We learn by association.

We remember who we were with and what we were doing on important dates. 9/11, maybe the Hale-Bopp comet, maybe even the Kennedy assassination or Nixon resigning. And always right there is baseball and the Mets. You may have a detailed recollection of 1986 or vivid memories of what the world was like in October of 1969.

For me, 1969 was about a house fire and the Mets, while 1986 was about Paris Island and the Mets. But 2008? Oh, 2008 I will always associate with one of our nation’s worst ever financial downturns and the Mets getting hella ponzied!

Let’s take a trip back to 2008 where we meet up with this ordinary guy in Queens. Let’s call him Rodney. Rodney and his wife are big Mets fans and they buy a house they plan on fixing up and they sink all their money into it right? And everything is cool and they plan on using some equity to fix the place up and get season tickets when suddenly, bam. Their house is worth half what they paid! It’s just like when Fred Wilpon found out that what he thought was a cool half billion in reserve, was, absent…only not as bad.

Rodney wasn’t able to borrow against accrued value because, ha, there wasn’t any! Again, like when Fred Wilpon tried to borrow as much money as he could and had to settle for a Bank of America bridge loan!

Eesh.

So Rodney and his wife made do with old kitchen cabinets the way the Mets made do with Nick Evans. Instead of new floors, they got more of Mike Pelfrey and his mouth guard. Something like that. The Wilpons still had a team and Rodney still had a house and in 2008 both were crappy! See, collision of worlds.

Then in 2011 Rodney gets a visit from an insurance adjuster even though he hadn’t made a claim. This 1950’s poindexter looking guy just stood outside with his clipboard taking notes, and he wasn’t appreciated by Rodney one bit. Rodney especially didn’t appreciate how this insurance dude was looking at his chimney. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later Rodney and his wife got a letter telling them to fix their chimney or their policy would be cancelled. Rodney was accused of something amounting to “poor chimney maintenance.”

So Rodney vowed never to let anyone with a pocket protector anywhere near his house. He even dusted off his dream of training a squadron of attack pigeons. In the end he simply repaired the chimney, switched insurance companies (to a company that wasn’t sending out gaggles of poindexters in Ford Fiestas looking for reasons to rescind policies in “high foreclosure” neighborhoods), and he put off training pigeons to crash into the faces of anyone possessing a clipboard or a passing resemblance to Jeff Wilpon.

Now, you ask, why should we care about Rodney?

Well, you see, most people would think Rodney and his wife had it pretty bad, but as bad as they had it, it was not 500 million bad. Rodney and his wife worked hard and they fixed their place up bit by bit and regained some of their equity.

The Wilpons? The Wilpons hired Sandy Alderson.

But they were still pretty cheap.

Maybe if, like Rodney, Fred Wilpon had gotten a visit from the insurance adjuster of Christmas Yet-to-come telling him to sign Cliff Lee or lose his franchise, well, maybe then he would have spent more. But it was the banks with their vested interest in the upkeep and operation of the Mets who became concerned. After all, in 2012 some estimates had the Wilpons owing upwards of 1.5 again, billion dollars.

Now it struck Rodney as somewhat unfair that he had to fix his chimney, paint his exterior, update his electrical and replace his plumbing while the Wilpons fielded the likes of Brad Emaus and tinkered with ticket prices. Brad Emaus would be like Rodney wrapping his old toxic lead pipes with duct tape and asking the city inspectors to have a gander. See, in 2011 the inspectors wanted to see that nice new PVC pipe of the 8.7 WAR Ben Zobrist variety, not Jason Pridie and some cheapo linoleum. But the Wilpons went with the duct tape and the linoleum and kept the bankers at Bay with a few nominal acquisitions and a whole lot of rebuilding talk.

And Rodney was OK with that because he is a Mets fan and he understands sacrifice. So what if the Wilpons tried to pass off some secondhand Craigslist appliances as new? Rodney and the Mets had a big turn around coming and sure enough the Mets turned things around with playoff appearances in 2015 and 2016.

Now here is where the story gets murky. A host of pitching injuries derailed even the most modest expectations for the Mets in 2017 and the team came in at 70-92 and fourth in the NL East.

OK, one bad season, no biggie, you just move on right? Not so fast Rodney!

You see, Rodney and his wife also had their share of setbacks during those years. There was the time the kitchen ceiling collapsed and the time the main sewer line backed up. But they cleaned themselves up and got back to building a better life.

And the Wilpons? Would they also dust themselves off  from 2017, liquidate a few assets and remain focused on the prize? Yes?

Nope. Not at all. Not even close.

It appears that the Mets’ purchasing power was hobbled this time, not by a Ponzi scheme or a host of bad contracts, but by the very 70-92 season they’d hoped to turn the page on. So the “cash flow” problems never really went away, and the one bad season that most big market teams could shrug off with a few checks, instead forebode many more just like it.

This reminded Rodney of the time he thought he could finance his home renovation by selling produce from his little backyard at a local farmer’s market. It didn’t work because he didn’t have nearly enough produce and the bank was not OK with “We had a bad batch of turnips, but the cucumbers are looking good,” as a reason for Rodney’s failure to repair a roof leak.

Fred Wilpon also was unable to finance 2018 with 2017’s proceeds.

Rodney took solace in the fact that the Mets still had their vaunted pitching core, that they only needed a decent supporting cast. But Mets fans are quickly realizing that there are no reinforcements coming. There will be no legion of filthy Dwarves or even Ian Kinsler.

Rodney and a great many Mets fans are in an uproar as we speak on Twitter. Not because they are “New Yorkers” who feel they somehow deserve better than fans in Boise or Toledo, but because they’ve watched this team’s core come together and they think it’s a good one with two playoff trips and a World Series appearance already under their belts.

They think, that failing to provide the necessary backup for this group would be like spending all your money buying a Kentucky Derby contender and then being unable to afford a saddle. It’s got to be like a crime against baseball or something. No one wants to watch Jacob deGrom pitching meaningless games down the stretch. Everyone wants to see Noah Syndergaard pitch a deciding game.

You see Mets fans like Rodney are smarter than your average Cubs fan. They know that baseball owners don’t make their money at the gate, they make their money by purchasing a team in Chavez Ravine for $330 million in 2004 and selling it for 2.3 again billion in 2012. So it’s all very confusing to Rodney and his ilk. Why would the Wilpons try and operate a $2 billion dollar asset with nickle and dime gate proceeds?

