A few years ago, no one would have believed you if you told them that Brandon Nimmo would get $162 million in free agency. That hustling guy on the Mets? How many millions? I don’t know whether it’s the try-hard-ness or the walk-heavy shape of his production, but his rise to prominence and subsequent nine-figure payday elicited more “wow he got what?” responses and raised eyebrows than any marquee free agent in recent history, save possibly Xander Bogaerts’ deal with the Padres. Well, the joke’s on those eyebrow raisers, because Nimmo is one of the best players in baseball this year, and he’s doing it by being as Nimmo as he’s ever been.
What does that mean? I’m glad you asked. For me, the core Nimmo skillset is getting on base without putting the ball in play. He might do it by walking. He might do it by wearing one on the elbow (or, let’s be realistic, elbow pad). However he handles it, though, his most consistent and bankable skill is juicing up the bases for the Mets’ bashers and boppers to drive him home.
In that sense, this season is just business as usual:
Brandon Nimmo, Free Bases by Year
Year
BB%
HBP%
Total
2017
15.3%
0.9%
16.2%
2018
15.0%
4.1%
19.1%
2019
18.1%
2.0%
20.1%
2020
14.7%
2.7%
17.4%
2021
14.0%
1.3%
15.3%
2022
10.5%
2.4%
12.9%
2023
14.7%
1.7%
16.4%
All those free bases add up. Nimmo got a cup of coffee in the majors in 2016, but his first real playing time was in 2017. Since then, he’s seventh in baseball in on-base percentage, just behind plate discipline legend Joey Votto. Read the rest of this entry »
Pete Alonso is a specialist. He’s not one of those boring types, though: defensive replacement, pinch-runner, long reliever, LOOGY, the list goes on and on. He’s the kind of specialist that every team would take more of: a home run specialist. You might not notice it, because every star hitter is seemingly also a slugger these days, but Alonso isn’t like the rest of them. He’s out there for the home runs, and everything else about his game simply works in support of that.
That’s a vague statement, but I really think it’s true. To me, there’s no player in baseball today who is a more pure home run hitter. Given that we play in one of the homer-happiest eras in baseball history, and that players today train harder than at any point in the past, he might be the best home run hitter of all time.
Let’s start with a simple fact: since Alonso debuted in 2019, no one has hit more home runs. He’s 13 homers clear of Aaron Judge in second place, with a whopping 156. This isn’t a case of a pile of extra-base hits with some going over the wall, either. Of the top 15 homer hitters in that span, only Judge has a higher proportion of home runs as a share of all extra-base hits. Alonso isn’t up there spraying balls into the gap; he’s up there trying to give fans souvenirs:
The best article I’ve ever read about Adam Ottavino was written on this site. Travis Sawchik wrote it, years ago, and ever since then I’ve found myself following Ottavino’s career and thinking about that article. The season after he revamped his pitching arsenal by throwing by himself in a Manhattan storefront, he had a career year for the Rockies. The season after that, he returned to New York to pitch for the Yankees, and after a brief detour to Boston in 2021, he’s back in his hometown pitching for the Mets. Now, though, he’s doing it with some new tools.
That fateful offseason, Ottavino learned to command his slider. But that wasn’t the pitch he was trying to learn at the start. Take a look at his pitch mix by year, and you can see the cutter he planned on integrating:
Adam Ottavino Pitch Mix, ’16-’19
Year
Four-Seam
Sinker
Cutter
Slider
Changeup
2016
19.3%
33.9%
3.1%
43.1%
0.7%
2017
33.4%
17.5%
2.9%
46.2%
0.0%
2018
1.3%
41.9%
9.8%
46.8%
0.2%
2019
1.9%
39.6%
13.8%
44.7%
0.0%
Big sweeping sliders like the one Ottavino throws pair well with sinkers, and he changed his primary fastball accordingly. But sweeping sliders and sinkers both display large platoon splits, so he also picked up a cutter to pair with his two primary pitches. That was the idea, at least. In practice, he didn’t throw his cutter much against lefties, and by 2020 he didn’t throw it much at all. From 2020 through ’22, he threw that cutter only 3.7% of the time overall.
