Today, I’m looking into something that doesn’t require much explaining. Well, that’s not quite accurate. I’m looking into a situation that’s so good for the pitching team that in our minds, we go ahead and write it off. That doesn’t mean it’s not interesting, though; it can just be hard to see why it’s interesting, which is why I’m writing about it. That’s right: let’s talk about when Jacob deGrom gets ahead in the count.

When the best pitcher in baseball has the advantage on a hitter, that hitter doesn’t do well – a real shocker, that one. With two strikes, deGrom turned batters into sub-pitcher-hitting-level zeroes in 2021:

Those aren’t typos. When deGrom hit two strikes before three balls, he struck out roughly three-quarters of the batters he faced and walked almost none. Survive until 3-2, and you stood a chance – he had a 12% walk rate and a mere 52% strikeout rate after 3-2 counts – but for the most part, facing deGrom with two strikes is a one-way ticket back to the bench. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Tech Lead, Baseball Systems

Summary:
The New York Mets are seeking a Tech Lead in their Baseball Systems department. This individual will help architect and guide the Systems group in the building of mobile and web applications to enrich the Mets data ecosystem and inform decision-making within Baseball Operations. This position requires a strong background in mobile and web development. The ideal candidate would use lessons from personal experience to build scalable baseball solutions, mentor team members in software best practices, and architect new capabilities within Baseball Operations at the Mets. We are looking for strong engineering generalists who are excited to work on greenfield software projects and design scalable systems. This is a senior IC role that will be expected to mentor, write code part-time, and weigh-in heavily on technical designs and implementation details of solutions. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the New York Mets.

Batters

It feels a little weird to be optimistic about the Mets after the season they just had (or perhaps because the Mets are one of the world’s most powerful pessimism-inducing entities). But when I look at the offense, there’s just not that much to complain about. None of Starling Marte, Mark Canha, or Eduardo Escobar are superstars — though Marte comes close at times — but signing that trio really improved how the lineup looks going into 2022. The team has a credible backup at most positions and even some upper minors depth (Brett Baty, Mark Vientos and, if you believe Steamer rather than ZiPS, Khalil Lee) they can use if the need arises. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Bench Coach, Dominican Republic Academy

Summary:
The New York Mets are seeking a Bench Coach for their Academy in the Dominican Republic. The individual will provide support to the rest of the coaching staff in numerous areas. These will primarily consist of hitting and defensive instruction, but may also include assistance in constructing the daily Academy schedule, lineups, and designing practice environments. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Director, Systems Engineering

Summary:
Our Technology department delivers all technology solutions used within the organization. Our team is comprised of individuals that are highly proficient in their respective technology platforms, articulate, solution driven, client focused and proactive in building their technology skills. We are seeking an accomplished senior manager to lead the team focused on end-to-end service delivery from solutions design to operations. In this role, you will take on a wide range of responsibilities including establishing and driving the strategic and architectural direction of the team. You will be responsible for team leadership, ensuring that your team members are efficient, happy, and have opportunities to continue to learn and grow their careers. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a hard slider learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

For all of the sound and fury coming from Steve Cohen last week upon being spurned by Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, the Mets’ owner has put his money where his mouth is since then. After signing a trio of midmarket position players — outfielders Starling Marte and Mark Canha, plus infielder Eduardo Escobar — over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, New York landed a marquee hurler on Monday, agreeing to terms with Max Scherzer on a three-year, $130 million deal.

The contract will pay Scherzer $43.33 million annually for his age 37–39 seasons, marking this as quite a high-risk move. The deal, which includes an opt-out after 2023 as well as a full no-trade clause, is a record-setter, with an average annual value 20% higher than the $36 million per year won by the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, the previous standard-bearer. And — in a bit that’s sure to be schadenfreude-licious for a certain segment of the Mets’ fan base — while Scherzer is pulling down that massive salary, he’ll also be receiving the first three of seven $15 million deferred payments from the Nationals during the span of his contract with the Mets.