Rodney and his Mets faithful continue to wonder why the forces governing this great sport, namely MLB, Rob Manfred, the banks, Elrond. Why they continue to permit the Wilpons to run out this 1962 Berlinetta on cheap Dunlops?

That’s why Mets fans like Rodney are upset. It’s not because of some imagined “Yankee envy,” it’s because of the mind-numbing negligence of wasting the tremendous gifts of a Mets cohort as talented as this one on a broke as a church-mouse property owner who forgets to turn the furnace on before a deep freeze.

The post When Mets Worlds Collide appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

You know those people who say BABIP is a meaningless stat? They don’t know what they’re talking about. I know because I used to be someone who said BABIP was meaningless and I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Fangraphs defines BABIP as Batting Average on Balls In Play. It measures how often a ball in play goes for a hit. A ball is “in play” when the plate appearance ends in something other than a strikeout, walk, hit batter, catcher’s interference, sacrifice bunt, or home run.

I used to believe that BABIP was not a particularly “usable” stat because it seemed to fluctuate at the mercy of variables that were not necessarily controllable by the hitter or the pitcher. Defense, for instance, was problematic because if you happened to play in a division with some top tier defensive talent, outside of division BABIP comparables lose their utility. A batter’s quickness is also problematic because faster players will get on base more if all else remains the same. BABIP seemed to me to simply be a picture-on-a-wall stat undermined by contextual variables such as luck, quality of defense, speed and whether or not you play in pitcher friendly confines.

And luck is a funny thing in baseball. Players can and will sometimes experience incredibly unlikely and prolonged strings of good (and bad) luck, so it’s no wonder fans have concocted notions of invisible “baseball gods” doling out karma like fast melting soft-serve ice cream in hot waffle cones as the players exit the dugout. It’s true, baseball is littered with statistical aberrations. You might even argue it’s one of the things that make it so damned entertaining. Nevertheless, luck and karma notwithstanding, BABIP does have value in its own right.

The 2017 Mets were crappy on BABIP. They rolled to the finish line with a .286 BABIP, No. 27 out of 30 teams, right behind the Padres. Why is that bad? Well consider that this .286 consists only of balls in play, so foul pop-ups, strikeouts, and any other manner of out that does not involve a “ball in play” are not tallied. So yeah, .286 is not great. Now when you click on Mets individual BABIP leaders (with at least 150 ABs) here is what you see …

1. Brandon Nimmo (.360)
2. Michael Conforto (.328)
3. T.J. Rivera (.318)
4. Yoenis Cespedes (.316)
5. Norichika Aoki (.315)
6. Asdrubal Cabrera (.310)
7. Juan Lagares (.309)
8. Neil Walker (.286)
9. Rene Rivera (.283)
10. Lucas Duda (.278)
11. Jay Bruce (.271)
12. Wilmer Flores (.270)
13. Jose Reyes (.263)
14. Curtis Granderson (.251)
15. Travis d’Arnaud (.250)
16. Dominic Smith (.218)

Immediately, you notice that all the high BABIP players are quite young. The average age of the top four players on this list is 24.7, the average age of the bottom four is 30. But beyond that there don’t seem to be any patterns. T.J. Rivera and Reyes are both contact hitters but are on opposite ends of the BABIP spectrum. Then again, the average OBP of the top five players on the BABIP chart above is .343 but the bottom five are at .302, a 41 point difference. This is a significant split and the correlation between BABIP and OBP may be a topic for another day.

But for our purposes, namely determining whether BABIP has any broad applicable utility, there may be a plausible argument that younger players with high on base percentages tend to have a high BABIP (which would give BABIP value as a correlate to OBP – especially on a Sandy Alderson team). Does that mean that younger players tend to see the ball better and hit the ball harder? You can see where we might get into trouble – we just jumped to the conclusion that a high BABIP results from hitting the ball harder. Does it?

Intuitively you would say yes of course, it has to,  but if we look at Hard Hit Ball percentage (Hard%) the same top five BABIP players above have a Hard% of 34.5 and the bottom five have a Hard% of 33.2, a marginal difference at best. In performing this comparison, however, a couple of things come to light. First, Smith, who had one of the lowest BABIPs (.218) had one of the highest Hard% at 37 percent, and secondly, the Mets, who had one of the lowest team BABIPs in the league, were pretty good at Hard% coming in eighth in the league with 33.5 percent.

So were the Mets unlucky as a team? And how is it possible that a guy like Smith can hit the ball hard 37 percent of the time and still somehow end up with a .218 BABIP? Is it because BABIP is purely based on luck and is maybe garbage as a stat? Nope. Smith really did hit the ball hard a lot, but he also had a traditional lefty shift against him in 72 (almost half) of his at bats, and in those at bats he hit a not robust .194, much more in line with his .218 BABIP.

Lets look at another season with a wide split between BABIP and Hard%. In 2016, Bryce Harper had a .264 BABIP with a 34.1 Hard%, and yet in 2017 he had a .356 BABIP with a 34.3 Hard%. Harper saw a 92 point increase in BABIP in 2017 but he didn’t appear to hit the ball any harder. How? Well, in 2017, Bryce Harper’s BABIP rocketed back up to .354 while his 2016 .271 mark was 105 points off his 2015 BABIP. Harper reverted back to his norm in a big way with 2016 looking like an outlier. What we see here is that BABIP is useful in one very important way — as a season to season predictor. It is a stat that becomes more useful and more robust as you increase your sample size.

Because BABIP is susceptible to variables such as speed and defense and shifts and bad luck, a sample size of 100 at bats (or less) will not tell you much. In fact BABIP is probably more useful when looking at samples of 900 – 1,000 at bats over three seasons or more, in so far as it can strongly predict performance from there on. As was the case with Bryce Harper, no one could have predicted his 2016, but by the same token if you looked at his previous BABIP percentages, you would have clearly seen that 2016 was an aberration and that he was a pretty good bet to rebound, and sure enough, he did.

Dominic Smith’s sample in this sense is very small. However, given his lack of speed, his vulnerability to shifts, his home run totals, his Hard%, and his historically good plate discipline and high BABIP, coupled with what appeared to be some pretty bad luck, could be an excellent candidate for a significant rebound. His conspicuously low 2017 BABIP may act as a strong indicator here.

In three minor league seasons prior to his call up, Smith’s BABIP was .353 including a.380 BABIP in Triple-A. Now granted, it’s tougher to get hits in the majors, but a 162 point drop? Seems unlikely given his 37 percent Hard%. More likely, he was successfully shifted against, a lot, while experiencing his share of bad luck.

