Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about whether contract extensions are actually on the rise, the increasingly curious career of Rinku Singh, and Pirates owner Bob Nutting’s confusing comments about payroll, then preview the 2019 New York Mets (14:07) with The Athletic’s Mets beat writer Tim Britton, and the 2019 Toronto Blue Jays (45:22) with Sportsnet’s baseball editor, Ben Nicholson-Smith.

Audio intro: Travis, "Sing"
Audio interstitial 1: The Magnetic Fields, "In My Car"
Audio interstitial 2: Humble The Poet, "Iam Toronto"
Audio outro: Joel Plaskett, "A Million Dollars"

Link to Jeff’s extensions research
Link to Singh interview
Link to Vlad ETA FAQ
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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When publishing our lists — in particular, the top 100 — we’re frequently asked who, among the players excluded from this year’s version, might have the best chance of appearing on next year’s version. Whose stock are we buying? This post represents our best attempt to answer all of those questions at once.

This is the second year that we’re doing this, and we have some new rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. So while we think Austin Hays might have a bounce back year and be a 50 FV again, we’re not allowed to include him here; you already know about him. We also forbid ourselves from using players who were on last year’s inaugural list. (We were right about 18 of the 63 players last year, a 29% hit rate, though we have no idea if that’s good or not, as it was our first time engaging in the exercise.) At the end of the piece, we have a list of potential high-leverage relievers who might debut this year. They’re unlikely to ever be a 50 FV or better because of their role, but they often have a sizable impact on competitive clubs, and readers seemed to like that we had that category last year.

We’ve separated this year’s players into groups or “types” to make it a little more digestible, and to give you some idea of the demographics we think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own with THE BOARD. For players who we’ve already covered this offseason, we included a link to the team lists, where you can find a full scouting report. We touch briefly on the rest of the names in this post. Here are our picks to click:

Teenage Pitchers
Torres was young for his draft class, is a plus athlete, throws really hard, and had surprisingly sharp slider command all last summer. White looked excellent in the fall when the Rangers finally allowed their high school draftees to throw. He sat 92-94, and his changeup and breaking ball were both above-average. Pardinho and Woods Richardson are the two advanced guys in this group. Thomas is the most raw but, for a someone who hasn’t been pitching for very long, he’s already come a long way very quickly.

Eric Pardinho, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Lenny Torres, Jr., RHP, Cleveland Indians
Simeon Woods Richardson, RHP, New York Mets (full report)
Adam Kloffenstein, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Grayson Rodriguez, RHP, Baltimore Orioles (full report)
Owen White, RHP, Texas Rangers
Mason Denaburg, RHP, Washington Nationals (full report)
Tahnaj Thomas, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates (full report)

The “This is What They Look Like” Group
If you like big, well-made athletes, this list is for you. Rodriguez was physically mature compared to his DSL peers and also seems like a mature person. The Mariners have indicated they’re going to send him right to Low-A this year. He could be a middle-of-the-order, corner outfield power bat. Luciano was the Giants’ big 2018 July 2 signee. He already has huge raw power and looks better at short than he did as an amateur. Canario has elite bat speed. Adams was signed away from college football but is more instinctive than most two-sport athletes. Most of the stuff he needs to work on is related to getting to his power.

Julio Rodriguez, RF, Seattle Mariners
Marco Luciano, SS, San Francisco Giants
Alexander Canario, RF, San Francisco Giants
Jordyn Adams, CF, Los Angeles Angels
Jordan Groshans, 3B, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Jhon Torres, OF, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Shervyen Newton, SS, New York Mets (full report)
Kevin Alcantara, CF, New York Yankees (full report)
Freudis Nova, SS, Houston Astros
Brice Turang, SS, Milwaukee Brewers (full report)
Connor Scott, CF, Miami Marlins (full report)

Advanced Young Bats with Defensive Value
This is the group that produces the likes of Vidal Brujan and Luis Urias. Edwards is a high-effort gamer with 70 speed and feel for line drive contact. Marcano isn’t as stocky and strong as X, but he too has innate feel for contact, and could be a plus middle infield defender. Perez has great all-fields contact ability and might be on an Andres Gimenez-style fast track, where he reaches Double-A at age 19 or 20. Ruiz is the worst defender on this list, but he has all-fields raw power and feel for contact. He draws Alfonso Soriano comps. Palacios is the only college prospect listed here. He had three times as many walks as strikeouts at Towson last year. Rosario controls the zone well, is fast, and is a plus defender in center field.

Xavier Edwards, SS, San Diego Padres
Antoni Flores, SS, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Jose Devers, SS, Miami Marlins (full report)
Tucupita Marcano, SS, San Diego Padres
Wenceel Perez, SS, Detroit Tigers
Esteury Ruiz, 2B, San Diego Padres
Richard Palacios, SS, Cleveland Indians
Antonio Cabello, CF, New York Yankees (full report)
Cole Roederer, LF, Chicago Cubs (full report)
Jeisson Rosario, CF, San Diego Padres
Luis Garcia, SS, Philadelphia Phillies (full report)
Simon Muzziotti, CF, Philadelphia Phillies (full report)

Corner Power Bats
Nevin will probably end up as a contact-over-power first baseman, but he might also end up with a 70 bat. He looked great against Fall League pitching despite having played very little as a pro due to injury. Lavigne had a lot of pre-draft helium and kept hitting after he signed. He has all-fields power. Apostel saw reps at first during instructs but has a good shot to stay at third. He has excellent timing and explosive hands.

