The Mets had never drafted a player from the University of Central Florida before the fifth round. That changed in 2025 when the opportunity to add Jimenez to their organization came along.

The club poached the draft-eligible sophomore with their third-round pick, 102nd overall, in the 2025 MLB Draft, inking him to a bonus worth $564,000. Jimenez joined UCF alums Alex Freeland, Dylan Moore, Ben Lively, and Edian Espinal in professional ball.

Photo by Ed Delany of Metsmerized

After a season where the infielder slashed .329/.407/.575, he was named among the top 100 collegiate shortstops by way of the Brooks Wallace Award Watch List, a grouping of players headed by the premier selections of the 2025 draft and the potential top picks from the 2026 draft class.

Being in the same conversation with Wehiwa Aloy, Aiva Arquette, Roch Cholowsky, and Justin Lebron is certainly always a good thing.

Shortly after his nomination, Jimenez, along with Mets’ 2025 first-round pick Mitch Voit, appeared in MLB Draft’s Combine, a relatively new mid-season event where players can impress scouts and clubs can gather additional data on eligible draftees.

After a brief stint with the Low-A St.Lucie Mets to conclude his 2025 season, Jimenez and Voit were selected to start the 2026 season with the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones. Despite their brief time in the Mets’ system, both have impressed Cyclones’ manager Eduardo Nunez early on; the skipper called them both hard workers during the campaign’s opening series.

Nunez confirmed that Jimenez is expected to play in a multi-positional capacity throughout the year.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Antonio about the draft process, his journey to get to professional baseball, and the insights he’s gained from his time in the Mets’ organization.

MMO: Talk to me a little bit about the draft process. You were selected [in the third round] last year. Did you know the Mets were interested in you? What was that process like?

Jimenez: A lot has changed in the last year. After my freshman year, I was able to play in the Cape Cod Baseball League and started getting attention from scouts. I was blessed enough to be able to do well there. I joined the transport portal and headed to UCF. There, I learned how to play the actual game of baseball. I improved my approach and learned skills like baserunning.

As my season went on, I was blessed enough to continue to get opportunities to do well.

After the season ended, I got invited to the MLB Draft Combine. I met with the Mets, and they seemed pretty interested. I’m super thankful for where I’m at today.

MMO: What is the biggest difference between collegiate, summer, and professional ball?

J: Wherever you go, I think the game is very similar. In professional ball, people have sharper command. They know where to place the ball a little bit better. They throw a tad bit harder. They sink it a little bit better. Everyone here has a superpower, and you figure out what their superpower is.

It’s just staying within yourself and understanding what type of player you are. I’m just really taking it one day at a time. Collegiate ball really helped me, as I was able to play against the best of the best. Here, I think it’s more of a daily grind. Mentally, it’s just an everyday thing.

In college, we played on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and sometimes on Wednesday. So, you have a few days to relax your body, but here it’s every single day. You’ve got to bring it and make adjustments, because you’re not going to feel the same everyday.

MMO: What would you say your superpower is?

J: Impacting the ball. Awareness of the strike zone. Can throw the ball well. Can defend well. Can steal bases. I’m just trying to stick within the strike zone, get into the heart of the plate, not trying to chase anything.

MMO: Well, what would you say your goals for the upcoming year are?

J: Just staying healthy and staying consistent in all aspects of my life. I’m just continuing to make faith my foundation in my everyday life. I think it is a huge step for me.

It just allows me to free up and play the game well. If I can free up and play the game the way I can, I think all the numbers are gonna come along. If you really focus on the skills, instead of the result, it’s gonna put you in a lot better place, every single time.

MMO: What parts of your game have you focused the most on since turning pro, and how have the Mets been helping you in that regard?

They’ve been helping me with little mechanical adjustments. I’m able to get in the zone early, to stay through it longer, and to hit the offspeed a little bit better.

I’m doing a lot better job just being more comfortable this year. I’m trying to hit the offspeed better by trying to understand where my swing needs to start.

I’m also trying to stay cognizant when men are on base. I want to stay on the heater so I can stay in my tunnels longer. Since my bat is in the zone a lot longer, I want to back up on the fastball and stay along with the breaking balls.

MMO: You talk about some of the mechanical changes you made at the plate? Has that been a result of the Mets’ hitting lab at St. Lucie, or has it been something else? Alternatively, are your adjustments more of a feel thing?

J: Oh, my goodness. I love the Mets’ hitting facility. They have a lab [in Port St.Lucie], and I remember we got marked up [with nodes that track biomechanics], and it just changed my whole perspective on how my body actually moves. They helped me understand where my bat is starting in the zone.

They helped me a ton through different thoughts and drills, but they kept me the same player. They just made very minor adjustments. They have every resource possible to let you know, hey, this is where you’re at, and this is where you be.

They do a really good job of not just telling me things, not just to tell me things, but to actually show me with evidence. They work with a purpose and a plan, and it’s been helping me a ton. I’m super grateful.

MMO: What would you say the most tangible thing was that you took away from your time at the Mets hitting lab? How long did it take for the change to take effect?

J: Oh my gosh. My front shoulder stopped dipping and was moved into a better angle so I could fire them better. We worked a lot with pitches up in the zone and getting behind the ball. I feel like if I can control the top of the zone, I can control the lower half of the zone, which I consider my strength.

MMO: I noticed you’re a guy who likes to have a lot of fun. You like to celebrate. Why is that so important to you?

J: I think just playing the game itself, like people see themselves doing a job. But I try to look at this game like it hasn’t changed. I’d love to do this every single day.

I want to go out there and just have fun and be crazy. I like to have pretty good energy because I think if you bring positive vibrations out into the world, you’re most likely going to get it back.

I’m just trying to get as much momentum as I can in the dugout, no matter the situation. If we’re up ten, if we’re down ten, I want the same energy.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Full interview can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/matt-mancuso-139191659/antonio-jimenez-interview

The post Exclusive: Mets’ 2025 Third-Round Pick Antonio Jimenez appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

MLB umpire Emil Jimenez. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Long live the robots. The robots are here to stay.