BABIP can be very helpful as a high-sample season to season stat that can predict what is perhaps an aberrant stretch (or season). You can look at Brandon Nimmo’s .360 BABIP and wonder if he will do as well next season with similar skepticism, but Nimmo’s three previous minor league seasons produced a combined .352 BABIP. So, unlike Dominic Smith, he’s not far off his career mark. And while Nimmo is faster, it is unlikely that Smith’s lack of speed would account for a 162 point drop in BABIP from Triple-A to the big leagues.

So there you have it folks, BABIP is useful if you have a large season to season sample as a baseline stat that can give you some substantive information on whether a player will revert to career norms — particularly in scenarios where hard hit ball % supports or is inconsistent with career averages. It’s a good way to spot what may be a fluke season or what may otherwise be a deviation from a player’s career trajectory, which is helpful in predicting regression or spotting bounce back candidates.

The post The Book on Mets BABIP appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

First there was PITCHF/x and things were good. Things were great in fact since around 2006 when it was installed in ballparks all over the country. We had exit velocity to ponder. Exit velocity is a hilarious stat when you think about it. It’s the statistical equivalent of noticing that geese can fly. It adds a measure to the obvious, but that measure is still interesting in it’s own right when Mike Trout makes a 114 mph line drive out and you think, somebody caught that.

If ever there was a flaw with PITCHF/x it was in its ex post facto analysis of spin. It basically amounts to if an 84 mph slider breaks 6 inches from its nascent trajectory and ends up out of the strike-zone, spin is guessed to be behind this break but it isn’t an exact measure — it’s assumed based on the magnitude of the deviation as marked by release point and landing.

Now there is Statcast. Statcast did to PICHF/x what the internal combustion engine did to the horse-drawn buggy industry. Statcast can actually see the spin. Statcast is like a tiny Muhammad Ali butterfly with a bodycam that can video the rotation and count the spin with a tiny clicker in its proboscis. It’s so fast it’s invisible, like those super-fast invisible Star Trek people who tried to take over the Enterprise. I picture a bunch of them standing around a baseball with lab coats and clipboards as it takes several days to reach the catcher’s mitt. OK not sure exactly how spin-rate is measured but it’s fantastic trust me.

A stat is only as good as its utility and as such we are only now starting to see how spin-rate can be employed by the pros — namely more innovative front offices around the league. There is some early indication that spin-rate can account for a healthy and predictable swing-and-miss correlation. We knew for instance that Seth Lugo’s curve “falls off a table” but are now able to quantify it with a literally off the charts (and a record) 3,498 rpm measure.

Hopefully the Mets as an organization can capitalize on investments like Statcast (and it looks like they have a Peter Parker level spinner in Lugo). They sure missed the spin-boat on Colin McHugh though, who tweaked the spin on his breaking pitches and had that nice stretch in 2014.

I see spin rate data like it’s a formula for time travel that an alien species gives us so we can help them out in three thousand years or so. We have all this great information and we don’t know what to do with it. Also, it doesn’t (yet) have a real time application. I don’t think Collins is getting “make sure you put in Salas tonight — his spin-rates are mad trending” calls in the clubhouse. We only have after-the-fact analyses, which are nonetheless valuable. Spin-rate ultimately is an observational stat, which is part of its beauty — it quantifies (as opposed to interpreting) what is actually happening.

We didn’t need Statcast to know that Bob Gibson threw a ridiculously nasty slider, but with spin-rate we can quantify optimal zones for inducing swings and misses and there appears to be tremendous potential for that sort of thing. There is some indication, for instance, that slower spins at certain velocities assist in optimizing off-speed pitches. Fascinating stuff for sure, even for non-physicists it’s a brave new world of stats when we can put a real number on a freakish occurrence.

There’s another thing that spin-rates may assist with: pitch recognition. You might watch a game like Matt Harvey’s first start and determine that he threw 38 fastballs, 24 sliders, and 12 changeups. Someone else might say Harvey threw 36 fastballs and 26 sliders. Harvey throws a really hard slider, and sometimes it seems to break down more than in making it look almost like a sinker, or a fastball with a tiny curve ball tacked on at the end, almost like a cut fastball with some sink. Like that heavy bowling ball cut fastball that Bartolo throws that we all know Harvey is a big fan of (especially after a Bartolo start). That’s the part that’s hard to quantify. The stuff that’s going through a pitcher’s head.

If a pitch acts like another pitch but is technically a pitch of the first variety – if it looks like a cutter but is technically a slider because of the way it’s thrown – does it really matter if the result is the same? Bartolo’s sinker clocks in at around 88 mph with “obvious tail” but little actual sink (for a sinker). Doesn’t that make it a little like Harvey’s slider which shows a lot of sink for a pitch that’s supposed to also break horizontally? If it walks like a duck, right? The hope is that spin-rate can demystify some of these distinctions. I probably saw fewer good tailing Matt Harvey sliders and more of what looked like a cut fastball with late 12 – 6 break. So whether we start calling curveballs “dark-green-zoners” for their location on a swing-and-miss correlation chart remains to be seen, but change is in the air.

The post The Spin on Spin Rate appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

A little competition never hurt anyone as they say, but there’s something beyond the whole “rising to a challenge” boost you get from a rival when you’re looking at competition within an organization. When positional battles benefit the team, they take on an impetus all their own.

On the other hand you have consistency, baseball is an ebb and flow game of rhythm and repetition, hot streaks and slumps — the more a manager can afford to let a player find his groove by providing consistent playing time, the better.

And therein you have Terry Collins‘ conundrum on a Mets team featuring considerable depth and multiple positional battles. There is of course the Michael Conforto playing time question, there’s the 5th starter battle, and then there’s the potential first base battle which is becoming more interesting every day.

The least interesting is perhaps the fifth starter’s spot which has tentatively gone to Robert Gsellman. I say least interesting because we’ve very quickly been reminded, with Seth Lugo‘s frayed UCL and Steven Matz‘s flexor tendon strain, how starting pitching depth very rarely goes unused. Whether we’ll ever be depleted enough to see Rafael Montero start remains to be seen, but right now I don’t think anyone on the Mets rotation is feeling any breathing on their necks. Sure Gsellman and to some extent Wheeler may see their ropes shortened should they stumble, but organizational depth at starter is not as vast as it looked even a couple of weeks ago.