In a perhaps related development, Ottavino has gotten shelled by lefties since 2018: from that year through ’22, he allowed a sterling .256 wOBA against righties and a middle-of-the-road .313 mark against lefties. That’s hardly surprising; he basically only threw two pitches, and neither of them are at their best against opposite-handed batters. The Yankees used him more or less as a righty specialist and then traded him to the Red Sox in a salary dump to make their bullpen work more efficiently. Read the rest of this entry »
Maybe it’s because of the right-hander’s lack of a pedigree, or his status as a non-roster invitee during spring training. After all, Hamilton is a 27-year-old reliever who struggled through injuries and ineffectiveness over the past four years. At the same time, he looked like a find as recently as 2018, when he pitched to a 1.74 ERA and 2.44 FIP across 51.2 innings between Double- and Triple-A; he even averaged 96.7 mph on his heater in a brief eight-inning callup. The next season, he seemed poised to play an integral part in the White Sox bullpen, but he was struck by a foul ball while rehabbing separate shoulder and head issues stemming from a car accident. His poor luck nearly brought his career to an end, but he finally began to feel back to normal this offseason.
If you didn’t know about Hamilton before, I’ll be the first to tell you that he has been a joy to watch this season, not only because of his unique offering but also his comeback story, parlaying his rediscovered health into a spot in the Yankees’ pen, where he’s found early-season success with a resurgent fastball (averaging 95.4) and the slambio. The latter pitch has been nothing short of excellent thus far: a ludicrous 29.9% swinging-strike rate and worth 3.8 runs, which rank third and tied for fourth, respectively, among the 85 sliders thrown at least 50 times this year (as of Saturday night). The pitch’s unusually high rate of called strikes, 15.6%, given its whiffiness, also places it second among the 85 sliders in CSW%. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been a tough start to the season for the Mets’ rotation. Their two-headed ace monster isn’t looking so fearsome, as Justin Verlander went on the IL before throwing a regular-season pitch — joining fellow free-agent signee Jose Quintana — and Max Scherzer has been ineffective through two starts. To make matters worse, Carlos Carrasco dealt with erratic velocity in the first of the team’s back-to-back blowout losses at the hands of the Brewers and yielded a six-spot against the light-hitting Marlins. But one major bright spot has shone.
Kodai Senga, the former three-time NPB All-Star, shut down the Marlins in his Mets debut. With a trademark offering he calls the “ghost fork” and an emblazoned glove to match, he seems poised to become a fan favorite.
The actual process of cutting a major league baseball player on a guaranteed contract is easy enough in theory, but time-consuming in practice. The Mets designated Darin Ruf for assignment last Monday and had likely known he wouldn’t make the team for at least a couple weeks before that. But it wasn’t until this Monday that the 36-year-old former Creighton Blue Jay finally received his release. That ends the fifth act in Ruf’s career, one everyone would probably just as soon forget.
Ruf was one of several first base/DH types who passed through waivers just before the season, as teams weighed the potential for a bounceback against the downside of being on the hook for $3 million in his case, plus another $250,000 to buy out his club option in 2024 if things didn’t go well. Perhaps he’ll be more attractive at the league minimum or as depth in Triple-A if he accepts such an assignment, and we’ll see him in the majors again.
Even if this is the end of Ruf’s time as a major leaguer, he’s had a noteworthy career, spanning 561 games over parts of eight seasons across 10 years, on either side of a dominant three-year run in the KBO. I, for one, did not expect to be writing about Ruf in 2023, but he’s confounded my expectations and then some. Read the rest of this entry »
Justin Verlander wasn’t scheduled to start on Thursday, but he couldn’t even make it to the first pitch of his first Opening Day as a Met unscathed. The 40-year-old righty officially opened the season on the injured list due to a low-grade strain of his teres major, and while his absence isn’t expected to be a lengthy one, it comes at the tail end of a spring in which the Mets already lost starter José Quintana for about half the season and closer Edwin Diaz for most if not all of it.
Unfortunately, Verlander isn’t the only frontline starter to be sidelined by a teres major strain this week, as the Guardians’ Triston McKenzie recently suffered a more serious strain of the same muscle. Likewise, Verlander isn’t the only big-name hurler for a New York team who was sidelined this week (the Yankees’ Luis Severino is out again), nor is he the only NL East starter to turn up lame on Thursday (the Braves’ Max Fried took an early exit), or the only over-40 star whose plans took a turn (the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright missed his Opening Day assignment). If it’s not a party until something gets broken, it’s not a new baseball season until a star pitcher goes down. Perhaps the only consolation to be had in this round-up is that all of these injuries are muscle strains of some sort rather than ligaments or tendons. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the WBC’s TV ratings in Japan and (8:56) possible consequences of MLB’s RSN shake-up, then continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the New York Mets (21:08) with Deesha Thosar of Fox Sports, and the Oakland Athletics (1:00:11) with Matt Kawahara of The SF Chronicle, plus a Past Blast from 1982 (1:39:53) and trivia answers (1:52:11).