After trial runs in both Triple-A and spring training, the Automated Ball Strike Challenge System [ABS] has made its way to the big leagues in 2026.

Starting on Opening Day 2026, players have been able to turn to ABS to issue a final judgment on close ball/strike calls. ABS is the first system to take away unilateral ball/strike decision-making from the home plate umpire’s discretion. Now, batters, pitchers, and catchers are granted an opportunity to challenge an egregious ball or strike call.

Once a player requests a challenge by tapping his helmet, 12 strategically placed Hawkeye cameras review the pitch’s location, and either overturn the on-the-field call or confirm the initial decision. Teams are granted two “challenges” per game, and retain the challenge if a call is overturned.

Early returns show ABS pretty evenly split on each side. As of publishing on March 31 before gameplay, 55% of challenges have been overturned. (Batter sit at 50% and pitchers and catchers sit at 58%.)

This change, the latest to incorporate cutting-edge technology into on-the-field play, will have major ramifications on the sport’s strategy.

Consider the delta in run value when a ball is called on the first pitch of an at-bat, compared to a strike. According to Baseball Savant, batters who started an at-bat with a 1-0 count were more productive by 9 runs, compared to batters who started with a 0-1 count. Nine runs are estimated to be worth an extra win, underscoring the importance of ensuring the accuracy of every single pitch.

Not every questionable call strike will be worthy of a challenge. Some teams may only use their objections at leveraged moments, such as when the game is on the line in the later innings.

Incorporating ABS into the granularities of calling balls/strikes represents a paradigm shift from the antiquated technologies that previously proliferated MLB.

In the mid-2000s, Pitchf/x emerged as the first regulated system to provide simple insight into pitch metrics, such as velocity and location. In the years since, TrackMan & Hawkeye have become virtually household names by disseminating new levels of pitch data at a rapid pace and furthering our understanding of “what makes a pitcher good.”

The Mets seemed primed to face any early ABS issues. Earlier this spring, Carlos Mendoza relayed the club’s spring training ABS strategy to the NY Post:

Asked how the team would approach the new rule this spring, the manager said, “Be aggressive. Challenge as much as possible. We want to see who’s good and who’s not [at challenging].”

While numbers in the spring should be taken with a grain of salt, and despite the guidance from their skipper, the Mets’ batters challenged only 19 times in the Grapefruit League; six were reversed. Their backstops tapped their heads 27 times, reversing the call 13 times.

Marcus Semein, Kevin Parada, and Christian Pache each led the club with three challenges; Semein and Pache overturned a call apiece while Parada was unsuccessful in his trio of attempts.

A handful of Syracuse Mets, projected to receive time with the big-league club in 2026, used ABS in 2025. Thanks to Baseball Savant’s new functionality, we’re able to identify the Mets players, a step away from the Majors, who were strong in their decisions to challenge ball-strike calls in 2025.

Veteran journeymen Gilberto Celestino & Yonny Hernandez each led the Syracuse Mets with 10 overturned challenges, with Hernandez’s 56% successful challenge rate just eeking out Celeistin’s 50%. Hernandez led the club with +2.7 “Net For” challenges, which gives a player credit for overturns on pitches thrown in similar locations to other players.

Celestino challenged at more opportune times. He had three strikeouts negated by a correct overturn on a strike outside the zone, while once correctly challenging a strike on a three-ball count.

Several Syracuse Mets hitters, who either previously garnered extensive major-league time or are projected to in 2026, familiarized themselves well with the challenge system in their debut season with ABS. Even with the small-sample caveat, Jesse Winker, Mark Vientos, and Jose Siri ranked in the team’s top three in “Challenge Rate vs Expected”, which takes into consideration the challenges a player is expected to win.

The club’s top hitting prospects in Triple-A, namely Jett Williams, Ryan Clifford, and Luisangel Acuna, overturned four calls in six tries.

Overturning calls via ABS isn’t just an option for hitters; pitchers are able to utilize it to reverse egregious ball/strike counts. During his time leading the Mets’ AAA staff, Nolan McLean‘s pitches were challenged 17 times by the Mets, with seven overturned. His seven reversals ranked second among Mets’ pitchers, trailing only former Mets farmhand Brandon Sproat.

A plethora of the Mets’ top pitching prospects, including McLean, got accustomed to ABS in 2025, a relieving note given the Mets tend to yo-yo pitchers between their Triple-A and big league rosters. McLean, Austin Warren, and Jonathan Pintaro, all members of the Mets’ current 40-man roster, each won three challenges in 2025.

Despite the individual success stories, when compared to the league, the Syracuse Mets, as an aggregate, performed poorly at overturning calls. In 2025, Syracuse won only 46 challenges, placing last in the International League. Their -42 expected net overturns ranked second-to-last in the minors, while 36% overturn rate trailed none.

Give Angel Hernandez his flowers. Calling ball/strikes isn’t an easy job to do. The nuances required, combined with 40,000 fans watching the real-time result, make this task a particularly grueling one. ABS provides a fix to baseball’s toughest job by putting the onus on the players to correct any inaccurate calls.

If you’d like to pull ABS data to an Excel file programmatically, via Python, please follow this request.

The post Statcast Breakdown: MiLB ABS Analysis appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Photo by Ed Delany of Metsmerized

I come from Italian heritage, so it’s sacrilege that I haven’t incorporated food into my baseball analysis. That changes here.

I’ve begun to think of an-bat as one of my favorite pastimes: cooking a homegrown meal.

The similarities are plentiful. Pasta, seasonings, and a choice of meat are exchanged for fastballs, curveballs, and sweepers. The aroma of sauce rolling through the kitchen is identical to the musk of dirt rising from feet digging into the batter’s box. Just like an oven timer, a pitch clock ticks away.

And just like a series of ingredients necessary to create a homegrown meal, the sequence of pitches in at-bats must be planned and executed. Pasta can’t be cooked without boiling water first.