Now the center field battle is interesting because people get all emotional and animated about it. Us Mets fans love our prospects and Michael Conforto endeared himself to a good many with his .841 OPS antics in 2015. There are many among us who would sign off on Conforto as our regular center fielder like it was the mailman bringing us our brand new Asics-gel extra wide digs … but again before we let our emotions get the better of us, consider the other options, namely Lagares. Lagares, who may be back as early as next week, brings a whole different defensive dimension to a critical defensive position. You cant understate that and, although the metrics are vastly improved, it’s still an inexact science trying to qualify Lagares’ contribution in center. But Lagares is a damned good center fielder and the others aren’t, that much is clear.

You also have Curtis Granderson who for some reason is easy to overlook when, in reality, he’s one of the main cogs and has been for quite some time. Granderson offers timely power, a steadying veteran presence, and “good enough” defense. Now Granderson may get some time in right field as well so he’s somewhat tangential to the center field time split — he is also older and could use some off days. Still, for me, you have to see if Conforto can put up numbers because that swing … that kid’s swing is a thing of beauty. And then there’s Jay Bruce, who in spite of last year’s second half flop in Flushing, put together a 33 homer 99 RBI season. Who wouldn’t take that from a right fielder?

Finally and perhaps most interesting is the first base “loose platoon” between Lucas Duda and heart string virtuoso Wilmer Flores. Duda, both in his production and his play at first (which isn’t nearly so bad considering he is roughly the size of a redwood) has the look of a regular, and Flores, well, Flores seems to have a knack for winning games — which is kind of important or so I’ve been told.

Anyway, this all gets thrown in Terry Collins’ lap for him to sort through like a ball of cat hair and twine. Personally I don’t envy him (Okay fine I would kill to manage the Mets even for a day but I don’t envy his having to distribute playing time). Gsellman may yet stick but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more of our vaunted starting pitching depth over the course of this season. I like Lagares’ defense but you also have to see if Conforto’s bat can catch fire. And Duda will get you 30 bombs but Collins has to become Flores’ secret santa of playing time because that kid needs to be involved. Ultimately this is pretty important stuff for my bottom line because how Terry handles these decisions largely predicts my Pepto-Bismol outlay — and that’s dollars in the here and now.

The post Competition Vs Consistency: The Collins Conundrum appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Most people tend to become more mellow as they get older … not me. I think I’m just as cranky as ever. See I live in constant fear that some alternate version of myself will breach the space-time continuum and make an attempt on my life … So I’m tense, all the time, and I’m constantly hiding stuff and second guessing myself because I wonder what my parallel-universe self would be doing, or even which cantaloupe he would pick.

Also I live in Minnesota where you aren’t allowed to complain about anything except something called “the Vikings” (and their 45 sacks allowed) who play a game called “football” … This is discernibly true even though it routinely gets in the double digits below freezing with wind chills that can kill a sickly moose, I’ve seen it. So I end up classified a “character”  (Midwest code for being a misanthrope or perhaps an ogre) because I “vent.” Whatever …

What people don’t understand is that my crankiness is inversely proportionate to Mets wins – as one increases, the other abates. It’s always been this way — it has nothing to do with the weather or the amount of fiber in my diet. Once the Mets reach that critical mass of 87 – 90 wins I’m good for the calendar year give or take a few weeks in February. It’s better than a sunny day in Hibbing … or Prozac.

My wife likes this new “kinder” person I’ve become over the past couple of years but she knows better than to think it’s really me. She knows for instance that should the Mets find themselves 6 games under .500 in late June I am more likely to make a snide remark about her aunt’s bean dip at a family outing.

But lets stay on topic — this is the winter of Mets content. Nothing really bothers us. Some of you may have noticed phenomena in your daily lives supporting this strange serenity. Random people will come up to you and start talking about kale and you are somehow ok with it.

Stories about Mets spending limits barely register on the Wilpon-agita scale. So what if Russian operatives mess with your cable preferences? Stream Mets games on line! Smashed banana in your book bag? Who cares? Your Mets cap was barely touched. Fake news? Sidd Finch it away with actual replays of Yoenis Cespedes moon-shots!

Of course, being a Mets fan, there will always be times when you feel doubt creeping up. The recent discovery of deep-space radio waves for instance will almost certainly trigger a rescue mission with lots of implantable Space Marines in tow. And how come no one in the galaxy wants Jay Bruce? Will Michael Conforto ever get his groove back with Terry Collins lefty-righty-ing him to death? And will an offense that was 26th in hits and 25th in runs last season ever get into gear? And how in the world will Cespedes top last spring training’s parking lot antics? Because you know he will.

And what about beat writers prattling on about how frequently injured pitchers are more likely to get injured again? That’s like saying someone who makes bagels a certain way is likely to continue making bagels that way. What’s the point of even saying that? That’s why you have Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman people.

Mets pitching injuries last year didn’t keep them from accumulating a third best in MLB ERA (and xFIP) or a best in baseball 24.8 total WAR … there’s that. So buck up, 2017 is shaping up to be all kinds of crazy but as always, it will come down to who shows up on opening day, and right now Mets rotational depth is mad deep. Think of it this way, Mets starters are just as likely to not get injured (at least not all of them at the same time, again) as they are to break down … Especially if one or more of them gets knocked off by an alternate-universe double with better break on his slider and a bigly spin rate.

The post It Is The Winter Of Mets Content appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Marc Carig of Newsday tweeted the following yesterday:

“In short: the Mets have been so horrendously unclutch that it’s hard to think they could sustain that level of crappiness.”

Carig was referring of course to an article by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs detailing just how “unclutch” the Mets have been. Clutch, as calculated on Fangraphs, measures how well a player (or team) perform in high leverage situations. It’s calculated as such: Clutch = (WPA / pLI) – WPA/LI

David Appelman defines it as: “How much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.”  Sullivan concluded: “Offensively speaking, the Mets have been impossibly unclutch. It shouldn’t continue like this. Of course, what’s done is done.”

Per Sullivan, in April, Mets hitters ranked 29th in Clutch. In May, 22nd. In June, they were 29th. Overall, they’re dead last, and it’s not very close.

The Mets’ current run of unclutch play is, in fact, historic, as you can see in the chart below listing the 10 most unclutch seasons over the past 40 odd years.

10 Least Clutch Offenses

It gets worse … Sullivan goes on to note:

“My stat of choice is tOPS+, which measures split performance vs. overall performance. By this measure, the worst team in recorded history with runners in scoring position is the 1962 Mets, who finished with a tOPS+ of 77. The 1987 Indians finished with a tOPS+ of 80. As I write this, this year’s Mets have a tOPS+ of 74.”