Grant Lavigne, 1B, Colorado Rockies
Sherten Apostel, 3B, Texas Rangers
Triston Casas, 1B, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Dylan Carlson, RF, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Moises Gomez, RF, Tampa Bay Rays (full report)
Elehuris Montero, 3B, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Nathaniel Lowe, 1B, Tampa Bay Rays (full report)
Tyler Nevin, 1B, Colorado Rockies

College-aged Pitchers
It’s hard to imagine any of these guys rocketing into the top 50 overall. Rather, we would anticipate that they end up in the 60-100 range on next year’s list. Gilbert was a workhorse at Stetson and his velo may spike with reshaped usage. Singer should move quickly because of how advanced his command is. Lynch’s pre-draft velocity bump held throughout the summer, and he has command of several solid secondaries. Abreu spent several years in rookie ball and then had a breakout 2018, forcing Houston to 40-man him to protect him from the Rule 5. He’ll tie Dustin May for the second-highest breaking ball spin rate on THE BOARD when the Houston list goes up. We’re intrigued by what Dodgers player dev will do with an athlete like Gray. Phillips throws a ton of strikes and has a good four-pitch mix.

Logan Gilbert, RHP, Seattle Mariners
Zac Lowther, LHP, Baltimore Orioles (full report)
Brady Singer, RHP, Kansas City Royals
Bryan Abreu, RHP, Houston Astros
Daniel Lynch, LHP, Kansas City Royals
Wil Crowe, RHP, Washington Nationals (full report)
Josiah Gray, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Jordan Holloway, RHP, Miami Marlins (full report)
Tyler Phillips, RHP, Texas Rangers

Bounce Back Candidates
The Dodgers have a strong track record of taking severely injured college arms who return with better stuff after a long period of inactivity. That could be Grove, their 2018 second rounder, who missed most of his sophomore and junior seasons at West Virginia. McCarthy was also hurt during his junior season and it may have obscured his true abilities. Burger is coming back from multiple Achilles ruptures, but was a strong college performer with power before his tire blew.

Michael Grove, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Jake McCarthy, CF, Arizona Diamondbacks
Jake Burger, 3B, Chicago White Sox
Thomas Szapucki, LHP, New York Mets (full report)

Catchers
We’re very excited about the current crop of minor league catchers. Naylor is athletic enough that he’s likely to improve as a defender and he has rare power for the position.

Ivan Herrera, C, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Bo Naylor, C, Cleveland Indians
Payton Henry, C, Milwaukee Brewers (full report)

Potentially Dominant Relievers
These names lean “multi-inning” rather than “closer.” Gonsolin was a two-way player in college who has been the beneficiary of sound pitch design. He started last year but was up to 100 mph out of the bullpen the year before. He now throws a four seamer rather than a sinker and he developed a nasty splitter in 2017. He also has two good breaking balls. He has starter stuff but may break in as a reliever this year.

Trent Thornton, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Darwinzon Hernandez, LHP, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Dakota Hudson, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Sean Reid-Foley, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Colin Poche, LHP, Tampa Bay Rays (full report)
Trevor Stephan, RHP, New York Yankees (full report)
Vladimir Gutierrez, RHP, Cincinnati Reds (full report)
Dakota Mekkes, RHP, Chicago Cubs (full report)
Tony Gonsolin, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Mauricio Llovera, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies (full report)

With spring training just around the corner, I should remind you that you should feel safe ignoring just about everything anyone says. There’s so much noise, and so little signal. It makes sense that it would be that way, to be sure — it’s an optimistic time of year — but optimism has a tenuous relationship with the reality of the future. Every clubhouse has a great group of guys. Every team is talented enough to surprise some people. Every injury is buried in the past. Every new pitch is going to miss bats.

People say optimistic things about themselves, and coaches say optimistic things about strategy implementation. Here’s how these players are going to platoon. Here’s how the bullpen is going to shake out. Here’s how the team will fold in more shifts. How many times have we heard coaches say their clubs are going to run more often? The clubs typically don’t run more often. It’s just a thing to say when it’s still theoretical. When the games start to count, only then can you test one’s commitment to an idea.

With all of this in mind, I’d like to bring your attention to the 2018 Mets. The 2018 Mets operated under a new pitching coach, in Dave Eiland. Like many other coaches, Eiland voiced some ideas in spring training. But out of that fog, the Mets did something concrete. As is common, there was an idea. As is uncommon, there was subsequent follow-through.

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 more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the New York Mets.

