On Wednesday, Bloomberg released an article stating that PGA Tour signed a $3 billion investment deal with the Strategic Sports Group, which includes the Fenway Sports Group and Mets owner Steve Cohen. The deal will include an initial investment of $1.5 billion and is for a new for-profit entity which values PGA Tour Enterprises at $12 billion. LIV Golf is not initially involved in the deal, but The Saudi Public Investment Fund will provide additional money if PGA and LIV Golf reach an agreement on a merger. The group includes numerous other owners including Arthur Blank of the Atlanta Falcons, Tom Ricketts of the Chicago Cubs, and Wyc Grousbeck of the Boston Celtics. 

Steve Cohen. Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Latest Mets News

Six Mets prospects break into the ESPN top 100 prospects list: Jett Williams, Drew Gilbert, Luisangel Acuña, Ronny Mauricio, Ryan Clifford, and Christian Scott. Click here to see where they landed on the list. 

The Mets announced their promotion schedule for the 2024 season as well as a different start time for Saturday games, check out Metsmerized’s article on it to learn about all the important dates and information!

Former Mets reliever Joe Smith is calling it a career after 16 major league seasons, per his agency Excel Baseball. Smith appeared in a whopping 866 games throughout his career while racking up 228 career holds. 

Mets radio announcer Keith Raad joined FanGraphs‘ “Beat the Shift Podcast” to talk about his career path and answer some questions about this years Mets club. 

The Mets’ Double-A affiliate, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, announce that their old persona — the “Binghamton Mets” — will return for select games during the 2024 season. 

Latest MLB News

Left-handed relief pitcher Wandy Peralta agreed to a a four-year, $16.5 million deal with the San Diego Padres, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. The deal includes three opt-outs. Click here to learn more about the signing. 

The Baltimore Orioles released an official statement as the Angelos family agrees to sell control stake in the Baltimore Orioles to David Rubenstein and his group, which includes Cal Ripken Jr. The release, which was posted to Twitter by Dan Connolly of Sportsnaut.com, says that John Angelos will stay on as a senior advisor and the Angelos family will keep over 30% stake. 

RHP Wily Peralta signed a minor league deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates, which includes an invite to spring training, per Robert Murray of FanSided. The veteran relief pitcher put up a 2.93 ERA in his two seasons with the Detroit Tigers. 

Former Met Robert Gsellman signed a minor league deal with the Washington Nationals and will make $900k if he is in the majors with the club, per Jon Heyman of the New York Post. 

Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic reported that the guarantee on James Paxton‘s one-year deal with the Dodgers will be lowered due to an unspecified health concern. The guarantee will be lowered from $11 million to $7 million but still has a maximum potential value of $13 million. 

The Boston Red Sox claimed utility man Romy Gonzalez off of waivers from the Chicago White Sox and in turn designated RHP Zack Weiss for assignment. 

The Houston Astros announced that they are acquiring IF/OF Trey Cabbage from the Los Angeles Angels and are sending RHP Carlos Espinosa in return. 

Latest on MMO

Patrick Glynn ranked all five projected NL East starting third baseman for the 2024 season. 

Take a look at the Mets’ promotion schedule for the 2024 season!

See where the Mets’ top prospects landed on ESPN’s top 100 prospect list. 

On This Date in Mets History

2013: The New York Mets sign Marlon Byrd to a minor league deal. Byrd would go on to bat .285 and lead the team with 21 home runs before being traded to the Pirates later in the season.

Birthdays: Steve Gelbs (37), Austin Jackson (37), Rich Becker (52), Joe Vitko (54)

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As Justin Turner tweeted Saturday night, he and the Dodgers will be reunited after the third baseman tested free agency after the 2020 season.

Jon Heyman of MLB Network later tweeted that Turner, now 36 years old, and the Dodgers have agreed on a two-year deal. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic added that the deal is for $34 million over two years with a club option for a third year, and a $8 million signing bonus.

Justin Turner deal with Dodgers, per source: Two years, $34M, with club option for third season. Includes $8M signing bonus.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 14, 2021

Turner returns to the team he’s been with since 2014, and where he won a World Series last season, though was unable to be on the field for the last out because of a positive result of a COVID-19 test. Turner began his career with the Orioles in 2009, and after brief appearances for Baltimore in 2009 and 2010, was waived and claimed by the Mets in May of 2010.

As a Met over four seasons, the Long Beach, CA native slashed .265/.326/.370 with eight home runs and 86 RBIs. He was non-tendered by the Mets after the 2013 season, and signed with his hometown Dodgers for the 2014 season.

As a Dodger through seven seasons, Turner slashed .302/.382/.503 with 116 home runs and a 139 OPS+. His best seasons were 2016 and 2019, when he hit 27 home runs in each of those seasons. In the 2015 NLDS against the Mets, Turner led the Dodgers with 10 hits in 19 at-bats, with six of those hits being doubles.

During his free agency this off season, there was some speculation that the Mets may be interested in a Turner reunion, as rumors have abounded that the Mets are seeking to upgrade third base. Turner’s return to Flushing never seemed realistic, as he seems very comfortable playing in his native Southern California, and his departure from the Mets in 2013 was not amicable.

Turner has said that he was non-tendered because he was working with former Met Marlon Byrd on a hitting approach that was not consistent with the Mets’ team approach. He has openly stated that he left on bad terms, and has an objective to play well against the Mets to make them see that they made a mistake. Since Sandy Alderson, GM when Turner was non-tendered, is back with the Mets, it was unlikely Turner would consider coming back to New York.

Although Turner is signing with Los Angeles late in the off season, he had been courted by the Brewers, who reportedly made him a multi-year offer. With Turner off the board, the Mets can focus their third base energy elsewhere (the Kris Bryant rumors are hot right now, and the Mets have also contacted the Athletics about Matt Chapman).

Acting GM Zack Scott said on Friday that the Mets are comfortable going into the season with JD Davis playing an important role, though that role was never defined. It seems likely the Mets will try hard to land a new third baseman for 2021, and now it’s clear that third baseman will not be Justin Turner.

The post MLB News: Justin Turner Returns To Dodgers On Two-Year Deal appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

A copy of Swing Kings by Jared Diamond. [Ryan Kolakowski]

Diamond spent three years as the Mets beat reporter for the Wall Street Journal from 2013 until 2015, and Swing Kings includes several stories from those Mets teams. I spoke with Diamond about Swing Kings, the 2015 World Series-bound Mets and when we might see baseball again in 2020.

MMO – This story started as a Wall Street Journal article in 2017. What inspired you to build it into a book?

Jared Diamond – I did not understand how it was possible that great Major League players got great by working with people that didn’t work in Major League Baseball or professional baseball at all. I didn’t understand how that was possible. I assumed, the way I think many people would assume, that the best hitting coaches or the best pitching coaches or the best anything in baseball in the world worked in Major League Baseball.

If there was somebody better than those people, those would be the people working in Major League Baseball. So, that was my question, and every great story always starts with a question that you then set out to answer. For me, that question was, “How is this possible? Why are these people not working in Major League Baseball? How was it that there was this underground subculture of baseball instruction that seems to be outside of Major League Baseball?” Once I realized that that question took more than a 1,000 word Wall Street Journal article to write, that’s when I said “We’ve got to see what else we can do with this.”