That’s pretty bad folks, unsustainably bad, which is to say, it is extremely unlikely that the Mets will continue to perform this poorly in high leverage situations. But the article looks at this phenomenon from a decidedly statistical aspect. Statheads, for the most part, believe that clutch is not sustainable, clutch performances are simply random fluctuations in performance where successes happen to coincide with high leverage situations. So Alex Rodriguez was never really unclutch in the playoffs, he simply hadn’t had enough at bats … something like that.

So if clutch isn’t “real” in this sense, how do you explain the fact that some teams and some players clearly perform better in high leverage situations? You don’t, it’s simply a function of performance and context, a 900 OPS player isn’t considered clutch if he puts up a 900 OPS in a given playoff series.

Now a .770 OPS player who puts up a 1.850 OPS during the playoffs (Daniel Murphy) would be the definition of clutch, right? Well, yes and no. The fact that he rose above career averages in a high leverage environment and sustained it more or less for an entire post season is certainly the definition of “clutch,” however, you could argue that the talent was always there, it simply hadn’t been realized … Murphy’s performance since then would certainly support this conclusion.

There’s nothing wrong with saying a given hit was “clutch” because it scored a winning run, but to say that a player is intrinsically “clutch” because he has a knack for hitting with runners in scoring position is (at least according to some) presumptuous, because it may simply be a demonstration of that particular player’s natural ability randomly juxtaposed over high leverage contexts – a coincidence if you will.

The good news is Clutch (the stat) isn’t predictive. Sullivan took a bunch of notably unclutch first halves over the past 20 years and drew a correlation scatter with those same teams’ second halves and there was absolutely no correlation. An “unclutch” first half is not even in the slightest way predictive of an unclutch second half. Sometimes teams simply under-perform, sometimes they go through unbelievable stretches of bad luck, sometimes hitters slump. So the Mets are probably not as bad at they appear.

But while Clutch tells us nothing about the future and little about the present, it can certainly be used to qualify the past, and as such, the Mets have indeed been “impossibly unclutch.” When you have these extraordinary unlikely scenarios repeating over and over for weeks and months you invariably have to wonder how much of it is bad luck and how much is bad talent.

Sullivan pointed out that according to BaseRuns, the Mets should be averaging 4.07 runs scored per game. They are currently at 3.58, giving them a difference of -0.49. That happens to be the biggest negative difference in Baseball, and, it works out to about 38 missing runs (which amounts to around four wins). On paper, the Mets should be better, and as a team, it’s hard to avoid the specter of underperformance. The Mets have been atrocious at sequencing hits, they’ve hit tons of solo home runs and have left busloads of runners in scoring position. There are legitimate concerns that the team continues to stumble over it’s own misplaced parts.

The other question is whether the Mets offense, as constructed, somehow lends itself to excruciatingly bad runs like this current one. The value of improved plate discipline and selectivity (as an organizational tenet) is based on a preponderance of data, but do patient and selective lineups falter when they rely too much on the long ball? Does it become all too easy to pitch around the odd hot bat in a depleted lineup? Does the lack of team speed and contact hitting undermine even the most patient lineup’s ability to push runs across?

Whatever the myriad causes, this historic run of unclutch play shouldn’t continue. “What’s done is done.” Eventually the Mets will hit with runners in scoring position. Still, you can’t overlook just how bad this first half has been.

While things as unlikely as this level of ineptitude rarely occur (for this long) without some good reasons, waiting for the winds of change to somehow bolster the Mets’ fortunes seems naive.The Mets may be the most unlucky team in baseball for all we know, but the 2016 Mets, very much like the 2015 Mets, have some significant offensive shortcomings, and much like the 2015 Mets they’re going to need to improve their offense in some tangible ways if they intend to stay in the thick of the playoff hunt.

Waiting for the inevitable odds that say the Mets will hit with runners in scoring position to catch up with events on the field seems like an affront to a fickle pantheon of baseball deities who could just as easily make it so the Mets continue their historic futility. Stranger things have happened.

The post The Horrendously, Impossibly, Unclutch 2016 Mets appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Last spring I interviewed Steve Kettmann for Metsmerized Online following the publication of his book “Baseball Maverick,” and one of the questions involved whether he’d noticed any indication that the Mets front office was adjusting to a post-steroid era. I thought his response was interesting.

MB: Given this front office’s statistical predilections, have there been any efforts to establish post steroid era norms to your knowledge?

Steve Kettmann: I’m not sure that we have entered a “post-steroid” era or that we ever will. The cheaters are smarter and more sophisticated now than they were, and juicing is less prevalent; we’d be naive to think it no longer occurs.

The reality is there’s been a steady trickle of Major League Baseball players who continue to test positive for steroids with rumors of a freshly popped batch on the way. The problem persists — perhaps driven by desperation — in those who appear to exhaust all other alternatives. When put in a position where it is either this syringe (and the millions in earnings that accompany it), or a place on the car lot back in Topeka, the decision becomes … clear.

Ultimately the brunt of the responsibility rests with the players. They are, after all, the ones who willfully ingest these substances. But the owners and their cash-laden history of turning a blind eye are anything but blameless. The player’s union on its end has also played a role with years of opposition to more invasive testing.

Whatever the context, the onus comes back to the individual who uses these drugs unless they can somehow show that the choice, was not really a choice.

Take the case of Marlon Byrd. On May 21^st 2011 while with the Chicago Cubs Byrd took a fastball flush to his left cheekbone from Alfredo Aceves of the Red Sox at Fenway Park. He was hospitalized and put on the disabled list the next day after his eye swelled shut. He’d been struggling since he hit .210 in 2012 when he tested positive for steroids. Marlon had not benefited the way you might imagine from performance enhancing drugs, in fact he was looking squarely at his own baseball mortality.

“Guys that don’t like talking about it are the guys that were trying to beat the system. I wasn’t,” he said. “I was just stupid, I took something, didn’t do my due diligence, simple as that. So it’s easy for me to talk about. First time I talked about it was easy.” (CSNPhilly.com)

Byrd still maintains that his positive test result for tamoxifen, a banned substance, was the result of a medication he was taking to treat a condition called gynecomastia (an enlargement of the breast tissues in men).  While the fact that he had surgery to address this condition supports Byrd’s alibi, the fact that the condition itself can be brought on by steroids, not to mention his continued association with Victor Conte of BALCO, do not.

Byrd does not deny his error and he remains open about his past, which is certainly refreshing, but he has also enjoyed a remarkable resurgence as a player since that low in 2012.