At risk of making you hungry, I’m opting to bring it back to baseball.

David Stearns cooked up a brand-new roster this offseason. Out went stalwarts Pete Alonso, Edwin Diaz, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil. In came Bo Bichette, Devin Williams, and Luis Robert.

The cherry on top of Stearns’s group of well-rounded acquisitions: a trade for Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta and Tobias Myers. (Although the addition of Myers was crucial for the trade to be finalized, for the sake of this article, I will focus on only Peralta.)

Throughout the last several seasons, “Fastball Freddy” emerged from a fastball-heavy fireman to a top-shelf starting pitcher. Last season, he posted a 2.70 ERA/3.47 FIP, garnering a fifth-place placement in the Cy Young Award voting. His pitching was worth +26 runs (97th percentile) on the back of an expanded four-pitch arsenal.

He’s no longer a one-trick pony; his fastball, breaking, and off-speed pitches each delivered +8 Runs in 2025.

Each offering in his four-pitch arsenal serves a different purpose.

Data Via Baseball Savant

“Fastball Freddy” and his 80% fastball usage may be a thing of the past, but “Frequent Freddy Four-Seamer” is still plenty alive. His fastball leads the conversation in his repertoire and for good reason; it’s the 16th most valuable fastball since 2008,  benefiting from Peralta’s low release height and elite extension, traits that allow it to excel despite middling velocity and a usage rate north of 50%.

Meanwhile, his trio of non-fastballs is utilized to throw batters off. In 2025, his change-up distinguished itself as his clear secondary choice. It’s a thing of beauty; Baseball Savant’s Run Value deemed it his most effective pitch.

A curveball thrown 16% of the time and a slider thrown 9% of the time complete his repertoire; each of his secondaries notched at least a 35% whiff rate in 2025.

His pitches are already wonderful in a vacuum. They’re all elite pitches delivered from an elite extension, resulting in an elite pitcher. They’re effective, not only due to positive pitch characteristics, but because they’re methodically utilized within an at-bat. They’re the ingredients thrown into a recipe at the right time.

After crunching the numbers, Peralta’s sequencing indicates that he’s using his ingredients at an opportune time.

Sequencing has always been a part of baseball, but it’s taken a backseat to Pitch Design in the last few years.

Portable Trackman units and enhanced player data capture tools have given Pitch Design its moment in the sun over the last half-decade. There’s been a tangible change in pitcher evaluation throughout this movement. No longer are pitches graded as a result of a singular metric, like velocity. Rather, Stuff+ algorithms now grade offerings by quantifying their role in an arsenal. A pitch lives within the context of its peers, not alone and siloed.

Publicly, there’s been no such “a-ha” moment for pitch sequencing. At least not yet.

To bridge the knowledge gap between pitch design and pitch sequencing, I created a website to track frequent pitch sequences. Pitch Pairs is located here, and the introduction article, here.

Pitch sequencing begets pitch tunneling – or, otherwise said, pitchers throw pitches together that follow a similar path until they diverge shortly before home plate. This effect creates confusion on the batter’s side by inducing whiffs and generating soft contact.

In 2025, Peralta paired his fastball with another 689 times – 29% of the time, his most frequent pairing and the most frequent combination in the Majors. Pairing is important, not only in pitching but also as a mantra to take through life. A bowl of pasta isn’t a meal until it’s paired with a nice glass of Chianti.

Pairing the same pitch together is not an uncommon occurrence, but it is unique that Peralta pairs fastballs together as his most frequent pair, as pitchers typically pair sliders together. Peralta paired his change-up and fastball together 261 times (11%) in 2025. This pair was the third-highest rate of a change-up and fastball pair in 2025, trailing only change-up extraordinares Matthew Boyd and Tyler Anderson.

In comparison, David Peterson threw the most change-up and fastball pairs on the Mets in 2025, throwing a stark 180 fewer.

Although pitch sequencing – as presented – is helpful, it lacks context. There’s another variable at play: location of the pitch – and that can properly be accounted for. By flipping the top toggle to include location into pitch sequencing, more insight can be generated into the purpose of Peralta’s sequencing.

Peralta’s frequent paired pitches are often located in Zone 11 and Zone 13, the areas that are located up-and-in and down-and-in against righties. He peppers the area often, earning +44 Runs in Savant’s “Shadow Zone” Last Year, which ranked third in the Majors.

That’s unique in this era of pitch design. Zones 11 and 13 aren’t areas frequently populated, but Peralta targets them aplenty. Peralta even throws the two most frequent sequences located in Zone 11 and Zone 13. Given Peralta’s standing as a top-flight arm, it’s clear this strategy works. Against lefties, Peralta has a set plan. He grabs it and rips his favored sequences to his favored zones. However, against righties, Peralta pairs his fastballs together at a 25% clip.

Peralta’s a man from a previous era. Modern pitchers are Play-Doh molded in labs – Peralta’s the epitome of a grip-it-and-rip-it pitcher, the Chad Inning Eater.

I’m curious to see how – or if – the Mets change his sequencing in the coming year. Early research on sequencing indicates that the most frequent paired pitches correlate to higher whiff rates, but once more, Peralta’s an outlier. His fastball only tallied a 24% whiff rate in 2025.

The Mets acquired Peralta to do one thing in 2025: eat innings at a high-quality rate. When healthy, on the strength of his sequences, there have been few in the game better at doing so.

The post Statcast Breakdown: Freddy Peralta appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

It’s a really difficult question to answer. Simply put, a pitch is not defined by a singular characteristic. What good is a 102 mph fastball if it consistently hits the backstop? 102 mph can be a telling datapoint in a vacuum, but it clearly doesn’t tell the entire story.

David Reginek-Imagn Images

Take a moment to think about Mets’ wunderkind Nolan McLean. His debut season was a resounding success. He posted a 2.06 ERA, a 2.97 FIP, and demonstrated mastery of his entire arsenal. Each offering of his six-part repertoire filled its respective role admirably—a seemingly-random sequence of pitches bewildered big league opponents every five days, resulting in 30%+ whiff rates against four different offerings. 