It turned out that I had 95,000 words to write about the topic, and I hope that over the course of those 95,000 words I do my part in answering the question that sort of confounded me for the last three years.

MMO – The other day you tweeted how Daniel Murphy’s 2015 postseason laid the groundwork for Swing Kings. Why start with Murphy?

Diamond – We get to the 2015 playoffs and Daniel Murphy does what he did, It was absolutely remarkable, we all remember. It was really one of the most incredible runs of baseball I’ve ever seen. It just struck me, “How was this possible?” And I realized the way it was possible was that he changed his swing. It was about technique more than anything else for Daniel Murphy in that postseason.

I had covered Daniel Murphy for three years at that point, and he was a good player, but it was very clear what he was. He was a guy that looked to hit the ball the other way. He looked to hit the ball up the middle. He looked to hit the ball on a line or on the ground. He actively didn’t look to pull the ball, and then suddenly  that postseason comes and he is turning on inside pitches.

You could just see it clearly with your eyes, watching it, that he was looking to pull the ball. He was looking to put the ball in the air. It was a different mental approach than he’d ever had before, physical approach than he’s ever had before. That was incredible to me because it proved, or at least demonstrated, that a big part of hitting is technique and one can improve his performance by improving his technique.

MMO – And what was it like for you to cover that Mets team?

Diamond –  It was the most fun I’ve ever had in this job, was covering the last two months of the 2015 season, because they were getting buried. We all remember, they were not going anywhere. For much of the 2015 season they were talking about 2016 and how they could get better. Suddenly, they had this run, and it was so remarkable.

To me, it all started with the Wilmer Flores non-trade. From that night on, the season was just an absolute whirlwind… It was just an unending source of drama. 

MMO – Now I want to dive into the content of the book without giving away too many spoilers. How did you learn about and track down these private hitting coaches?

Diamond – I get a lot of inspiration just from reading local beat reporting. There are so many great local beat writers out there crushing it. Over the course of 2015, 2016 and into 2017, I kept reading about these independent hitting coaches. J.D. Martinez started talking publicly about Craig Wallenbrock. Justin Turner started talking publicly about Doug Latta, and Josh Donaldson with Bobby Tewksbary… So I had the names, and then it just became finding them.

It turned out, back then, guys were totally anonymous. They had never really been given a lot of recognition until now, so I had the opportunity to sort of embed myself with them early on and they were all, fortunately, interested in talking about their philosophies and theories about the swing.

MMO – These private instructors embraced film before Major League coaches. Why did they use it while professionals spurned those tools?

Diamond – So, Craig Wallenbrock, I consider him the godfather of everything happening with the swing. He is in his mid-70s and he has had a fascinating life. If there were a main character of this book, I would say it’s Craig Wallenbrock. He is one of the most fascinating human beings I’ve ever met in my entire life, and I hope I did his story justice.

In the book, this is a guy who quit baseball when he was about 20 years old, moved out to the beach in California and became a full-time, as he said, “pot-smoking hippie,” and full-time surfer. This was the guy who I think revolutionized hitting in ways that very few people in baseball have, and the way that he did that, like you mentioned, is by adopting film early on — starting to look at film as early as the 70s and 80s before that was in vogue.

The attitude back then was, “Good hitters don’t need film. Good hitters know what they’re doing. You’re somehow weak or it’s somehow less manly or macho to look at video of yourself. A good hitter knows what makes him a good hitter.”… It took outsiders to be the innovators that said, “Well that’s dumb. Obviously looking at video is a good idea, and if you’re not going to do it, I’m going to do it.” And what these hitting coaches found, Craig Wallenbrock perhaps being the first, was what great hitters say they do or think they do is not always what they actually do.

MMO – There’s a lot of content in your book for Mets fans. Marlon Byrd, Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy are all mentioned. How did Queens become such a significant part of the home run revolution?

Diamond – It started with Marlon Byrd, first and foremost. Marlon Byrd comes to the Mets in 2013, my first year covering the Mets, as a non-roster invitee, a non-roster minor league contract guy. He ends up making the club after  having an unbelievable spring training, and I think by about the beginning of May he’s the Mets cleanup hitter. And we all know he had a great season in 2013.

That was probably the best season of his career, and he was already about 34 or 35 years old at the time, you’d have to check me. How did he do it? How does this guy do it? And for most of the season he wasn’t really talking about. He just said, “Well I made some changes to my swing.” He didn’t really get into how, and other players noticed. Guys like Turner, Murphy and many others said ‘What are you doing man? Your swing looks weird. Your swing looks different.’

‘Yeah, I made changes.’ But it was sort of, guys didn’t want to try to emulate it. It was so radical. It looked so weird. 

Well, eventually, Marlon Byrd opens up. Enough time has gone by that it’s no longer dangerous to be honest about what he did, and he talks about Doug Latta. The story of how Marlon Byrd met Doug Latta is one of my favorite anecdotes in the book. I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s really fascinating how the twists of fate can happen to a person. But anyway, he makes some incredible swing changes under Doug Latta’s tutelage.

Eventually, Justin Turner, who was sort of on the fringes, we all know he was cut in the offseason between 2013 and 2014, he says, “I’ve got to get on this program. I don’t know what you’re doing or how you learned this or who taught you to do this, but clearly it worked for you and I think it can work for me.” That’s how it really started with the Mets, with Byrd and Turner making these changes. Unfortunately, when it came to the Mets, they really didn’t get the benefits from the changes that Justin Turner made because the Mets cut him in the offseason between ‘13 and ‘14.

MMO – You note in the book how Mets coaches barred Byrd from talking to teammates about his new swing. Do you think those coaches regret that now, especially after seeing Turner and Murphy succeed elsewhere?

Diamond – I think they’ve learned. I’m sure they regret it to an extent, but moreover I think they just know better now. The Mets hitting coach in 2013 was Dave Hudgens. Dave Hudgens, of course, would go on to work for the Astros, and suddenly was teaching similar things to what he was going against in 2013. So people evolve.

People change and they learn. So, do I think they regret cutting Justin Turner? Do they regret not taking Marlon Byrd’s influence a little bit more? Yeah maybe, maybe not. I don’t think it’s fair to really blame anybody. 

MMO – The result of this revolution is obviously more home runs. Is there a power hitter that you like watching or covering the most?

Diamond – I love watching Christian Yelich hit. He’s obviously made changes to his swing. He’s sort of a bit coy and cagy about what he actually did, but seeing the new Christian Yelich versus the Christian Yelich that I saw torment the Mets in Miami, how much better he’s gotten, I absolutely love watching.

MMO – We should be a few days into the baseball season, but Opening Day has been postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. When you think we’ll see live Major League Baseball?

Diamond – It’s so sad. The day that it all really hit me was opening day. It was a really tough day for me, and I’m sure for many others. Opening Day is the best day of the year. It just is. It’s going to be a while, but I still do believe there’s going to be baseball in 2020. I don’t know when. I don’t know if it will be any sooner than June, at the earliest. Maybe even July.

But I do know that baseball views itself as part of the recovery process, and they’re going to do everything in its power to make sure there are games this year. It’s going to be so satisfying when it does happen.

Follow Jared on Twitter @jareddiamond.

