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Yes he signed a minor league deal but Dan usually does predictions for FAs on their last teams.
BTW Anderson Hernandez is a National too (trade last season).
Dan NO predictions for Orlando or Pedro ? Also as you did Rocky Cherry (great name,no ?) could it be possible to add in Darren O'Day's as he also has a good chance to stick on the 25 man THX
Didn't see Nixon signing - removed him and I'm going to add Pedro back in.
Don't let Sam hear you say that.
The Mets need at least one of a leftfielder, second basemen, or a catcher. And a starting pitcher.
I think it would be great fun to skim through one of Boras' books on his clients. Do they ever pop up on ebay?
4-3, 4.26, 57 IP, 58 H, 5 HR, 18 BB, 36 K, 101 ERA+
Castro- 98
Delgado- 115
Murphy- 97
Reyes- 120
Wright- 149
Tatis- 100
Beltran- 133
Church- 117
GET PITCHINGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I know people project Castillo to start at second, so his is 87, but its OBP heavy and wouldn't really hurt us at the bottom of the order.)
Oh, nice. Too scared to make the bet until you saw the ZiPs projection, eh? Needed Dan to provide you with a spine transplant? ;-)
You got it. If the Mets have the smarts to give Murphy 400 PAs, then we've got a $10 B-Ref sponsorship of the winner's choice riding on over/under, 800 OPS.
I understand the basis for the projection, of course. IMHO, it is way low on the OBP he will achieve, although in the ballpark on the slugging. We'll see.
Team OPS+ in 2008 was 107, that was with Castillo posting a 77, Easley an 82 (in 316 ABs), Chavez a 69, in 270 Abs,
MAn oh man was Castillo bad, all year Dial was railing against him- and most of the year his OPS+ was in the 90s...(.261/.365/.331 at the break) but then he hit .170/.313/.189 in August and September (only 65 PAs, but still... yikes)
Sam... you should make the bet involve screen names, like Joe C has to go by "Joe #####" if Murphy hits better than .800
I've given up on Castro (as a regular), it took awhile, back when he was an effing Marlins prospect I thought he'd be a minor star...
He's been a better player than the last 2 Mets regular catchers--- when he's been able to suit up and play. Let's face it, he clear;y would have had more PT the last 4 seasons if he wasn't hurt all the time. He has not batted between 126-209 at bats the last 4 years becasue that's his "role", he's batted so little because he's either on the DL, or limping or sulking or WTF ever. Without a chaneg in usage or role, he'd get around 250 or so at bats a year if not for injuries.
Ha ha. :-) I suppose you've got me there, even if that wasn't my intention to wait.
But it's on. >=400 PA, +/-.800 OPS.
I'll do this, but we'd have to set terms on how long for and all that.
Plus, everyone wins when a player gets sponsored at BBRef.
Niese, Church, and Beltran will be worse.
I think the Mets should sign Garland. He'll do well for the Mets.
I will be wrong about most of my predictions.
Well, that's true, of course, although "awful" is an exaggeration. I mean, Johan-Pelfrey-Maine is a nice starting point for any rotation, and Niese is a solid prospect. But no one expects the Mets to go into the season without adding a starter. The question du jour, of course, is whether it's of the Derek Lowe variety (Heyman seems consistently, and curiously, optimistic that the Mets will be right there at the end for him, FWIW), or the Randy Wolf/Jon Garland type.
We shall see.
Talk about a flash in the pan. I remember his rookie season.
Exactly. I'm in for the original bet.
Probably. But it is scary for the moment. Santana is Santana. But behind that we have John Maine (coming off surgery), Pelfrey (is he for real?), and nothing. If just one of those two guys flops, which is a reasonable prediction, you are in full on disaster mode.
Niese is nice to have but for 2009 I think the only thing he brings to the table over a random AAAA vet is the emotional understanding that he is a rookie. ("At least it's not Brian Lawrence this year, maybe getting smoked will help him grow in the future.")
Of course, Derek Lowe would help, and I think the Ollie projection is low, should he return. The Putz/KRod projections are exciting.
Good God. The core even consists of three of the hardest positions to adequately fill.
anyway, what the Mets should do is drop Castillo, put Murphy in as the full time 2B, and get 1 corner outfielder. using Schneider/Castro as the catchers isn't the best solution but it's pretty hard to find good hitting catchers that aren't overpriced (Jason Kendall) or coming out of your own farm system.
It's more complex than this, but let me try to put it simply.
ZiPS isn't looking at Santana's 2008 as a 166 ERA+ season but more like a 120 ERA+ season in which Santana had good defensive support and continued his pattern of outperforming that but should not have outperformed it by quite *that* much. ZiPS sees Santana pitching better, but exceeding his peripherals by less.
