that the players believed in his strategies, although that was important too; it was also that in the ninth inning, with lefthanded Cuellar still on the mound for Baltimore, Hodges sent Shamsky up to pinch-hit, thus expressing that while Shamsky hadn’t gotten the start, he still had his manager’s confidence.

“That’s his greatest quality,” Shamsky said. “Being able to handle the players and get them to believe in what was best for the team.”

After the ’69 season, Hodges kept right on managing. The Mets had played far beyond their capabilities to win the division and the World Series; their pitching was excellent, but the Mets of the early 1970s could never seem to muster much on offense. The ’71 team only had one everyday player with an OPS above .800. Hodges led the Mets to back-to-back 83-79 finishes. He died shortly before the 1972 season began.

The wrap on Hodges’ career is actually pretty simple. He hit 370 home runs, batted .273/.359/.487, and was the preeminent offensive and defensive first baseman of the 1950s. He was an eight-time All Star, won three Gold Gloves, and probably would have won ten to twelve if the award had existed before 1957. Then he retired, took over a Mets team that had never won more than 66 games, and managed them to the greatest upset win of all time.

***

That’s Hodges as a player and a manager. On their own, those two qualifications — premier first baseman of a decade, plus managing an upstart team to one of the greatest victories ever — seem like they should be more than enough to merit Hall of Fame induction. But then his character enters the equation, and his case gets even stronger.

“He’s a Hall of Fame human being. He’s a Hall of Fame person,” LeRoux said. ““He never had a steroid problem, he never drove a car into a telephone pole, he didn’t slap anyone. This guy was one of the nicest gentlemen the game of baseball has ever seen.”

Gil Hodges, the old folk legend goes, was the only player never booed in Brooklyn. Except it’s not a folk legend. Carl Erskine says it’s true.

“I’m here to testify, I never heard them boo Hodges in Brooklyn,” he told me. “It didn’t seem appropriate that these raucous fans in Brooklyn would have such a sentimental and soft touch on Hodges, but they embraced his behavior. First base is a busy place. There’s a lot of close plays. And the way Gil handled it, it reflected somehow that the fans respected him for how he played his position.”

Erskine remembers all the opportunities Hodges had to get angry — and how he almost always refused.

“You can imagine how many close plays happen at first base, and how many opportunities there would be to confront the umpire about a close call,” he said. “That will give you some idea of the restraint he had. The umpire made the call, and that’s the way it was, that was it.”

Everyone knew about Hodges’ reputation. Dodgers’ manager Charlie Dressen once offered Hodges $100 if he would argue enough to get himself thrown out of a game. The bill never came due.

Hodges himself knew about how people saw him, and wasn’t above making fun of himself for it. Once, Erskine remembers, umpire Dusty Boggess called Hodges out on a pitch below his knees. Hodges quietly returned to the bench. His teammates were furious.

“He’s taking the bread and butter right out of your kid’s mouth!” Hodges’ Dodger teammates were yelling at him. “You don’t ever say a bad word to these umpires when they call these terrible pitches and take the bat out of your hand! You’ve gotta quit that!”

“Oh, okay, okay,” Hodges responded. “The next time I go to the plate and Dusty Boggess is back there, I won’t even ask him how his wife and kids are.”

Hodges wasn’t just respectful to umpires. He was fiercely loyal to his teammates — and even opponents realized that he wasn’t someone to fight with.

“There were a number of instances on the field, around second base with Jackie, that Gil stepped in,” Erskine said. “Everybody seemed to respect Gil. He was pulling guys off the pile, and nobody was taking a fist to Hodges.”

“If he raised his voice a little bit,” Shamsky echoed, “you could see that he was somebody you didn’t want to mess with.”

That’s an aspect of the story that’s rarely discussed, but feels more important than the coverage it’s been given: for years, Hodges played first base, and Jackie Robinson played right next to him at second.

“They often talked about Pee Wee playing alongside of Jackie,” Erskine said. “Well, Hodges played alongside Jackie on the other side, and he had just as much to do with keeping the peace. Maybe more than anybody.”

In an MLB.com essay, Vin Scully, who watched Hodges for more than a decade with the Dodgers, wrote about the dynamic between Hodges and Robinson. Once, he remembered, the two players were chasing a foul pop-up near the first base stands at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis when a whiskey bottle came flying from the upper deck, clearly thrown by someone aiming at Robinson. Thankfully, it missed.

“I remember Gil patting Jackie on the back,” Scully wrote, “as if to say, ‘Hey, you’re not alone. I’m with you.’”

Robinson noticed Hodges’ presence. Years later, at Hodges’ funeral, Gil Hodges Jr. was sitting in a church pew when Howard Cosell tapped him on the shoulder. Cosell was a friend of the Hodges family. Hodges Jr. followed Cosell out of the church and around a corner, where he found a car double-parked.

“Hop in the back of the car,” Cosell told him. Hodges Jr. got in. Jackie Robinson was sitting in the car, crying hysterically. Robinson hugged Hodges Jr.

“Next to my son’s death, this is the worst day of my life,” Robinson told him.

As a manager, Hodges was every bit as kind and respectful as he’d been as a player. Dave Kaminer went to his first Dodgers game in 1950, and Hodges instantly became his favorite player. 18 years later, though, Kaminer was a young sports reporter for a Westchester paper, covering the Mets. The week before the 1968 season began, though, he was drafted. He sent Hodges a note explaining what had happened. “Looks like I’m not going to be around,” he wrote.

Kaminer reported for induction on April 14, 1968. But he got lucky: examiners found psoriasis on his ankle and sent him home. A few days later, he was at Shea Stadium, covering Hodges’ first home game as Mets manager.

When Hodges saw him from across the field, he pointed at him. “Stay where you are,” Hodges called. He made his way over to Kaminer and asked what had happened. Kaminer explained. Hodges, the former Marine, smiled.

“That’s great,” he said. He grabbed Kaminer’s hand and shook it. At the time, maybe it was painful; Hodges was famous for his strong, enormous hands.

“He would shake hands with you, and you’re hoping you would still have a hand after that,” Kaminer said. But all the same, the personal touch from the Mets manager and personal hero wasn’t exactly what he’d expected.

“Made me feel like a million dollars,” Kaminer said. “The part of the Hall of Fame that says ‘character,’ that should have Gil’s picture.”

Rod Gaspar remembers an argument he once had with a clubhouse attendant. The attendant told Hodges about it. Soon, Hodges called Gaspar into his office.

“That’s the last time I was ever in his office,” Gaspar said, chuckling. “No problems after that. If he saw any little thing that could disrupt the club’s momentum, he would take care of it real quick.”