The post MMO Exclusive: The WSJ’s Jared Diamond appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

In this age of Major League Baseball, one in which data, analytics and technology are at the forefront and supply teams with substantiated numbers and information, players and front offices are using these advances to help enhance talent and shape organizational philosophies.

While utilizing this technology and data, players, coaches and the front office are able to more accurately assess strengths and weaknesses, along with helping to understand how improvements can be made and where.

In prior player developments, organizations would have their respective ideologies and techniques for improving talent from the bottom up in their systems. With the increased usage of tech and analytics, organizations can more accurately fine-tune players’ skill-sets with measurable data.

For example, if a pitcher is looking to add another pitch to his repertoire, he can use an Edgertronic – high-speed cameras that capture video at 1,000 frames per second – that can give him a much clearer breakdown of his release point, how it’s leaving his hand and the spin to better discern the quality. Pair that with a Rapsodo, a device that generates real-time data such as spin axis and spin efficiency to allow a pitcher to monitor if the pitch he’s designing is getting enough movement, and you’ll find how Trevor Bauer developed his slider after the 2017 season.

This type of data offers intricate precision that allows a player to better understand what the pitch is doing and what he needs to tinker in order to get the results he’s looking for. Being able to have the tangible data to verify how a pitch is moving, spinning, etc. is satisfying and gives a pitcher more assurance than just going off of feel.

On the offensive side, hitters can wear K-Vests, which measure the kinetic sequence along with tracking the body positions at different points of a swing to develop better habits and mechanics at the plate. Many have also taken it upon themselves to receive outside instruction from private hitting coaches, who have personalized and revived players’ careers, with J.D. Martinez and Justin Turner as two prime examples of this.

Teams are also employing more and more conduits – former professionals who act as liaisons between the players and front offices – who analyze and break down data and then bring it to players to discuss. Brian Bannister, the former Mets and Royals pitcher from 2006-10, who was hired by the Boston Red Sox as an analyst and pro scout in 2015 and has since become Vice President, Pitching Development and Assistant Pitching coach. In ’15, Bannister was the one who approached journeyman lefty Rich Hill, who was pitching with the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox, about throwing his curve more often due to the high spin rate and great separation between his fastball.

Since 2016, Hill has thrown his curve 38.9% of the time, second-most among qualified pitchers in that span. Opposing batters have hit just .213 against Hill’s curve.

In regards to organizations, no team has embraced the growth mindset and changing landscape in player development quite like the Houston Astros. The Astros have fully embraced the technology and analytics from top to bottom.

General Manager Jeff Luhnow has completely overhauled the entire Astros’ system, utilizing technology and employing the data from the lowest rungs of their minor league system. The organization has been leading the charge of implementing high-speed cameras and radar tracking systems in every one of their minor league affiliates, and has essentially gotten a head start among all other teams in gathering data and using that for scouting and development purposes.

The success the Astros have displayed, both behind the scenes and on the field, has made their coaching staff and front office employees extremely in demand, as clubs have swooped in to hire many of their former executives and coaches in hopes to extract what they’ve learned in Houston to their new organization.

The exciting aspect of what a team, such as the Astros, has done with their system means prospects are not necessarily bound by a natural ceiling any longer. Scouts and those in the industry use terms such as ceiling and floor to help project what a player’s best and worst-case scenarios may be in helping to perceive their value. With the use of technology and data, teams are able to unlock players’ latent potential with discernible evidence to back it up.

Perhaps the numbers indicate that a pitcher’s two-seam fastball to left-handed hitters was underwhelming and that he wasn’t utilizing his curve – which had a high spin rate – enough. Then, they asked the pitcher to elevate his four-seam fastball and increase his slider usage to play off the fastball to make it that much more effective.

That’s exactly what the Astros asked reliever Ryan Pressly to do, who has since seen big increases in whiff rate, and has been one of the more dominant relievers in the game.

The role of player development has reached new heights over the last several years, as organizations are looking for ways in which to gain an edge in the sport. After the release of “Moneyball” in 2003, teams were looking for undervalued players and market inefficiencies by looking at and analyzing data.

This idea swept through Major League Baseball, and soon every organization featured a statistical analysis department that was able to discern and break down sabermetrics. The gap between all 30 clubs in searching and being able to find untapped value was essentially shrinking.

The next frontier for front offices was not necessarily finding players who already have value but about being able to enhance their own internal talent.

Writers Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer, Effectively Wild Podcast) and Travis Sawchik (FiveThirtyEight) sought out to shed light on the techniques, technologies and data used to help shape and enhance players in their new book, “The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players.”

The book delivers detailed insight into the transformation baseball has undergone in player development, tracing its roots from Branch Rickey and the introduction of a farm system to the Royals Academy in the early 1970s to today’s wealth of incontrovertible data which has aided in talent development.

Lindbergh and Sawchik lift the curtains to expose many of the processes, techniques and ideologies that teams and players are using in helping to get players to fully realize their potential in the game. The information shared by the authors in this book is the type of stuff that had gone previously unnoticed by fans and yet, is crucial in the development and success of players and teams.

I had the privilege of speaking to one of the authors, Ben Lindbergh, about his latest work for this Mets Merized interview.

MMO: Where did the idea of writing a book on player development come from?

Lindbergh: We came to it independently and then ultimately teamed up. Both of us thought that this was the story of baseball in this era; that player development was the area of greatest growth, innovation and excitement when it came to being able to make players better.

I think each of us had a different origin story or player who made us realize that something was going on here. I think in Travis’s case he was covering the Pirates in 2013 when Marlon Byrd was there, and Byrd had kind of a career year at 35. He had changed his swing and gone to see hitting coach Doug Latta, and Travis was really struck by how Byrd had become more of a flyball hitter at that age. He had thought at that point, having taken so many thousands of swings, getting to the big leagues, and staying there for a long time, that your swing was probably pretty fixed and set. That there wasn’t a whole lot you could do with it. And then Byrd showed that wasn’t the case; you really could change your career even at that late of an age.

For me, it was another 35-year-old in Rich Hill who had been bouncing around in the minors, Indy ball and the big leagues for years. When Brian Bannister of the Red Sox told him, “Hey, I looked at your TrackMan data and you’ve got a really incredible curveball, and you should throw that more often,” did he really unlock that latent potential that was there the whole time? He went from Indy ball to being one of the best pitchers in baseball and making more money than he had in his whole career up until that point.

Those stories were really inspirational and eye-opening to us, and we really hadn’t considered that players who had already reached the pinnacle of their profession could possibly unlock even more. And yet, guys like that and J.D. Martinez and Justin Turner, they were doing that, and it seemed like that was spreading.

There was this technology and a new emphasis on enhancing player performance, and we wanted to be the first to tell that story because I think player development has kind of been undercovered historically. There really hasn’t been books on it before, and we thought this would be a way to stake out some new territory and tell a story people might not be aware of.

MMO: How did you and Travis split up the research and writing for the book?

Lindbergh: We sort of decided at the beginning that each of us had certain specialties, interests, connections and geographic locations that made us better to do certain things. Travis is in Cleveland, so it made it convenient for him to talk to Trevor Bauer a lot, so he handled the Bauer parts of the book, at least the initial drafts.

I was interested in history, so I worked on the history stuff, and I was interested in Bannister and had a relationship with him, so I worked on the Bannister stuff.