The move comes as something of a surprise given that Scherzer refused to consider waiving his 10-and-5 rights for a potential deal to the Mets in July. On top of that, the Dodgers, to whom he was ultimately dealt, were presumed to have the inside track on retaining the 37-year-old righty given their status as contenders, their seemingly limitless resources, and a sense of unfinished business after coming up short in their quest to defend their 2020 title. But whether it was because Los Angeles wouldn’t go beyond two years or because Scherzer, who purchased a mansion in Jupiter, Florida in 2020, preferred a return to the East Coast, New York was able to close a deal ahead of the December 1 expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement and the lockout that’s likely to follow.

In the final year of his seven-year, $210 million contract with the Nationals — perhaps the most fully realized free-agent mega-deal to date, featuring two Cy Young awards, two no-hitters, a championship, 39.7 WAR, and probably a curly W on the cap of his Hall of Fame plaque — Scherzer pitched like a man in search of more hardware. In his first nine starts after being dealt to the Dodgers, he posted astounding numbers (0.78 ERA, 1.36 FIP, 36.6% strikeout rate), and on September 12, during that run, he became the 19th pitcher in history to collect 3,000 career strikeouts, doing so while taking a perfect game into the eighth inning. Even after a couple of bumpy starts at the end of the regular season, he finished second in the NL in ERA (2.46), strikeouts (236), strikeout rate (34.1%) and K-BB% (28.8%), third in WAR (5.4), and fourth in FIP (2.96) in 179.1 innings. In the year’s Cy Young voting, he placed third behind Corbin Burnes and Zack Wheeler, receiving six first-place votes.

Even so, those bumpy starts turned out to be an ominous portent of things to come. Scherzer failed to complete five innings in two of his three postseason starts, including the NL Wild Card Game. After closing out the Giants in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the Division Series, he admitted that he was battling arm fatigue, and was able to make only one NLCS start; he could only watch as a similarly gassed Walker Buehler struggled on three days of rest in Game 6 against the Braves. Still, Scherzer’s problem was believed to be nothing more than arm fatigue — understandable given his 128.2-inning workload increase relative to 2020.
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Like many Americans last weekend, the Mets took out their credit cards once the Thanksgiving turkey was digested, coming to terms with three free agents on multi-year contracts. Starling Marte, coming off the best season of his career, received the most lucrative package, a four-year deal worth $78 million. New York also clarified its third base situation considerably with the addition of Eduardo Escobar on a two-year, $20 million contract. And the team’s revamped outfield may have been completed with the final of the three signings, a two-year, $26.5 million pact with former Athletic Mark Canha. Neither Marte nor Escobar was eligible for a qualifying offer, and Canha did not receive one from Oakland, so the Mets have clear sailing in terms of draft pick compensation.

The Mets were busy, but then again, they kind of needed to be, given their losses in free agency. Coming off a disappointing 2021 season, a collective 11 WAR-worth of players walked off into the sunset of the open market, resulting in a lot of needs to address this winter. All three of these signings fill holes on the roster, and along with the obvious interest in Steven Matz given some very angry words, they indicate that the Mets are focused on adding as many pieces as they can (with Max Scherzer set to join the rotation as well; more on that to come).

A centerfielder entering his age-33 season isn’t typically the most likely candidate for a long-term contract, but like Lorenzo Cain when he signed with the Brewers, Marte starts from a high enough perch to give him plenty of room to decline before he’s a drag on the team. He never had that crazy breakout year that seemed possible in his early days with the Pirates, but he’s also never truly had a bad season; he was only below 2 WAR in 2017 due to a suspension stemming from a positive test for Nandrolone, and he was well above a two-win pace in the shortened 2020 season. His power has faded from his peak, but he’s compensated with improvements as a more selective hitter making more contact. Most veteran players aren’t quick enough to “unwind” launch angle gains and reap a benefit from hitting more high-BABIP grounders, but Marte is still very quick, finishing just out of the 80th percentile in sprint speed and above the 90th-percentile cutoff for speed to first base. Before he and Whit Merrifield did it in 2021, the last player 32 or older to steal 40 bases in a season was Alex Rios back in 2013.

