By now, you know the drill. Earlier this week, I highlighted contending teams with weak points in the infield and on the mound. We’ve still got eight teams to cover today, so there’s no time to waste. Let’s dive in!

St. Louis Cardinals

The Hole: Two years ago, the Cardinals were so overloaded with outfielders that they traded Tommy Pham to open up playing time for promising youngsters Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill. This offseason, they had enough of an outfield surplus that they traded Randy Arozarena and José Martínez, but the top-end talent the team hoped for still hasn’t materialized.

That’s not to say that the Cardinals don’t have outfielders. O’Neill and Bader are still around. Dexter Fowler is solidly in his decline phase, but will likely take up a season’s worth of plate appearances. Tommy Edman will see some time in the outfield in addition to sharing third base with Matt Carpenter.

But while they have bodies, they’re lacking in upside. Bader looks like a long-shot to ever recapture his 2018 offensive line, O’Neill’s 2019 was gruesome (35.1% strikeout rate), and Fowler is subsisting on walks at this point. They might field an entire outfield of sub-100 wRC+ batters, and only Bader can make up for that with his glove. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Beltrán won’t set foot in a Citi Field dugout anytime soon. In my conclusion to Thursday’s article on Beltrán’s place in the Astros’ 2017-18 sign-stealing mess — he was the only position player mentioned in commissioner Rob Manfred’s report, which positioned him as central to the improvements that resulted in “the banging scheme” — I noted that his status as Mets manager wasn’t “likely to remain in limbo much longer; he could be out of a job by sundown.” While admittedly not a stretch, that prognostication turned out to be correct.

As with the Red Sox and Alex Cora, Beltrán and the Mets “agreed to mutually part ways” on Thursday. With that, all three sitting managers implicated by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich in their November 13 report (a day after they broke the initial story) — three who previously were well-respected throughout the industry and understood to represent part of a shifting paradigm with regards to the input of front offices and an emphasis on the interpersonal aspects of managing a club rather than the X’s and O’s of tactics — are out of work, that within roughly 72 hours of the release of Manfred’s report.

The Mets named Beltrán as their manager on November 1, 12 days before The Athletic implicated him. At the time, Beltrán denied any wrongdoing via text messages to The Athletic and the New York Post (and perhaps others). Manfred’s report showed that he had lied to them, and not with the kind of little white lies and half-truths — on topics such as player availability — that managers routinely get away with. Read the rest of this entry »

This article was published before the Mets and Beltrán “agreed to mutually part ways” on Thursday. Jay’s follow-up is available here.

This has not been a good week for Carlos Beltrán. Though he evaded punishment from Major League Baseball for his involvement in the Astros’ 2017 electronic sign stealing scheme, as did every other player, Beltrán was the only one singled out by name in commissioner Rob Manfred’s report. What’s more, he’s now the only one of the three managers who were caught up in the scandal — or at least its initial wave — who still has a job, though he’s already on the hot seat before managing a single game. Suddenly, what appeared to be a very promising second act to his career is in jeopardy, as is the possibility that Beltrán will be elected to the Hall of Fame once he becomes eligible in 2023.

Per Manfred’s report, which I dissected on Tuesday, the Astros’ efforts to steal signs using electronic equipment — a practice broadly prohibited by MLB rules but not strictly enforced at the time — began early in 2017 and grew more elaborate as the season went on. “Approximately two months into the 2017 season, a group of players, including Carlos Beltrán, discussed that the team could improve on decoding opposing teams’ signs and communicating the signs to the batter,” wrote Manfred. The intent was to upgrade a system that had been rather simple to that point, with employees in the team’s video replay room viewing live footage from the center field camera, and relaying the decoded sign sequence to the dugout, where it was signaled to a runner on second base; the runner would then transmit the signs to the batter.