Batters

The lineup feels a lot like one fielded by the St. Louis Cardinals. There are no bonafide superstar projections on the offense (Robinson Cano‘s projections don’t look like they used to, though ZiPS thinks he’ll still be a good player) but there’s a surprising amount of depth, providing a number of solid options for those times when stuff hits the fan. That approach is a smart way for a team in contention to construct its roster, given that teams with serious playoff aspirations should be more risk-averse than middling or rebuilding teams are; depth is certainly a preferable strategy to hoping injuries somehow pass you by. There’s one thing St. Louis has that the New York Mets have lacked, however: a track record of actually doing a good job shuffling their offensive talent around. The Cardinals very rarely bury players, but the Mets have been known to do all sorts of weird things, such as going into seasons without an obvious starting job for Michael Conforto, signing Jose Reyes and then playing him way too often, prioritizing Jay Bruce’s playing time, and needing some bad luck on the injury front to actually give Brandon Nimmo a full-time job coming off a .379 on-base percentage in 69 games in 2017. Whether you want to blame their managers or ownership, the Mets have made some real head-scratching decisions.

And so while are a lot of options here, the Mets will have to prove that they can deploy their talent effectively. Jeff McNeil doesn’t have an obvious starting role, so the team has to demonstrate that they want to find at-bats for him, not just give them to him grudgingly as they did in 2018, only after the obviously worse options played very obviously worse. Once Peter Alonso is down in the minors just long enough to get another year of cost control for the Mets … errr … I mean once Peter Alonso is finished polishing his game coincidentally in just enough games to delay his free agency for a year, getting him playing time should be the priority over the more expensive Todd Frazier. Yoenis Cespedes‘ heel surgeries will likely keep the Mets from having to make any tricky outfield decisions (his ZiPS projection is mostly theoretical) for a while, but that won’t last forever.

Pitchers

I like Jed Lowrie, but if you could buy baseball players from a catalog, I’d be calling customer service and telling the agent “Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with him, and he works fine and everything, but do you have him in pitcher?” The front four looks very solid, but the team has given every indication that Jason Vargas will take the fifth starter job if no other options are acquired this winter. Remember what I said about how contending teams should be risk-averse? Vargas is an extremely risky pitcher, and even though it hasn’t been so long since he pretended to be Greg Maddux for a few months in early 2017, I’d really like the team to do better here, given the noise they’ve made about contending and the very real improvements in other parts of the roster.

Edwin Diaz is a significant addition, and it’s surprising how cheaply they were able to add Diaz and Cano to the roster, both in terms of money and prospects. Of all the ZiPS teams to go up on FanGraphs so far, Diaz has the highest projected WAR of any relief pitcher and the lowest ERA, by three-tenths of a run. And that’s not just because I’ve run bad teams; Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen, Andrew Miller, and Brad Hand have already gone live. Signing Luis Avilan to just a minor league contract with a non-roster invitation to spring training may go down as one of the best low-key deals of the winter, and the back end of the bullpen is better than many think.

Bench and Prospects

Perhaps my favorite projection for the Mets this year is the league-average projection for minor league reliever Stephen Villines, who I suspect would attract the interest of my friend/mortal enemy/ex-FanGraphs editor Carson Cistulli. He’s not really on the prospect radar much, but he had an interesting first professional season, striking out 54 of 138 batters in the Sally League, 25 of 77 for Hi-A St. Lucie, and then after a final promotion to Double-A Binghamton, striking out 17 of 43 batters. That’s 96 strikeouts against just 13 walks and three homers in 66.2 innings. Now, if he was doing this by blowing batters away with a 95 mph fastball, he’d be on prospects lists. But he doesn’t — he’s a soft-tosser who gets by on changing speeds and a slow slider. But he’s also a sidearmer, with a motion that looks like he wants to throw submarine but gives up halfway and just whips it around, kinda like Terry Leach’s delivery (I’m dating myself). We’ve seen sidearmers/submariners survive with slower stuff than you’d expect was sustainable — guys like Chad Bradford and Mike Myers come to mind — so while Villines could blow up in a bad way against Triple-A hitters, I’m intrigued.

ZiPS already gives Andres Gimenez a win per 600 PA in 2019 and projects enough growth from him to make for an interesting decision for the Mets at shortstop in a few years. ZiPS has come off its love for Dominic Smith, but still thinks Dilson Herrera would at least be a good role player if he can stay healthy. Believe it or not, Herrera is still just 24 (he turns 25 in March) even though it feels like he’s been around forever. There’s really no room for him on the Mets the way the team is currently constructed, but he could still resurface elsewhere and have some type of major league career — people wrote off Jose Peraza at way too young an age, too.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart 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 at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

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 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.

Last Friday afternoon, Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reported that the Mets were in agreement with 31-year-old lefty Justin Wilson, lately of the Cubs, on a two-year deal later reported to be approximately $10 million over the life of the contract. A few minutes later, the Indians announced that they’d re-signed a lefty of their own — 37-year-old Óliver Pérez — to a one-year contract worth $2.5 million, with a 2020 option worth $2.75 million that will vest if he reaches 55 appearances in 2019. With Pérez and Wilson under contract for 2019, the lefty relief market is down to Jake Diekman and a handful of folks projected for zero WAR in 2019. Let’s talk about the two that signed this week, and what we can expect from them.