They say, “never meet your heroes.” Gil Hodges, it turns out, was the exception.

“When you’re a kid, we all have heroes,” Kaminer said. “And very few of us get to meet our heroes. And some of us, when we finally meet them, we find out, ‘jeez, this guy’s a jerk.’ But Gil was the best. It made me feel wonderful about my choice.”

***

There aren’t many critics of Hodges’ Hall of Fame candidacy. As Gaspar said, “I’ve never heard anybody say that he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame.” But there are a few.

The basic arguments against Hodges go like this. First, his career numbers don’t measure up to other Hall of Fame first basemen. Second, he may have managed the ’69 Mets, but overall, he was under .500 as a manager. Third, he may have been a wonderful person, but being a nice guy doesn’t make you a Hall of Famer.

I don’t buy any of them, for a number of reasons. First off, right at the beginning of his career, Hodges lost two seasons to World War II. Given those two seasons back, Hodges likely develops as a hitter far faster; he makes the big-league club in 1945 or 1946 with his development curve two years ahead of where it ended up; he almost certainly finishes his career with more than 400 major league home runs, a nice round number that, combined with everything else, seems like enough to win over even some of Hodges’ critics.

Hodges also suffered from the simple fact that the Gold Glove didn’t exist until his age 33 season. If he’d retired with 400 home runs, eight All-Star appearances, and nine or ten Gold Gloves (which, as the widely acknowledged best defensive first baseman of the 1950s and winner of the first three N.L. Gold Gloves at first base from 1957 to 1959, he seems fairly likely to have won), his Hall of Fame case would have been a no-brainer. He probably would have gotten in during his first few years on the ordinary ballot.

Photo: Gil Hodges, MLB.com

Second, sure, Hodges was under .500 as a manager. There’s one obvious problem: would he have remained under .500 as a manager if he hadn’t died at age 47, but rather, had gone on to live a long baseball life, managing for decades? Maybe, maybe not. Even just working with his existing managerial portfolio, though, I’m not too impressed by arguments about his win-loss record. Hodges took over a terrible Senators team, slowly but surely started turning the team around as he learned how to manage, then left for New York and managed the Mets into the history books. He is universally regarded as one of the three best managers in Mets history, along with Davey Johnson and Bobby Valentine, and those who played for him vouch endlessly for what an excellent manager he was, and how deserving he is of Hall of Fame induction. Of the Golden Days Era Committee ballot, Ron Swoboda told me, “If that process can’t include him in the Hall of Fame, the process is wrong.”

Also, managerial record sometimes just doesn’t capture the full picture of a manager’s contributions to baseball. Connie Mack was below .500 as a manager. So was Felipe Alou (he’s not in the Hall of Fame, but he certainly should be). So was Frank Robinson. So was Ron Gardenhire. So was Gene Mauch. Some of these guys aren’t in the Hall of Fame, of course, but of the ones who aren’t, none were also the best first baseman of a decade — and none managed the 1969 Mets. Sometimes a manager’s contributions to baseball aren’t reflected in their overall record. That’s especially likely when a manager dies at age 47 instead of getting to spend decades perfecting his craft.

The “managerial winning percentage” argument seems to just be a sly way of saying something else that Hodges critics don’t want to say out loud: Hodges wasn’t actually a good enough manager for it to push him over the line for Hall of Fame induction. But A) there’s the matter of his tragic, untimely death, and B) his players vehemently disagree.

“One of the best managers ever, in my book,” Gaspar told me. “He deserves it, but not just now. 50 years ago, he deserved it. Always has deserved it.”

“He was a manager who managed by feel,” Shamsky said. “He knew all the players on his team, he knew the strategies of the game. He was a step ahead of everyone else.”

Third — yes, of course being a great guy isn’t enough to make someone a Hall of Famer on its own. I think I’m a great guy; I don’t belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and you may quote me on that. But when you put it together with being the premier first baseman of a decade and managing one of the greatest upstart winners of all time, doesn’t it start to matter more?

Character counts. Character should count. The argument against counting character is a sort of rhetorical trick; it groups players into a binary, where the only possibilities are that someone is either a great guy or they’re not. Obviously, there are a lot of nice people in the world, so the “great guy” group is pretty big, which Hodges’ opponents can use to render character meaningless: “There are lots of nice guys! Are we going to start inducting every nice guy who hits a few home runs into the Hall of Fame?”

The key point that this argument gets wrong is that Hodges was not just another nice guy. This, more than anything, is the defining feature of his candidacy. If you look at Hodges and see a nice guy but nothing more, than maybe it makes sense to dismiss his Hall of Fame qualifications. But when you hear the stories about Hodges, you realize that he wasn’t just a “nice guy.” He was an unfailingly and uncommonly kind, respectful, respected, thoughtful, hard-working, conscientious leader, who poured his heart and soul into the game of baseball and in the end, gave it his life.

It’s not hard to see how much more than a “nice guy” Hodges was, and what a rare character he brought to baseball.

“Gil often came over in the middle of a tough ballgame, men on base, after a play at first base and time was out,” Erskine said. “He’d walk over to the mound and bring the ball to me. And in doing that, he’d say, ‘if anybody can get out of this jam, you can do it.’”

When he rounded the bases on a home run, Kaminer told me, he would pause to blow a kiss to his wife.

“Gil blew a kiss to his wife,” he said. “Maybe it’s time for baseball to blow a kiss to Gil.”

At Hodges’ funeral, similar sentiments were in the air.

“I’m sick,” said Johnny Podges. “I’ve never known a finer man.”

“If you have a son,” said Pee Wee Reese, “it would be a great thing to have him grow up to be just like Gil Hodges.”

“Gil Hodges is a Hall of Fame man,” said Roy Campanella.

“The older I get, the more I think Gil Hodges should be in the Hall,” said George Vecsey, longtime New York Times reporter who covered Hodges as both a player and manager. I reached Vecsey via email. “He was a fine man and a great player.”

“He was a class player,” Erskine said. “You wouldn’t be wrong to point to Hodges to your kids and say, ‘that’s the kind of gentleman you ought to grow up to be like.’”

“I am often asked who the best ballplayer was that I watched during my broadcasting career,” Scully wrote in his essay. “In looking back over my 67 years behind the microphone, I was truly blessed to watch firsthand so many of the all-time greats performing at their very best on the biggest stages in the game’s history. It is truly impossible for me to single out just one player. However, in terms of the players I watched who performed at a high level on the playing field, but at an even higher level off the field in how they lived and carried out their lives, my response is an easy one — Gil Hodges.”

