It’s been awhile since something went right for the Mets, but on Sunday, Noah Syndergaard traveled the 20-odd miles from Citi Field to Coney Island and didn’t gorge himself on 74 Nathan’s hot dogs in 10 minutes. Nor did he suffer a sword-swallowing mishap, or have his hair charred by a fire-eater with questionable control. In his first competitive outing since May 25, a rehab start for the Low-A Brooklyn Cyclones, the 25-year-old righty singed Staten Island Yankees hitters with fastballs that sat at 98 mph and touched 99 during a five-inning, 71-pitch outing that could pave the way for his return to the majors later this week, and perhaps an audition for a blockbuster trade later this month.

Syndergard hasn’t pitched in the majors since being scratched from his May 30 outing due to a strained ligament in his right index finger. Unsurprisingly, he had a bit of extra adrenaline early in his return, beginning with six straight balls. He issued a four-pitch walk of leadoff hitter Alex Junior, who followed with a steal of second. Junior took third on a single by Josh Breaux and scored on a wild pitch, the first of two that Syndergaard uncorked on the afternoon. That run was the Yankees’ only one of the day, however, and after Breaux’s single, Syndergaard retired nine of the next 10 hitters and allowed just one additional hit, a fourth-inning single by Frederick Cuevas. That single was followed by another steal and a wild pitch on a strikeout that put Syndergaard under pressure, but he escaped by getting Eduardo Torrealba to line into an unassisted, inning-ending double play. Syndergaard then completely overwhelmed the Baby Bombers in a 10-pitch, two-strikeout fifth. Read the rest of this entry »

Great teams may dream of winning 116 games in a season, but for losers, whether of the lovable or non-lovable stripe, 120 is the number at which they gaze, gimlet-eyed. The 1962 Mets, with their inaugural band of cast-offs, left behind a legacy of being great at being not-so-great, losing 120 games and planting their flag in the Mt. Everest of Terrible.

Yes, 120 losses isn’t actually the MLB record, that feat being accomplished by the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who lost 134 of their 154 depressing games. But it took a bit of chicanery to reach that sum. Frank and Stanley Robison owned both the Cleveland Spiders and St. Louis Perfectos and transferred most of the good 1898 Spiders over to St. Louis in an attempt to build one superteam and one comedy legend. Cleveland was doomed by design, though the Perfectos failed to be a superteam.

Incidentally, the Brooklyn Superbas pulled this off more successfully, looting the Baltimore Orioles to put together a 101-win roster (though I’d have penalized them a few wins for the confusing team name, which was swiped from an acrobatic act of the time and awkwardly made into a plural noun).

The 1962 Mets earned their infamy on the square and now serve as the gold standard for seasonal ineptitude. But as we head towards the trade deadline, we have two teams trying to make it interesting, the 25-66 Baltimore Orioles and the 25-65 Kansas City Royals.

Both teams stand slightly behind the Mets’ fierce pace, with winning percentages that round to 45-117, tantalizingly close to bleak greatness, but not quite there. Like when a batter tries to hit .400 over the course of the season, you want to have a cushion over the mark, since the natural course of regression will stamp down on the extremes.

But there’s at least a chance, which is really all that matters. What fun is a record if it’s likely to be surmounted? And it gives an additional layer of excitement to losing seasons when you need a break from wondering in what wacky way the Baltimore Orioles will mess up a Manny Machado trade or being astounded that the Royals actually advertise that it took them years to spare the roster from even a single game of Alcides Escobar’s services.

Powering up the ZiPS SuperComputer (it’s really just a regular computer), I cranked up the old simulations to get the latest probabilities that either the Royals or Orioles pull off the 120-loss feat.

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Before Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom, before Steven Matz, the face of the New York Metropolitans’ pitching rebuild was a young fireballer named Jenrry Mejia. When he first arrived in the big leagues in 2010, Mejia had a mid-90s cutter that was compared to Mariano Rivera’s, but it was complemented by a collection of underdeveloped secondary pitches. Over the next couple of years, Mejia refined his arsenal and his command; he broke out in 2013, flashing four average or better pitches (cutter, sinker, changeup, slider) and a real ability to miss bats. In that 2013 season, Mejia struck out 24.1% of hitters while walking just 3.6%, en route to a 65 ERA- and identical 65 FIP-. Mejia quieted any small sample concerns the following year, striking out better than a batter per inning (23.5% overall) and posting a mid-3.00s ERA, FIP, and xFIP across 93.2 innings alternating between the rotation and bullpen — and even recorded 28 saves as the Mets’ closer.