Wilson is probably the higher-upside of the two, though bouts of inconsistency mean he’s not a lock to repeat the .188/.301/.342 line he held lefties to in 2018. A strong start to the 2017 season, in which he threw 40 innings for the Tigers, striking out 55 and walking just 16, led to a mid-season trade to a Cubs team hunting for a second straight division title. They didn’t quite get what they were after: Wilson walked 19 in just under 18 innings of work, struck out just 25, and visibly lost manager Joe Maddon’s confidence down the stretch — after a three-run, two-walk, one-out appearance on September 2nd, Wilson appeared just once again for the next 10 days, and was entrusted with just 5.1 more innings the rest of the season. Wilson’s wild ways continued into the early part of 2018 but seemed to improve as the season wore on, and he finished the year with a 3.41 full-season ERA, even as his Cubs mark (5.09) fell well below his then-career 3.30.

Wilson has always been a pitcher the spin rate guys love — see his acquisition by Chicago in mid-2017, for example — and nothing in his recent performance suggests the raw stuff that’s so impressed scouts and spreadsheet-wranglers alike has gone anywhere. He has, if anything, become even more reliant on his four-seam fastball than ever (he threw it nearly three-quarters of the time in 2018, mostly at the expense of his sinker) and given its 82nd-percentile spin rate that seems as reasonable a strategy as any. Batters were slightly more successful against that pitch in 2018 than they were in previous years (familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose) but much less successful against Wilson’s breaking pitches than before, suggesting a successful ability to pick his spots and disrupt timing effectively.

In New York, Wilson will join new acquisition Edwin Díaz, a re-signed Jeurys Familia, and holdovers Robert Gsellman, Seth Lugo, and Drew Smith for what should be a vastly improved Mets ‘pen. The Mets were fairly terrible in relief in 2018 — their 4.96 ERA was second only to the Marlins for worst in the National League, and their FIP was worst outright — and they were heavily right-handed, getting just 62.1 inning out of southpaws in 2018, 42.2 of which came from the departing Jerry Blevins. Whatever else can be said about Justin Wilson, I think we can fairly say he is a better relief pitcher than Jerry Blevins, and his addition will give Mickey Callaway a strong seventh-inning option before heading to Familia in the eighth and Díaz in the ninth.

Pérez, meanwhile, is back in business after it appeared, even just a year ago, that his big-league career might be over. He started 2018 on a minor-league deal with the Yankees, showed enough to sign on with Cleveland on a big-league deal after a June 1 release from Scranton, and promptly posted a 36% strikeout rate and 1.39 ERA over 32 innings for Terry Francona’s squad. Most impressively, after spending a career mostly more effective against lefties than against righties, Pérez absolutely dominated right-handed hitters in 2018, holding them to a minuscule .138 wOBA (lefties posted a .213 mark). It’s hard to say precisely what changed for Pérez, but my money would be on his increased use of a newly-improved slider (up to 49 percent usage after sitting in the low 40s for most of his career) and a move away from a fading fastball.

If Wilson is a sensible move in the middle of a somewhat puzzling offseason for the Mets, Pérez is a sensible move in the middle of a straightforward, if disappointingly stingy, offseason for Cleveland. The bullpen could certainly use some help — it was nearly as bad as the Mets’ last year — but Pérez will at best help the ‘pen stand pat in 2019 rather than move forward, and he is (somewhat incredibly) the first major-league free agent acquisition of the offseason for Mike Chernoff. Ideally, we’d see Cleveland pick up a few more relievers off the market — all they cost is money — and perhaps spin off some of the leftover pieces for replacements for the departing Michael Brantley and the traded Edwin Encarnación and Yan Gomes. The plan instead seems to be to reduce payroll while hoping the departures don’t weaken the team enough to fall behind the rest of the Central. That isn’t likely, but seize the moment this approach is not.

Still, Pérez is a good pitcher and Cleveland needs a few of those. He had a terrific season in 2018 and there is reason to believe, despite his 16 seasons in the major leagues, that he has more left in the tank. He’ll be best served if the front office goes out and gets more arms to take some of the strain off of, say, him and Brad Hand, but if he pitches like he did last year, he’ll be useful anyway. Wilson, too, will probably be in the best position to succeed if the Mets go out and find another lefty reliever to take some of the load off (Diekman is of course still available) but has enough of an ability to get righties out that he should be a contributor. In an offseason that has been remarkably bereft of teams going out and getting players they need by paying money for their services, Cleveland and New York have done just that, even if these signings would ideally be part of a larger plan to spend money on good players at positions of need.

Position: Analyst, Baseball Research & Development

Job Description Summary:
The New York Mets are seeking a Data Analyst to work on its Research and Development team. The employee will analyze baseball data in order to build models that support player development, baseball operations, and scouting. The Analyst will report to the Director, Baseball Research and Development.