Simply put, most people don’t get talked about this way. You have to be more than just a nice man for people to tell their sons to grow up to be like you. Vin Scully broadcast Dodger baseball for 67 seasons, and Gil Hodges, he says, had the best combination of on-field play and off-field character that he ever saw. You don’t hear that every day.

Character counts. Character has to count. And Gil Hodges is the picture of strong baseball character more than almost anyone else. He was the shortstop turned third baseman turned minor league All-Star catcher turned elite big league first baseman, who never complained but always did what his team needed. He was the manager who taught a young Mets team that it wasn’t okay to accept losing, and that wearing a Major League Baseball uniform was a privilege that came with responsibility — and that if they embraced that responsibility, selfless teamwork, and determination, they could shock the world.

“He was a player whose major-league career was interrupted by World War II,” Swoboda told me. “He was a manager whose career was interrupted by death. If you can’t simply add up what he was as a player and as a citizen, and include in it the character that he carried with him every day, and add to that what he was as a manager…if you can’t come up with a Hall of Famer, you really shouldn’t be in a position to vote, in my humble opinion.”

Inducting Hodges will also mean inducting the last rock of the Golden Age Brooklyn Dodgers. Campy, Jackie, Pee Wee, and The Duke are all there, but the team isn’t whole. They’re still waiting for Gil.

“When you see a teammate make it to that status, part of you went with him,” Erskine said. “That’s what I’ll feel if Gil makes it. I’ll feel a piece of that. If he goes into the Hall of Fame like Pee Wee and Duke Snider and Campanella did…I’ll feel like a piece of me went with him.”

Hodges belongs in the Hall of Fame because of his accomplishments as a player, a manager, and a human being. He belongs because he was the best first baseman of the 1950s on both sides of the ball. He belongs because he was the kindest, most respectful, most devoted person that many people ever played with or played for. He belongs because he taught the Mets to win. He belongs because of everything that he did.

When he was young, Hodges Jr would travel all over the country with his father’s team. He remembers sitting in the visiting manager’s office at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore on October 11^th, 1969, reading over the stat sheets for both teams before game one of the World Series.

“I couldn’t even comprehend that they were going to play this team,” he told me. “They were a juggernaut.”

The Orioles looked unbeatable. They had gone 109-53 in the regular season. They had two 20-game winners in their rotation, along with a young Jim Palmer, who had just put up a 2.34 E.R.A. They had Boog Powell (37 home runs, .942 OPS) at first base, solid-hitting Davey Johnson at second, elite defender and competent hitter Mark Belanger at short, and Brooks Robinson, the greatest defensive third baseman of all time, at third. They had Frank Robinson and his .955 OPS and 32 home runs in right field, and two OPS’s above .800 in center and left. The next year, Palmer would join the 20-game winners, and the Orioles would win 108 games and beat the Reds four games to one in the World Series.

Looking at the stats sheets, Hodges Jr. was confounded. “Dad,” he said, “what are you doing on the field with this team?”

Hodges stood up. He walked to his office door and closed it. He sat back down.

“Don’t say that again,” he said. “There’s 25 guys outside who believe that they can win.”

The post Gil Hodges Has Always Belonged in the Hall of Fame appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

Does Tomás Nido need to be the Mets starting catcher? If he does, it puts the Mets in two strange positions at once.

The Mets spent $40 million a few months ago on James McCann, who batted .276/.334/.474 over 149 games in 2019 and 2020. The trouble is that McCann, 30 games into 2021, is batting .202/.269/.242, has hit about three fly balls all season, and has grounded into about 600,000,000 double plays.

These days, whenever McCann strikes out, Mets fans breathe a sigh of relief. For McCann, striking out, refusing to put his bat on the ball and ground into another double play, is a selfless act, the ultimate team-player move. In terms of self-sacrifice for the sake of the team, James McCann striking out is on par with Bruce Willis staying behind to detonate the bomb in Armageddon.

That’s the bad position: you don’t want to have to bench your sparkling new catcher 30 games into his tenure. At the same time, though, in Tomás Nido, the Mets might have something. It’s hard for me to believe that Nido has suddenly found himself as a hitter: even in the minors, he’s never had a great offensive season without the benefit of a high BABIP. He’s batting .288/.354/.559 over 2020 and 2021, but that’s just a 22-game sample size. Such a small sample means that Nido’s available metrics are limited. Statcast rates him as an excellent pitch framer — in the 96^th percentile — but also says that he hasn’t hit the ball particularly hard this season or last.

Still, though, Nido has started to look like quite the ballplayer. After a key home run to put the Mets ahead of the Braves on Tuesday and a clutch pinch-hit single on Wednesday, Nido’s career seems like it might be reaching a watershed moment.

Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

So what do the Mets do? First, they can’t overreact. While Nido has looked good, McCann is coming off an excellent 2019 and 2020. Purely anecdotally, he’s also thrown the ball well so far this season. McCann can’t play every day if he’s going to continue hitting like he’s hit so far, but the Mets should also work to get his bat going, and prepare for a time when he starts hitting and needs a regular spot in the lineup.

At the same time, this is one of those moments when the Mets should ask themselves: what more does Nido need to do to earn playing time? He has an .913 OPS since last season, and he’s coming up clutch and looking like a professional hitter. Obviously, 22 games is a small sample size, but the solution to that isn’t to deny that Nido’s success ever existed: it’s to see what he looks like over a larger sample size. The Mets need to get Nido at-bats to learn whether his momentary success will last beyond a few games; they also need to get McCann at-bats, to see whether he can find his way out of his momentary failure.

Fortunately, catching, what with its toll on the knees, lends itself to multiple players splitting time. But the Mets still need to figure out exactly what that split should be. How much playing time should Nido get, based on being in the middle of what might be a hot streak? How much time should McCann get, meanwhile, based on two excellent seasons that he hopefully hasn’t left in the past?

The answer, as usual, is complicated. Nido and McCann’s career splits don’t help differentiate them: both hit vastly better against left-handed pitching, and their respective numbers against hard-throwing pitchers, finesse pitchers, fly-ball pitchers, and ground-ball pitchers don’t help answer the question either. All the Mets have are their raw stats, and the contexts in which they’ve come.

So what do they do with that? It’s simultaneously simple and complicated: they split the time. They split it more or less evenly. If McCann starts hitting and Nido slumps back to his past self, McCann gets more time; if Nido keeps hitting and McCann doesn’t start, then Nido takes on more of the Mets’ catching duties. Forget the contracts and the histories: the Mets should pretend they met their two catchers yesterday, and start one anew with a starting job audition. Right now, both Nido and McCann are unknown quantities.

