Brewers Pass, Mets Fail Giology Class
The Milwaukee Brewers signed a famous lefty starting pitcher out of free agency Wednesday, bolstering the back of the rotation. No, not that famous lefty starting pitcher, but a still quite respectable one in Gio Gonzalez, most recently biding his time with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Rail Raiders. In MLB terms, Gonzalez’s contract with the team is barely even a wallet-opener at one-year, $2 million with performance incentives.
Milwaukee’s rotation necessitated another arm after the early season struggles of Corbin Burnes. Burnes struggled to hit locations with his hard stuff, resulting in a slugging percentage over 1.000 against his fastball and a total of 11 home runs allowed in 17 2/3 innings. That’s a 58% home run to fly ball ratio! Gonzalez was brought in as an emergency option for the Yankees, and with the team’s injury emergencies largely being hitters, they never called up Gio and he exercised his out clause.
The Brewers and Gonzalez have a recent history, one that went swimmingly after the late August trade with the Washington Nationals. In 2018, Milwaukee was generally content to let Gonzalez go through five solid innings and then go to the bullpen, something that worked out well, at least during the regular season (3-0, 2.13 ERA/3.63 FIP in five starts). ZiPS projects 1.0 WAR for Gonzalez, assuming 100 innings for the rest of the season, which is comparable to the team’s other options. There’s a catch of course, in that the other options aren’t actually available at this moment; Burnes shouldn’t be working out his problems in a pennant race and Jimmy Nelson and Freddy Peralta haven’t yet returned from injury, even though they’ve made progress. Gonzalez doesn’t really add wins to the standings directly so much as serving as inexpensive insurance for other pitchers.
Gonzalez joining the Brewers is only a bit of a surprise in that they weren’t actually the team most in need of Gonzalez’s services. The buzz has been that about a third of baseball was interested in Gio, but why didn’t a team more in need blow away a measly one-year, $2 million option. After all, if you’re in desperate straits and you’re not going after Dallas Keuchel, where else are you going to get viable a starting pitcher outside of the system in late April? It’s not as if the Giants are begging (yet) to trade Madison Bumgarner.
So who else would have seen a real benefit from signing Gonzalez, and if failing to sign him, at least should have driven up the price for the Brewers? To go about this in an objective manner, I ran the ZiPS season simulation as of right now and then for each team with at least a 5% chance of making the playoffs currently, then I re-ran the projections with Gio swapped in for their current fifth starter. In situations in which Gonzalez doesn’t project to be an improvement for a full 100 innings — for example Mike Clevinger is expected back before Jefry Rodriguez or other replacements collect 100 innings — I’ve reduced the number of innings that Gonzalez replaces.
| Team | Playoff % | Gio Playoff % | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York (N) | 44.8% | 51.1% | 6.3% |
| Atlanta | 53.2% | 56.5% | 3.3% |
| Washington | 78.1% | 81.2% | 3.1% |
| Boston | 45.8% | 48.3% | 2.5% |
| Seattle | 13.5% | 14.9% | 1.4% |
| Oakland | 36.6% | 37.9% | 1.3% |
| Cleveland | 92.7% | 93.9% | 1.2% |
| San Diego | 14.2% | 15.2% | 1.0% |
| Pittsburgh | 6.7% | 7.4% | 0.7% |
| Milwaukee | 38.4% | 39.0% | 0.6% |
| Philadelphia | 41.1% | 41.7% | 0.6% |
In all, 11 teams in playoff contention project, at least according to ZiPS, to have some kind of playoff improvement relative to baseline by giving Gio Gonzalez some of the innings that their back-end starters or various injury replacements are currently receiving.
As you might have expected given the title of the article, the Mets come out in “first” place of these 11 teams, with a boost almost double that of the second-place team, the Atlanta Braves. It’s a familiar story for Mets fans. The Mets, after making some significant moves this offseason to strengthen the bullpen and improve the team’s depth offensively, looked at the back of the rotation and decided to do precisely nothing. The team entered the season, in a division that was expected to be extremely competitive, with Jason Vargas as the team’s fifth starter. Intentionally. It was not a case of the preferred options being abducted by highwaymen outside Port St. Lucie in March. This is what they chose.
