Five Down, One to Go

Turn out the lights, the party's over...

Dandy Don Meredith sang it oh so sweetly. With four weeks to play, and a huge lead, I feel completely comfortable patting the Mets on the back.

TEAM    W   L    PCT  GB    HOME   ROAD   L-10 STREAK  

NYMets  82  50  .621  -     43-23  39-27  8-2  L-1  

Philly  67  66  .504  15.5  33-35  34-31  6-4  L-1  

Florida 65  68  .489  17.5  35-30  30-38  8-2  L-2  

Atlanta 63  69  .477  19    30-35  33-34  5-5  L-1  

Wash.   56  77  .421  26.5  31-32  25-45  2-8  W-1  

The Mets are playing the best baseball of any team in the NL. Even despite having a big lead, and running the Norfolk pitching staff out there all month. The offense is clicking as David Wright and Carlos Delgado located their strokes. In August, Jose Reyes, Delgado and Beltran all posted OPS marks over 1.000. Endy Chavez (yes, that one) posted a 0.917. It's just ridiculous how good our lineup is. Even Paul LoDuca is hitting well above .300.

Since the All-Star Break, the Mets are 29-14. They have 11 starts from Glavine and Pedro. The team ERA is just 4.35 over that period, and Pedro (5.75) and Glavine (5.18) weren't helping. There were 81 bullpen innings below 2.75 in there. John Maine posted a 2.96 ERA in 45 IP. This team is just very good.

One of the best parts of this team is the youth - David Wright and Jose Reyes both have new contracts and are MVP candidates now and in the future. That's great talent to have.

MVP! MVP!

Carlos Beltran is in a battle with Albert Pujols for MVP. Some want to throw Ryan Howard in the mix, but really - if Pujols is the best first baseman, then RHoward isn't. The bats of Pujols and Beltran are about even at their respective positions, but Beltran is having a great year with the glove as well. Pujols is a good fielder in his own right, but he isn't Beltran.

Beltran should win the Mets first of many MVP awards.

Player VORP RSpt Total
Pujols...65.8.... 1.....66.8
Howard.56.0....-1....55.0
Beltran..64.4... 12...76.4

That's just not particularly close, and I hope some sportswriters start taking notice. Beltran is solidly the MVP - by a full win. The only other NL player up there in VORP is Miguel Cabrera, and he's a big negative with the glove.

Get your head out of a stat book and watch a game!

I love David Wright as much as the next guy, as long as the next guy isn't a particular law professor, but I know he has to work on his defense. He's solidly below average. Yes, he's young and makes some great plays, but after watching and scoring 100 of the Mets games this season, I can visually tell you he's below average.

I also evaluate defense with ZR and a run value calculation of it. Wright's score agrees with my visual perception. Yes, that's not veyr positive, so why bring it up?

Because I was looking at some VORP numbers at the BPro site, and I saw a Chris Kahrl chat. I scrolled down to a question about King David:

"TheRedsMan (Chicago): David Wright vs. Edwin Encarnacion....is Wright really going to be a much better player?

Christina Kahrl: I think Wright's going to be the much better player, but a big part of that is because Wright's a brilliant defensive player with superstar offensive potential..."

Are you kidding me? I understand not being a Met fan and all, but wooooo, guess that Wright is "about average". Brilliant defensively? That's this week's "GYHOOASBAWAG" Award.

Further down in the chat I read this:

phil44 (Boston): For what it's worth, and I suspect it's worth something, the Fielding Bible ranked Encarnacion as a +5 last year while it had Wright as a -11. That's enhanced plays made above average not runs saved above average.

Christina Kahrl: ... and I'd suggest that every fielding system has its yips, and it's a mistake to get too hung up on what any one of them says. They all have issues, and if they're honest about them, they admit as much.

Sure, Chris, but some are clearly worse than others.

But others want to know:

TGisriel (Baltimore): Are there any fielding stats that you like? I tend to use the Rate and FRAA and FRAA on this site, but I also glance at zone rating.

Christina Kahrl: Depending on your point of view, I dislike or like most of them--Clay's fielding translations, stuff from the Fielding Bible, even Range Factor's interesting to me on some level. I don't have much use for most of the iterations of Zone Rating, since I think that's a matter of trying to fix something that never worked, and I think we should all miss Sherri Nichols' work from way back in the day when it was publicly available

.
Sherri Nichols' work, while spectacular, is a weaker version of MGL's present version of UZR (no park or other adjustments). In fact, MGL's UZR as first published was nearly identical to Sherri's DA/DR. Then MGL improved on that by switching back to ZR grids instead of Baseball Workshop grids. And now we see a knowledgable interpretation agrees with MGL's UZR.

Either way, like ZR or not, you can watch David play defense and see he has a lot of work to do - and he's far from "brilliant defensively". But I agree with her point - Wright is going to be much better than Encarnacion.