However you feel about the World Baseball Classic, there’s no getting around the fact that the Mets were dealt a stunning blow when Edwin Díaz sustained a freak right knee injury on Wednesday night while celebrating Puerto Rico’s victory over the Dominican Republic. On Thursday afternoon, general manager Billy Eppler announced that Díaz had suffered a full thickness tear of his patellar tendon and would undergo surgery later in the day. The timeline for returning from such injuries is around eight months according to Eppler, making it likely (though not completely certain) that Díaz would miss the whole season.
That’s a gut punch, particularly as the Mets and anyone who roots for them no doubt harbored dreams of the soon-to-be-29-year-old closer nailing down the final outs of the World Series. The injury comes just three days after the team confirmed that lefty starter José Quintana will be out until at least July as he recovers from bone graft surgery to repair a stress fracture and remove a benign lesion from the fifth rib on his left side. Three other relievers on the depth chart sustained significant injuries this week as well, with Brooks Raley straining his left hamstring while working out with Team USA in the WBC, Bryce Montes de Oca diagnosed with a stress reaction in his right elbow, and Sam Coonrod suffering a high-grade lat strain. The Mets have had better weeks, to say the least.
Eppler noted that some athletes have returned from patellar tendon surgeries in six months, but that they’re exceptions. I was only able to find a few recent examples of major league pitchers undergoing patellar tendon repairs, and they fit a six-to-nine-month range:
Angels righty Garrett Richards suffered a complete tear of his left patellar tendon while covering first base on August 20, 2014, and underwent surgery two days later. He made his 2015 season debut on April 19, about two weeks after Opening Day and about eight months after surgery, and went on to set career highs with 32 starts and 207.1 innings that year.
Royals lefty Matt Strahm tore his left patellar tendon on July 1, 2017 and underwent surgery on July 14. He returned to the mound in the minors on April 7, 2018, about nine months later, and was back in the majors a month after that, making 41 appearances totaling 61.1 innings. In late October 2020 while a member of the Padres, Strahm underwent patellar tendon surgery on his right knee, then returned to the mound in the minors on July 24, 2021 (nine months later), and to the majors on August 3, though he made just six appearances before being sidelined by inflammation. He recovered to make 50 appearances totaling 44.2 innings for the Red Sox in 2022.
Phillies righty Zach Eflin underwent surgeries to repair both patellar tendons in 2016, with the right one first on August 19. He returned to the mound in the minors on April 6, 2017, and was in the majors 12 days later — again about eight months — though he struggled with his performance and was sent to the minors, where he was hampered by elbow and shoulder strains. Four years later and much more established at the major league level, he underwent another surgery to repair his right patellar tendon on September 10, 2021 and was back on a major league mound for the Phillies’ third game of the season last April 8, about seven months later.
That’s an average of about eight months to return to competitive pitching, but all of those timelines are at least somewhat confounded by the offseason, with surgeries taking place in the July-to-September range and leaving no possibility of a six-month return even if the player were to heal quickly. Richards was the only one whose injury was reported as a full tear, like that of Díaz, and in comparing the two, the distinction of whether the injury is on the same side as the throwing arm probably matters; a pitcher’s back leg (same side) drives velocity, but the stress on the front leg (opposite side) for a pitcher’s stride is hardly trivial both for purposes of controlling pitches and in not overtaxing the arm.
Even allowing for the fact that relievers require less buildup than starters, it does seem very difficult to make an in-season return from such a surgery. If one simply ponders the math of a theoretical best-case scenario, six months would put Díaz in mid-September, leaving time for a late-season tuneup before the playoffs; seven months would land him mid-playoffs if the Mets do get that far.
Any way you slice this, it sucks, particularly for Díaz, who’s coming off an incredible season in which he made his second All-Star team, won the NL’s Trevor Hoffman Award as the league’s top reliever — thus completing the set he began when he won the AL’s Mariano Rivera Award in 2018 — and had his entrance music (Blasterjaxx & Timmy Trumpet’s “Narco”) become a viral sensation. Statistically, he led all relievers who threw at least 50 innings with a 0.90 FIP, 1.69 xERA, 50.2% strikeout rate, 42.6% K-BB%, and 3.0 WAR; his 1.31 ERA ranked fourth among those qualifiers, and his 32 saves (in 35 attempts) ranked fourth in the NL. The day after the World Series ended, he agreed to a record-setting five-year, $102 million deal to remain a Met. It was a very good year.