In the most surprising stretch of his career, Jason Vargas put on his best Greg Maddux costume for half-a-season, starting off 2017 going 12-3 with a 2.63 ERA (but 3.80 FIP) for the Royals. In 175.2 innings since, Vargas has pitched like Greg Maddux… in 2019… with a 6.25 ERA and a 5.56 FIP since the 2017 All-Star Break, turning the average batter into a star slugger with a .288/.357/.516 triple-slash allowed. And yes, I might actually be too harsh about how Maddux would pitch in 2019.
Gonzalez is far from a star, but he would have likely helped the Mets. And that’s with the rotation right now, as the team has three non-Vargas starting pitchers who averaged only 12 starts in 2017 due to various injuries. As bad as the back of the rotation is with Vargas, how quickly would it fall apart if they lose a couple of their good starters for any significant stretch of time? What’s even more concerning isn’t just that the Mets didn’t get Gonzalez, but that they didn’t even view him as an upgrade from Vargas.
Mets viewed Gio as a marginal upgrade over Vargas at best. Weren’t prepared to offer guaranteed dollars and face the prospect of carrying him all season, even if he flopped (the Mets seldom eat bad contracts).
— Mike Puma (@NYPost_Mets) April 24, 2019
You can always make up a couple million bucks in baseball. You can’t replay a season and correct your mistakes. Couple this with things like the Mets refusing to use Edwin Diaz in the highest leverage-index situation of the season last week because they rigidly wanted to save him to collect a save that might materialize later on and it makes you wonder just how well-equipped the Mets are relative to their competition at the real little things that can cost you a close divisional race.
Two other teams in the NL East would have gotten a significant projected bump from adding Gio. The Braves have been cycling most of their Triple-A prospects in-and-out of the rotation with none of them catching fire, and Julio Teheran’s hot spring hasn’t continued since the games started counting. The Washington Nationals have extremely thin rotation depth and are largely counting on Anibal Sanchez and Jeremy Hellickson both repeating surprising 2018 seasons. ZiPS projects both teams to have received some benefit from adding a dependable No. 3 or No. 4 starter.
The Brewers didn’t win the NL Central by signing Gio Gonzalez, but by adding him as insurance, they’ve done a lot to protect themselves from some of their downside scenarios. That’s a bargain at $2 million.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
That title is some of your finest work.
The article lived up to the hype too. The sarcasm had me rolling. Great work, Dan, as always!
If Vargas takes his starts on regular rest and doesn’t get thrown back out there to face a lineup for a third time, he usually does alright. I still would’ve liked to see the Mets sign Gio, not so much because I think he’d be a lot better than Vargas, but because of how terrible the Mets depth options are beyond their starting five. Chris Flexen, Corey Oswalt, and Drew Gagnon have all looked absolutely terrible when they’ve gotten oppurtunities.
If you’re always taking Vargas out after two times through the order, then signing Gio is worth it just to eat some innings and save the bullpen.
I agree, I was just saying I don’t think signing Gio and releasing Vargas, which a lot of Mets fans were calling for, actually would’ve improved the team very much. They absolutely should’ve signed him, though.
“If Vargas takes his starts on regular rest and doesn’t get thrown back out there to face a lineup for a third time” unfortunately for Mets fans that’s usually the third inning.
Personally, I think an in-shape Maddux in 2019 would probably be a totally valid 5th starter
probably still has 60 command
The video of him undercover pitching to KB a couple years back definitely makes it look like he’s still got some quality stuff in the tank, even if he’s way out of shape.
What else is new? the Mets FO/owners always give their fans the illusion of competing.
It’s not like they’ve got much offensive depth, either.
They have a lot of offensive depth:
1b: alonso, Smith
2b: McNeil, cano
Ss: rosario
3b: davis, frazier
C:ramos, d arnaud
Of: nimmo, comforto, lagares, mcneil (if he doesn’t play second)
Not everyone of those is great but the mets definitely have above average offensive depth, at least in the IF. They also signed lowrie who got injured.
Pfft, Smith, Lagares, and especially d’Arnaud (who’s been DFAed) are NOT quality or even decent depth pieces. Smith may be off to a hot start, but that’s only in a small sample size of 32 PA that will come crashing down before long.
Meanwhile, Rosario, Nimmo, and Conforto will only ever be average regulars at best; Davis is an unproven youngster whose hot start may or may not be for real; McNeil isn’t much more proven than Davis is; Cano is in decline; and Cespedes is constantly hurt.