I think it sort of worked out where we each had things that we thought we were probably a little bit better suited for that would be easier for us to do. We divided it almost down the middle in terms of workload and divvied up the chapters and said we would each do the initial writing, research and reporting.

Each of the chapters sort of started as a Ben or Travis chapter, but by the end, they were all Ben and Travis chapters because we traded chapters back and forth, and then we gave each other feedback and revised everything and contributed reporting to each other’s chapter. It ended up being very much a team effort, even though we tried to kind of divide and conquer.

MMO: While all 30 clubs employ an analytics department – with some more heavily involved and invested than others – your book takes a deeper dive into the evolution of the sabermetric movement in helping to improve and enhance players already in their systems through the use of data and technology. Can you talk a bit about the change we’ve seen in player development over the years, and the time frame that baseball started to witness this change?

Lindbergh: I think there were precursors to this movement, and we wanted to document those because baseball has such a long, rich history. A lot of the things we think are new and unprecedented do turn out to have some precedence somewhere at some time, and we wanted to make those connections and show how things that are happening today, in some cases, are things that people were thinking about years ago. I think the game wasn’t really ready for them on a broad scale, and in many cases, the technology wasn’t there yet.

I think it’s a confluence of those two things that you needed the sabermetric movement to kind of question some of the traditions in baseball and bring some new thinking into the game. The same disruption that happened with front offices, where you had people with non-traditional backgrounds getting hired and making those decisions. I think that’s now filtered down into the coaching ranks and instruction, which previously – like front offices used to be – were really the realm of former players. Former players would become coaches and teach the next generation of players the same things they had been taught, so these same tactics and techniques would be passed down from generation to generation. There was some stagnation in thinking, and you had to be a former professional player, a high-level player in almost all cases, to be a big-league coach.

There wasn’t that rich variety of perspectives that you get now. I think teams are looking more at: What can these coaches do, and are they intellectually curious? Are they open to new ideas, and are they based on reason and evidence? Do they have a track record of making players better? I think all that is more important now than where did you play and how good were you as a player. I think that has really shaken things up a bit.

We portray it as a new phase of the game, and it’s sort of an extension of the previous phase, and we’ve been talking about Moneyball for fifteen plus years at this point. The idea of Moneyball is that you’re really just looking for some inefficiencies, some competitive advantage that initially took the form of finding talent that was already out there. Finding players who were already good and already valuable, but for whatever reason, the market just didn’t recognize that value, whether it was walks and OBP, catcher framing, etc.

The idea was players were already good and teams didn’t realize it, and that now becomes very difficult to do. You can’t really find that free talent out there anymore because I think all teams are pretty good at appraising past performance and saying this is what this player was worth.

Now the real way to separate yourself is not to be better at finding talent that’s already out there but to be better at building, creating or enhancing talent. I think that’s the big emphasis now. The technology is there to analyze how players are performing, not just the results but the mechanics and the process. What can they do better, whether it’s building a new pitch from scratch, throwing a certain pitch that’s already good more, or changing the swing so that if you’re already hitting the ball hard, you’re hitting it in the air instead of on the ground.

All of these things are seen as possible now, whereas in the past, I think the prevailing idea was that you got the most talented prospects, and they would ultimately turn out to be the most talented players. These days, I think there’s a little more flexibility there, and maybe your raw talent dictates your ultimate outcome a little less than it used to.

Word.

MMO: I think what’s exciting about the strategies and implementations of the advanced player development system we’re witnessing now is the fact that players are in a sense no longer bound by a natural ceiling. We’ve seen older players like Rich Hill, J.D. Martinez and Justin Turner completely change their projections and become stars.

Lindbergh: Yeah, I think so. And there are unintended consequences of this whole movement, and maybe negative consequences. And we talk about that in the book, too. I think it’s an inspirational thing that players who were written off who were believed to be a certain type of player, it turns out that they’re not necessarily bound by that. I think these days we’ve seen so many players who were supposed to have a certain ceiling be much better than that.

The idea of talent is less fixed now than it used to be is an exciting idea when it comes to players like Byrd, Turner, Martinez or Hill; guys who already made it to the big leagues but also with prospects, young players and amateur guys who are just coming up now and are being exposed to all these ideas early on. That’s not to say that natural talent isn’t still a factor; it certainly is. There are some people who probably don’t have to apply themselves quite as hard and make it to that level, and there are others who might apply themselves incredibly hard and will still not make it to that level. But I still think it dictates what you turn out to be a little less than it used to be.

In the past, you might’ve been written off because you couldn’t throw a fastball this speed or you weren’t a big guy and you weren’t believed to have the potential to hit for power. But now maybe you can throw your curveball or slider thirty or forty percent of the time, and if it’s really good, then that can make up for a lackluster fastball. Or if you’re not a big guy, you can still optimize your swing; you can hit the ball farther out in front of the plate. You can hit for a lot of power even though you don’t have the build of a traditional power hitter. I think that’s a pretty powerful idea, and it’s one that we hoped would extend beyond baseball as well.

MMO: Trevor Bauer is a central figure in the book. Can you talk a little about his ascension, and his role in shaping the use of advanced technology and data in today’s game?

Lindbergh: There were pluses and minuses with featuring Bauer, of course. Off the field, and the things he’s said on Twitter, he is far from a perfect poster boy for this movement, and he’s a flawed person for sure. But he has been a pioneering player and probably has done more than any other player in this era to push player development forward through his own success when we talk about designing a slider and making that into one of the best pitches in baseball and being one of the best pitchers in the game last year.

I think it goes beyond his own performance to the influence he’s had on other players, whether it’s teammates and front offices who’ve looked at the things he’s done. I mean, he’s introduced a lot of tactics, techniques and technology to the game that prior to him just weren’t a part of baseball or were kind of on the fringes but weren’t being used actively by a major leaguer. He’s set the example of showing that you really can benefit from these things.

He was the first player to use the Edgertronic cameras to show that it can play an important part in pitch design. He sort of created the science of pitch design. Previously, pitchers would pass on pitches to other players or pitching coaches would pass on to players, but it wasn’t such a scientific tech process the way it is now.

Today, you’re pairing these high-speed cameras with Rapsodo spin-tracking devices, and you’re saying this is what I want my pitches to look like, and I want to tunnel them so they play really well with each other. I’m just going to throw off the mound and see how they look based on this footage and data, and I’ll just tweak pitch-by-pitch until I get closer to what I want these pitches to be.

I think Bauer has shown the potential of that process, and it’s been widely adapted. It’s difficult to buy an Edgertronic camera these days because they’re often sold out because teams are buying them up as quickly as they’re manufactured. And that’s in large part because he showed there was potential there.

Whatever you think of him as a person, I don’t think that we could’ve pulled the story of modern player development accurately and comprehensively without explaining the role that he’s played in it.

MMO: A name that Mets fans will remember is Brian Bannister, who you and Travis also profile in the book. He’s now the Vice President / Pitching Development & Assistant Pitching Coach for the Red Sox. I loved this quote from the book, in which Bannister talks about the work he put in with Zack Greinke: “I realized that my future was not about me competing for a Cy Young Award or being an All-Star, but about taking that information, studying it more than anybody and using it to help the best players in the world become even better.” What makes Bannister such an influential figure in the world of pitching?