Job Description:

• Assist development team to create and integrate new tools into existing enterprise application.
• Collaborate with members of Research and Development team to maintain long term information and systems architecture for Baseball Operations.
• Write scripts which support data collection, automation, and report generation.
• Interface with Baseball Operations leadership on player evaluation, in-game strategy, scouting, and player development.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Statistics, Data Science, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, or similar quantitative field.
• Strong experience querying and managing data with SQL.
• Demonstrated experience using statistical tools and packages in R or Python.
• Familiarity with baseball specific datasets (i.e., Trackman, Statcast, etc) and knowledge of current baseball research.
• Preference for candidates who have demonstrated experience building web applications in Python, Java, PHP, Javascript, etc. Please provide a link to the application and/or codebase (Github) if possible.

To Apply:
Please follow the link to the application and apply by January 25th.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the New York Mets.

In the abstract, the Mets’ signing of infielder Jed Lowrie to a two-year, $20 million contract is a nice little move. The team gets a versatile, well-regarded veteran who’s coming off such a strong enough year that he might have received double that guaranteed money in a more hospitable free agent market. In the real world, the signing of Lowrie raises more questions than it answers, questions for new general manager Brodie Van Wagenen about how the Mets plan to allocate playing time throughout not just their infield but their outfield, and about how they value the futures of the promising youngsters within both groups.

The switch-hitting Lowrie, who turns 35 in April, has spent the last three seasons with the A’s and is coming off career bests in home runs (23), wRC+ (122, with a .267/.353/.448 line), and WAR (4.9). That comes on the heels of a previous career high of 3.6 WAR in 2017, accompanied by 14 homers and a 119 wRC+. Before that, he had his ups and downs — we’ll get to those — and he has a long history of playing all over the infield, but during this two-year surge, 95% of his defensive innings have come at second base.

Of course, less than six weeks ago, the Mets traded for an eight-time All-Star second baseman in Robinson Cano, and just this past summer, in the second half of an otherwise lost season, they stumbled upon a productive, homegrown second baseman in Jeff McNeil. As with their outfield of the past two seasons — a collection light on capable center fielders, and populated with more lefty-swinging corner outfield bats than any reasonably assembled roster needs — it’s not at all clear how they intend to fit all of the parts together into a coherent whole. They do intend to play Lowrie every day, according to Newsday’s Steven Marcus, but with position(s) to be determined.

I’ll attempt to sort all of that out below, but first, Lowrie is worth a closer look. Before his big 2017 and ’18 seasons, you’d have to go back to 2013 to find a similarly strong campaign on his resumé. He was below replacement level in 2016 before missing the final two months of the season due to surgery to remove a bunion and repair a ligament in his left big toe, and from 2014-2016 hit for just an 89 wRC+ with 2.2 WAR in 292 games while missing additional time due to a fractured right index finger (2014) and a torn ligament in his right thumb (2015).

Lowrie, who lists at a modest 6-foot and 180 pounds, has cited improved lower body conditioning and late-2016 surgery to repair a deviated septum — a procedure that improved the quality of his sleep and his ability to recover from workouts — as reasons for his recent improvement. He speaks like a man aware of the flood of data available to players these days. “I look back at the success I’ve had in my career hitting, and the focus has always had to be on my legs, getting the most out of my legs as I can,” Lowrie told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser last April. “Some guys are strong enough to manipulate their mechanics and get an ideal launch angle. I’m trying to maximize bat speed to maximize exit velocity.”

As he told Sports Techie’s Joe Lemire in September:

“I check [Statcast] regularly. We have our system upstairs in the clubhouse, so if you see me leaving the dugout, 99 percent of the time it’s to go up and look at either video or exit velocity and launch angle. I use that information more as a debriefing. I can figure out that if I take the swing that I wanted to mechanically on a pitch that I know I can hit hard, but the exit velocity wasn’t what I expected it to be, then maybe it’s because my legs aren’t underneath me.”

By and large, Lowrie’s 2017 and ’18 Statcast numbers are better than his 2015 and-16 ones:

He’s elevating the ball more consistently and hitting it harder, which explains why he’s been more successful at ages 33 and 34 than earlier in his 11-year major league career, which began with the Red Sox (2008-2011) and has included multiple stays with both the Astros (2012, 2015) and A’s (2013-2014, 2016-2018). That should mitigate some fears about an expected fall-off in his mid-30s.

On the defensive side, Lowrie made 132 starts at second base in 2017, and 133 in 2018; he was above average there in the latter season (6.1 UZR, 1 DRS) after three straight years in the red by both metrics (-5.5 UZR, -12 DRS). He last played shortstop in 2016, and that was for just three innings, with 16 starts in 2015; his metrics had slipped far enough into the red prior that he’s best regarded as an emergency solution at the position these days. He’s played only a smidgen of third base recently (three innings in 2017, 14 starts in 2018); his most extensive work at the hot corner came in 2015, when he played 47 games and was within a run of average via both UZR and DRS.