Haven’t read the article yet but I just have to comment on how much I love Dan’s article titles.
After reading: holy moly the Mets playoffs odds in the table and also holy moly that the Mets considered Gio a marginal upgrade. That’s bonkers! BVW said this offseason that he wanted to raise the teams floor and depth options but they didn’t see an improvement from Vargas to Gio? Even if Gio is pitching out of the bullpen he’s a better option than what they have in AAA
Gio would certainly not have accepted a bullpen role when a rotation spot is on the table from another team.
GIO STORRRRRRRM!
“The Braves have been cycling most of their Triple-A prospects in-and-out of the rotation with none of them catching fire”
Fried? Soroka? Fire so far.
OK, Fried. Soroka’s got a spark, but it’s one start!
But I think the point stands – a stable mid-rotation starter and one better than Teheran would assist.
Two starts now for Soroka. However, to sign Gio would be silly for the Braves either way. They have to know about the kids sooner or later. Signing another Teheran type would just add more mediocre starts and block the kids. It’s not like the Braves would dump Teheran if they signed Gio. The reason that the percentage goes up so much on the playoff odds is that projection systems generally hate kids. They never liked the Braves much last year until the standings made it obvious to computers and humans. With the Braves hoarding of a gazillion B grade pitching prospects for so long, they are in for the penny in for the pound. They have to figure out what they have. An innings eater is the last thing they need—if a Rich Hill type was out there who would pitch well but get hurt a lot, that would make sense for the Braves. That and any reliever who can throw a strike, ever.
That would make sense if they were still rebuilding, but a contending team can’t afford to rely on a bunch of unproven kids. Only one rotation spot at the most should be explicitly reserved for that purpose. The odds are that Gio is an improvement over most of them. If someone gets hurt, then the kids can provide depth. They can also always put one or two of those kids in the bullpen for now, as well.
They are still finishing the rebuild. Winning the division last year was an accident based on the lack of other good teams not self-destructing in the division. Adding a good pitcher is one thing, but adding an innings-eater is the last thing they need to do. The problem is that actually good starters are very hard or very expensive to acquire.
I view the Braves as contending with the Mets for 3rd place in the East.
Pshhhhhhhhhhhh – Braves gonna take the division.
I think silly is a strong word. I have been hoping for 1 SP that can be a stabilizing factor to our rotation. Somebody like Gio would be great. Worse case go with 6 man rotation to save the young and injured arms we have.
I immediately came down to the comments after reading that line.
The Mets are the GIO Metros of the MLB
The Mets would benefit if they added an actual replacement level starter. Lets assume Gio is a marginal upgrade over Vargas. If any of the starting five go on the DL, the Mets are throwing out guys who I don’t think would even qualify as Quad A nor any real prospect in the upper minors who might help later in the season.
Nice signing, and fascinating market that a guy like Gio, who you expect to be at least useful, couldn’t get a gig before a month of the season is gone. Teams are either looking for cheap or good. When he was a free agent in the Fall, he wasn’t that cheap, and he’s no longer that good. The deal with the Yankees was a trap for Gio–with CBT implications it only paid them to bring him up if they had a significant injury that couldn’t otherwise be plugged short-term. At $3M plus $300K per start, you don’t activate him to replace someone who might be out for a few weeks.
The comparison I keep coming back to is JA Happ.
Happ had 3.0 WAR last year and 8.7 over the past 3 years. Gonzalez, 2.1 and 8.6. Of course, Gonzalez is also 3 full years younger than Happ.
The Yankees signed Happ early in FA, giving him 34 million over 2 years with a vesting option for another year and $17 miillion more.
I wonder if they’re regretting that signing now, knowing they could have signed a comporable pitcher in Gonzalez for a lot less. (or perhaps waited and signed Happ for a lot less).
BTW, I should add: regardless of how the Yankees feel about their decision, I’m still flabbergasted that Happ got so much more than Gonzalez.
Dallas Keuchel, 3.3/8.0, 2 years younger than Gio, but why give DK 4+ years, $80M+ when there are comparable pitchers like Gio and Happ at much lower cost?
I think that Gio’s recent 2.1 win year makes him see like he’s on the decline more so than Happ and Keuchel and thus why he’s gone for so much less.