Lindbergh: The Bannister chapter might be my favorite part of the book. He really helped us out a lot in sharing his perspective. Before I teamed up with Travis, I had envisioned maybe writing a whole book on players like Bannister; former players who are now in this role we call the conduit who are conveying this information from the front office to the field. That has been such a big part of this process because Bannister was a player who didn’t throw very hard and was always looking for information and ways to make himself better. He was pitching at the time that PITCHf/x came on; the first pitch-tracking technology that was widely available. He used that to evaluate himself, developed a cutter, prolonged his career and made himself a bit more effective.

I think the greater impact that he’s had has been post-playing days when he transitioned to this hybrid role where right now he is the assistant pitching coach for the Red Sox but he is also the vice president of pitcher development. He’s kind of this go-between where players will listen to him as he was a player himself and been in uniform. He’s comfortable in that world, but he’s also really familiar with the physics, the advanced concepts, stats and ideas these front office people talk about.

I think some of these insights were there, but there was a bottleneck between the front office and the field where someone upstairs might say that so and so should throw this pitch more often, but if that message wasn’t getting passed down to the players then it wasn’t doing anyone any good.

It turns out, I think, that you need these communicators, these people who are comfortable in both of these worlds, to pass that message along and to translate that information to both directions. A lot of teams are now employing former big leaguers who are recently retired players who have an interest in analysis and are kind of in similar roles as Bannister, and I think it’s an exciting idea.

Fifteen years ago or so, when all of those stats started pervading the game, there was this kind of us versus them mentality, and it was jocks versus nerds and players being skeptical and thinking why do we need this? I didn’t have this when I was coming up; what are these people who have never played the game going to tell me about playing? Now I really don’t think there’s this adversarial relationship anymore. I think both sides have realized that they have a lot to learn from one another, and I think someone like Bannister has really personified that progress where you have both sides working together to make players better.

MMO: You detail an entire chapter to the Houston Astros, an organization that is seemingly ahead of the rest in terms of technology investment, resources and using new techniques to enhance players. We’ve seen other teams come in and hire away many of the Astros front office executives, coordinators and coaches in hopes of bringing some of that wealth of knowledge and info to their organization. What has made the Astros such a powerhouse when it comes to player development?

Lindbergh: In our book proposal, I don’t even know if the Astros were mentioned. I think we wanted to feature some team and explain how they were implementing all of this because it is sort of this bottom-up movement with these outsiders and players with independent coaches and their ideas have been implemented into the game. We wanted to show how one team has really made use of all this, and we didn’t know which team that would be.

As we started doing reporting for the book and as we had a lot of conversations, all of them just kept pointing to the Astros. They were clearly at the forefront of all of this, and I think they were just the first to realize that this was the next frontier. They had been among the leaders in evaluating players, and they built a model in St. Louis – Sig Mejdal and Jeff Luhnow – to evaluate amateur players and prospects and use college stats to try and forecast who would be good big leaguers.

They realized in Houston in 2013-14 that the players they were able to draft in St. Louis because no one else was looking at the same things they were looking at were being snapped up even before they fell to the Astros. Other teams had caught up. And that’s what I was talking about earlier with the parity when it came to player evaluations.

They realized that the next great opportunity was in player development, to bring that same rigor to player development that had been brought to player evaluation. They really pivoted to player development; they hired people like Mike Fast from Baseball Prospectus, who had an interest in applying data to help players. They were very aggressive in turning over their entire minor league staff and also expanding it so that anyone who wasn’t on board and who was sort of set in their ways and didn’t want to adjust to the way that the Astros wanted to do things were let go and replaced with someone who would. They were kind of ruthless when it came to that more than most teams tend to be.

They also invested in technology and bought 75 Edgertronic cameras before some teams had one, and they installed them at all the ballparks in their system. I think they realized this was important because they had a couple of high-profile failures, like releasing J.D. Martinez just before he broke out. They were the team who drafted Mark Appel first overall, and he never made the majors. I think in a way those very glaring failures made them realize that they had to be better.

The Astros changed their whole player development pipeline and process so that when you enter the system now, you get a full workup essentially on day one. You throw with Edgertronics and Rapsodos in the bullpen, or swing sensors if you’re a hitter on your bat, and you get a diagnosis of what your flaws are and how you can be better and what you should be aiming for. I think that’s what they realized: You can’t just tell players to be better at something; you have to tell them how to be better at something.

I think they really closed the gap between scouting and player development, where traditionally those were two different worlds. You had the scouts and scouting director bringing in players, and then you had the player development staff and player development director whose job it would be turning those players into productive big leaguers. Those two worlds didn’t really interact all that much, and I think the Astros unified them so that now when you’re bringing a player into the Astros system when you’re trading for him, signing him, drafting him, I think it’s always part of that discussion: Can we make him better? What can we do to improve that player?

And I think that’s a really revolutionary idea.

MMO: I’m surprised more teams haven’t bought more into this organizational thinking like the Astros have. The relative investment in doing something like this organizationally seems to me like it would pay off big in the long run.

Lindbergh: Yes, I think so. The Astros had a five-year head start on some teams, and I think that a lot of teams have gotten some of these devices. There’s much more than checking that box and saying yeah, we bought a camera, we bought this Rapsodo device. That’s a good start, but you have to not just have these things lying around, but have people who are really qualified to use them and understand them. It’s not just a novelty in something players try once and experiment with. It’s something that you’re using on a regular basis, and your team really has the infrastructure to support.

The Astros hired these player development coaches at every level that kind of provide this statistical support to the coaches, and that was a really important role because those coaches would interact with the front office so everyone would be on the same page. You’d go from one level of the minor league system to the next, and players would be hearing the same thing.

There’s a consistency and instruction, and I think that takes some time to implement. Not every team is willing to kind of clean house the way that the Astros did under Luhnow. It can also be difficult depending, on your ownership, to convince them to loosen the purse strings a little to invest in these areas, even though it’s cheaper to hire coaches or buy cameras than it is to sign a big free agent. It’s still an area where there’s not a lot of history behind it, so you’re trying to sell your ownership on something that is a fairly recent innovation. And you can’t always point to an immediate day one improvement from it. You can’t say this is going to be worth exactly this to us the way that you can with a player where you’ll say he’ll be worth three wins above replacement.

It’s harder to forecast what buying a camera gets you, so I think it can be tough at times to convince these owners to make the investment even though it seems obvious that it would be beneficial in the long run. All teams are still not paying their minor leaguers nearly enough for them to just focus on baseball, which aside from ethical concerns just seems very short-sided and counterproductive if you’re trying to win.

I think it’s definitely happening, and by the time a book comes out about something, I think teams are probably aware that this is going on, and maybe the book has helped raise some awareness of it, as has the success of teams like the Astros, Dodgers, Yankees and Rays. I think we will see more and more of it, and in the next five to ten years of baseball, it’ll probably be about teams investing more and more in this and this becoming not just something that a few teams are really implementing in a top to bottom way but that most or all teams are.

MMO: I really enjoyed the Amateur Ball chapter, in which you underwent the three-part intake process that any player goes through at Driveline for an assessment. Can you talk a little about your experience, and how influential Driveline has become with their tutelage and analysis?

Lindbergh: My first book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, was more of a first-person story, more of a participatory element where Sam Miller and I went and took over an Independent League baseball team for a summer, and we wrote that story from a first-person perspective. This book is not like that; this book is telling this tale of other people’s successes.