And then it all fell apart. Twice in 2015, Mejia was suspended for the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Although he was his old dominant self between suspensions — recording a 25.9% K, 7.4% BB, 53 FIP-, and 0 ERA- in 7.1 innings — his absence opened the door for the next wave of Mets pitchers, including Jeurys Familia, who supplanted Mejia as the team’s closer in the Mets’ historic run to the World Series. Still, there seemed ample room for for the fireballing Mejia to rejoin the Mets in 2016, either in a setup role or as a starter.

And then, on February 12, 2016, just before spring training was scheduled to begin, Mejia tested positive again. Per MLBTradeRumors:

Mets reliever Jenrry Mejia has been banned permanently from the majors after his third positive PED test, according to a league announcement. Remarkably, Mejia tested positive for the banned substance boldenone after earning two suspensions just last year.

And with that, Mejia became the first player ever banned from the majors on the basis of repeated positive tests, per the terms of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Mejia did not take it well, accusing MLB of a “witch hunt,” saying the league had set him up, calling out the MLBPA for not defending him, and later threatening to sue MLB for his ban.

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Monday through Wednesday notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

7/2

Brewer Hicklen, OF, Kansas City Royals (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: HM   FV: 35+
Line: 4-for-6, 2B, HR

Notes
Hicklen has some statistical red flags if you’re unaware of the context with which you should be viewing his performance. He’s a 22-year-old college hitter with a 30% strikeout rate at Low-A. But Hicklen hasn’t been committed to playing baseball for very long, as he sought, late in high school and throughout college, to have a football career. He went to UAB as a baseball walk-on and eventually earned a football scholarship as the school’s defunct program was to be reborn. But Hicklen’s physical tools stood out as he continued to play baseball (plus speed and raw power), so he was drafted and compelled to sign. He hasn’t been focusing on baseball, alone, for very long and has a .300/.350/.525 line in his first full pro season. He’s a toolsy long shot, but so far so good.

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If you’re like me, then, before Tuesday, you didn’t know the name Stu Scheurwater. We all know the names of some umpires, and maybe you know the names of most umpires, but it’s almost impossible to keep track of all of them. Scheurwater, previously, wasn’t anywhere on my radar. And honestly, that’s probably a good thing, since we get to know umpires in the first place because they do something that ticks us off. We don’t seize many opportunities to congratulate umpires for a job well done. In that way they’re kind of like closers — their success is almost assumed. They’re supposed to get it right. They can’t always do that. Every little mistake makes thousands of people upset.

I’d like to take this moment to applaud Scheurwater’s performance. One call in particular has placed him on my good side. Scheurwater didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do. He simply followed the rule book, which is much of an umpire’s job. Yet many other umpires wouldn’t have made the same decision. When it comes to how baseball is played, I don’t have many strong opinions. I’m open to the pitch clock, I’m open to changing the mound, and I don’t care either way about the DH. With Brandon Nimmo at the plate Tuesday, Scheurwater called a ball. I strongly believe any such sequence should be called the same way.

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Ron Gardenhire’s experience in the game extends far beyond his 14 seasons as a big-league manager. The 60-year-old “Gardy” has also spent time as a coach and a minor-league manager — and, before that, he played nine seasons as an infielder in the New York Mets system. Primarily a shortstop, Gardenhire appeared in 285 games with the NL East club between 1981 and -85.

He’s also a lifelong fan of the game. The bulk of Gardenhire’s formative years were spent in small-town Okmulgee, Oklahoma, where he collected bubble-gum cards, religiously tuned in to The Game of the Week, and cheered for his heroes. Then he got to live his dream. Gardenhire played with and against the likes of Dave Kingman, Rusty Staub, and Pete Rose. As he told me recently at Fenway Park, “I’ve been fortunate.”

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Ron Gardenhire: “I was an Okie, so I followed the guys who were from Oklahoma more than anything else. Mickey Mantle, Johnny Bench, Bobby Murcer. I also watched the Dodgers, Don Drysdale and those guys, because my dad was in the military and we were out in Arvin, California when he was overseas in Korea. That’s when I really got into baseball. I collected bubble-gum cards, and all that stuff, with my cousins out there.

“Every Saturday we would hunker down in front of the TV and watch the Game of the Week. In our area — this is when we were back in Oklahoma — a lot of the time it was the Cardinals. They were prominent there. We’d also get to see the Yankees quite a bit, and the Dodgers.

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Ever since Rich Hill tossed convention aside and began using his curveball at an unusually high usage rate, other pitchers have followed the template. That’s how copy-catting best practices typically work. Drew Pomeranz started Hill-ing. So did Lance McCullers and, to a slightly less pronounced degree, Charlie Morton. Other have followed suit, too.