The Mets need to figure out what each has to offer, and the only way to do that is to give each of them time on the field and see what happens. Nido needs playing time because the Mets need to know whether his current numbers are for real. McCann needs playing time because the Mets are hoping desperately that his current numbers are not.

The post Opinion: The Mets Have Two Catchers Who Need Playing Time appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Was it a rat or a raccoon? We may never know.

But within a few hours of the Mets rushing off the field into the tunnel, Jeff McNeil taking the field with what might have been a black eye, and Francisco Lindor’s bizarre press conference in which he announced he and McNeil had merely seen an animal and been debating its species, vocal fans on Twitter had come up with a more important question: Who cares? Why was the media refusing to let the story go? The Mets had clearly put the story behind them; what business did the beat reporters have pursuing it any further?

“The anti-media sentiment was bizarre,” said Tim Healey, who covers the Mets for Newsday. “I was really surprised at that.”

Online, the debate was pretty much settled: this wasn’t a story. McNeil and Lindor had put it behind them. Mets fans didn’t care about it. It was over. The media was beating a dead horse.

That argument, though, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what a reporter’s job is. Quite simply, reporters are there to report the news, and this was undoubtedly news. Healey and Justin Toscano, who covers the Mets for The Record and NorthJersey, both told me almost the same thing. “The $341 million shortstop and the second baseman beside him having a big disagreement is a story,” Toscano said. “It just is.”

“It’s so obviously a story,” Healey said, “that it would be negligent of me not to write a story about it.”

To those who objected to media treatment of the events, the ideal media coverage of the fracas must have looked something like this. First, the dust-up happens, and the media asks questions about it. Second, Lindor tells the rat/raccoon story. Third, the media stops asking questions and accepts what they’ve been told.

It shouldn’t be difficult to see why this would be completely unjustifiable — or “negligent” — on the media’s part. The whole job of the reporter is to question everything and find the truth. Any reporter who just accepted the Mets’ version of the story and stopped asking questions because they didn’t want to make people look bad or anyone uncomfortable, wouldn’t be reporting; they’d be working for the Mets’ PR department.

Much of the anti-media sentiment, I suspect, isn’t based on deeply-held principles of media ethics: it’s based on Mets fandom. Mets fans want the Mets to play baseball and not be distracted or derailed by non-baseball controversy. But imagine if there was a fight in the Yankees’ clubhouse? Or on the set of a major movie? Or in the White House? In all those circumstances, Mets fans would count on the media to cover the story. They would deserve a media that treated things fairly and objectively and didn’t let stories go just because they made the people involved look bad.

Think about what happened from an unbiased perspective. The Mets rushed off the field into the tunnel as if they’d spotted a major commotion; Jeff McNeil looked like he had a black eye; Francisco Lindor told a story at a press conference that didn’t make much sense. Clearly, there’s a story here. To criticize the media for pursuing it is to criticize journalists for doing their essential jobs.

Some argue that Mets fans just don’t care about this story, so journalists aren’t serving them by pursuing it. But…how do they know? It’s all too common to replace “I myself don’t care” with “nobody cares,” but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

“I see how many people read my stories, and I promise you, people care,” Healey said.

And besides, “people don’t care” isn’t an excuse for not telling a story because people might care only after the story has been told. Nobody cared about Watergate until Woodward and Bernstein exposed it; likewise, if a reporter managed to reveal the full, inside story of what happened in the tunnel, maybe the gory details of the event would reveal something Mets fans cared about.

I can’t help but agree with Healey’s sentiment: the anti-media sentiment is bizarre. The Mets’ star shortstop — newly signed to a $341-million contract — may have gotten into a fight with his double play partner, then lied about it at a press conference. This doesn’t mean the Mets are dysfunctional, and it doesn’t make Lindor a villain, but it was undoubtedly a story that the media needed to pursue. That becomes clear when you remove your Mets fandom and examine the story objectively — exactly what beat reporters need to do.

“As a beat reporter, you are not a fan of the team,” Healey said. “It’s your job to report on news, and this was news.”

The post Opinion: Don’t Blame Beat Reporters For Pursuing Rally RatCoon Story appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

It was April 14, 1986, and the Mets were playing the Cardinals at Shea Stadium. The Mets had already lost two in a row after winning their first two games of the season; if they lost again, they would move below .500.

The game was in extras, and neither team could score. Tim Teufel struck out with a man on second in the 10th; in the 11th, Gary Carter walked, but could go no further; in the 12th, Rick Aguilera walked and went to second on a wild pitch, but Lenny Dykstra couldn’t drive him in.

The Cardinals batted in the top of the 13th, and with one out, a grounder to Howard Johnson at third could have turned into an inning-ending double play. Instead, he missed it. Two runs scored, and by the end of the inning, two more had come in. The Mets faded quietly in the bottom of the 13th, and just like that, they’d lost their home opener 6-2.

“The Cardinals emerged with a 6-2 victory,” wrote Jim Naughton in the Daily News, “and the Mets were left to contemplate why a team from which so much is expected has, thus far, accomplished so little.” The paper labeled what the Mets were going through a “three game tailspin.”

In his column, Mike Lupica wrote that the Mets were playing without spirit.

“They do not seem to understand that all of the National League East, hell, all of the National League, is gunning for them,” he wrote. “If the Mets could have gotten more than four scratch singles, they would be 3-2 today… It is not too early to ask baseball’s cover boys to start playing like these games count.

“No panic here,” he concluded. “Of course the Mets are still a terrific group with all the proper tools to win. It’s just that since last Tuesday, they have set the wrong tone for a season so eagerly anticipated.”

So what happened next? Fans of the 1986 Mets will remember: the Mets won their next 11 games, and 18 of their next 19, and by May 10, were 20-4 and led the NL East by five games and had pretty much locked up the division 24 games into the season.

Which brings us to the 2021 Mets. Maybe you’re less worried after Thursday’s wild walk-off hit-by-pitch, or maybe you’re even more freaked out, because that’s the kind of thing that seems to make the baseball gods mad, and now Michael Conforto will definitely get thrown at when the Mets play again on Saturday, and the Marlins will be so angry that they’ll take the rest of the series on pure malice. Either way, take a lesson from the 1986 Mets — and take a deep breath.

The first four games of the season are just that: four games of the season. They’re not darkly symbolic, and they don’t portent an onslaught of losses. Trevor May was never going to have a perfect season, and unless you thought he would go the entire year without blowing a single lead, there’s no reason to be alarmed that he allowed two runs on opening day.

Francisco Lindor is batting .214 — did you think he would go the entire season without batting .214 over a four-game stretch? Dominic Smith is stuck at .250, Michael Conforto at .176, James McCann right with Lindor at .214, Jeff McNeil at a ghastly .091. May’s ERA is 7.71, and Jeurys Familia and Aaron Loup both have even 9.00 marks.

