Mets Geek: Peterson: Who Are These Mets?

Are the Mets a (gasp!) “Moneyball” type team or something else…John Peterson takes a look.

Ignorance of Marginal Value: As good as the Mets are at intuitively recognizing the strength of major league talent, they are poor at determining the relative and marginal value of those players. The team seems stuck in the plug-and-play mentality, where one has “holes” that need to be “filled,” lists of “needs” which are prioritized and satisfied in a linear fashion. The Mets decide that they need “a top starting pitcher,” and they go out and try to get one. They decide they need “a big bat,” so they go get one. This is a bad way to think about things. When teams decide that they absolutely must have a player, they are bound to pay too much. Instead of saying “we need pitching,” smart teams look to see where they can improve most efficiently. Maybe the pitching market is thin, but there’s a solid hitter available. Rather than trying to increase runs scored or decrease runs allowed, a team should aim to positively increase the difference between these two numbers, whether adding from the one or subtracting from the other.

I don’t doubt that Brian Schneider is all that he’s cracked up to be defensively, and that Ryan Church is an underrated bat who will perform well for the Mets in the coming years. After all, the Mets are good at recognizing major league talent. The problem is that those players are not that much better than the current players who were available at their positions. The Mets perceived that they had a hole in the catching position and filled that hole. But they paid far too much, because they didn’t properly consider marginal value.