“The big thing is,” Byrd said. “Why wouldn’t anybody question it? I’m 35 going on 36. Last year, I hit .210 with a home run and nine RBIs, in conjunction with testing positive.”

There would be nothing to question had Byrd not lost his effectiveness and his power in the first place. More interesting than the aftermath is the precursor — only a year after an All Star appearance Byrd’s mechanics were a shambles and his career was in a nosedive. It’s hard to imagine. You spend your life building something, a dream, a career, a livelihood, then poof, gone.

In the years leading up to 2012 Byrd earned something around 15 million over an eight year span, a virtual pittance by MLB standards.  It is simply naïve to presume ballplayers will neglect to perform a simple cost / benefit analysis and conclude they’d be crazy not to try steroids when the alternative is … the abyss. In the years since his suspension Marlon Byrd has earned over 20 million dollars (although he actually earned less two years post-suspension then he did in his two years prior to — something of an outlier in this regard).

Below is a chart detailing earnings (in millions) of suspended players on the Y axis with before/after comparisons of individual players on the X.  These are players for whom I was able to derive two years of salary figures both before and after a steroid suspension. I did not use players with multiple suspensions (as the consequences begin to encroach on the risks) or suspensions prior to 2012 (to coincide with MLB’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement).

Alex Rodriguez was not included because his suspension wiped out all of his 2014 and he has not had two full years since. In all, there were 11 players and the results are eye opening. While you’d expect player salaries to rise with consideration to age and time in service, in the context of returning from a steroid suspension, the group did remarkably well even without Alex Rodriguez. In the two years leading up to suspension, suspended players earned 56.6 million, in the two years after? 137.9 million.

Players earned a combined 81 million more in the two years following their suspensions than they did in the 2 years leading up to them. That’s a 144% increase. I don’t know about you, but if the penalty is a 50 game suspension and the benefit is a 144% pay raise either way, pretty much a slam-dunk. Again, you’d almost have to be some kind of baseball saint to resist the temptation if the alternative is a declining skill set and a slow painful exit. We hold athletes to a standard that very few among us would uphold. The lure is simply too enormous and the punishment too feeble.

MLB on their end is certainly culpable for welcoming suspended players back with a slap on the wrist and a massive chunk of change. In the chart below we look at cumulative WAR for these same suspended players in those same four years sandwiching their suspensions, and they perform more or less up to career norms post mandated hiatus. So they are at least a safe bet, provided they stay off the juice.

In fact, if you take Ryan Braun off the list, your post-suspension players look even better. Players like Cruz, Colon, and Cervelli saw marked improvement while most others held their own. As a fan, you have to think long and hard whether a single suspension wasn’t worth the opportunity to enjoy Cruz’s prodigious power and Colon’s wily showmanship. Sadly I believe this isn’t lost on ownership. Is it a virtual free pass for a first offense? An implement for a select few who may use it to catapult back into form? Are there lingering positive effects years later?

We know what MLB’s Drug Prevention and Treatment Program isn’t, and that’s effective.

If MLB and the MLBPA are serious about ridding the game of steroids they have to enforce a policy that will compel players to genuinely question whether dabbling in performance enhancing drugs is worth it. Presently it totally is, to the tune of a 144% pay raise — and that’s if you get caught.

The post MLB Feature: Why Steroids Aren’t Going Away appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

When I was a kid I’d run to the drug store on the corner of Junction Blvd. and Roosevelt Ave. as my dad was pulling up the big chain link. I’d get a paper and I’d head across to the diner for a cup of coffee and a couple of fried egg sandwiches. Two dollars was usually plenty. If Dad didn’t ask for change I knew I’d be heading back later for a comic or a Mad magazine. Dad would drink his coffee and we’d go over the sports pages behind the register. He and mom ran a little deli right by the Junction Blvd. southeast landing on the 7 line.

We bought the lease to the store from the family before us. They were crazy about baseball. They had two sons, both a bit older than me, and we found a few things they’d left behind when we took over. There was a baseball carefully stored in a box on a shelf in the back, a baseball the older boy caught at Shea off of Cleon Jones. They’d been searching everywhere and they wanted it back of course. I had it for like 5 days.

We lived over by 98^th street and 37^th Ave. and there was this perfect alleyway for stickball by a private school down the block. We’d wait until the school clerk — an uptight big haired lady who wore the same exact dress in different fabrics every day — walked out to her station wagon wrapping her hair in a scarf (even in the summer) with a knot under her chin, and we’d bend the gate poles and slip through.

The alley ran wide and long with a high fence on one side and the windowless wall of a 4 story school building on the other. It opened a good 300 feet to dead center across the church parking lot. Sometimes I’d sneak in on my own and practice pitching with Lindsey Nelson’s voice in my head. You were never alone for long, kids always showed up and your pretend game became a real one. Sometimes if older kids showed up you’d be lucky if you even got to play. The custodian would come out and chase us off in the evening and we’d end up scrambling back to the gate where we’d wait turns slipping back out … immediately fingering our noses at creepy Charlie Chaplin looking janitor guy who’d tighten the chain and lock it from his giant key ring.

Sometimes it isn’t even really the game but the people you share it with, the memories, good and bad — even the group-hug sad ones. For Mets fans, from the outset, even losing wasn’t the worst, it was better than the alternative – no baseball. The old-timers remember those days after the Giants and the Dodgers packed up and shipped out … A bitter nostalgia.

There is no bad baseball really. It’s great when you win, but some of my best memories were sitting in the bleachers watching the Mets play the Reds, or the Cubs, or the Pirates, and it didn’t matter if the team was terrible, we were happy if it didn’t rain and if Kingman hit a moon shot.

I left New York in 1996. Hadn’t been back much since my parents passed. I finally got to take the family to Citifield this past summer. We’d been to a few ballparks, some newer, so I had some idea of what to expect. We had a great time. Matt Harvey dominated, the burgers were good, and it didn’t bankrupt us. There’s a slow egress with Citi from high-end luxury above left field to the almost carnival atmosphere on the pavilion where I think I saw people playing Wiffle Ball. It feels linear, like a gallery, where Shea was annular, modernist, whatever.

The rotunda gives the place focus, with everything pointing to home plate as it should. I can see why a lot of people insist they don’t miss Shea. And sharing it with first timers made it even better, watching them startle with the first roar of the crowd. There was something about Citifield last August, something that could make a kid lose his popcorn and spill soda on his Duda shirt … hard to put a price on that. These Mets can pitch, and the fans are going nuts with every punch-out.