But the only reason these numbers stand out is that they’re the first numbers you see. Michael Conforto has bad four-game stretches all the time; usually they’re in the middle of the season, and fans barely notice because a “bad stretch” means his OPS falls from .884 to .871, or something like that. It’s the beginning of the season, so the numbers look bad — but they’ll be just fine.

Here’s how you can convince yourself of that, even if you’re not sure you believe it. Just think back to the 2019 Mets home opener, when Keon Broxton singled in the go-ahead run, raising his OPS for the year to .990 and winning the hearts of Mets fans. Is that how you remember Broxton now? Does anyone remember what he did the first week of the 2019 season?

Of course not. It’s just a week. The Mets will have good weeks and bad ones, and just because a few bad games came first doesn’t mean they’re a sign of things to come. Once the Mets start winning, May’s ERA over the first 2 1/3 innings of the season will be the last thing on anybody’s mind. No panic here: the Mets are still a terrific group, with all the proper tools to win.

The post Opinion: Take a Deep Breath appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

The sense around Mets camp seems to be that while a breakthrough in Francisco Lindor’s extension talks could come at any moment, there’s less optimism about a new deal for Michael Conforto. Today in The Athletic, Jim Bowden predicted that Lindor would sign for ten years and $320 million — but that Conforto, represented by Scott Boras, would reach free agency after the season.

Lindor, obviously, is the Mets’ top priority, the star of a blockbuster trade that some have said won’t be worth it unless the Mets extend him. But hopefully, the Mets aren’t working exclusively on Lindor at the expense of getting a deal done with Conforto. The Mets can’t extend everyone, and sometimes there are better options outside the organization, but the Mets need to work hard on an extension for Conforto for a very simple reason: who else is going to play right field?

Sure, there are free-agent options. Here’s MLB.com’s breakdown of the 2021-22 free agent class of outfielders: Michael Conforto, Tommy Pham, Starling Marte, Kyle Schwarber (mutual option), Eddie Rosario, Corey Dickerson, Nick Castellanos (opt-out), Charlie Blackmon (player option), Andrew McCutchen (club option), Jackie Bradley Jr. (opt-out). The full list of free agents is a little longer, but this one captures the best names available.

Among the group, you have:

-Michael Conforto

-Players who probably aren’t as good as Michael Conforto (Dickerson, Castellanos)

-Players who definitely aren’t as good as Michael Conforto (Schwarber, Rosario, McCutchen, Bradley)

-Players who are at least four years older than Michael Conforto (Pham, Marte, Blackmon)

There’s no free agent outfielder in Conforto’s class who combines youth and talent as well as Conforto does. Arguably besides Blackmon, Conforto is probably the best hitter of the bunch. He has an .864 OPS over the last four seasons; other than Blackmon, that’s the best mark on the list. The various defensive metrics — UZR, DRS, and OAA — all rate Conforto around average in right field over his career, which is more than some outfielders on the list can say. Right now, it’s not really debatable: if the Mets don’t sign him to an extension, Conforto will be the best outfielder on the open market.

Of course, two things can be true at once. On the one hand, Conforto will be the most attractive outfield free-agent option available if the Mets don’t extend him. On the other hand, he’s coming off a monstrous season — batting .322/.412/.515 in 2020, powered in large part by an unsustainable .412 BABIP — so he’s probably overvalued right now. It will be difficult or impossible for Conforto to sustain his superstar-type numbers over full seasons going forward.

Say the Mets extend Conforto tomorrow with a George Springer-type deal, about $25 million a year for five to seven years. They should do so fully aware of two things: 1) Conforto won’t continue to put up the superstar-level numbers he did in 2020, but 2) he’ll still be a very good hitter and a solid defender. An extension right now might be an “overpay” in the traditional sense, but it’s not like the Mets could let Conforto walk and spend that money on a better outfielder instead: there simply won’t be a better free-agent outfielder on whom to spend it.

There are two other factors to consider. For one, after 2021, the National League is likely to adopt the designated hitter. If Pete Alonso becomes the Mets’ primary DH, Dominic Smith is likely to move to first base, shifting Brandon Nimmo to left field and opening another outfield slot. Thus, if the Mets lose Conforto, they’ll probably need to find two new outfielders in a free agent class that’s already fairly thin.

For another, the Mets don’t have much depth in their farm system. Khalil Lee is a legitimate prospect, but he hasn’t shown much power and is far from a sure thing; other than that, the Mets next-closest outfield prospect is probably Pete Crow-Armstrong, who won’t be MLB-ready for years.

So if the Mets lose Conforto, the best-case scenario for the starting outfield is either A) Brandon Nimmo, Khalil Lee, and an outside acquisition, or B) Brandon Nimmo and two outside acquisitions. These acquisitions, remember, probably won’t be as good as Conforto.

If Conforto leaves as a free agent after 2021, the Mets’ outfield will take a large step backwards. Meanwhile, Conforto’s value may never be higher, which is why it’s somewhat surprising that Conforto’s representatives aren’t pushing harder to get a deal done right now. Maybe the Mets are gambling that they can re-sign Conforto more cheaply after 2021, and that there won’t be much of a bidding war in free agency. They may be right, but those bets are also risky.

Right now, Conforto’s age and outfield talent are irreplaceable. The Mets can gamble on a regression in hopes of saving a few dollars, but if they lose him, the dollars saved won’t be remotely worth it.

The post Opinion: The Mets Can’t Lose Michael Conforto appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Mandatory Credit: Mary Holt-USA TODAY Sports

You can’t take a step these days without running into a discussion about contract extensions. They’re everywhere. Sandy Alderson and Luis Rojas have addressed them in press conferences, as have Michael Conforto and Francisco Lindor. Noah Syndergaard’s name has also been mentioned as an extension candidate. Fans debate them endlessly, with a passion that reflects their potential enormity: a contract extension for Francisco Lindor, for instance, could mean that Lindor is a Met through the year 2030.

“That’s not a real year!” I’m tempted to shout. “We’ll all be drinking moon juice with President Jonathan Taylor Thomas!” But that’s what gives this moment all its volatility and nervous energy: any day now, Mets fans could learn that they’ll get to see Francisco Lindor in orange and blue for the entire next decade.

They certainly should, because signing Lindor to an extension makes complete sense. Lindor is one of the best shortstops in baseball on both sides of the ball. He had a down year on offense in 2020, posting a .750 OPS, but his numbers were suppressed by a .280 BABIP, which, considering he’s always hit the ball a fair amount harder than average, is due to improve. That down year in 2020 will also slightly suppress his value, which might allow the Mets to sign him at a slight discount.