Pitch Grading systems, like Fangraphs’s Stuff+ and BPro’s PitchPro, recently introduced to the public realm advanced algorithms designed to discern an entire repertoire’s value, which are applicable in cases like McLean’s, where his fastball isn’t the belle of the ball.

Arsenals perform well when they contain pitches that “tunnel,” sequential pitches that pass through the same path on their way to the plate for as long as possible.  These sequential pairs of pitches work well when they diverge after a batter’s “decision point”—the point in ball flight when a hitter makes a decision when/where to swing. When pitch sequencing is done right, it’s hard for a batter to stay on top of a pitcher.

Conventional baseball wisdom supports these systems’ conclusions. Now, there’s data to back up if the conventional wisdom is working. If a fastball is thrown in the first pitch of an at-bat, the line of thinking typically says a curveball should follow. The former is thrown to disrupt an opponent’s swing on the latter due to the distinct difference in velocity, shape, and movement between the two offerings. Don’t just take my word for it, see this effect in action here.

This GIF visualizes the importance of “paired pitches,” or pitches frequently thrown in tandem. It’s baseball’s answer to a magic trick. You expect the fastball down the pipe, you get a curveball brushing the dish. It’s the phenomenon that demystifies Tyler Glasnow’s success. His fastball screams to the plate while his curveball drops down like an angel falling from heaven.

The aforementioned McLean alluded to this effect in a recent interview with PitchingNinja’s Rob Friedman, explicitly mentioning that he’s looking to pair more cutters with sweepers and fastballs with sinkers in 2026 to change eye level and induce additional whiffs.

How Are the Mets Pairing Pitches?

Thanks to Baseball Savant, we’re able to identify the most frequent paired pitches from the 2025 season and create a public-facing website for further analysis. (Link can be found here.) Given the namesake of this site, let’s start with analysis from the 2025 Mets.

Note that several prominent Mets pitchers from the 2025 campaign weren’t on the 25-man roster during the entirety of the season, which may skew results.

In 2025, Clay Holmes threw a sinker followed by another sinker 365 times.

And for good reason. Holmes’ usage epitomizes one of baseball’s latest trends: throw your best pitch more. Don’t just hear me preach; listen to World Series champion David Price:

“Pitch to your strengths. Make him beat you with your best pitch, with your best stuff.”

Largely on the backings of his sinker, Holmes emerged as the Yankees’ closer early in his career, parlaying his late-game success into a three-year, $38 million contract with the Mets last winter. Just like seasons past, Holmes’s sinker served as his bread-and-butter in 2025, inducing a +10 Run Value, sixth among MLB starters.

In 2023, Yankees columnist Bob Klapisch compared his offering to a bowling ball, noting his sinker dulls results just like a bowling ball would. Fangraphs’ Stuff+ Metric grades it as a positive, an indictment on the pitch’s unique movement profile—15 inches horizontal, 2.9 IVB.

However, using the “Pitch Type” tab—as seen on the center of the website—only tells one chapter in the tale of pitch design. There’s more to the story. As Benoit Blanc of Knives Out fame once put it, there’s a donut hole within a donut hole.

Pitch Pair Types are informative in a vacuum, but their pitfalls relate to their dependence on usage, which can provide more noise than true analysis.

Instead, picture this:

You’re a hitter facing Mets’ starting pitcher Kodai Senga. You know Senga’s fastball plays well in the upper-to-mid half of the strike zone, given the pitch’s historical location tendencies. You also know Senga has a dastardly forkball in his back pocket, a wicked pitch designed to induce whiffs, limit contact, and overall, ruin your 2-for-2 day at the plate so far.

Where would this forkball be likely to be located? On the top half of the plate, or towards the bottom?

The answer, as you may have surmised, is the bottom.

This hypothetical example exemplified Senga’s real-life pitching strategy. Despite an injury-marred campaign, his high fastball/low forkball combination finished among the Mets’ leaders in pitch pairs.

Paired pitches work best when they follow the same path, diverge after the “decision point,” and wind up in two distinct zones of the plate. Senga’s fastball/forkball combination is a prime example.

Senga was far from the only Met to utilize pitch pairs to great success in 2025. Former Met closer Edwin Diaz employed several tactical pairings en route to his dominant campaign.

Few hitters seemed comfortable as Diaz continued to rack up whiffs, often generated by sequential pitches in similar locations. Throughout the season, sequential sliders low-and-away and fastballs up-and-in were thrown 61 times, 7.5% of the time.

Diaz’s calling card was prevalent throughout Major League Baseball.

A series of pitchers’ top combinations were the same offering in the same zone, a somewhat surprising conclusion to even the most diehard of fans. While shocking, this result makes sense. Pitchers often use “waste pitches” to induce a swing-and-miss ahead in the count.

Alternatively, I hypothesize that offspeed pitches wind up in the same zone sequentially, so pitchers can take another nibble at the swing-and-miss.

Diaz threw his fastball up-and-away, followed by a slider down-and-low 16 times in 2025, his third most frequent sequence of the year. This frequent sequence hints that a pitch tunneling effect is in play, giving the impression that the pitches are the same before they diverge to the opposite sides of the plate after their decision point.

A series of conclusions can be generated from just a quick search.

Further insights:

• New Met Devin Williams frequently threw his changeup one-after-another during his sole season with the Yankees in 2025, dancing it around the lower boundary of the strike zone. Given the Mets’ new pitching coach Justin Willard’s emphasis on throwing pitches in the zone, I’m curious if this trend persists in 2026. [Picture]
• 10% of Matt Brash‘s sequences consisted of sliders low-and-away, which led the Majors in 2025 [Picture]
• Unsurprisingly, Tommy Kanhle—famous for frequent change-up usage—followed a change-up with its twin 71% of the time. [Picture]

Website Usage Guide:

• To select a player, type their name in the drop-down under “Players” on the left sidebar. The default setting is “Clay Holmes.”
• To select a team, type their abbreviated name in the drop-down under “Team” on the left sidebar. The site defaults to show “All Teams.”
• To see sequencing splits, select “L” or “R” in the drop-down under “Platoon” on the left sidebar. The default is “All.”