We thought it would be nice to have at least one section where we had a sort of hands-on approach and experience some of it ourselves. We hoped that it would make it more relatable to the average reader who is not a professional baseball player. It’s one thing to read about Justin Turner and Trevor Bauer doing these things, but of course, those guys were more focused on being professional athletes than most of us are. The hope was that by trying out some of this stuff ourselves and explaining what it was like for us, we could kind of convey more clearly the potential of these devices and techniques.

I went to Driveline and put myself through their intake process and also worked with some other technologies around the country that teams and players are using these days, and for me, it was enlightening and eye-opening. Of course, I had no illusions about being anywhere close to a pro athlete. But I wanted to be able to measure myself, and so I threw off a mound with all of these cameras tracking me and took swings with sensors and had them all over my body tracking my movements.

It was somewhat humbling, of course, to get the data and see just how far I was from a real player, but I think I also got a sense of, if I were dedicated to this, these technologies really could be transformative. You can see exactly where you’re going wrong with a precision that you couldn’t before when it was all about eyeballing things and using your experience to hopefully perceive something. Some of this stuff just couldn’t be seen because it was so subtle or it happened so quickly, and now you can get these precise readouts which show you exactly what you’re doing at every millisecond, and you can diagnose flaws that previously would’ve gone undetected.

Once you can diagnose something, then in theory you can fix them. It’s really powerful, and going through that myself and making some minor improvements and just being able to see what was wrong with me essentially made it all much more clearer to me and to be in that.

A lot of players have gone to Driveline and have rebuilt themselves in some way, and there are plenty of success stories like Bauer, Adam Ottavino and Matthew Boyd. But that ethos, that idea of questioning everything and why are we doing this, is the best thing we can do. Let’s question everything and test everything, and try to determine the best way to do things.

I don’t think Driveline has all the answers, and I don’t think they would say they have all the answers. But they’re trying to get to the answers or reexamine what we think the answers are. And I think it’s very good that someone is doing that because a lot of times tradition can just become ingrained, and people will forget why exactly you’re doing something a certain way other than that’s always how it’s been done before. It’s a good thing to constantly question and revisit those things, especially as we get new and better information.

MMO: Where do you foresee player development going next? Is it with wearables, virtual reality, injury-prevention or something else?

Lindbergh: I think in the short term it’ll probably be a wider adoption of the things that we wrote about in the book, including pitch design and making that a part of every player’s routine. Just getting everyone comfortable with these technologies. I think that will happen naturally just as more players get exposed to them in college and high school and they see big leaguers doing these things. They’ll be comfortable working in this way by the time they get drafted. You may start to see players move more quickly [through the minors] because the things that once would’ve taken them years of trial and error and having to make these discoveries as you went along, players are now coming into pro ball knowing these things already.

The wearable technology will continue to spread and hopefully be more affordable because, at this point, there are certain devices that I think can help players but not everyone can afford them. It would be bad if people from certain economic backgrounds were excluded from the future of the game because they didn’t have access to these tools. Hopefully, that will change; maybe MLB will continue to make investments in that area to ensure access to this technology. I think that would be beneficial.

I think teams are continuing to look into psychology and mental skills and ways to integrate all of that. Teams are starting to form high-performance departments and sports science departments, kind of taking cues from some other sports and looking at ways to make sure players are always in the best physical shape possible. Are they sleeping well? Are they getting the right nutrition? Does their exercise plan make sense, and are they overexerting themselves?

I think that ties into – if you want to call it the next frontier – injury prevention, which I think some teams are making strides in. Having pitchers change their deliveries to reduce the stress on their body, for instance. There’s more to do in that area, but I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the point where you won’t see pitchers blowing out their elbows. I think there are just some natural limitations in anatomy where there are weak points and as pitchers throw harder and harder, they’re going to break down inevitably. Teams obviously want to keep players healthy because they collectively spend billions of dollars every year on players who are not able to take the field, and that’s bad for them; it’s bad for the players, and it’s bad for the sport not to have the best players playing at all times.

I’ll be excited to see what teams are able to achieve. You hope that whatever insights are gleamed, they will be shared throughout the game. Maybe for a while you might see certain teams have an edge there, but players move around, front office members move around, and hopefully they will bring that information with them no matter where they go so that more players can take advantage of it. I think that would be best for the sport as a whole if those preventive measures were available to as many players as possible.

MMO: Thanks very much for your time, Ben. Best of luck with the book.

Lindbergh: Thanks very much.

Follow Ben Lindbergh on Twitter, @BenLindbergh

Purchase “The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players” here.

Read more of Ben’s work for The Ringer here.

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With the current New York Mets just playing out the string in a second straight disappointing season I thought it would be fun to get peoples thoughts on their favorite obscure/part-time Mets players on Twitter.

Given the strong response and awesome names brought up by numerous people I decided to put together an obscure Mets team.

For criteria I decided to go with players that played less than 162 MLB games with the Mets. Should also note that I was born in 1987 so the team will have some recency bias. Also tried to limit myself to players no longer active and leave guys off that had strong major league careers like Gary Sheffield.

Here are my position players:

• C: Omir Santos – Obviously quite a few names I could’ve went with here but his game-winning homer off Jonathan Papelbon in 2009 endeared him to me. He would hit .260/.296/.391 that season with seven homers and 40 RBI then spend the next season in the minors for the Mets before leaving in free agency.
• 1B: Mike Jacobs – Few players have ever had the type of start to their Mets career than Jacobs did  in 2005. He blasted four homers in his first four MLB games and had a 1.085 OPS in his first pro season (30 games). He was traded in the package for Carlos Delgado in that offseason though he return to the Mets for seven games in 2010.
• 2B: Anderson Hernandez – I decided to go defense with this choice and that his superman catch will always be engraved in my brain. The slick fielding second baseman had 5 DRS in the majors at the position. The Mets traded Hernandez in August of 2008 to only get him back from the Nationals less than a year later in a trade. Both Damion Easley and Jose Valentin had too many games played to fit by bill, but obviously two names that come to mind.
• SS: Mike Bordick – This one has a personal connection for me given he played baseball in my home state of Maine (very rare for anyone with Maine connections to make majors). He did homer in his first at-bat as Met though that was one of very few highlights with the 2000 team. Melvin Mora (who could also be in this spot) was traded for Bordick and had a fine career.
• 3B: Mike Hessman – You might have completely forgotten his time with the Mets given it was only 32 games in 2010. The minor league home run king hit 433 in the minors, 14 in majors and 7 in Japan.
• OF: Tommy Davis – The Brooklyn native slashed .302/.342/.440 with 32 doubles and 16 homers in his one season with the Mets in 1967. At the time, he set a team single season record with 577 at-bats, 174 hits and 32 doubles. That offseason he was traded in a package for Tommie Agee and Al Weis.
• OF: Jason Tyner – Pretty obscure player despite being a first round of the Mets back in 1998. The speedster would play in only 13 games with the Mets before being traded to the Rays in in 2000 as part of the package for Rick White and Bubba Trammell.
• OF: Marlon Byrd – I remember the lazy, “Going to the World Series” reactions when the Mets gave him a minor league deal in 2013. All he did was hit .285/.330/.518 with 21 homers and 71 RBI before trading him with John Buck to the Pirates for Vic Black and Dilson Herrera.