It’s strange: signing Lindor to an extension seems to meet almost universal acclaim from Mets fans. But the arguments are also all true about Marcus Stroman — and compared to Lindor backers, support for a Stroman extension is almost inaudible. Even Sandy Alderson doesn’t seem to have Stroman at the center of his mind. Asked about possible extensions, Alderson named Lindor, Conforto, and Syndergaard — but didn’t even mention Stroman’s name.

Marcus Stroman's Debut of his new Split Change. 🤢 pic.twitter.com/nB7okhkFEO

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) March 2, 2021

Stroman is just 29, and he’s pitched to a career 3.76 E.R.A. over six seasons. After being traded to the Mets in 2019, he proved he could handle New York, pitching to a 3.77 ERA in 11 starts. He constantly works to improve, making deceptive tweaks to his motion, developing new pitches, and fine-tuning the ones he already has. It’s early — in fact, it’s very early — but so far this spring, Stroman looks like he’s at the top of his game. The newly developed “split change” that he debuted this week against the Astros dropped like it had fallen off a table, and completely deceived Michael Brantley, which, if you’re judging the efficacy of a pitch, is a pretty high bar to clear the first time out.

Stroman also famously grew up on Long Island, pitching for Patchogue-Medford High School. After his trade to the Mets, he Tweeted a picture of himself, around age five or so, wearing a Mets jacket. He’s a local kid, just like Steven Matz and John Franco and Ed Kranepool, and he’s also an excellent pitcher.

“He’s an excellent pitcher” is already enough of a reason to extend him. But there’s also a reason the Mets should extend Stroman right now, the same reason they should sign Lindor as soon as possible: the cost. If the Mets don’t sign Stroman before Opening Day, his price could skyrocket before their next opportunity to negotiate.

Simply put, Stroman’s value right now may be at its floor. He opted out of the 2020 season, so he’s surrounded by uncertainty. Right now, that uncertainty will mean a discount for the Mets. But if Stroman starts 2021 looking dominant, pitching to an ERA around 3.00 or better and looking every bit the pitcher he’s been at his best, the Mets will lose their exclusive opportunity for a discount.

The 2022 free agent pitching class will drive Stroman’s price up even further if he hits the open market. Two big free-agent names, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke, will be almost 40. Clayton Kershaw may be a free agent, but he may also retire or sign another extension with the Dodgers. If Stroman becomes a free agent after this season, there probably won’t be anyone else on the market who can match his combination of age — he’ll only be 31 — and pitching ability. He’ll be a hot commodity.

For the moment, the Mets rotation looks like a strength, but it won’t stay that way unless they work to maintain it. Stroman and Syndergaard will both be free agents after this season, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the Mets are willing and able to extend both of them. For some reason, the Mets haven’t talked much about a Stroman extension. But if they’re interested in keeping Stroman, and Stroman wants to stay, they should sign him sooner rather than later, before he has a chance to prove that he hasn’t lost a step, and that any team in baseball would be lucky to have him.

The post Opinion: The Mets Should Extend Marcus Stroman — Immediately appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

It’s hard to say something that doesn’t mean anything. That sounds like a nugget of philosophical wisdom, or a Taylor Swift lyric, but it’s true. The whole point of language is that it all means something. If it didn’t, the cavemen wouldn’t have come up with it. They didn’t have time for meaningless words, what with punching each other and fleeing mammoths and all their other caveman hijinks. Modern humans don’t punch each other as much, and language involves less grunting, but words still must have meaning.

There’s the common Spring Training refrain, for instance, that “he’s in the best shape of his life!” Some people say it’s meaningless, but really, it’s always meant the same thing. Overusing a phrase doesn’t change its meaning; it changes whether listeners believe it.

The meaning of “he’s in the best shape of his life” isn’t complicated. It means a player is in the best shape of his life. It might turn out to be irrelevant or false, but that doesn’t mean the phrase itself was meaningless. It still bears the meaning with which early inventors of language imbued it as they sat around grunting and flinging dung.

Meaning is one thing; truth and relevance are two others. They’re like RBIs and actual offensive ability: completely different things that are often entirely unrelated.

I’ve been thinking about meaning ever since I read Joel Sherman’s column  in the New York Post. Things haven’t really changed, Sherman says, since Steve Cohen took over. “The Mets really need to stop being Wilpon-ian,” he writes.

At first, I thought it was meaningless. Then I realized: it’s not exactly. The meaning is plain as day. The truth and relevance, though, aren’t.

What does “stop being Wilpon-ian” mean, exactly? It’s obvious: it means the Mets front office is acting like it did under Wilpon ownership, and it should stop. But is this relevant? And is it true?

First off, what does Sherman mean by “Wilpon-ian”? He tells us. “You can explain each (free agent that the Mets didn’t sign) away,” he writes. “But that is a Wilpon thing, close but no big star in free agency.” So basically, like the Wilpons, Steve Cohen has said he’s targeting big fish in free agency, but also like the Wilpons, he hasn’t finished the job, and now he’s making excuses. If it were true, this would be a bad, bad thing.

But it’s not true. Clearly. Equating this Mets offseason with offseasons under Wilpon rule is sort of like looking at Abraham Lincoln and a random 16^th century criminal who poisoned a lake, and saying “they’re both failures, because in the end they both died. Really, Lincoln, you died? You need to stop acting so much like that guy who poisoned a lake.”

The Mets, as Sherman spends paragraphs explaining but then ignores, do have excellent explanations behind all the free agents they didn’t sign. The Wilpons always tried to explain away their free-agency failures, but they almost never had actual, legitimate explanations; it was all just cover for not having money, or not wanting to spend it. That’s not what’s going on here.

The Mets offered Trevor Bauer about $110 million, for goodness sake, and thought they’d agreed to a deal; they didn’t want to wait around for J.T. Realmuto, so they signed the next-best option. Springer would have been an upgrade, but he’s getting older, and might have consigned Dominic Smith to the bench and prevented the Mets from locking up their homegrown outfield talent. Meanwhile, the Mets have also signed Trevor May and re-signed Marcus Stroman and added Joey Lucchesi and Jordan Yamamoto, and for goodness’ sake, they traded for Carlos Carrasco and Francisco Lindor.

Missing out on free agents this way isn’t “Wilpon-ian” at all. Steve Cohen’s way of missing out on free agents is to offer them $110 million, but have them sign with their hometown team at a discount instead. The Wilpon-ian free-agency method, meanwhile, was basically to make either no offer or a lowball offer to a superstar, and then hold a press conference: “We really do believe that even more than Bryce Harper, we’ve found exactly the dynamic outfield talent we’re looking for in Keon Broxton.”