In the wake of Beltrán’s intervention, bench coach Alex Cora arranged for a monitor showing the center field feed to be placed in the tunnel near the dugout. After decoding the sign from that monitor, “a player would bang a nearby trash can with a bat to communicate the upcoming pitch type to the batter,” according to the report. The practice continued through the end of the regular season and the postseason, and into 2018, even after Manfred issued a stern warning to all 30 teams on September 15, 2017, in the wake of separate allegations regarding the Red Sox engaging in their own abuse of the system. At that point, Manfred said that he would hold general managers and managers accountable for their teams’ efforts to subvert his prohibition on using electronic means to steal signs. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Mets. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Younger Developmental Types
Stanley Consuegra, RF
Blaine McIntosh, CF
Sebastian Espino, SS
Federico Polanco, 2B
Robert Colina, RHP
Benito Garcia, RHP

Consuegra would be above Valdez on the main list on tools and long-term physical projection but he missed all of 2019 with a torn ACL. McIntosh was a multi-sport high schooler committed to Vanderbilt who the Mets got done on Day Three of the 2019 draft. He’s toolsy, but raw. Espino is a contact-oriented shortstop who lacks bat control when he takes big hacks, and bat speed when he’s under control. Polanco was a DSL All-Star; he’s a little more compact but twitchy. Both will need to have contact-driven offensive profiles since they lack power projection. Colina is a loose teenage arm up to 93 with positive spin axis traits. Garcia is the oldest player in this cluster at 19.8 (McIntosh and Espino are the youngest at 18.6) and sits 90-93 with above-average spin.

Depth Arms and Luis Carpio
Reyson Santos, RHP
Dedniel Nunez, RHP
Tony Dibrell, RHP
Christian James, RHP

Santos, 21, has been up to 96 but the breaking ball is still a work in progress. He’s a relief-only sort. Nunez is older (23) but also up to 96 with nearly pure backspin. He had a 15% swinging strike rate on his heater last year, but it was at lower levels. Dibrell and James are spot starter types.

System Overview

This group is a bit thinner at the top because of Pete Alonso’s graduation and the Marcus Stroman trade (and, of course, there’s no Jarred Kelenic or Justin Dunn), but a tier of teenagers (mostly arms) in the lower levels of the system have emerged to make it deeper.

Both recent agents-turned-GM, the Mets’ Brodie Van Wagenen and ex-Diamondback Dave Stewart, were a little cavalier with dealing away prospects early during their tenures. If you care about surplus value, then the Robinson Canó deal was instant highway robbery for Seattle. If you don’t, it’s probably starting to look that way. But the Keon Broxton trade, in which the Mets surrendered three prospects for a player who was DFA’d by Baltimore less than a year later, was another, almost immediate example.

Decision-makers deserve time to adjust the same way players do. The Mets beefed up the analytics department last year. We’re still waiting to see if they start scouting the lowest levels of the minors, but if their goal is to compete right now, then they’re not likely to acquire that type of player anyway. How the international department sustains its recent level of excellence in the absence of departed Chris Becerra will be a key to continuing to stock a system that looks better than we anticipated when we began sourcing.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

Batch five hundred thirty-seven — no, wait, it’s just batch five, the rest of that was my daughter’s drawing — of my completist series features a pair of hard-throwing relievers who took a long time to get a shot at the majors, and even longer to become closers. Not much went right for either of them as Mets, and by the time they crossed paths in Arizona, both had seen better days, but somewhere in the middle of all of that, they became All-Stars. We could quibble as to whether they should be on this ballot, but why not celebrate two guys who made the most of their relatively brief careers?

Heath Bell

It took Heath Bell until he was nearly 27 years old to reach the majors, and he turned 31 before he claimed the closer’s job. Big-bodied (6-foot-3 and as much as 275 pounds) and with a big personality, he radiated joy on his best days, showing his exuberance with his signature sprints to the mound, making three straight All-Star teams, converting 41 straight save opportunities at one point, and netting a big deal in free agency — not too bad for a guy who was a 69th-round draft pick by the Devil Rays. Read the rest of this entry »

Early in the 2019 season, Yoenis Céspedes suffered a mysterious injury on his ranch. Described as a “violent fall,” there had been some discrepancy in exactly how the Mets outfielder suffered a fractured ankle (this while still rehabbing from surgery on both heels). According to fresh reports on the matter in the New York Post, he broke his ankle by stepping in a hole while trying to “sidestep a boar.” The story was confirmed by the Mets, as well as officials from MLB and MLBPA.

There have been many questions in response to this information, such as “Why?” and “How?” and “Again, I ask you… why?” But these put the wrong information in focus. Instead, we must look at the historical context of Céspedes’ misstep, and attempt to understand that the paths of men and boars do not easily cross; and yet, even in this niche of the natural world, baseball has a legacy.