And the talking — the constant talking. On line, on the escalator, in the gift shop … I overheard an argument on the Shake Shack line between this guy and a girl way ahead — he accused her of getting away with cutting in line because she was hot and had nice boots. She admitted the boots were nice but claimed she was “replacing” her friend who was on line earlier, and he’s like “aw, c’mon you can’t replace someone from ten minutes ago.” He even got the people around her to admit that they let her cut in because she was hot. It was hilarious, the entire line was laughing. I turned to my oldest, “only in New York.”

I realized again that the heart and soul of the Mets was right there on the promenade. A friendly hostility that people sometimes mistake for rudeness when it’s just honest. An old guy grabbing you by the arm as you’re about to walk into traffic, “Hey! What the hell is wrong with you? What aah you stoo-pid?” That’s what you end up missing the most when you leave New York. The innumerable conversations about the Mets in the subway with perfect strangers, and always you leave knowing something you didn’t before — everybody with their scrap of back-page insight.

I remember selling Italian ices and watching the crowds coming off the 7-train after a day game. I could tell if they won or lost, mostly because I’d listened to the game. There were these big sacks of beans in front of the cold-cut fridge and sometimes I’d grab my giant straw and sneak a handful of black eye peas and blast pigeons flying down from the el platform. This old lady yelled at me for that, said I was a mean kid. I felt bad. I remember once this drug addict tried to rob the store with a switchblade and my dad chased him half way down the street with his apron in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other.

Sometimes I’ll drink my coffee and thumb through my fantasy roster and think about the old days. We still play wiffle ball out back. A lot’s changed but the Mets are still here, that hasn’t changed much at all.

There’s always that day, usually in February, when you feel it in the air and you know the worst is over and you are reminded of Spring. You hold a baseball and remember, you’re still that kid with the Spaldeen looking for a place to dream.

The post It’s February, But Spring Is In The Air appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

It used to be you could tell when a ball was hit hard because it made a loud noise and it moved quickly through the air. Now, according to Baseball Information Solutions, you need an algorithm …

“BIS now records certain hard data (duration of hang time and landing location) with the observed hit type — liner, grounder, etc. — and then an algorithm decides if the ball is hard hit.” Neil Weinberg via Hardball Times.  The actual algorithm is proprietary, so we have to take their word for what constitutes “hard contact,” but, generally speaking, the calculation is based on hang time, location, and trajectory.

I see it playing out something like this, David Wright lines out to Dee Gordon and as he’s taking his batting gloves off in the dugout he complains to Kevin Long, “Dagnabbit Mr. Long, I really thought I tattooed that one,” at which point Kevin Long pulls out a handy printout, “Sorry son, the algorithm says it was medium – see, right there.”

The truth is that the almost infinite diversity of statistics is one of the things that makes baseball so fascinating for so many. There was a time when a kid who saw [∂∂p−β(λ)∂∂λ+2(1−γ(λ))] G(2)(p)=0 in his head, when told to put a bunt down the first base line, would have no place on a baseball diamond. Now, the same kid can turn a soft blooper into a screaming liner with the right algorithm.

It’s amazing what data can tell you. For instance, it was recently discovered that guys like Giancarlo Stanton who routinely hit the ball hard, tend to be good hitters. A shocker, I know – there’s even proof in the form of a correlation study between wOBA and exit velocity.

It’s not the biggest of correlations, but it’s there.

Ultimately BIS modified their approach with hang time and landing to presumably make it less of an abstraction. Previously hard/soft hit% data involved some guy who would watch the games and decide whether balls were hit hard, medium, or soft … I mean, if he drops a melted cheese Dorito on his vintage Jethro Tull jersey, it can skew the results. So the algorithm is a good thing in spite of my incessant persiflage.

But technology is only good if you can use it, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why StatCast exit velocities have yet to be employed quantifying hard and soft hit%. There are limitations (StatCast has trouble with weak contact) but the potential to disambiguate contact rates at the initial judgment level is tremendous. There is in fact some preliminary data showing that StatCast exit velocity correlates closely with hard% contact, which I’m sure brought a sigh of relief from the guy with the stained Jethro Tull shirt — who may want to keep his job options open nonetheless (I hear UZR is hiring).

Over the past few seasons, indications are that soft and medium contact rates have risen in MLB while hard contact has fallen. Teams have increasingly delved into contact rates in an effort to improve, and for good reason. A top 10 leaderboard for hard% contact features dignitaries such as Mike Trout, Paul Goldschmidt, Bryce Harper, and Miguel Cabrera (by the way Lucas Duda comes in at #11).

The Mets had a 31.5% hard contact rate in 2015, good for best in the game. The Mets are also tied for the fourth lowest hard% contact rate allowed (27.5%). Now there are lots of reasons teams succeed, but you have to think that the ability to make solid contact while preventing the opposition from doing the same gives you quite the advantage.

Sure enough the 2015 Mets made it to the World Series where they faced … the Royals with their 22^nd in the league hard% contact rate and their 19^th in the league hard% contact allowed … nothing to write Dorothy about. The Royals also had the lowest line drive percentage (19%) in all of baseball, while the Mets were third (22%).

The 2015 Mets hit the ball with authority more than just about anyone, which is very much in line with their selective philosophy – wait for your pitch, square it, clobber it. Yet they were beaten by a team who threw quality contact out the window in favor of plain old ordinary contact. The Royals led the league in contact% with an 81.9% mark.

KC also gave up quite a lot of hard contact (29.3%) but compensated with a top-notch defense. For the Mets, on the other hand, it didn’t make much sense to spend a lot of time or money on defense, given their high-K pitching staff and relatively low hard% contact rate (27.5%). The Mets looked like the better team, yet the Royals, a catch and throw outfit designed to spray the ball around, beat them in 5.

It’s doubtful that Dayton Moore, knowing his Royals were destined to play the Mets in the fall classic, specifically designed a team that would act as their ultimate foil … but it felt that way. The Mets vs. the Royals in the World Series was a tale of quantity trumping quality. In the end, the Royals were able to scrape enough runs together by putting the ball in play, while many a Met line drive ended up in a Royal mitt.

Still, the ability to hit the ball hard has to count for something, and, given the correlations (below) between that skill and other offensive indicators, (not to mention the wOBA / EV chart above), I’d hesitate to scrap the pursuit of quality contact in favor of increasing overall contact.