Just before this column went to print, the Mets signed Taijuan Walker to be a back-end starter. The Wilpon-ian way to do it was to sign Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha, and hope that either A) they magically rediscovered long-gone talent, or B) memories of their long-ago good seasons overshadowed how bad they were in the present. Clearly, that’s not what’s happening here.

Wilpon-ian? This offseason has been no such thing. The Mets have traded for one of the best shortstops in baseball, brought in two top-flight starting pitchers, a solid back-end starter, and an excellent catcher, and made several other useful additions. The Wilpons, it turns out, were the cavemen, flinging dung at their fans in the form of press conferences hyping the likes of Jed Lowrie and Jay Bruce. Steve Cohen, meanwhile, turns out to be the modern human, and Mets fans can rest assured that he’ll never bombard them with steaming piles of fourth outfielders disguised as superb starting options.

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Late Wednesday night, the New York Mets sent Josh Winckowski, recently acquired from the Toronto Blue Jays for Steven Matz, to the Boston Red Sox. They’ll also send a Player to be Named Later to either the Red Sox or the Kansas City Royals — that move, as the name suggests, won’t come until later. In exchange, the Mets acquired Khalil Lee, a 22-year-old outfield prospect. Lee, from what I’ve seen, instantly becomes a top-10 prospect in the Mets system. In his last full season, he batted .264/.363/.372 at Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2019. The headline on that season was probably his 53 stolen bases.

This trade, I must say, is a weird one. It’s a good one, to be sure, but in a strange way. It’s essentially a prospect swap, Winckowski for Lee, plus a player to be named later. For one, the whole “player to be named later” idea has always seemed a tad off to me. It just doesn’t make sense; why not name the player now? It’s not the biggest deal in the world though, because PTBNLs rarely end up being consequential.

Roughly speaking, you can divide all baseball players into about seven tiers, from “legendary” to “forgettable” in descending order: Willie Mays tier, David Wright tier, Daniel Murphy as a Met tier, Ed Kranepool tier, Luis Castillo tier, Mike Nickeas tier, Joe Hietpas tier. Maybe I’m remembering this wrong, but Players to be Named Later almost always seem to fit perfectly into the Nickeas tier, not really making a baseball impact but just sort of existing.

The other reason — frankly, the main reason — this trade is strange is it doesn’t really comport with a conventional theory of trading. Usually, there are more or less two sides to a trade: A) a team wants to improve enough to win a division or chase a playoff spot and is willing to give up something in the long run, or B) a team wants to shed salary and build up a talent base for the long term and is willing to sacrifice something in the short term. Obviously, you’ll also sometimes see trades based on mutual need that don’t fit in with the long-term/short-term framework. If the Mets were to trade Dominic Smith straight-up to a team that needed a first baseman in exchange for an MLB-ready, quality starting pitcher, both teams would fill immediate needs.

This trade isn’t any of that. For now, it seems like a straightforward prospect-swap. There are basically two explanations I can think of for the deal: either the Mets are trying to build up their farm system piece-by-piece without trading away big-league talent, or they want to turn Lee into part of a bigger trade. It’s hard to say which is closer to the truth, because both are plausible. If the Mets think Lee is close to being an MLB-ready outfielder, maybe they’re preparing for the possibility that Michael Conforto departs as a free agent after 2021. Or, the likelihood that the Designated Hitter comes to the National League in 2022 for Pete Alonso to take that position, Smith to move over to first, and Lee to slot into the outfield that way.

On the other hand, Lee is also supremely tradeable. He’s a 22-year-old outfielder with all of his team control and options and everything, who stole 53 bases in his last full season. What team wouldn’t want that? The Chicago Cubs, for instance, have apparently been stubborn in their demand for catching prospect Francisco Alvarez if they’re going to part with Kris Bryant. Would they take a prospect package including Lee instead — and have they told the Mets as much?

The thing is, whatever the Mets endgame with this trade is, it’s already a good move. Pending the Player to be Named Later, they’ve basically turned Matz into Lee. Matz was a non-tender candidate, so turning him into a top-10 organizational prospect is far from trivial. The question now is what they do next, and how Lee fits in.

Andy Martino of SNY reported yesterday that the Mets were working on trading Jeurys Familia and Dellin Betances. They’re clearly still working on freeing up salary and/or making splashes in the trade market, and it certainly seems like they have an ultimate plan more impactful than what happened Wednesday night. Lee might be another trade chip, just like Winckowski. If Matz could start a chain reaction of trades that led to New York acquiring someone like Kris Bryant, that would certainly be a fun chapter in Mets history. Or Lee might just be a future candidate for the Mets outfield himself.

We’ll see — but for now, we just don’t know. The trade was a good one, but it was also delightfully, puzzlingly weird.

The post Opinion: The Khalil Lee Trade Is Delightfully Weird appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Do you understand the GameStop stuff? I think I do, sort of. Basically, what’s happened is that lots of people on Reddit have decided to pump money into GameStop stock, and the stock has skyrocketed. There doesn’t seem to be any real reason for this other than disruption. It’s sort of like if every MLB team got together and decided to start a ferocious bidding war for Adeiny Hechavarria just to see what would happen.

Some people have responded to the GameStop saga with caution. “The stock isn’t actually worth this much,” they say. “Eventually Redditors will run out of money to prop it up. Or it’ll get high enough that they’ll sell it, and it’ll fall back down.” To my limited financial knowledge, this sounds sensible. Reddit can’t pour money into GameStop forever. While the stock market isn’t perfectly efficient, it will probably figure this out eventually. So at some point, the price of the stock will slide back to whatever it’s really worth, which probably isn’t all that much.

I mention GameStop because I’ve been hearing a lot about “true value” and things “not being worth that much” lately. Specifically, I’ve been hearing it about Trevor Bauer. Now that the Mets have traded Steven Matz, their interest in Bauer seems genuine. But those who don’t like Bauer say that he’s not worth an enormous contract.

The argument goes a few different ways. Bauer might make more than Jacob deGrom this season — deGrom is way better, so there’s no way Bauer is worth that. He won’t repeat his 2020 numbers in future years, so by definition, he’ll be overpaid. Besides a few fluky years, he’s a 4.00 ERA pitcher. Why pay millions and millions of dollars for that?

The problem with this argument, though, is that Trevor Bauer isn’t like a share of GameStop. Well, in a few ways — unpredictability, strangeness, weird following on the internet — he is, but there’s an essential difference between them. Bauer operates in a market that’s far less efficient than the stock market. The MLB free agent market is so volatile, and such a small sample size, that it’s barely efficient at all.