FIP+ ERA+
2005 159 155
2006 142 161
2007 109 130
2008 120 166
ZiPS 09 122 133
ZiPS also sees the K rate as more alarming than it looks on the surface because the context changed to favor him while the Ks went the wrong way. Santana lost 20% of his K rate while moving to a league that was slightly lower in quality, had pitchers instead of DHs, in a lower offensive year. Given the changes in context, Santana's drop in K rate starts to head towards a third. ZiPS isn't sounding any super-loud klaxons, but it increases the chances of Santana having a bad year.
I think it is a stretch to say they have a dud at catcher. Based on last year, and the projections, a Castro-Schneider platoon can be around average. Castillo's projection is much better than that of a black hole. So I wouldn't go as far as you did.
You don't seem to understand where replacement level is for starting pitchers. In the NL alone, there were 689 starts by pitchers with an ERA+** of 85 or below. That's 43 per team or roughly 1.3 rotation slots or 27% of starts. The median ERA+ of that group is about 76, an ERA around 5.75. Replacement level pitchers carry names like Patrick Misch and Jack Cassel. Those last two FIPS you cite are an ERA+ around 95 in Wrigley (the other two not so good but only one at replacement level :-). And Marquis has been very good about going out there and giving you 30 starts a year -- which keeps those replacement-level starters off the field.
And that's before we even get into the fact that, FIP or no FIP, Marquis has been average or better in terms of ERA+ in 4 of the last 5 seasons.
** that's their overall ERA+ not necessarily their ERA+ as starters but that seems all I can do using PI. Still, hard to imagine too many of these guys pitched worse in their bullpen stints.
Besides, Vally P. had 62 ML ABs and what did he do with those ABs? He choked, that's what, and choked so badly that the Expos had to leave Canada. Besides, I can't help noticing that while Val DOES get to the occasional ball in the OF, he's not exactly fleet of foot. It's gotta suck, though. Imagine being a very good AAA player and watching your chances fade away, year by blistering year.
I never see guys in jerseys/shirts celebrating obscure players, but I bumped into some guy in a Pascucci/Expos top in front of me at the grocery store the other day. It was more exciting (albeit fleetingly) than I ought admit.
Thank you Dan - that puts O'Day as the Mets 5th best pen arm - behind F-Rod/Putz/Green & Feliciano - so could be a nice R5 pick up
I once ran into Val and some of his teammates at Outback Steakhouse. I remember turning to my little brother and saying "that, right there, is Valentino Pascucci". One of the teammates was Australian too (Adrian Burnside).
Ah, memories.
Tell that to his shoulder, and to the lesion they removed from it on September 30th. Ahem.
First of all, they are platooning Murphy, not giving him the whole job.
Second, if the core isn't getting any younger, that is precisely a reason to give a promising young player a chance, to help the team get younger. You have to balance the short term desire to win against the long term building of a contender over time. In this particular case, obviously, I happen to think there is no short-term sacrifice, since I think Murphy will also help them win now. But even if I thought there was some short-term pain, I would say endure it in the interests of the development of a young player who can help the team down the road. You can't keep filling holes with patches and let your young players stagnate. Daniel Murphy has earned the chance to prove he can make a major contribution. There will be jobs they might well want Murphy to fill by 2010 (1B, 2B, corner OF). If you don't see what he can do in an extended number of major league ABs in 2009, you will have the exact same questions then you do now.
It also, I might add, has the critical benefit of keeping payroll down in one area so as to help them afford an upgrade elsewhere (in our case, in the rotation). Every one of Omar Minaya's comments about this subject has made clear without saying explicitly that given the way the market has gone for starters, it's a choice between a LFer or a starter, and they have chosen a starter. I, for one, think that is a pretty obvious choice . . . given that the talent on hand gives them an adequate (or better) LF option, and nothing resembling an adequate choice for the middle of the rotation.
Well, yeah. Otherwise the bet between Sam and Joe C doesn't get settled and b-r is $10 poorer.
I propose an addendum to all b-r sponsorship bets -- if the bet doesn't "qualify", each party contributes half the bet amount. That way b-r always wins ... much better than b-r having to rely on the Mets making sensible decisions!
Core isn't getting younger? WTF? This isn't the 2001 Mets ... our core is two 26 year olds, and two HOF talents just barely over 30. The Mets are not in "win now" mode. They can let a rookie or two find his footing in the majors.
Sean would've closed up shop years ago if that was case.