We may not know what draws typical ballpark wildlife, the lost squirrels and panicking cats, to our infields and outfields. But we do know that their slashing claws and snapping mandibles have been on display in the realm of big league baseball for generations. With nature’s fury finding its way into man-made structures, it seems unwise to venture out into the domain that birthed it. Beyond our city limits and past the closest tree line, the creatures that spill into our stadiums are in their natural habitat, and that much more eager (and able) to kill or maim.

Boars have about the same reputation as dinosaurs: Their vision is based on movement. They are produced in formidable sizes (a male tusker can be 36 inches tall and weigh over 400 pounds). They can cause damage and be the bane of farmers. An August 23, 1911 report in the Oroville Daily Register warned that valley-dwelling boars are even more dangerous than those that live in the mountains and come equipped with “death-dealing tusks.” Read the rest of this entry »

Despite best-laid plans, seemingly nothing went right for the Mets’ bullpen in 2019, and the same can be said for Dellin Betances. The team is hoping both can change their luck in 2020, and earlier this week signed the 31-year-old righty to a one-year, $10.5 million deal that includes both a player option for 2021 and a vesting option for ’22. Though the move is hardly inexpensive or risk-free, it’s a worthwhile gamble on a reliever who prior to missing nearly all of the past season due to injuries spent five years as one of the AL’s best and most dominant with the crosstown Yankees.

After throwing more innings out of the bullpen than any other pitcher from 2014-18 (373.1), Betances didn’t complete a single frame at the major league level in 2019. First, his arrival in camp was delayed by the birth of his son, and after he showed diminished velocity in a March 17 Grapefruit League appearance, he was diagnosed with shoulder impingement. He began the regular season on the injured list, and worked towards a return, but following a rough showing during an April 11 simulated game, he received a cortisone shot for shoulder inflammation, a problem that was soon linked to a bone spur that the Yankees — but not the pitcher — had known about since 2006, the year they drafted him in the eighth round out of a Brooklyn high school. Moved to the 60-day injured list, Betances ramped up towards a return, but renewed soreness led to a June 11 MRI, which revealed that he’d suffered a low-grade lat strain. He finally began a rehab assignment with the Trenton Thunder on September 6, during the Eastern League playoffs, and made three postseason appearances for them before being activated by the Yankees, who hoped that he would augment their bullpen for the postseason.

Betances made his lone major league appearance for the season on September 15, striking out both Blue Jays he faced (Reese McGuire and Brandon Drury) and topping out at 95 mph. After the second strikeout, he did the slightest of celebratory hops and landed awkwardly on his left foot. Watch here around the 15-second mark:

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 eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the New York Mets.

Batters

They took a winding road to get there, but the Mets’ core offensive talent is all on the 25-man, all still under 30, and generally speaking, are all free from odd playing time restrictions once due to the presence of inferior veterans at their same positions. Jake Marisnick will likely get a lot of time in center, but given that Brandon Nimmo is coming off of injury, having Marisnick on the roster is smart; he’s a capable fourth outfielder and not famous enough or well paid enough that a healthy Nimmo won’t be able to wrest away the lion’s share of the playing time.

ZiPS didn’t like what it saw in Robinson Canó’s 2019; he now projects as one of the team’s weaker players, but there isn’t an obvious replacement at the moment. Jed Lowrie is still hanging around, at least until the Mets convince someone to take his contract (which is unlikely given the plethora of 1.5 WAR middle infielders still available), but his health is still iffy and he’d have to be clearly better to take Canó’s job. I don’t believe he is. Sadly, Canó no longer projects to finish with 3000 hits, though he’s likely already wrapped up his Hall of Fame candidacy in any case.

Pitchers

A Jacob deGrom–Noah Syndergaard–Marcus Stroman top of the rotation is a top three that can compete with that of any team in the majors. I’m not sure if the Mets have truly given up their strange dream to trade Thor, but as of right now, he’s a Met and that’s where he’s being projected. The Mets have at least six major league-caliber starters with the additions of Michael Wacha and Rick Porcello. The conventional wisdom is that Steven Matz is the odd man out one or the other, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. Now, Matz may very well be traded this winter, but I’m not sure it’s a given that he’s the one sent to the bullpen if he’s still a Met in April. I know Wacha joined the team with the intention of being a starter, but he’s also coming off injuries and a $3 million salary typically isn’t enough to have much leverage over what position you actually play.