You don’t easily replace a player like that even given a full offseason and a spend-happy owner, but teams with playoff aspirations deal with closer changes on the fly. Think of Rafael Soriano saving 42 games for the Yankees after Rivera tore his ACL in early 2012, Koji Uehara converting 23 straight save chances with a 0.36 ERA for the Red Sox after Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey needed surgeries in ’13, or Wade Davis replacing the injured Greg Holland for the Royals in mid-’15 and closing out the Division Series, Championship Series, and World Series in October. Stuff happens, and teams deal with it; nobody wins without having several good relievers anyway, and GMs do build their rosters with contingencies in mind.
As to how the Mets will cover the ninth inning, via SNY’s Andy Martino, the team views 37-year-old righty David Robertson and Raley, a 34-year-old lefty, as its top options to match up in save situations. Robertson has saved 157 games in his 13-year major league career, including 20 last year for the Cubs and Phillies. In doing so, he posted a 2.40 ERA and 3.58 FIP with a 30.3% strikeout rate in 63.2 innings, a respectable showing given that he had been limited to 19 games from 2019 to ’21 due to a flexor strain, Tommy John surgery, and a commitment to Team USA for the Olympics (he saved two games and won a silver medal). Raley has just nine career saves, but six of them came last season with the Rays, for whom he put up a 2.68 ERA and 2.74 FIP with a 27.9% strikeout rate in 53.2 innings. Since returning from a five-year stint (2015–19) with the KBO’s Lotte Giants, he’s held lefties to a .213 wOBA, but righties have hit him for a .308 wOBA; last year, the splits were .214 and .247, respectively. Raley’s hamstring strain is reportedly low-grade, and he’s expected to return to action in a few days.
Setup man Adam Ottavino, a 37-year-old righty, has 33 career saves as well, with a high of 11 in 2021 with the Red Sox. Last year while setting up Díaz, he pitched to a 2.05 ERA and 2.85 FIP with a 30.6% strikeout rate in 65.2 innings, saving three games. The Mets may prefer to keep him in that setup role, however.
The free-agent market does have experienced closers still on the shelves such as Archie Bradley, Zack Britton, Ken Giles, and Corey Knebel, but each is there for a reason. Bradley suffered a forearm strain in late September last year, ending what was already an injury-marred season in which he threw just 18.2 innings in the majors for the Angels. Knebel saved 12 games for the Phillies with a 3.43 ERA and 4.46 FIP in 44.2 innings but suffered a shoulder capsule tear. Giles totaled just 4.1 innings last year and a mere eight over the last three years due to Tommy John surgery, other elbow problems, a middle finger sprain, and shoulder tightness. He threw a couple of February showcases that have failed to lead to a signing but has another scheduled for Friday. At best, any of them would be a project, not an immediate replacement.
The most workable option of that group is probably Britton, a 35-year-old lefty who pitched under Mets manager Buck Showalter with the Orioles from 2011 to ’18, making two All-Star teams and winning the 2016 Mariano Rivera Award. After undergoing September 2021 Tommy John surgery and bone chip removal — that in a season that also included a previous arthroscopic surgery on his elbow and a hamstring strain — he made just three appearances with the Yankees last year. Hopes for him to be part of the team’s postseason bullpen were dashed when he struggled with his control and was sidelined by a bout of shoulder fatigue. By coincidence, on Thursday he was scheduled to throw at least his third showcase session since January, and the Mets were expected to attend. Via MLB Trade Rumors, the Mets had previously focused on relievers with minor league options remaining, but with Díaz moving to the 60-day injured list and freeing up a spot on the 40-man roster, that’s less of an issue now.
Trading for a closer is another option, but at this point, the cost would be prohibitively high for a reliable one such as the Pirates’ David Bednar, a 2022 All-Star who won’t even be eligible for arbitration until after this season, or the Royals’ Scott Barlow, who has two years of club control remaining. On that note, Martino reported that last summer the Mets explored a possible trade for Alexis Díaz, Edwin’s 26-year-old brother and teammate on Puerto Rico’s WBC team (the sight of him sobbing over his brother’s injury on Wednesday night was heartbreaking). Last year as a rookie with the Reds, Díaz saved 10 games and notched a 1.84 ERA and 3.32 FIP in 63.2 innings, wit a 32.5% strikeout rate but 12.9% walk rate. Batters hit just .127, slugged .190, and whiffed on 31.1% of swings against his four-seamer, which averaged 95.7 mph with high spin; against his slider, they hit .133 and slugged .253, with a 45% whiff rate.