Twasn't what I was thinking, though. Unfortunately, what I'm afraid of is that they will be the same old Mets, and fail/refuse to give him 400 PAs because he's not a Proven Veteran™ who "deserves" the playing time because of his Longtime Track Record™. And if he fails to get to .800 because of a small sample size rather than his abilities, I don't want to be the victim of the Mets' fascination with whomever is next in line to follow the Easleys and Alous and Castillos and Andersons and Greens and Valentins and LoDucas of the world. It's certainly not hard to imagine that if Murphy gets off to a bad April, he might never get off the bench, or he could even get sent down to Buffalo, and that's that.
Actually, you make a decent point. If we also put a bet on +/-400 PA, I'd take the under on that, too.
If the Mets have $20 mil left to spend, they could probably bring in a solid SP a sketchy LF or vice versa. If they've got half that, they probably just get the SP.
Its already been pointed out that this was an overstatement but I think its bears mentioning again --- the Mets offense is NOT the problem. This team scores a TON of runs because have three superstars at 3B, SS, and CF and a good supporting cast at 1B and RF. Further, the C platoon is pretty darn good. Offense is fine. We scored the same number of runs as the Phillies last season.
The REAL problem is pitching, pitching, pitching. As someone also pointed out, we've got one legit starter, a rookie who exceeded his innings max by 50 last year, and a guy who has never thrown 200 innings coming off a season where he needed to shut it down. We need to resign Perez just to tread water -- what we really need is Perez and something consistent (a Marquis type garbage guy) or an upgrade on Perez (like Lowe) and something cheaper. If the Mets go into the season with Niese as the #5 starter, we're missing the playoffs, and I'll make a bet on that.
I think that is an overstatement of the pitching need. If you are determined to look at the negative, sure -- you can see Mike Pelfrey as a question mark instead of one of the best young pitchers in the league, and dismiss the reports that said Maine's surgery was as simple as it gets (arthroscopic, removeal of a lesion), and make it sound like the Mets have Johan Santana and a prayer.
No doubt the Mets need another starter. But as long as they get one, the starting pitching overall has a good chance to be at least as good as it was in 2008 (when it was just fine, at least until Maine's departure). Lowe as an upgrade over Perez would make that a very good bet. And Niese at # 5 is particularly unlikely to be the reason if it is worse, when you consider that last year that role was occupied by the remains of Pedro Martinez and his various fill-ins. Niese doesn't have to be particularly good to represent an upgrade. I'd rather have reliable mediocrity (and Niese gaining experience in the process) than Pedro and his inability to give the Mets innings and thus disrupt the whole season.
To answer Darren's question, I haven't done the exact math, but my strong impression is that the remaining dollars are enough for one major addition. Not for two pitchers, and not for one pitcher and a left fiedler. And the basic premise seems to be that the goal is to match last year's payroll of around $135M, so I'd estimate they must be in the mid-$120's right now.
always the tricky bit with the rotation though. Teams simply have to plan 7 starters deep these days and who the #6-7 guys are will likely be important. Now, I don't know how one unearths good #6-7 guys (other than having good young prospects ready to make the jump mid-season) but you at least want guys who can fake it, otherwise you'll be seeing Sidney Ponson (or his pitching evil twin) in a Mets uni next year.
Playing around a bit with P-I, using just 2008 data (should be close enough), these days the "median" rotation probably has an IP profile about like this:
210/190/170/140/100
That's only 810 IP while you want 970 or so out of your starters. That leaves 160 IP which, at 5 IP per start, is 32 replacement starts or one entire rotation slot. And of course that "median" rotation is the median "actual" rotation not necessarily the intended rotation -- i.e. some of those guys on that list were replacements to begin with.
I have no idea if the Mets have done a good job of that this year or not. It was just the comment of "they were fine until X got hurt." Some X is almost always going to get hurt or stink so bad he needs to be dropped from the rotation. Today you need staffs which will be fine (or better) even when X gets hurt. On average you'll be giving 1-1.5 rotation slots to some guy who starts in the minors and/or be so desperate for healthy pitching that you'll let the guy with the 83 ERA+ keep going out there every 5th day.
Note, there were 13 pitchers last year with 25+ starts and an ERA+ of 85 or below. And not all sucky teams either -- Texas, St Louis, Houston and Philly had one each. Only 3 of them could be characterized as kids with growing pains.
no of course not. but some team decided he was a good hitting catcher and paid him nearly $10 million a year on a multi-year contract. that's the kind of risk you take when you trade for a star catcher (or sign one off the free agent market).
To be fair, Jason Kendall through 2000 was basically Joe Mauer, and he signed the contract prior to 2001, when his slide began. IIRC, that contract was widely lauded at the time as a small market team managing to lock up a building block to a long term deal.
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