Well, we might have another pitcher on the Hill Plan — or, at least a modified version of the plan.

After throwing his curveball at 16.6% and 17.4% rates in each of the previous two years, Seth Lugo threw his curveball 32% of the time on Sunday night, nearly in line with his 31.2% rate on the season. It worked. While it’s not Hill-level usage, a 100% increase in pitch usage is notable. In his second start of the year against the vaunted Yankee lineup, Lugo allowed just two hits over six shutout innings striking out eight and allowing no walks.

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The Mets started out hot in 2018, needing just 12 games to record 11 wins. It would take the club another 30 games to get their next 11 wins, however. Even then, at 22-19, the team’s prospects for contending seemed decent. Twenty-one games and just six wins later, a once-promising season looks much less so. The graph below shows the team’s playoff odds since the start of the season.

Even heading into May, the playoffs looked like a 50/50 proposition. A week later, it was one-in-four, and now the Mets’ odds of making the playoffs are basically 1-in-10. In what figures to be a very competitive National League playoff race, the Mets’ record is better than only the Marlins’ and Reds’. To make the playoffs, they will have to pass eight teams. Unless the club turns things around quickly, they might find themselves as sellers in a month. The question, though — if indeed the Mets do becomes sellers — is “Who precisely do they sell?” The two best players on the team are ace-level starting pitchers controlled beyond this season in Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard. Buster Olney recently argued the team should at least gauge their trade value.

So deGrom is everything that the New York Mets really need right now, in their worst of times, in his dominance and his leadership. But given the current challenges of the organization — the gray-beard age at the major league level, the lack of depth at the top of their farm system — they owe it to themselves to welcome offers from other clubs for deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, to at least understand what’s possible.

If the Mets were to start a rebuilding process, deGrom and Syndergaard would be the first to go. With deGrom in arbitration through 2020 and Syndergaard controlled through 2021, the duo would fetch a huge prospect haul. For sake of comparison, after the 2016 season, the White Sox traded Chris Sale for Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Basabe, and Victor Diaz, and then traded Jose Quintana last year for Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, Matt Rose, and Bryant Flete. If the Mets were to trade both deGrom and Syndergaard, they would probably come pretty close to that kind of haul.

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Brandon Nimmo’s promise as a hitter had been addressed in these pages during the offseason, so it’s not surprising that, when Nimmo was demoted to Triple-A following a strong start to his 2018 campaign, this author argued on behalf of a quick return to the majors.

The decision had little to do with his talents, of course. Rather, it was due mostly to the outfield logjam created by the Mets after reuniting with Jay Bruce over the winter. Nimmo was quickly freed from Las Vegas in mid-April, however, returning just days after being demoted as the Mets moved Jacob Rhame to the DL.

Since he’s returned, all he’s done is lead all NL batters in wRC+ (173), ranking third by that measure among all major leaguers with at least 100 plate appearances .

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On May 9, the Mets batted out of turn against the Reds. You probably know this. Actually, you might have known this and then forgotten it already. May 9 was a while ago. A lot has happened since May 9. Like, just in baseball, a lot has happened. Why even talk about it further?

Because May 9 was also not that long ago. In the context of humankind’s march through history, for example, it’s basically yesterday. In the context of the universe, it’s like a second ago. In the context of the universe, our whole lives are no longer than the snap of a finger. So, from that point of view, any discussion of baseball is absurd. From that point of view, why not discuss the Mets batting out of order on this first day back from a long weekend?

So much of baseball is routine. We learn from the repetition, but sometimes we glean something new when the seams get pulled apart. Batting out of turn isn’t entirely new, but it is unusual: according to Retrosheet, it had happened just six times in the last decade prior to the Mets’ foul-up. In case you missed it live, the lineup the Mets shared with the media looked like this:

The trouble was that the lineup actually given to the umpires and Reds manager Jim Riggleman had Wilmer Flores and Asdrubal Cabrera flipped.

Shortly after the game itself began, Flores came up to bat and struck out. Riggleman said nothing. They tell you to say nothing unless something good happens. Then Cabrera came up and doubled, after which Riggleman pointed out the mistake. Rule 6.03(b) is one of baseball’s more complicated rules, but the gist of it is, if a team bats out of turn and the other team notices in time, it’s an out. Once Cabrera’s at-bat commenced, it legalized Flores’ previously illegal at bat, which meant that Jay Bruce ought to have batted after Flores. Because Bruce was the proper batter, he was called out, poor guy. Cabrera’s double was wiped from the books. The Reds would win on an Adam Duvall walk-off solo home run in the 10th. One could argue it would have been good for the Mets to have scored a run in first.

It was silly and embarrassing, but it also showed us some things. These are a few of those things.

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