This bench group was so tough to put together with the Mets using tons and tons of random guys off the bench from failed prospects to old veterans way past their prime.

• INF: Ruben Gotay – Dude hit .295/.351/.421 over 211 plate appearances in 2007 for the Mets, what’s not to like? The Mets got him in trade from the Royals for another guy that I had on my original tweeted list, Jeff Keppinger.
• OF: Chris Jelic – The former second pick of the Royals has the distinction of being the only Met player in franchise history with their only hit being a home run. He went 1-for-11 with the Mets in 1990 and was released that offseason. The home run is his only major league hit and it came in his final at-bat.
• C: Joe Hietpas – His Mets major league career consisted of catching one inning on October 3, 2004. That one inning ended up being the last of the Montreal Expos.
• OF: Eric Valent – Bet most fans wouldn’t remember Valent posting a .782 OPS during his 350 plate appearance Mets career. I’m sure most would remember when he hit for the cycle in 2004 against the Expos.
• INF: Desi Relaford – The switch hitter only played in one season for the Mets but it was the best year of his 11-season career with a 2.1 WAR and .836 OPS. He also pitched a perfect inning with one strikeout.

Plenty of other players that could’ve been on this list like George Theodore, Robinson Cancel, Harry Chiti, Doug Mientkiewicz, Omar Quintanilla, Xavier Nady and Collin Cowgill to name a few. Should note that Endy Chavez and Mike Baxter both played over 162 games as Mets though both of them were popular responses from fans on Twitter.

The second half of my Obscure Mets Team will feature pitchers next week!

The post My Obscure Mets Team: Position Players (Part 1) appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Good Morning, folks! Today the Mets take the day off before heading to San Francisco for a three game series.

Yesterday, the Mets won 10-3 thanks to Todd Frazier and solid pitching from Jason Vargas.

Latest Mets News

According to Mike Puma of the NY Post, the Mets will make it David Wright‘s call to return this year.

Tim Healey of Newsday writes about the Mets strange day.

Andres Gimenez and Michael Paez were named to the FSL’s All-Star team.

Latest MLB News

Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal writes about how some think baseball can be fixed.

Kell Mago writes about the Cubs getting Daniel Murphy.

The Astros extended A.J. Hinch.

Albert Pujols underwent knee surgery yesterday.

Latest NL East News

The Braves got a couple of former Mets. They got Rene Rivera from the Angels and Lucas Duda from the Royals.

Matt Gelb of the Athletic writes about how fans should view this underdog team.

The Dodgers have a claim for Nats reliever, Ryan Madson.

The Marlins want to improve the fan experience.

Latest on MMO

John Edwards looks to see if Amed Rosario‘s improvements are due to him batting leadoff.

John Sheridan looks at the Mets prospects who have excelled after their promotion.

This Day in Mets History

1999: Edgardo Alfonzo goes 6-for-6 with three homers.

2000: Mets trade Nelson Cruz to the A’s for Jorge Velandia.

2015: Mets trade Miller Diaz and Matt Koch to the Diamondbacks for Addison Reed.

Birthdays: Marlon Byrd turns 41, Jon Adkins turns 41

The post Morning Briefing: OTD Alfonzo Collects Six Hits, Three Homers appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Good morning, Mets fans! Tonight, the New York Mets will take on Cincinnati Reds at 7:10 p.m. The probable starters will be Rafael Montero and Homer Bailey.

Yesterday, Chris Flexen started and was hit hard in the first. Scott Schebler hit a grand slam off him and there wasn’t much offense from the Mets to counter the Reds. Dominic Smith got a couple hits including a two-run single. Hopefully that is the start of something good to jump start the young first baseman.

Latest Mets News

Jay Bruce is open to a Mets reunion. He spoke very highly of his time with the Mets.

Curtis Granderson sends his regards to Mets fans and the city of New York in an article posted in the Players Tribune.

Tomas Nido, Luis Guillorme, David Thompson, and Kevin Kaczmarski are heading to the AFL this fall.

Latest NL East News

Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post hypothesizes a potential Giancarlo Stanton to Washington scenario.

Stanton tied the MLB Record for homers in August. He has 51 on the season and is starting to make his case for MVP.

Mark Bowman of MLB.com writes about the progress Lucas Sims has made for the Atlanta Braves.

Matthew Leach of MLB.com looks at the statcast behind budding Phillies star, Rhys Hoskins.

Latest on MMO

David Casillo dissects the David Wright dilemma.

This Day in Mets History

1999: Edgardo Alfonzo goes 6-for-6 with three home runs in a 17-1 win over the Astros.

Birthdays: Marlon Byrd turns 40, John Adkins turns 40

Let’s go Mets!

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You may have heard that the Mets are probably selling at the deadline.

The Mets’ impending fire sale is the worst-kept secret in sports. Being that they’re in the middle of a lost season, the Mets have plenty of expendable guys. Addison Reed, Curtis Granderson, Jay Bruce, Lucas Duda and Asdrubal Cabrera are all slated to hit the open market at the end of the year and the Mets would be well suited cashing them in now.

Given the many losing seasons the Mets have had, they’ve obviously been in this position before. Let’s take a look back at ten other times the Mets sold at the Deadline:

1977: Tom Seaver to the Reds for Steve Henderson, Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn and Dan Norman.

The Mets’ first big foray into selling resulted in perhaps the worst trade in Mets history — the “Midnight Massacre.” The team traded its’ G.O.A.T. in Seaver to the Reds and what a bust it turned out to be. Seaver continued his dominance with the Reds, pulling in two top-five Cy Young finishes in his five-and-a-half seasons there. He tormented Mets fans with a no-hitter in 1978, something the Flushing Faithful wouldn’t get until 2012.

It goes without saying that none of the players the Mets got for Seaver accomplished anything close to that.

1977:  Dave Kingman to the Padres for Paul Siebert and Bobby Valentine.

This trade got a lot less publicity thanks to the “Midnight Massacre,” but was arguably even worse in terms of return. “Sky King” was the Mets’ best power-hitter at the time, and the only one of the two players the Mets got back in return to have any degree of success with the team was Valentine– and that came as a manager 20 years later.

1991: Ron Darling and Mike Thomas to the Montreal Expos for Tim Burke.

The Mets’ 1991 season marked the team’s first sub-.500 campaign since 1983. Darling was one of the few remaining stars left from the 1986 team, and was traded to Montreal since he was due for free agency that offseason. The Mets received former All-Star reliever Tim Burke in return, who posted a 3.41 career ERA in relief with the Mets before being traded to the Yankees in 1992.

1992: David Cone for Jeff Kent.

This one happened in August, so it’s not technically a trade deadline deal. But it definitely marked one of the bigger sales in Mets history.

In the midst of an awful 90-loss season, the Mets traded Cone to the eventual World Series champion Blue Jays for young second baseman Kent. Kent was a solid player with the Mets, before he went on to put up Hall-of-Fame numbers with the Giants, Astros and Dodgers. Cone, meanwhile, helped the Blue Jays win a World Series in his two-month stint with the team.

1995: Bobby Bonilla to the Orioles for Alex Ochoa and Damon Buford.