The best news here is that ZiPS is projecting bounce-back seasons for Edwin Díaz and Jeurys Familia. Diaz looked awful in 2019, but who doesn’t look awful when allowing 2.33 HR/9 and a .377 BABIP? Based on the advanced hit data, ZiPS doesn’t think Díaz ought to have fared this poorly in either stat last season. After Díaz, it’s not the flashiest bunch, but the computer thinks they’ll far exceed their miserable 0.7 WAR from 2019, which was 24th in baseball and last among the contending teams.

Prospects

One problem for the Mets is that they don’t have a lot of short-term depth in the upper minors as injury replacements. That’s partially why they’ve been a Who’s Who of washed up outfielders at Triple-A the last few years. ZiPS doesn’t think Luis Guillorme will do much to force a change at second base, and doesn’t believe Andrés Giménez’s bat is quite ready, despite a glove that projects as above-average. Ronny Mauricio is farther off, and the computer doesn’t really have much to say about him at this point, but no matter what, it’s unlikely he shoots up to the majors in 2020. Of course, I said that about Juan Soto once!

The one prospect ZiPS is excited about in the short-term is David Peterson, the big lefty sinkerballer drafted in the first round in 2017. ZiPS thinks that Peterson is already in the same tier as Wacha or Porcello, but given that the Mets are likely contenders in 2020, it would be reasonable to expect the team to go with their most established players, rather than have Peterson adjust to the majors in games that matter. Like Porcello and Stroman, Peterson’s numbers are likely to be sensitive to the Mets infield defense, which will improve by having less of J.D. Davis in it.

He’s not really a prospect, but the Mets still seem inclined to let Tim Tebow get time in the upper minors for some reason, and they haven’t slammed the door on the possibility of actually giving him some kind of playing time in the majors. zDEF thinks that Tebow has improved defensively — my system estimated him at a ludicrously awful -25 runs in left field in 2017, the worst in my database — but he’s never done enough offensively to doubt the scouts who think he doesn’t have the skillset to contribute at the major league level. At least the Mets don’t have a significant prospect above Single-A for him to block!

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.

You’d be forgiven, in a week where the three biggest free agents on the market signed for the better part of a billion dollars, for suffering from a little contract fatigue. The Angels and Yankees are both fascinating to think about — the Yankees for the neo-Evil Empire vibe the Cole signing gives off, and the Angels because hey, Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon are fun together. The Nationals re-signing Strasburg was the least interesting of the three, and he was just the World Series MVP on the team he helped make nationally relevant!

So in that light, I’m not going to try to convince you that the Mets signing Rick Porcello is an earth-shattering, franchise altering move. It’s a neat coincidence that the terms of the contract, one year and $10 million, match Blake Treinen’s deal with the Dodgers — two pitchers trying to prove they still have it. But in terms of competitive impact, it’s a meat and potatoes kind of deal; it will make the team a little better for 2020, in the way that adding competent pitchers does, without significantly changing the general circus that is the Mets.

So instead of detailing the prospective Mets rotation, let’s look at a few mystery players. First, here are two pitchers who seem pretty okay:

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Wacha was once one of the most promising young pitches in the game. In 2013, he pitched the Cardinals to the World Series, winning NLCS MVP. Through his first dozen starts in 2014, Wacha put up a 2.78 FIP, 2.45 ERA, and a 1.8 WAR that was among the top 15 pitchers in the game. Shortly thereafter, Wacha was diagnosed with a scapular stress injury that would ruin the rest of 2014, leaving him an innings eater the following three seasons, and something less than that over the last two years. Wacha hit free agency for the first time having barely held on to a rotation spot for most of the season and having failed to make the Cardinals postseason roster. The Mets, seeking depth in a rotation that already includes Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Marcus Stroman, and Steven Matz, opted for a low-risk deal to position Wacha to close out the rotation with a one-year, $3 million contract that, with incentives, could bring the total to $10 million, as first reported by Joel Sherman.

Wacha still has his signature changeup, but his fastball rarely missed bats and he allowed 16 homers on the pitch last season. His strikeout rate dipped below 20%, and he might have been hurt by the rise in home runs last year. While Busch Stadium is a home run suppressor, Wacha gave up a ton of long balls both at home and on the road, though his road numbers were particularly brutal, with a 6.17 FIP. An indication that he probably wasn’t fully healthy, Wacha’s velocity moved all over the place throughout the season. Mike Shildt did say that Wacha was healthy as the season ended, but that he didn’t make the postseason roster due to a lack of need for an extra starter. Read the rest of this entry »