Preseason projections weren’t kind to him either. I think I remember he was projected for less than 1 win over a full season. The industry clearly was afraid the wheels are going to fall off similar to they did for Vargas last season.
Looking at the top 50 free agents contract predictions, Steamer did indeed predict Gonzalez for only 0.9 WAR. But that was also in only 92 innings pitched. Even though the writeup that went along with the prediction said that he should be good for 30 starts. So something doesnt add up. Meanwhile, Steamer predicted Happ to put up 3.4 WAR, which was more than he had in 2018. Which is also an odd prediction for a 36 year old pitcher.
Anyway, Happ was predicted to received about $28-33 million over 2 years whereas Gonzalez was predicted to receive $22-26 million over 2 years. So they were both in the same ballpark.
Where was Happ pitching? AL East.
At preseason projections, Gio was projected for less than 1 win, I believe. I can understand why teams aren’t chomping at the bit to get Gio. It seems like there’s decent concern that the wheels fall off completely.
I mean, the Mets probably still should have given it a go. Vargas isn’t nearly good enough to pass on an opportunity like this, but let’s not pretend he was considered a viable starter that deserved a major league deal by the market this past winter.
Great title, great table, nice thinking. I see $2 million for Gio as bonkers cheap, but we may be measuring the value the wrong way.
I’m pretty sure a lot of these (contending) teams are keeping that $2 million in their pocket for July, if they need it. (Not for a $2 million pitcher. Just for a $2 million extra value for whatever comes out of the trading season.) It depends upon present pitching contingencies, but I think Atlanta, Washington, and Philly fall into this gray area.
The value that Gio has is, I think, in two areas. One, he’s an extra back-end arm, proven for 100 IP, who can be stashed in the BP in case of injury. Two, he seems to be a decent LHP out of the pen.
Given that (quite possibly flawed) analysis, I think you should have targeted the Red Sox first. Swapping $900K on a third catcher (Swihart) for $2M on an extra arm doesn’t strike me as a difficult choice. (Of course, I am not privy to the contract offers involved.) In this particular case, you’d be looking at a replacement for six weeks of Eovaldi, further insurance down the line, and an actual honest-to-god LHP in the pen who can deliver.
Gotta be reasons for the Red Sox turning the opportunity down, but I’m blamed if I can see any of them. I’m liking the David Stearns management approach more and more.
It may be that Gonzales has no interest in signing for any team that would make him primarily a reliever. I think being guaranteed a rotation spot is easily worth giving up a couple extra million at this point of his career.
I agree that Lanidrac makes a good point. To put a little more detail to that case: Gonzalez has earned $65+ million so far in his career, and the last time that he entered a game as a reliever was in 2009.
Is it possible that Gio took significantly less to return to Milwaukee but wouldnt havent excepted only $2M from the Mets? Or is it honestly that the Mets are just dumber then Fangraphs and everyone else.
I honestly think it just came down to who could promise him a starting role. He supposedly grew up a Mets fan, but clearly at this point he just wants to keep starting, money be damned.
Think you might be being a little unfair to Vargas. In the 2nd half of 2018 (54 innings) he pitched to a 3.81 ERA with a 3.92 FIP and 3.94 xFIP. Those are similar numbers to what you would hope Gio would produce. Of course, Vargas has looked awful this year and his floor is much much much lower. The Mets 6th starter is basically a random AAAA player. Really stupid of the Mets not to upgrade.
Arbitrary endpoints don’t concern FG as long as they make the Mets look foolish. (I do agree with Dan’s conclusion, though.)
Vargas hasn’t even been that bad this year; in his 3 starts this year on normal turns through the rotation, he’s given up a total of 4 runs. Even in his two bad appearances this year, he gave up fewer runs than Matz and Wheeler in their meltdowns this year. Going back to last year, too, he really only got shelled a few times- most notably in his first two appearances. None of which is to say he’s great- I just think his crappiness is overplayed, and Gio may turn out to not be any better. The bigger problem, for me, is that Callaway seems to have no confidence in him and pulls him early at the first sign of trouble (or the third time through the order).
Vargas had so much pine tar on his hat last night, it looked like Craig Biggio’s batting helmet.
I don’t really have a problem with a quick hook given Vargas’s track record, not to mention our new and impr…I mean, wait…these damn juiced balls are to blame!