In terms of his recent usage, Lowrie doesn’t look like the second coming of Ben Zobrist, Kiley McDaniel’s admiration notwithstanding, but the Mets, who lost out on the real Zobrist in December 2015, when he signed with the Cubs, are planning to move him around. Not only is second base overpopulated, but third baseman Todd Frazier is under contract for one more season and $9 million. Oh, and Lowrie, like Cano and Frazier, is a former Van Wagenen client. Things could get awkward as these guys fight for playing time, and in the meantime, it’s fair to raise an eyebrow regarding this agent-turned-GM’s penchant for collecting his aging former clients.

Indeed, right now, it’s hard to make sense of how Van Wagenen and manager Mickey Callaway plan to piece this together. Not only did they trade for Cano, they just added utilityman J.D. Davis for a rather steep prospect price. They got a nice 63-game rookie season out of McNeil and a not-so-nice sophomore campaign from shortstop Amed Rosario. They have last year’s first base prospect, Dominic Smith, and next year’s first base prospect, Peter Alonso. I don’t even dare crack wise about another reunion with Jose Reyes, as his 2018 season and the Mets’ justifications for keeping him were both terrible.

Let’s put these guys in a table:

Alonso, Smith, and Davis all have minor league options; so does Rosario, but lacking a ready alternative at shortstop, we can ignore that. Worth adding to the picture is the knowledge that Smith’s stock is very low, that Davis is a bench piece for now, that McNeil didn’t seem to have any problems against southpaws as a rookie (124 wRC+, albeit in 62 PA), that Frazier suddenly struggled against lefties in 2018 (52 wRC+ in 129 PA), which may just be a fluke, and that Lowrie’s been about average versus lefties over the past two years while mashing righties. That still leaves a fierce game of musical chairs.

If the Mets go around the horn with Ye Oldest Lineup, Frazier-Rosario-Lowrie-Cano, then not only are they playing their marquee offseason acquisition at a position where he’s got just 14 games under his belt — and he’s still quite playable at second base (2.8 UZR in 2018) — but they need to figure out how to get enough playing time for McNeil, who hit .329/.381/.471 (137 wRC+); they clearly aren’t calling up Alonso (.285/.395/.579 with 36 homers split between Double-A and Triple-A) anytime soon in this scenario. If they go Lowrie-Rosario-McNeil-Cano, they’ve got two corner guys playing their lesser positions, a second baseman on whom the jury is still out defensively (0.4 UZR, -2 DRS), a bench player making $9 million, and again no clear path for Alonso. McNeil-Rosario-Lowrie-Cano trades a comparatively minor question about second base for a major one about whether McNeil can handle third, something the Mets appeared reluctant to find out in 2018. McNeil-Rosario-Cano-Lowrie? The new guy has a total of 28 major league innings at first base, all of them in Boston in 2010-2011; that’s 11 more innings than McNeil has played at first in the minors, lest you think about swapping those corners. Frazier-Rosario-Cano-Lowrie may as well be Lowrie-Rosario-Cano-Frazier; the Toddfather might be the better defender at both positions.

All of this is reminiscent of the Mets’ mismatched outfield of the past two seasons, with Jay Bruce, Curtis Granderson, Yoenis Cespedes, Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, and no true center fielder besides the oft-injured Juan Lagares. Granderson was traded to the Dodgers in late 2017, Bruce went to Seattle in the Cano trade, Cespedes may not play at all in 2019 after surgery to remove bone spurs in both heels, Nimmo has established himself as one of their top hitters, and they just acquired Keon Broxton in a 3-for-1 deal, so it’s a stretch to say they’ve got things sorted out there beyond some kind of Conforto-Lagares/Broxton-Nimmo arrangement. Reportedly, they plan to find time for McNeil in the outfield, though he has just nine minor league appearances totaling 65.1 innings out in the pasture. At whose expense will that playing time come?

I don’t know those answers, and right now, I’m not sure the Mets do, either. The fear is that they’re now overly stocked with infielders in their mid-30s who are cutting into the playing time of infielders and outfielders in their 20s, but it’s worth acknowledging that Opening Day is 2 1/2 months away (gah) and that this move probably means others are in store. Perhaps they trade Frazier in a salary dump, or deal Conforto for another young, controllable player who fits their lineup better.

For all of the above hand-wringing, the good news is that Van Wagenen continues to add useful players, and that the Mets are projected to win 85 games, which should put them in the thick of the NL East fight. Van Wagenen’s vision of a competitive 2019 squad may not be my vision or your vision, but it’s certainly more visionary than what we’ve seen in Queens in the past couple of seasons, and that counts for something.

Earlier this winter, the New York Mets were looking to upgrade their catching situation. The team was dissatisfied with Travis d’Arnaud, Kevin Plawecki, and Tomas Nido as the frontline options, and after rumors of a J.T. Realmuto trade, the team ended up signing Wilson Ramos to give them four, major league-caliber catchers. Cleveland has moved in the opposite direction. The team traded top prospect Francisco Mejia to San Diego for Brad Hand and Adam Cimber over the summer to aid their bullpen. Then, when winter began, Cleveland moved Yan Gomes to the Nationals to save money. That left Cleveland with the ultra-light hitting Roberto Perez and the all-or-nothing Eric Haase, whose projections lean more toward the “nothing” side than the “all.” That made the two teams pretty good trading partners, and this is the result:

Cleveland receives:

• C Kevin Plawecki

New York receives:

• RHP Walker Lockett
• 2B Sam Haggerty

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.