All of the flack Bonilla has justly received from Mets fans actually drowns out the fact that he had some good seasons with the club. Bonilla was hitting .325/.385/.599 at the time of his trade to Baltimore, with 18 home runs in 80 games. The Mets received a top-tier prospect in Ochoa, even though he became only a journeyman in the majors.

1995: Bret Saberhagen to the Rockies for a bunch of scrubs.

That year, the Mets also traded Saberhagen to the Rockies for pitcher Juan Acevedo and two minor leaguers. Acevedo appeared in 25 games for the Mets, posting a 3.59 ERA. Acevedo was later traded by the Mets to the Cardinals for Rigo Beltran, who was traded in 1999 for Darryl Hamilton. Hamilton was a solid complimentary player on the 1999 and 2000 Mets playoff teams, so while this trade might not have featured a sexy return, it indirectly helped the team make the playoffs twice.

2003: Jeromy Burnitz to the Dodgers for a couple of scrubs you’ve probably never heard of.

No need to waste your time with this one.

2003: Armando Benitez to the Yankees for the equivalent of what Burnitz landed.

Ditto here.

2011: Carlos Beltran to the Giants for Zack Wheeler.

This was heralded as a fantastic trade at the time. And given that Beltran was going to leave anyway, it still looks like one of the better trades in Mets history.

2013: Marlon Byrd and John Buck to the Pirates for Dilson Herrera.

This was another August trade where the Mets traded only a little bit to get a relatively large return. Byrd played fantastically for the Mets on a minor-league deal that season, and Buck got off to a rollicking start as well. These two journeymen were traded for Dilson Herrera, who eventually became a decent prospect with the Mets. He has yet to really make an impact in the majors, but he was traded for Jay Bruce. So that’s a pretty solid return for Byrd and Buck.

The post Ten Times the Mets Sold at the Deadline appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

The former Met and current Cleveland Indian, Marlon Byrd, was suspended 162 games by Major League Baseball for the use of a banned substance.

“I alone am responsible for what I put in my body, and therefore, I have decided to forgo my right to an appeal and accept this suspension,” Byrd said on Wednesday.

“I apologize for any harm this has caused the Cleveland Indians, Indians’ fans, my teammates, and most importantly, my family.” (ESPN)

Byrd was also suspended in 2012 for using Tamoxifen when he was a member of the Red Sox. This time he was caught taking Ipamorelin.

Players around the league took to twitter to react to the suspension of Marlon Byrd.

“Marlon Byrd is a joke,” Jeremy Guthrie said. “All you cheaters are a joke. Do it the right way one time, accept your ups & downs.”

Byrd, 38, played in 117 games for the Mets during the 2013 season and was arguably their best all around player. He hit 21 homers with 71 RBIs and scored 61 runs. His slash line with the Mets was .285/.330/.518.

Byrd and John Buck were traded in August of 2013 to the Pirates for Dilson Herrera and Vic Black. Although he was good for the Mets, it is certain that the Mets got the better of that deal.

Although it is only speculation, this latest suspension most likely marks the end of Marlon Byrd’s career.

The post Marlon Byrd Suspended 162 Games For PED Violation appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Alderson’s method has been slow and excruciating, a definite change of pace from the Minaya era.

When Sandy Alderson took over the team after the 2010 season, it seemed as if the organization had ground to a halt. Alderson’s style was in stark contrast to Omar Minaya’s: he was about as reluctant as any executive in baseball to make any flashy moves, especially those which required the team to take on salary. Say what you will about the Wilpons’ financial state (and I will always be in the camp that they withheld and continue to withhold money), but it did save the Mets from the restricting long-term commitments that had plagued the previous front office.

This made the early years of Alderson’s regime especially frustrating. At least Minaya tried to improve the big league club, however badly he often handled that. The biggest free agents the Mets seemed to bring in were the likes of Scott Hairston and Marlon Byrd. The Yankees dropping hundreds of millions on players seemingly every offseason didn’t exactly make things better. And that frustration was totally justified. A New York team should be players in free agency and trade talks every year.

However, Alderson saw what many fans either failed or refused to see. He looked at the Yankees and realized that method of building a winning club simply wasn’t possible in Queens. The Dodgers and Yankees are the only two teams who could, in theory, build successful teams year after year by just throwing money at their problems. No left fielder? We’ll just drop $100 million over seven years to fix that problem immediately. And when that player fizzles out three years later, we’ll spend another $100 million to fix that. This model may work for teams like the Yankees and Dodgers, the only two who can afford this, but it does not work for anyone else. The only way to build is to actually build. You know, from the ground up.

As frustrating as Sandy Alderson’s first actions were, they made sense. He liquidated most of what could be dealt and saved the few long term assets available (i.e. David Wright). Trading Carlos Beltran, R.A. Dickey, John Buck, and Marlon Byrd absolutely did make the team less competitive in the near term, but they were never going to help in the long term. And as much as general managers say they want to win immediately, the goal is always to build a long-term winner. That’s what’s best for the franchise, the league, and the fans.

You see, Alderson did what few general managers these days have the gumption to do: wait it out, knowing that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. If you build up your system enough, and stock it with top-tier young talent, odds are your system is going to produce a core of young, above-average, cheap players. In my opinion (and it seems like this is Alderson’s opinion too), you cannot win year after year without a young, cheap, core group of players. Even the Yankees, who I just said were the exception, needed Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, and Jorge Posada to win in the late-90s.

Having cheap, controllable players like Syndergaard frees up millions of dollars to spend elsewhere if needed.

Stockpiling prospects, however unglamorous, is the best way to build this young core. With high prospect failure rates, you can’t just rely on one or two to save your franchise.

For years, the Mets did nothing but bring in top and middle-tier prospects. In fact, Michael Fulmer was, by far, the biggest prospect to be dealt during the Sandy Alderson regime. But more importantly, having a young core frees up a ridiculous amount of money to fill whatever miscellaneous holes your team has. This is where Bartolo Colon, Curtis Granderson, and Michael Cuddyer fit in. When you look at the Mets’ starting four heading into the division series, not only are all four absolute studs, but they all make the league minimum. In fact, Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom, and Steven Matz will all be making the league minimum for multiple years. That’s part of what makes this all sustainable. Then you add in Michael Conforto and Travis d’Arnaud. Heck, even throw Matt Harvey in there, even though he’s arbitration-eligible this winter. All six of those guys will, combined, cost the Mets less than $10 million next season.

These last few years have been very trying for most Mets fans. Prospects develop slowly, and that sucks. Money has been tight, and hard decisions had to be made. Did Alderson do a perfect job in getting us here? Absolutely not. He has made some glaring mistakes. However, he’s limited his mistakes enough that he’s kept on this steady, gradual path towards a winning ballclub.

Building a team the right way requires diligence, patience, and the ability to withstand flak from fans and the media. Whatever you think about Alderson’s approach to baseball, how he acquired (or didn’t acquire) some of his prospects, or how he’s handled the media over these last few years, it’s clear that the hard-but-necessary path he took this franchise on has paid off. I can honestly sit here and say that the Mets are going to be good, and no matter what happens tonight, this weekend, or in the weeks ahead, they’re going to be good for many years to come.

Boy, does it feel good to say that.

The post Featured Post: Patience, Prospects, And Staying The Course appeared first on Metsmerized Online.