Pitch Pairs are nothing new. Managers have called a series of pitch combinations since Fred Goldsmith first twirled his curveball around a pole in a thrilling exhibition of athletic ability back in 1867. In 2017, a trio of Baseball Prospectus writers introduced the concept of “pitch tunelling” to the public realm for the first time with their Introducing Pitch Tunnels article.

The full website can be found here. Forks to the website are welcome. If you’re technically inclined, check out the GitHub repository PyBaseball, my North Star on this journey.

What’s next? Who’s to say? I see this article as a foreword with iterations to follow. There’s a multitude of other variables that impact frequent pitch sequences—movement, velocity, seam orientation, seam axis, batter tendencies—and I look forward to establishing a relationship between their importance and the likelihood of a sequence.

If you (yes, you, the reader) spot something noteworthy on the website, please share. My contact information is available on the site.

The post Statcast Breakdown: Why Pitch Sequencing Matters appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Juan Soto (22) & Pete Alonso (20) Credit: Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

The Mets have historically won on the backs of their pitchers. Seaver, Koosman, Matlack, Gooden, Darling, the list goes on.

In 2025, the narrative has shifted. Juan Soto and Pete Alonso have anchored the club, producing a combined 6.7 fWAR throughout the season. Despite both sluggers teeing off like there’s no tomorrow, they’re each taking different approaches to succeed.

Alonso is the archetype of a grip-it-and-rip-it slugger, living up to his Polar Bear persona. In 2025, he’s surged back to his early-career form.

In just his first season, he broke the Mets’ single-season home run record, finishing the year with 53 round-trippers. Throughout the ensuing years, he established himself as a formidable, middle-of-the-order bat. A ghastly walk year resulted in an unexpected reunion with the only club he’s ever known.

It’s fair to say the one-year pillow contract has worked well for both parties. The Polar Bear is back to attacking balls like they’re baby seals.

Darryl Strawberry‘s franchise home run record fell on August 12 with Alonso’s 253rd blast. He’s slashing .265/.348/.514, racking up 28 home runs and 101 RBIs. His .401 expected wOBA, 19% barrel rate, .286 expected batting average, and .587 expected slugging percentage all support his .862 OPS. Baseball Savant Profile Pages have rarely seen a page with more hues of red.

After his poor 2024 campaign, he changed his swing in the offseason to maximize what he’s best at: blasting fly balls all around the ballpark.

Swing Path Data allows us to take a peek under the hood at Alonso’s adjustments. He’s swung faster and more efficiently, reaping the rewards in return. According to Statcast, he’s taking efficient hacks at the plate 59% of the time, which ranks 33rd in the Majors.

So, what’s different in his 2025 version of his swing? Plenty.

He’s implemented a swing more conducive to his specialty: pulling fly-balls.

At the point of contact, the angle of his bat has drifted two degrees to the left, from 1˚ to 3˚. His average intercept point between ball and bat has tilted 11% towards the catcher. This could be the result of a slight stance adjustment, which has swung an inch towards the first-base dugout and three inches closer in between his appendages.

In plain English, he’s following good process with a brand-new hack, eliciting memories of the Polar Bear of old.

In contrast, Soto has raked at the plate in his first year in the Orange and Blue, albeit with a different approach than Alonso. Since May 1st, the 26-year-old’s scalded the ball to the tune of a .390 wOBA.

He continues to do what he does best: marry elite plate discipline with top-of-the-league power. His swing decisions are a thing of beauty; he offers at only 15% of pitches outside the strike zone, 13% lower than the league average.

Soto’s bat speed is slower than both his 2023 and 2024 campaigns, though that could be directly related to his shorter swing and a ballpark change, a topic that Eno Sarris of The Athletic recently touched upon.

Sarris wrote:

In 2023, he had a longer swing (for him, not for the league), but let the ball travel a little. In 2024, he had that same swing length, but got the ball out in front. This year, Soto has a shorter swing, and he’s letting the ball travel a little again. Both of those things would reduce his reported bat speed — without necessarily reducing his actual bat speed.

Then again, bat speed isn’t everything. Steven Kwan and Luis Arraez bring up the bottom of the Bat Speed Leaderboard, yet both are comfortably above-average hitters. Where Soto deviates from the bat speed laggards is his innate ability to generate hacks designed to produce extra base hits.

In 2025, balls have departed Soto’s bat at an optimal Attack Angle — or the vertical angle that the ball comes off his bat — 65 percent of the time, an increase of five degrees year-over-year, placing the slugger 9th in the Majors.  When a ball is hit within this optimal range, batters produce a .313 wOBA, compared to a .265 wOBA otherwise.

Soto’s a natural at maximizing his kinetic chain. He guides his bat through the zone at 28˚, six degrees lower than the Major-League Average. By leaving his bat in the zone for longer, he’s more likely to avoid whiffs.

There’s more than one way to solve the problem 60 feet, six inches away. Alonso’s bombardment of Big Daddy Hacks is certainly one way. And it works well. But similar to pitchers, not every hitter is cut from the same cloth.

The post The Data Behind the Mets’ Dynamic Duo appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

You turn and he’s there. The man who defined your childhood. The one you cheered on for years, no decades, as he emerged as the humblest superstar your franchise ever produced. The one you cheered on, in person, in his last professional game. As he exits the field one last time, you feel tears drip down your cheeks, as tears stream down your hero’s face, all while Alan Silvestri’s Captain America theme blares through stadium speakers.