Outfield Projects
Freddy Valdez, OF
Stanley Consuegra, OF

Valdez, 17, got $1.5 million in July 2018. He’s a traditional corner outfield power prospect; physical, with a huge frame and natural feel for lift. He’s athletically limited and may end up in left field. Consuegra worked out at shortstop when he was an amateur but his footwork belonged in the outfield and he’s already out there full time. He’s a lean, projectable power bat and will be 18 next season.

Catching Depth
Ali Sanchez, C
Juan Uriarte, C
Wilfred Astudillo, C

Sanchez is an above-average defender with a plus arm and might be a backup, but his bat is so light that that’s probably his ceiling; he might just be a third catcher. Uriarte had a breakout statistical 2017 and had kept his body in check when he broke camp and headed to Brooklyn, but he fouled a ball off of his leg in his first at-bat and didn’t play the rest of the year. He’s picked up offseason reps in Mexico. Astudillo is a squat catcher who has notably low early-career strikeout rates, if you can believe it.

Relief-types
Kyle Dowdy, RHP
Daniel Zamora, LHP
Bryce Montes de Oca, RHP
Jose Butto, RHP

Dowdy was a 2018 Rule 5 selection. His full report can be found here. Zamora got some big league time last year. He’s a low-slot lefty with a pretty extreme horizontal release point who throws a ton of his above-average frisbee slider. His fastball only sits in the upper-80s, so he’s going to have to have pinpoint fastball command to profile as more than lefty specialist. Montes de Oca, 22, is a physical, fireballing reliever who touches 100 but has had injury issues, including a Tommy John in high school and nerve transposition surgery in college. Butto, 20, could be a traditional mid-90s, above-average breaking ball reliever.

Can Play Shortstop
Edgardo Fermin, SS
Luis Carpio, SS

Each of these guys can pick it at short but probably won’t hit enough to be more than a utility type at peak. Fermin has a knack for barreling balls at the top of the zone, though, which we like.

Individuals Who Didn’t Fit Into Another Group
Joe Cavallaro, RHP
Brailin Gonzalez, LHP

Cavallaro is a side-arming righty with a slider that spins at 2650 rpm. He had a good year in A-ball at age 22 and might be a reliever. Gonzalez, 19, is a semi-projectable lefty who can spin a plus slider. He sat in the upper-80s last year and needs more velo to come.

System OverviewThe Mets have been aggressive this winter under new GM Brodie Van Wagenen, dealing top 100 prospect and 2018 first round pick Jarred Kelenic and fringe top 100 prospect Justin Dunn, along with a 40+ and three 40 FV prospects. This will likely send what was an average farm system at season’s end to one somewhere in the 20s when we re-rank the farm systems later this winter. The system will produce an everyday player early in 2019 in first baseman Peter Alonso, but he’s the only prospect likely to return any real big league value next year. The exciting part of the system this year will be at Low-A Columbia, where the No. 3, 4, 5, and 7 prospects should all start the year; all show potential to be top 100 prospects in the next 12-18 months. Given the posture Van Wagenen has taken so far, these prospects will either be the potential center pieces of blockbuster deals or the wave of cost-controlled starters who will show up in about three years when the current big league group is losing its effectiveness. This new regime will carryover the same amateur scouting group but will have a new leader internationally, with Omar Minaya overseeing the effort after former director Chris Becerra left for the Red Sox.

Several league sources have told us that the Mets don’t scout beneath full-season ball, which is the opposite of what most others teams are doing as data comes to be a greater and greater part of the player evaluation process at the upper levels of the minors. The Mets haven’t acquired a player below full-season ball since Blake Taylor was the Player to be Named Later in the 2014 Ike Davis deal with Pittsburgh. As New York makes several trades, it appears they’ve mistakenly limited the talent pool from which they’re drawing by only caring about full-season prospects, something that the new regime has to live with this offseason, even if they desire to change it next year, because they simply lack reports on a lot of players.

On Sunday, the Mets continued an active weekend of trades designed to add bench-quality pieces to their big league roster, sending several low-level minor leaguers to Houston for power-hitting corner bat J.D. Davis. Here’s the whole deal:

The Mets get:

J.D. Davis, 3B/1B/OF
Cody Bohanek, INF

The Astros get:

Luis Santana, 2B
Ross Adolph, CF
Scott Manea, C

Davis is talented — he has plus-plus raw power, a plus-plus arm, and can play several positions, though none especially well — but it’s hard to see how he fits in New York without taking playing time from players who have greater long-term potential and might also be just as good as Davis is right now. He doesn’t complement Todd Frazier or Peter Alonso — the two players projected to start for the Mets at Davis’ primary positions — in any way. Like Frazier and Alonso, Davis hits right-handed and isn’t a good infield defender.