Díaz, though, has a full five years of control left, and the Reds have no reason not to ask for the sun, moon, and stars given the leverage they would have in revisiting a trade. Reds GM Nick Krall would probably lick his chops and ask for some combination of prospects Francisco Álvarez, Brett Baty, and Ronny Mauricio.
It’s far more likely that the Mets will sort through their internal options during the first half of the season and then start working on prying a late-inning reliever from a noncontender in July. With at least some part of Díaz’s $17.25 million salary covered by insurance (as is the case for all WBC participants), the Mets could, for example, absorb what remains of Daniel Bard’s $9.5 million salary (plus the same for 2024) when the Rockies inevitably look to cut costs.
There’s no getting around the fact that this is an impactful injury. Going by our Depth Charts, with Díaz the Mets bullpen ranked fourth in the majors with 3.7 projected WAR, and the closer accounted for 1.8 of that, nearly half:
Mets Bullpen Projection Pre- and Post-Díaz Injury
Split
Innings
ERA
FIP
WAR
WAR Rk
Pre-Injury
539
3.26
3.40
3.7
4th
Post-Injury
539
3.41
3.58
2.1
19th
Ouch. Overall, the team’s projected total WAR dropped them from 52.3 (fourth in the majors behind the Braves, Padres, and Yankees) to 50.7 (fifth, with the Blue Jays sneaking into fourth). New York’s Playoff Odds took a hit, too:
Mets Playoff Odds Pre- and Post-Díaz Injury
Split
W
L
Win%
Div
Bye
WC
Playoffs
WS
Pre-Injury
91.2
70.8
.563
30.9%
27.0%
51.4%
82.3%
8.4%
Post-Injury
90.3
71.7
.557
26.1%
22.4%
51.6%
77.7%
7.0%
Change
-0.9
0.9
-.006
-4.8%
-4.6%
0.2%
-4.6%
-1.4%
Double ouch. Even a six-point drop in winning percentage lowers the Mets’ odds of winning the NL East by nearly five percentage points, and likewise for making the playoffs, with their World Series odds knocked down a peg.
Every team, even championship ones, has to surmount injuries and other curveballs thrown its way. Losing Díaz stinks, and losing him in the manner that the Mets did even moreso (but I’m not listening to your death-to-the-WBC gripes). Even so, he’s not Francisco Lindor or Max Scherzer, and this $355 million roster can’t afford to fall apart over losing 60-some elite innings. The Mets must figure out how to win without Díaz while holding out hope that maybe — just maybe — they can stick around long enough for him to join them and fulfill that World Series dream.
“You can never have too much pitching” is an adage that predates the bombing of Pearl Harbor and a notion that’s at least as old as Old Hoss Radbourn’s sore right arm. Every team goes into the season expecting that its rotation will need far more than five starters, and one pitcher’s absence is another’s opportunity to step up, but that doesn’t make the inevitable rash of spring injuries any more bearable. This week, we’ve got a handful of prominent ones worth noting, with All-Stars Carlos Rodón and Tony Gonsolin likely to miss a few regular season turns, top prospect Andrew Painter targeting a May return, and José Quintana potentially out for longer than that.
The latest-breaking injury involves Painter, the freshest face among this group. The fast-rising 19-year-old Phillies phenom placed fifth on our Top 100 list. Moreover, the 6-foot-7 righty, who sports four potentially plus pitches, had already turned heads this camp, reaching 99 mph with his fastball in his spring debut on March 1 (Davy Andrews broke down his encounter with Carlos Correahere). While he topped out at Double-A Reading last year after two A-level stops, he was considered to be in competition with Bailey Falter for the fifth starter’s job, and had a legitimate shot at debuting as a teenager, though his 20th birthday on April 10 didn’t leave much leeway.
Alas — there’s always an alas in these stories — two days after Painter’s outing, manager Rob Thomson told reporters that he was experiencing tenderness in his right elbow, and several subsequent days without updates suggested there was more to the story. Indeed, an MRI taken on March 3 revealed a sprained ulnar collateral ligament, with the finding subsequently confirmed via a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache, hence the delay. The Phillies termed the injury “a mild sprain” that isn’t severe enough to require surgery. The team plans to rest Painter for four weeks from the date of injury (so, March 29) and then begin a light throwing program that under a best-case scenario would have him back in games in May. Read the rest of this entry »
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