You begin a casual conversation with your hero, your mind unravelling under the sheer weight of trying to piece together the right combination of words to thank him for a decade of hope, a decade of optimism. You’re trying not to stammer and trying not to stutter as the conversation you’ve practiced for years finally comes to fruition: thanking your role model for setting a path to follow, not only for himself and his teammates, but for an entire generation of young adults in the tristate area to follow.

On Friday, I ran into David Wright on my way home from work.

I can confirm that the public accolades are correct. David is as nice as can be, as pleasant as advertised.

David has a rare ability to resonate with anyone, even a random star-struck young professional. I didn’t need additional proof to believe the story of David driving a rookie Josh Satin home to Manhattan in the middle of the night, but I certainly got it. His public image, among Mets fans, is as pristine as it should be.

David’s contributions to the Mets have been well-chronicled and rightfully so. He’s the franchise leader in hits, runs, total bases, RBIs, bWAR, and Win Probability Added. He wasn’t just a great Met; his contributions on the field resulted in a nomination to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame Ballot, with a chance of getting in.

But his off-the-field work is what shone through. Steve Phillips’ call of “Not Only a Great Player, but a Great Person” still rings true.

In only his second season in the bigs, Wright established the “David Wright Foundation,” a local charity designed to increase awareness of multiple sclerosis. New York’s media, always ready to shoot someone down, rightfully put Wright on a pedestal thanks to his exceptional character, his never-ending work ethic, and his accountable captainship.

He was always the bright light during some putrid Mets teams in the mid-2010s. On September 29th, 2018, David received the send-off he so rightfully deserved after years of grueling rehab to heal a degenerative back condition.

Today, Citi Field will be rapturous as Wright’s No. 5 joins the rafters, alongside fellow Mets greats. I will be among the crowd, drowning out his speech with cheers of appreciation.

As a personal aside, I’ve always worn No. 5 for years playing sports. The reason was simple enough: On and off the field, I wanted to emulate the way David Wright conducted his business. 

If you’ve read my writing before, you probably know me for my Metsmerized StatCast series, or my interview with Mets minor leaguer Josh Hejka, or my never-ending analyses of Mets players through the lens of Baseball Savant. In other words, you know me as an analytical writer.

There is none of that with David Wright. There is solely an appreciation of how he conducted his business, day in and day out,  knowingly or not, to make me a better teammate, a better role model, and a better person.

The post Meeting Your Hero appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

Pete Alonso is slugging his way to a lucrative new contract.

His furious start has him primed as a contender for the franchise’s first MVP award. On the heels of a disappointing 2024 campaign, where the first baseman hit for a paltry. 343 wOBA and career-low .219 ISO, Alonso’s since posted a .310/.419/.589 clip in 2025, equivalent to a full-season total of 36 home runs.

His 2025 success can be attributed to batting stance adjustments that hitting coach Eric Chavez hinted at during a recent radio interview with Mets’ broadcaster Pat McCarthy. Chavez said:

“[Alonso’s]  totally revamped his swing…. He’s able to hold his positions a lot longer, stay behind the baseball and rotate behind the baseball.”

Baseball Savant’s new tooling visualizes how Alonso’s career year is a byproduct of his upgraded mechanics.

Savant’s litany of tools has defined baseball’s last half-decade. Their most notable disclosures revolved around the art of pitching, leading to terms like spin rate, seam orientation, and spin axis entering the public vernacular. Last season, it released arm angle data, its first such disclosure of pitching biomechanics.

Recently-released bat tracking and batting stance tools push the onus onto the fan to understand hitting biomechanics – similar to the explosion that has culminated in a pitching revolution.

Using Savant as a lens to delve into the art of hitting, we’re able to quantify Alonso’s adjustments that have led to his outstanding campaign.

In 2025, Pete Alonso’s average bat speed crept up to 76.3 mph. When he’s hitting hard-hit balls (as defined by Savant), his bat speed is nearly two miles an hour harder, compared to 2024. While this bat speed delta doesn’t sound like a lot off the bat (pun intended), batters, on average in 2025, have posted 50 points higher of wOBA on swings in the 77 mph bucket, compared to the 76 mph bucket.

His fast-swing rate (percentage of swings >75 mph) increased by 12%, compared to 2024. And when he’s swinging hard, the results follow, as evident by his career-best bat speed on hard-hit balls.

While bat speed is certainly a useful tool, it doesn’t tell the entire story – merely a single chapter. Bat speed isn’t a proxy for in-game hitting performance. It’s as if a pitcher added a change-up to his repertoire? Could it help? Absolutely. Is it a given? Not at all. Some of the best hitters in the league (Luis Arraez, Steven Kwan, etc) bring up off the bottom of the bat speed leaderboard.

Alonso’s power surge has been complemented by a drastic change in his batting stance at the plate. Thanks to Savant’s nifty features, we’re able to track player movement and biomechanics in and around the batter’s box.

His stance has closed off by seven degrees since Opening Day 2024; he’s standing shallower in the box, and he’s shortened his stance by half a foot. His intercept point (the x,y coordinates where his bat makes contact with the ball) shows that Alonso makes contact four inches in front of the plate, compared to the average Major League hitter.

While public bat tracking data is not available prior to the 2023 season, we can assume that these are the swing changes Chavez hinted at.

This isn’t your usual hot-start typically followed by a mid-season swoon; Alonso’s expected statistics support this level of production. While his BABIP is higher than career norms, his expected wOBA, average exit velocity, and hard-hit percentage all sit in the 98th percentile or higher. Brian Murphy of MLB.com recently investigated Alonso’s resurgence, noting that his plate discipline and two-strike approach have turned a corner, in addition to his swing alterations.

Overall, this new frontier of public hitting data is certain to produce additional insights. Major League Baseball – and quite a few of its fans – have pivoted to following the game through a data-driven approach. With additional data releases scheduled for later this year, it’s a wonderful time to be a baseball fan.

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Citi Field has historically been a desert for batters, Jody Gerut aside. Since 2021, hitters have posted a .694 OPS at the ballpark, 25 points lower than the league average.