Baseball players don’t really have one true “worth.” They might, theoretically; I suppose you could project that Bauer’s mean outcome is a 143 ERA+, and calculate exactly what contract that’s worth. But that’s just not how the free agent market works. Players aren’t paid strictly based on projected statistics. Bauer might make more than Jacob deGrom next year, while not pitching as well. Why? Bauer is a free agent, while deGrom signed a contract extension; Bauer is hitting the market later, so there’s been inflation; Bauer has no allegiance to the Mets, while deGrom took a hometown discount.

Whatever team ends up signing Bauer will probably have to pay more than he’ll be “worth” over the course of a contract. That’s just the nature of sports contracts. The same thing is true of George Springer. When Springer is making over $20 million at age 36, will his numbers be enough to deserve that salary? Probably not. But he’s a good enough player right now that the Blue Jays opted to overpay for his older years in exchange for the years before them. If they hadn’t, another team would have. So while Springer’s numbers in six years might not be worth $20 million, it’s what the Blue Jays were willing to pay.

Before the 1999 season, the Mets signed Mike Piazza to a seven-year, $91 million contract, the largest in baseball history at the time. From 2003 to 2005, he was nowhere near the most valuable player in baseball. But he was paid like it, because in order to have access to the first four years of the deal, the Mets had to pay handsomely for all seven. If they hadn’t, another team would have — and then Piazza would have gone somewhere else after 1998. Monetarily, from 2003 to 2005, Piazza wasn’t “worth it.” But overpaying for Piazza was worth it, because it meant the Mets got Mike Piazza.

Does Trevor Bauer deserve to be the highest-paid pitcher of all time? Probably not. But circumstances have aligned such that Bauer may cost more per-year than any pitcher ever has. Free-agent pitching supply is low; Bauer had a great year before hitting the market; inflation, of course, plays a role.

Being paid more than Jacob deGrom doesn’t mean Bauer is better; it just means his circumstances were different. Trevor Bauer isn’t like GameStop. The market won’t find his true value eventually. In this case, as with all sports contracts, Bauer won’t be paid by what he “deserves.” He’ll earn whatever a team is willing to pay him, and the question is whether the Mets are willing to pay him more than anyone else.

The post Opinion: Assessing Value On The Field And In The Market appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

After Monday’s acquisition of Joey Lucchesi from the San Diego Padres, the Mets’ starting rotation seems mostly set. Jacob deGrom, Marcus Stroman, Carlos Carrasco, Lucchesi, and David Peterson represent five capable starters, and if any of them should falter, Robert Gsellman, Steven Matz, and Seth Lugo are all solid options to step into the rotation for a start or two.

With the rotation set, the Mets can now focus on the bullpen — and thank goodness. The Mets need left-handed relief, and they need it badly. Ask a Mets fan what the team’s biggest need is, and they’ll probably mention third base or left field. But at those positions, the Mets at least have okay options. In left, they can use Dominic Smith. At third, they can platoon J.D. Davis and Luis Guillorme. Those aren’t foolproof plans, but they’re not gaping holes either.

Speaking of gaping holes, do you know who the Mets’ left-handed relievers are? At this moment, they have four: Steven Matz, Stephen Tarpley, and Daniel Zamora that are on the 40-man roster and they signed Jerry Blevins to a minor league deal.

Matz pitched to a 9.68 E.R.A. in 2020. Zamora has thrown 17.2 innings in his career, and didn’t pitch in the majors in 2020. Stephen Tarpley has pitched 44.2 innings in his career, and has pitched to a 6.65 E.R.A. Blevins didn’t pitch in 2020.

Sure, the Mets could use a left fielder or a third baseman — but their need for left-handed relief is dire, and far more pressing.

Fortunately, the Mets seem like front-runners for Brad Hand. While reports last week that the Mets and Hand were on the verge of a deal turned out to be premature, Hand and the Mets are a perfect match. Hand makes so much sense for the Mets that it would almost be shocking if they didn’t sign him. He has a 2.70 E.R.A. over the last five seasons, and over his career has held lefties to a .552 OPS.

Hand is the most consistent left-handed reliever available in free agency, and the Mets should do everything they can to sign him. But if they miss out on Hand, they can quickly shift their attentions to a different target: Justin Wilson.

With the Mets in 2019 and 2020, Wilson put up a 2.91 E.R.A. and struck out more than 10 batters per nine innings. He’s actually been slightly better against righties than lefties in his career — righties have a .638 OPS against him, while lefties have a .651 OPS — but he’s excellent against hitters on both sides of the plate. He’s a lower profile name than Hand, so he shouldn’t cost too much, and he’s already proven that he can handle New York.

In fact, it might not be the worst idea in the world for the Mets to pursue both Wilson and Hand. They’re different pitchers: Hand shuts down left-handers, while Wilson is excellent against both righties and lefties. You can never have enough quality relief pitching. The Mets’ starting pitching staff is shaping up to be excellent in 2021, but starters can only do so much if the bullpen can’t hold a lead.

In the age of Steve Cohen, now that the Mets have acquired James McCann and Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco all in one season, it’s easy to forget that to be great, baseball teams have to go beyond the big names. The 2015 Mets had a starting rotation stacked with superstars and big egos, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as they were without quiet, excellent seasons in middle relief from Sean Gilmartin and Hansel Robles.

Even teams loaded up with stars need to do the everyday housekeeping that prevents leaks from becoming floods. Signing middle relievers is just about the least exciting thing a team can do in free agency. But it pays off with interest when the season comes, and the bullpen is not necessarily dominant, but is refreshingly competent and not a perpetual source of headaches and blown leads.

The 2021 Mets bullpen looks strong from the right side: Edwin Díaz, Trevor May, Miguel Castro, and Seth Lugo are all solid options. But on the left side, they have almost nothing. They certainly don’t have any left-handed relievers whose entrance into a close game will instill confidence. With Hand, Wilson, or both, that can change.

Sure, it would be exciting if the Mets signed George Springer, and it would be earth-shattering if they traded for Nolan Arenado or Kris Bryant. But big moves aren’t the only ones worth making. Just by signing a left-handed reliever or two, the Mets can immediately turn what is now a weakness into a strength.

Wilson and Hand won’t sell jerseys or season tickets, and they may not be All-Stars or Silver Sluggers. What they will do is close a gap in the Mets’ roster, and prove instrumental in helping the Mets protect leads and win games. Right now, that’s exactly where the Mets’ focus should be.

The post Opinion: Mets in Dire Need of Left-Handed Relief appeared first on Metsmerized Online.