I actually thought the Jays might try and sign him after Shoemaker’s shoe made his season disappear., with a goal of being traded to a contender for another copy of Teoscar Hernandez, Billy McKinney or whatever. It makes me wonder if they ever had that conversation, or if Gio basically said that he’d only bother signing with a potential contender to begin with.
Is there anything about that proposition that’s better than the prospect of pitching for Milwaukee?
If I were Gio, Jays will have to offer eight figures to even get me to pick up the phone. And even then, maybe not.
I’m kind of surprised the Cardinals didn’t pop up on your list. Dakota Hudson isn’t very good, and Gio is at least marginally better than him. If Hudson turns it around, or Alex Reyes can figure out his command issues, Gio could be moved to the bullpen, where the Cardinals currently have ZERO lefties who can be relied upon (seriously, maybe it’s time for them to stop signing relievers for more than a few million per year).
The Cardinals have a ton of 5th-starter types (Gant, Poncedeleon, Hudson, Helsley, Gomber), but Gio is probably a bit better than all of them. Maybe it would only be a marginal upgrade, but that kind of upgrade has the biggest impact on a high 80-win team like the Cards.
I think the obvious reason though, is all those arms you mentioned as 5th starter types. That’s a ton of depth. If Gio is marginally better than any of them, that’s fine, but why pay him when one of the kids may take a step forward? It’s a little early to say Hudson isn’t very good, for example.
Who says they’re only 5th starter types? If Hudson continues to struggle (although he was good in his last start), the Cardinals can easily replace him. Odds are at least one of those talented kids will blossom into a mid-rotation type by the end of the season.
I’m not sure how he wasn’t signed to the Yankee rotation anyway. The minor league deal was odd to me. They knew CC was out to open the year, and from Spring on, they knew Severino was out. German looking good, but with their violent injury bug, I really thought he’d have been picked up by them.
Not worth it, really. The contract structured as it was really made it a non-starter (pun intended). German and Johnny Lasagna are both capable of providing better pitching, even if at a slightly fewer # of IP.
Honestly, LA Angels. How could they NOT be in on Gio for 2-3 million? They were willing to try out some reclamation projects in Cahill and Harvey in an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle, similar to what their rival A’s haphazard rotation did last year, yet somehow they are not willing to push it a bit further to include Gio? Or, hell, call up James Shields and offer him 3 million. Seriously, there’s one guy that even the Angels probably couldn’t send to the IL. Look, I know Gio and Shields would not make a world of difference but COME ON! That LAA rotation looks so incredibly bad that they 100% should be operating on that “well, what’s the worst that could happen?” psychology, because that is exactly where they’re at. Can’t get any worse, can it? What, are they afraid that Shields would take innings away from…Skaggs? Heaney? anyone else who somehow stumbled into that rotation? I don’t know man, I just can’t seem to follow their logic here at all. What’s 3 million, seriously? It is literally a no-lose situation when the rotation is already at rock bottom.
I think the Mets were just afraid of some old jokes about Gio being a Metro and getting lots of mileage out of his tank right before he fell apart!
Putting aside the Brewers/Mets, why the hell was Gio Gonzalez playing for the Rail Riders??? He’s 33, not 38, has made essentially 32 starts a year like clockwork since 2010, has only one sub-average season over that span, and even last year, was an average pitcher. And he’s left handed. How does that not hold value anymore.? This is the kind of contract you expect to see signed by someone who flamed out 3 years ago and is on the comeback trail, not a consistently durable pitchers who’s been better than average for the last 10 years.
The MLB is starting to become a parody of itself.
One thing I’m curious about – how was his velocity in AAA this year? On the surface, it seems like a no brainer for the Mets to sign him. But was he throwing 2-3 mph lower than he did last year? If so, you can throw the projections out the window.
It seems like plenty of teams scouted Gonzalez because they knew he was going to opt out, and none of those teams made him a decent offer. Maybe it had to do with the scouting?
As for Vargas, I thought it made sense to go into Spring Training with him as an option for the 5th start job. He was fine at the end of last year. But his fastball has somehow gotten significantly worse – it looks like he’s throwing 85-86 mph. If he’s going to rely on that, then they need a back-up plan.
I just posted this on reddit — I suppose posting it in the thread here makes some sense and perhaps the SABR-minded folks here can poke some holes?