Thanks to the wonderful work done by the Baseball Savant team, we can conclude that the venue is one of the most difficult parks to hit at. There’s a plethora of information that we can consult to measure this. We can look at home/away splits, weather effects, or expected production.

Savant’s ‘Park Factors‘ is a nifty tool that quantifies how much a stadium can impact a game’s offensive production by reducing statistical noise. Park Factors can indicate if a ballpark is favored towards pitchers or hitters, given the altitude, handedness preferences, and outfield dimensions.

For obvious reasons, Yankee Stadium grades out as favorable for left-handed hitters. Conversely, the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park presents an advantage to pitchers.

Below are the rolling Park Factors across all MLB stadiums for the last three seasons. 100 is the average; anything above 100 indicates a bias against hitters, and conversely, for hurlers.

Citi Field ranked as the eighth-worst ballpark for hitters from 2021 to 2024. In particular, the park was particularly detrimental towards triples and doubles.

In 2024, Batted Ball Events [BBEs] at the Mets’ home stadium travelled two feet below average, compared to similarly-hit balls. This is attributed to Citi’s elevation—or lack thereof. When a stadium’s altitude is higher, BBEs travel further; Citi only sits 10 feet above sea level. This effect explains the regular-season Home Run Derbies that frequently take place at the Castle-on-the-Hill that is Coors Field.

There’s another aspect at play that MLB.com’s Mike Petriello analyzed in a recent article. Using brand-new Baseball Savant tooling, he concluded that Citi Field’s wind has negatively impacted batted balls at the third-highest rate in the Majors.

That’s a known phenomenon with Citi Field’s batted balls that team officials and sabermetricians have studied for years. Many have theorized that the effect may be the result of the nearby LaGuardia Airport or the breeze from the nearby Flushing Bay.

Even the Mets’ head of baseball analytics, Ben Zauzmer, publicly acknowledged the conundrum in a 2021 interview with The Athletic:

“Citi Field definitely suppresses exit velocity,” head of analytics Ben Zauzmer said. “For any given player whose true talent is at a certain bar, you would expect the exit velocities to be lower at Citi Field than at the average park. And what’s fascinating about it is it appears to affect guys in all sorts of different situations.”

Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs studied this trend back in 2018, concluding Citi Field lends itself to more infield pop-ups, a reduced BABIP, and decreased exit velocities. Since Jeff Sullivan is a certified smart man™️, I wanted to update the analysis he helped formulate.

A way to analyze this phenomenon is to examine how batted balls play in Citi Field compared to other ballparks. BABIP, a metric used to calculate batting average on balls in play, can be used as a proxy to show how batted balls play, either at a player level, at a team level, or at a stadium level. BABIP is calculated via the following equation:

Using the PyBaseball Python API, I calculated the Mets’ BABIP for the last 15 seasons, comparing their BABIP while playing at Citi Field and away. 2020 is excluded. The code can be found here, and yes, it is in Polars. If you know, you know. The Sickos Know.

Since Citi Field opened 15 years ago, the Mets have had a higher BABIP on the road in 11 seasons. 2008’s 41 points of difference in Home/Away BABIP was the largest gap. In 2024, the difference was 15 points.

The Mets haven’t been the only ones to struggle at Citi Field. BABIP’s historically trended lower at Citi for all Major League Teams.

These wide gaps in BABIP can be explained by the way different batted-ball buckets play at Citi Field.

Although the analysis is a bit outdated, Fangraphs‘ Steve Staude previously helped prove Sullivan’s aforementioned conclusion that line drives play worse-than-expected at Citi. Staude deducted that venues with lower line-drive percentages have lower BABIPs. Citi Field’s 3.9% LD rate ranks as the second-lowest among active ballparks.

Line drives aren’t alone. Citi Field ranks 7th in active ballparks in pop-up percentage; pop-up percentage has an inverse relationship to BABIP.

Since the inception of Citi Field, the Mets have been aware of the deficiencies surrounding their home ballpark and have made moves to fix them. The so-called “Great Wall of Flushing” limited round-trippers at the stadium and was torn down after the 2011 campaign. The club also moved in their center and right field fences multiple times to induce more offense at the park.

Oh, and signing the best hitter in the world with a career .305 BABIP won’t hurt either.

Overall, Citi Field is still a pitcher’s haven. Despite the plethora of Mets’ struggles at Citi Field, innate environmental influence has deadened offensive production at the venue.

The post Offense At A Premium At Citi Field. Here’s Why. appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

David Stearns and his group aimed to kill two birds with one stone with their signing Friday night, swiping RHP Clay Holmes from the New York Yankees and inking the hurler to a three-year, $38 million contract.

One of baseball’s best firemen is a fascinating addition to the Mets’ staff. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Holmes will be signed as a starting pitcher, despite being primarily utilized out of the bullpen in his career. Passan also reported that Holmes will receive an opt-out after the second year.

Holmes finished 2024 on a sour note, losing his late-inning job to Luke Weaver, amidst 13 blown regular season saves. That’s not to discredit his dominant four-year stretch where he established himself as one of the game’s best set-up men.

Holmes represents a different project for the Mets’ pitching development group after they signed Frankie Montas earlier in the week. Holmes is in familiar company in the Mets organization, due to Eric Jagers and Co. recently poaching highly-regarded pitching coach Desi Druschel from the Yankees. Druschel overlapped with Holmes for years in New York.

Unlike Montas, Holmes enjoyed recent excellence, employing a nasty sinker/sweeper combo en route to a 3.71 ERA/3.44 FIP in 2024.

However, like Montas, Holmes’ success depended on another team optimizing his arsenal. In 2019, the Pirates sent the struggling reliever packing to the Yankees in exchange for two minor leaguers. Pittsburgh attributed his command issues to the wild movement his pitches produced.

A decade ago, Holmes would have floundered in the 40-man bubble, with his command serving as the main detriment to a stable roster spot.