Correlations:
R² with ISO: 0.70
R² with SLG: 0.63
R² with wRC+: 0.57

(Courtesy of Hardball Times)

From the Mets perspective it’s hard to find fault. Chances are they won’t have to face this same Royals team again in a World Series, and there’s a good chance that if they do, they could just as easily beat them. I’m also not sure there’s an overarching lesson here … for instance, in spite of the fact that the Mets lost to the Royals, I’d take hard contact over more “general” contact, because, again, according to the correlations above, it means you have better hitters. Furthermore, if you’re facing a team that can field, that’s all the more reason to hit the ball hard – anybody can make the routine play.

If there’s a caveat it’s that defense has to be more than an afterthought. The most ambiguous and unwieldy of all the branches of Sabermetrics, defense it turns out was the Mets’ Achilles heel all along. Hard contact will play as will power pitching, but if you are going up against a team who puts the bat to the ball, you’d best be able to field.

The Royals had an insane 59.6 dWAR in 2015, easily tops in the game (26.7 points ahead of the second place team). The Mets? 17^th, with a 2.3 dWAR. In 2015, the Royals had 24.4 more defensive wins above replacement than the Mets.

If I’m Sandy Alderson, I am all of a sudden very interested in recalibrating the value of defense in a seven game series and I’m checking to see whether StatCast velocity data comes in a dry aerosol.

The post 2015 Mets Contact Rates: A Tale Of Quality vs. Quantity appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

I remember watching the Munsters when I was a kid and even then I didn’t understand the whole Marilyn Munster thing. In what world was she more attractive than Lily? I mean I understand Lily is undead and all, but come on. Sometimes I’d see Al Lewis (sad that he passed) sweeping the sidewalk on Bleecker St. and I always wanted to ask him about his car, but I didn’t want to be annoying.

Anyway as anyone who has ever gone out with good looking people can tell you, it’s tough being the ugly step-cousin … In some ways you’re better off finding odd and repulsive friends so you can come off as “normal,” not that I would know.

A unique reversal of this chemistry is precisely what is plaguing the Mets rotation this winter (in terms of of forecasts). Too many Marilyns and not enough monsters. The ugly stepsisters are as gorgeous as Cinderella. Who has the best breaking pitch? Who can throw the hardest fastball? Who has the best hair? Where do you even start?

The Mets rotation is a victim of it’s own remarkably deep make-up – any one of them would feature prominently on 9 out of 10 teams in the league, yet on the Mets they all play second fiddle, to each other. Maybe it’s because they hit the scene at the same time, I don’t know, but you can’t really say deGrom is in Harvey’s shadow or vise versa and I think Thor will slot in soon if he hasn’t already. So how do you look at the Cubs’ or Nationals’ rotations and manage to rank them above the Mets? That’s just crazy talk.

Carson Cistulli had this to say in the preface to his ZIPS 2016 projection:

Much of what Muhammad Ali said regarding his own self applies also to the pitchers at the top of the Mets’ rotation: the triumvirate of Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, and Noah Syndergaard are each some combination of young, handsome, and fast. With regard to the possibility that any of them might be beat, it certainly exists, but not in great volume. Among the 17 clubs for whom projections have now been released, the forecasted WAR for the threesome is surpassed (it would appear) only by the Cubs’ top three pitchers — although the third member of the group (John Lackey) receives a lesser projection than the Mets No. 3, Syndergaard.

I don’t think the Cubs rotation beats the Mets, we need only look at the NLCS to see why. The Nats are the real threat. ZIPS manages to project Strasburg, the presumed Nat #2 starter, above deGrom — on FIP and zWAR — which which I find tough to swallow. Stephen Strasburg hasn’t had a sub-3 era since 2010, since before his TJ surgery, yet Steamer thinks he’ll have a 2.94 era in 2016 while deGrom (who has a career 2.61 ERA mind you) is projected at 3.17? Is ZIPS a Bernie Madoff victim or something? 84 wins Steamer? I think you’ve blanched the arugula quite enough! Why, it’s enough to make Bartolo Colon eat salad.

The other issue is depth. Labeling a pitcher a “#1” or a “#2” is nice when you are comparing aces across teams, but on the field the reality is that your #1 is the guy who is pitching that day. If your goal is to convince me that Doug Fister and Tanner Roark are better than Steven Matz and Colon/Wheeler? Fister had a 4.19 era last year and Steamer thinks that will only go up, while Steamer also thinks Matz’s 2.27 era will rise to 3.59 even though he has never had an above 3.00 era at any level (the one exception is his 4.91 era for 3.2 innings rehabbing in A+ last year which I wouldn’t count), no, really.

Matz may regress given his 3.56 xFIP and 2.46 WHIP, but so far he’s been lights out and he can hit. I also remember with Matz that quite a few grounders found holes but there wasn’t much in terms of hard contact with a 21.2% hard hit ball rate (Max Scherzer comes in at 27.7%) which would have been tied for best in the league with Dallas Keuchel if Matz had enough innings … And Matz was gassed when came back from the injury, losing command after 5 innings or so, but they pushed him. So yeah, Matz might regress some, but the hometown kid could just as easily get better.

Anyway I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, especially if they make predictions for a living or live in Washington and have like access to nuclear codes or zip codes or whatever … but I don’t think the Nats eclipse the Mets in their starting pitching, and honestly, I think it’s because the situation is unprecedented. I can’t remember when a team had this many ace level pitchers in the same clubhouse.

We all know about athletes who played under someone’s shadow, Pippen and Jordan, Koosman and Seaver, A-Rod and Ramiro Pena … but with this Mets rotation their collective shadow is such that they become sort of interchangeable and they get overlooked. They all have this nasty slider, they all throw hard, they all hit and field, and they all order the stuffed mushrooms and linguini white clam sauce at Don Peppe’s, they’re like clones. If you’re playing the Mets you figure you’re going to see beau-coup pitching — so adjust your fantasy rosters!

It’s only slightly outrageous to say that there are five pitchers on the Mets who could potentially win a Cy Young over the course of their careers, five. When has that ever been the case? The 97 Braves? The 2014 Nationals? The 2011 Phillies?

Look, I know calling Matz and Wheeler potential “Cy Youngs” is a stretch, but the stuff is there, and who were the 4^th and 5^th starters on those other great rotations? Worley? Haren? Ryu? It’s tough to find a starting 5 that match up in terms of raw talent and sheer potential. The only one I can think of is the 1988 Mets because of Cone.

It’s early. This pitching rotation is just starting out … they have a NLCS title and a ROY between them. If they can stay healthy and together, this is going to be fun to watch.

The post No Ugly Ducklings In This Mets Rotation appeared first on Metsmerized Online.