ZiPS projects decline from Marte, but the contract’s terms reflect that of a player in decline. At $7.3 million per win with 3% annual growth (which I’m assuming for other contracts in this article as well), ZiPS projects a $77.7 million deal over four years, basically indistinguishable from what he got. Brandon Nimmo had surprisingly good defensive stats in center for a change in 2021, but even if you think he’s now underrated defensively there, he’ll be excellent in right, and hopefully less injury-prone at a lower-impact position.
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There are two narratives to consider with Steven Matz, who signed with the Cardinals last Wednesday. There’s the straight-up baseball story of a solid pitcher joining the rotation of a good team. Then there’s the seemingly never-ending soap opera that is the Mets, whom he spurned in the final moments of his free agency for St. Louis.

Let’s start with the baseball side of things. Matz immediately fills a rotation spot for a Cardinals team that will likely be in the thick of things in the NL Central in 2022. At four years and $11 million per, with the chance to earn an additional $4 million over the life of the contract via performance bonuses, he topped the length and total value, though not AAV, predicted by Ben Clemens in our top 50 free agents list, on which he ranked no. 31, and beat the crowd-sourced numbers in each category.

The lefty will slot somewhere in the middle of the St. Louis starter group, certainly following Adam Wainwright and Jack Flaherty, and if there’s anyone on the market who fits the definition of middle-rotation starter, it’s Matz. As 2020 gets further away in our collective rear-view mirrors, we’ve learned how much data from that season is an outlier, and an extreme one at times, as was the case with him; he was northing short of miserable in his nine appearances that season. And while he had his share of health issues in his earlier years, if you take his three most recent full seasons, he’s been the roughly the same player in terms of both consistent performance and availability.

He doesn’t have the kind of high-spin, bat-missing stuff that teams tend to look for in the modern game, but Matz keeps the ball on the ground at roughly a 50% rate and should benefit greatly from a Cardinals defense that represents a significant upgrade from what was behind him in Toronto. He leans primarily on his 93–96-mph sinker and throws a pair of breaking balls roughly a quarter of the time, preferring his curve over his slider, and for good reason, considering the quality of the pitch. Changeups are rare but shouldn’t be, as he’s added a few inches of drop on the pitch over the past few years, leading to an offering that performs quite well.

During those previously mentioned three full seasons, Matz averaged 30 starts and 155 innings per, so he’s been taking the bump every five days, but going deep into games is not something he brings to the table, as he got more than 18 outs just three times in 2021. He can throw a strike when he has to but needs to play around the edges in order to succeed with his arsenal, leading to deeper counts, more than 100 pitches per six innings, and the need for multiple relievers to finish the job.
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Carlos Cortes might be the most-unique player available in the upcoming Rule 5 draft. A 24-year-old multi-positional player whom the New York Mets took in the third round of the 2018 draft out of the University of South Carolina, Cortes is ambidextrous. When stationed at second base, he throws right-handed. When patrolling the outfield, he throws from his natural left side.

The both-ways ability dates back to his formative years in the Orlando area.

“When I was around eight years old, my dad told me that my chances of playing a position would increase if I was able to throw right-handed,” explained Cortes, who currently stands 5-foot-7. “I didn’t really like it at first — he kind of forced me to do it — but by the time I got to high school, I was pretty natural with it. I caught my first couple years, then played second my junior and senior years, as well as in the outfield. I kind of played everywhere.”

Everywhere included the mound. Throwing left-handed, Cortes sat comfortably in the high-80s and became Lake Howell High School’s closer in his final prep season. Then came his collegiate experience. Eschewing the opportunity to sign with the Mets as a 20th-round pick in 2016, Cortes proceeded to play primarily in the outfield with the Gamecocks, putting up a .906 OPS along the way. Read the rest of this entry »