A decade ago, the idea of seam-shifted wake only existed in theory. However, around the time, Holmes was sent to New York, the idea of seam-shifted wake (SSW) had made its way into the public domain, thanks to ground-breaking work from Utah Professor Barton Smith.

Smith concluded that certain pitches move more unexpectedly through their path to the plate, a byproduct of the ball’s seams interacting in a certain way with air molecules.

The Yankees incorporated Smith’s research into their reasoning for Holmes’ acquisition. Baseball Savant proves this theory; Holmes’ pitches move vertically more than any other comparable offerings. 

Coupled with Dreschel’s specialty in pitch tunneling, Holmes broke out in a big way upon landing in the Bronx. Dreschel took advantage of Holmes’s perceived weakness – his movement – and turned it into his greatest strength.

In shorter stints, his new repertoire shone.

As a reliever, his sinker emerged as his bread-and-butter, inducing hellacious swings year over year. Coupled with his high release point, his seam-shifted wake and -7.2 VAA gave batters fits. The Seam Shifted Wake phoneme can be observed via the 75-degree difference between the pitch’s spin-based movement and the observed movement indicating a degree of a seam-shifted wake.

Max Bay, currently a quantitative analyst for the World Champions Los Angeles Dodgers, recently released a publicly accessible app that calculates a pitch’s effectiveness by visualizing its expected shape, with respect to a pitcher’s arm angle. Given his 49-degree arm angle, Holmes’ sinker moves six inches more than expected. This unexpected movement leads to more whiffs and poorly-topped ground balls.

Holmes paired his outstanding sinker with a pair of excellent breaking balls. In 2024, his slider performed as one of the best in the business, finishing with a +6 Run Value. Meanwhile, his sweeper induced a 40% putaway rate. This duo helped his Breaking Ball Run Value finish in the 86th percentile in Run Value in 2024

Savant Pitch Mix Analysis visualized Holmes’s plan of action in 2024. He threw his sinker most often when even and behind in the count, and utilized his sweeper and slider mix to finish his opponents off.

Holmes quickly emerged as one of skipper Aaron Boone‘s most trusted arms upon joining the club, stabilizing the late innings in the Bronx. Holmes ditched his slider and change-up, focusing on the pitches that produced the most hectic movement profiles. His whiff rate rose 20% from his time with Pittsburgh while his strong ground ball remained among the league leaders. In his four seasons in the pinstripes, the 31-year-old right-hander pitched to a 2.69 ERA/2.74 FIP, racking up 74 saves and 19 holds.

Clay Holmes, Vicious 98mph Sinker. 😤 pic.twitter.com/WdE0pl3nBt

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 16, 2024

Technically speaking, Holmes routinely finished among the best in the league in xwOBA, wOBA, xSLG, Barrel %, and xERA over the last four seasons. If it wasn’t for Edwin Díaz locking down the 9th inning across the river, Holmes would have gotten more notice as a household name in New York City.

And yet, despite predictions at the offseason’s outset that he would pitch in tandem with a closer in the same ilk as Díaz in 2025, Holmes will instead slot into the Mets’ rotation to kick off the campaign. While his offerings worked very well out of the bullpen, he should look for an additional weapon to counter the third-time-through-the-order penalty. Although his wOBA in 2024 was similar against both sides of the plate, he should permanently incorporate a change-up into his arsenal, a pitch he’s only tinkered with in games.

A change-up could be a perfect addition to Holmes’ arsenal, given Holmes’ native tendency as a supinator and his work with Tread Athletics. Multiple Mets pitchers, including Jose Quintana, have trained with Tread to improve their pitch design.

In an October 2024 article, Bryan Hoch of MLB.com noted that Holmes recently reincorporated his four-seam fastball late in the season. This fastball, and proposed change-up, could be the key to Holmes’ success as a starter in 2024.

Overall, this is a big swing by the Mets’ front office. Seth Lugo and Jordan Hicks serve as recent examples of relievers that have made the pen-to-rotation shift. Lugo just finished among the AL Cy Young finishers while the jury’s still out on Hicks. Holmes is in the mold of Hicks; a pitcher with a limited arsenal with historical command concerns. Given the Mets’ recent pitching development wins, David Stearns deserves the benefit of the doubt with his plan to mold Clay into a starter.

The post A Deep Dive into Clay Holmes appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Santucci was ranked 37th by MLB Pipeline, 50th by the Athletic, and 64th by ESPN.

Santucci is a southpaw out of Duke, who struggled with health during the 2024 campaign, but had terrific stuff when he was on the field. Santucci’s profile is driven by his slider. His fastball has some positive traits, the most notable being plus-vertical break. His repertoire is rounded out by a change-up, though, it was used sporadically in college. MLB Pipeline grades his fastball and slide both at “60” which is above average.

In 2024, Santucci posted a 3.31 ERA and 90 strikeouts as Duke’s Friday night starter. His 58 innings represented a career-high. He was named to the 2024 All-ACC First Team. Santucci did struggle mightily with his control during his college career. He posted 72 walks across his 128 1/3 innings college career. This leading to the “45” (below-average-to-average) control grade by MLB Pipeline.

Jonathan Santucci. (photo by Duke Athletics)

Health has always been an issue for the Santucci. In his junior season, he underwent surgery to address bone chips in his left elbow. His senior year was cut short by a rib injury that cost him three weeks. He returned for two frames during Duke postseason, where he sat 95-to-96 mph with his fastball.

Despite moonlighting as a two-way player in college, Santucci was only announced as a pitcher. He only had 53 career college at-bats, posting a .685 OPS.

Will Sammon of the Athletic recently reported that the Mets were looking to draft, “pitchers with electric raw stuff.” Baseball America noted Santucci, along with Brandon Sproat and Blade Tidwell, represents the third college pitcher that the Mets have drafted after he slipped on draft night. Santucci early projections fit that profile.

The 46th overall pick carriers a slot value of $2,031,700.

Rounds 3-10 will occur tomorrow, starting at 2:00 pm ET. The Mets will make their next selection at pick 82.

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