Short version, “how much is a 6.3% bump in post-season odds worth to a team, in dollars and cents”?
They are projecting Gio at +1 win for the rest of the year and Vargas is at 0 wins, so at $8-9M per win, I suppose we either should expect an order of magnitude more than what I got below or FA valuations are *way* out-of-whack…
—
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/estimating-postseason-revenue-for-players-and-teams/
That was a bunch of years ago and is just an estimate. The 2018 player’s pool was 8.3% higher 6 years later, so lets say it will be 9% for 2019 and figure that the team’s cuts are proportionate, so we’ll add 9% to those (and average teams together based on how far they got and doing some smoothing):
$500k WC Play-in loser
$5.5M LDS loser
$11.5M LCS loser
$17.5M WS loser
$23M WS winner
Given that and saying that the proposed bumps in post-season odds are 80% wildcard play-in and 20% division and a 45% chance of advancing then I get:
+44% play-in loser
+31% LDS loser
+14% LCS loser
+6% WS loser
+5% WS winner
Now multiply those by the expected revenue and we get the expected value of 100% vs 0% of making the post-season (for a team with below average chances of advancing), $5.8M
So, each extra percent chance is then worth around $58k, so the expected 6.3% bump is worth about $370k. So, with these numbers it’d be like buying a $2 scratch-off where you can win $100 max, but expect to win $0.40 on average (assuming that Gio would have taken the same $2M deal from the Mets). I could see this as deemed a bad bet.
Lets try 80% division vs 20% wildcard and assume the Mets would be 50% in any series:
+10% play-in loser
+45% LDS loser
+23% LCS loser
+11% WS loser
+11% WS winner
Now I get an expected value of $610k. To get to even almost break-even @ $2M you’d have to add >150% of that each for boosted regular season revenue and bump for a big market vs average team.
I think the Mets will have Seth Lugo starting sooner, rather than later. He has 4 pitches, so he can profile as a starter. Obviously this creates a gap in the bullpen, but I think that need will be easier to fill via trade. In fact, I really really hope this is the plan, because otherwise, you really need to question the wisdom of throwing Vargas out there every 5th day, and destroying the bullpen.
While I mostly agree with this article, I think we’re forgetting that preseason projections were remarkably unkind to Gio. If I recall correctly, before opening day he was projected for less than 1 win, which means there are some legitimate reasons to be concerned that his relatively strong past performance will not continue going forward. His market bore that out as he was largely overlooked for 5th starter roles only a few weeks ago.
I mean, would the Brewers have bit here if Corbin Burnes didn’t have a HR/9 that began with a (jeez man) 5? I’m not fully convinced. I think the bigger question is why ZIPS believes he’ll be worth a win in only 100 innings when that seems to be the outlier opinion.
Why am I a New York Mets fan
You could be suffering a LOT more.
In the past 20 years combined, the Mets were .500, which ranks 12th of the 30 teams.
They made the playoffs 5 times, winning 4 first-round series and 2 pennants.
Sure, they haven’t won a WS in this span … but that’s true of 17 other teams, including 5 of the 11 with better overall records (LAD, ATL, OAK, CLE and TEX).
Ten teams haven’t even reached the WS the last 20 years. SEA and WSN/MON have never been there, and MIL, SDP, TEX, COL & TBD have never won it. CLE hasn’t won it since 1948.
Would you rather root for one of the other “second banana” teams?
— LAA and CHW each have a title in this span, but no other pennants, and their last postseason series wins were 2009 and ‘05, respectively.
— OAK hasn’t been to the WS since 1990, nor won any series since ‘06, nor even played a series since ‘13.
— BAL last reached the WS in ‘83, and hasn’t won an LCS game since ‘97.
… but would you really rather root Nats than O’s? 4 division titles in 7 years, all first-round exits.
The Mets haven’t won the WS since 1986. Nor have 11 other teams.
So really, except for NYY, BOS, STL and SFG, I doubt other fan bases have been notably happier than Mets fans over the last 2 decades.
But that’s just my view.
Gio is better off in the NL. Besides familiarity, his career ERA is 4.42 against AL teams (44-42 record), and 3.26 vs. NL teams (83-55). In the past 5 years alone, 4.92 vs AL (7-10), 3.58 vs. NL (50-39).