He does have experience in the outfield corners, an area where the Mets need warm bodies, so perhaps we’ll see Davis used as a platoon or situational corner outfielder as a means of getting him at-bats against left-handed pitching. Davis hit .348/.419/.583 against southpaws last year and .344/.401/.800 in 2017, with most of that production coming at Triple-A Fresno. He could get some starts against lefties in situations where the Mets can hide him on defense. They could mix him with Juan Lagares or Keon Broxton depending on if the game state dictates a need for offense or defense, which might move Michael Conforto or Brandon Nimmo to center field once in a while.

This assumes Davis, who turns 26 in April, can hit big league pitching, something he hasn’t done in a fairly limited sample; he owns a .194/.260/.321 line in 181 career big league plate appearances. Houston, an organization at the forefront at understanding how to implement swing changes, doesn’t seem to have been able to alter Davis’ batted ball profile in a way that would enable him to start showing his raw power in games. A power-hitting platoon outcome seems reasonable to hope for, though Davis’ true talent level is probably closer to a defensively-limited bench bat, one that’s easier to roster in the American League and isn’t a great fit on this Mets roster as it’s currently composed.

Cody Bohanek, also acquired by the Mets, is an interesting, late-blooming athletic flier who is probably just an org guy. He played safety and corner at Marist High School in Chicago and had college football aspirations until the University of Illinois-Chicago gave him the opportunity to play baseball. Two-sport, cold weather prospects are apt to improve later than their warm weather peers who play more baseball, and that’s what happened with Bohanek, who had a statistical breakout as a senior and impressed scouts at NCAA Regionals. He was a 30th round senior sign in 2017.

Bohanek split 2018 between Low and Hi-A. He walked a lot and has a proficient, versatile infield glove. He may be a bench infielder at peak and the two-sport, small school, cold weather pedigree makes him slightly mysterious and interesting.

I like Houston’s end of this deal. Tyler White, who lifts the ball consistently and has a track record of hitting for power against big league pitching, made Davis offensively redundant in Houston, as the team didn’t seem interested in exploring a two-way role for Davis, who closed in college. They add three up-the-middle defenders who have performed statistically. The best of them is 19-year-old Dominican second baseman Luis Santana, who is coming off a domestic debut at advanced rookie-level Kingsport where he hit .348/.446/.471 with more walks than strikeouts.

A stocky, curvaceous 5-foot-8, Santana crowds the plate so much that he’s practically straddling it, and his idiosyncratic, low-ball swing enables him to impact pitches that cross the plate beneath his chest as he leans over it. It’s weird, but it works, and Santana looks like he’s going to be a plus hitter who also has a discerning eye for the strike zone, and whose plate crowding gets him hit by pitches so often that it actually matters. Santana has been hit in 4% of his 611 career plate appearances, which is nearly twice the career rate of active big league HBP leader Shin-Soo Choo (132 HBP, 1.9%) who became the active leader when Chase Utley (204 HBP, 2.5%) retired.

Athletically, Santana fits at second and third base. His body is pretty maxed out and he’s not likely to grow into sizable raw power, but he runs well, has infield-worthy hands and an average arm. The combination of his defensive profile and promising feel to hit make him a very intriguing prospect. He was slated to be the 10th ranked Mets prospect on our upcoming list as a 40+ FV player, and I think he’s the best individual talent involved in this deal.

The Astros also received Scott Manea and Ross Adolph. Adolph,22, is an interesting small-school sleeper who hit .322/.445/.654 as a junior at Toledo, then signed for $125,000 as a 2018 12th rounder. He continued to rake at short-season Brooklyn after signing, hitting .276/.348/.509 and swiping 14 bases (on 17 attempts) in 60 games.

He’s an above-average runner with good instincts in center field, and there’s a chance he can stay there. He could be a 50 bat with gap power who is playable in center, which would make him at least a viable big league fourth outfielder. He was going to be a prominent part of the Mets prospect lists’ honorable mention section. We whiffed on him pre-draft, but our sources who saw him in pro ball raved and I’m very interested to see how he hits in full-season ball next year because I think the industry’s error bars on small school bats are pretty large due to the quality of pitching they face.

Manea, 23, was drafted by Seattle out of high school but didn’t sign. He transferred to St. Petersburg College in Florida after his freshman year at NC State, but wasn’t drafted after his sophomore year despite being eligible. He had a good summer for the Wachusett Dirt Dawgs of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League and was eligible to sign as an undrafted free agent, which he did with the Mets in late July of 2016.

He’s a heavy-bodied catcher with power who hit .261/.368/.432 at Low-A Columbia last year. Manea’s a below-average receiver who lets his target sag as his pitcher starts to deliver the ball home, which means he has to come back to that spot with his glove, creating a lot of unnecessary movement that isn’t great for stealing strikes. He’s also a well-below average athlete and thrower, so he probably can’t catch.

The Astros have, in several instances, traded players on the periphery of their big league roster (Teoscar Hernandez, David Paulino, Ramon Laureano, etc.) for prospects, and this is another example. I understand the Mets desire to add high-probability contributors to their big league roster, even if they’re low-impact players, but moving a prospect like Santana for the kind of role player readily available on the open market feels short-sighted.