For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the New York Mets.

Batters

Closing a deal with Carlos Correa would obviously improve the team’s outlook, but the situation at third base — Correa’s likely position — is hardly dire. Eduardo Escobar is a league-average if quite unexciting player, and if his thumb is better, Brett Baty ought to provide additional depth as the season goes on. Even if I’m not quite as optimistic about Brandon Nimmo’s attendance record as the depth charts are, he has a long history of providing a lot of value even while missing a lot of games. Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor are elite players at their respective positions, and Jeff McNeil isn’t that far off that status. Mark Canha and Starling Marte make up a solid supporting cast. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 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.

For so many who have practiced it, the knuckleball has been a pitch of last resort, an offering turned to only when a pitcher is hanging onto his career literally by his fingertips, as Jim Bouton described his situation in the introduction to Ball Four. Some have thrived with the pitch, with Phil Niekro and Hoyt Wilhelm riding it all the way to Cooperstown, but until R.A. Dickey mastered his so-called “angry knuckleball,” no such pitcher ever won the Cy Young Award. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets are changing the game. They’re spending too much, too fast. $800 million in a single offseason! Give us back our agreed-upon salary structure! (So to speak: “There’s no collusion. But … there was a reason nobody for years ever went past $300 million. You still have partners, and there’s a system,” an unnamed team official told Evan Drellich of The Athletic. Which is the kind of thing you say when there’s actually no collusion.)

Everyone’s freaking out about the Mets’ signing of Carlos Correa, news of which broke in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, hours after the Giants postponed their own official Correa rollout. Snatching the top remaining free agent away from a competitive rival in the middle of the night is a flashy move, as is signing a $300 million shortstop to play third base so as not to displace Francisco Lindor, the Mets’ incumbent $300 million shortstop.

The Mets’ projected 2023 payroll is currently at $376 million, not including tax penalties. At least for now, because the Mets’ 2023 projected payroll has been scrolling up all offseason like the scoreboard at the Jerry Lewis telethon. But here I feel compelled to borrow an observation from Tom Verducci: Before Correa, the Mets’ biggest free agent signings were mostly in service of either retaining or replacing outgoing free agents. Correa was the first real upgrade to a team that won 101 games in 2022.

Even then, the contract was not out of line with his market. He’ll make less money per year than Trea Turner or Manny Machado, and far less than Lindor. His AAV is only about $800,000 more per year than what Xander Bogaerts got from San Diego. Correa will make less money per year, over fewer years, than he stood to make had the Giants not reneged on their original 13-year, $350 million pact.

Less than 24 hours after they purloined Correa, the Mets signed another infielder at an hour when respectable people are trying to get another round in before last call instead of closing lucrative business deals. This time, it was Danny Mendick, inked to a one-year, $1 million deal.

Danny Mendick. A million bucks. One million of George Washington’s dollars. One million American simoleons.

I first became aware of Mendick many years ago while listening to an episode of FanGraphs Audio in which Carson Cistulli tried to say his last name and burst into laughter. But Mendick has evolved into a useful big leaguer. His career was probably hampered at the start because everyone saw a short White Sox second baseman and assumed he was Nick Madrigal. But after Madrigal got traded, we learned that Mendick can hold his own defensively at any infield position, and last season he hit .289/.343/.443 in 106 plate appearances.

There’s almost certainly quite a bit of batted-ball luck that went into Mendick’s 125 wRC+ in 2022. Surely the White Sox agree, otherwise they wouldn’t have non-tendered him. Let’s say he regresses all the way to his true talent wRC+, call it somewhere around 80. That’s still a perfectly acceptable backup infielder for $1 million. Of the 90 Opening Day starting second base, third base, and shortstop positions in the majors, I’m all but certain at least one will be occupied by a worse player than Mendick.

Here’s the thing: Mendick isn’t going to be the Mets’ utility infielder. He’s going to be the starting second baseman for the Triple-A Western New York Garbage Plates. (Which is what they should be called, instead of the Syracuse Mets.)

While Mendick is a serviceable, even slightly-north-of-replacement-level utility infielder, the Mets currently have that position covered. Many times over. Do you know how many people would have to be traded or incapacitated in order for Mendick to see meaningful playing time? Because I do. At least four: Eduardo Escobar, Luis Guillorme, Brett Baty, and at least one of New York’s All-Star infield starters (Correa, Lindor, and Jeff McNeil).

Escobar is the incumbent starting third baseman, and he would’ve remained so had Correa not become available. He’ll be making $9.5 million in 2023, after a season in which he posted a 106 wRC+ and 2.3 WAR. If he’s actually going to start the season as the utility infielder, he’s got to be the best utility infielder since Gil McDougald. Guillorme is what an elite utility infielder would look like on a normal team, someone who can back up the trickier defensive positions while also putting up excellent on-base numbers against right-handed pitching (.367 OBP, 118 wRC+).

Baty was the Mets’ third baseman of the future until the instant Giants owner Charles Johnson came over all Wayne Huizenga and San Francisco backed out of the Correa deal. If he’s not traded, he’s as exciting a backup third baseman as you’ll ever find. And even beyond Mendick, there’s more depth: non-roster invitee José Peraza, Jonathan Araúz, and Mark Vientos all saw big league action last year. (Though Vientos is more of a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency third baseman.) Top shortstop prospect Ronny Mauricio might not be ready now, but he might be before the season is over.

I have a recurring nightmare in which I’m back in high school and, despite having washed out of Little League as a preteen, I’m called upon to play third base in a high-stakes varsity baseball game. (To all the “You never played the game” guys: I did play the game, and I was terrible at it so I quit.) Every year, some version of this nightmare plays out on a major league field: A team with injury problems is forced to start an infielder who, upon encountering Double-A breaking stuff for the first time, started wondering if he’d have been better off going to law school.

That won’t happen to the Mets, because they can pay and have paid a premium for Danny Mendick, who has a remaining minor league option and can therefore be stashed in Triple-A until the Mets have need of him.

The normal cost for such a player is a split contract with a non-roster spring training invite. The major league minimum is $720,000 this year; such players would make at least $117,400 a year while in the minors, usually a little more if the team really wants them. But if the Mets can spend lots of money to make big, splashy improvements, they can also spend a comparative rounding error to fortify their organization further down the pecking order.

I’d argue that the Mets, by dint of their immense financial reserves, are the last team that needs to make these marginal improvements. That a team that’s committed to running bottom-third payrolls would get the most bang for its buck in the long-term by spending on minor league depth, facilities improvements, minor league salaries, coaches, and so on.

But there are 29 owners whose entire position in society is defined by having money. To spend or share it any more than necessary is to imperil their entire conception of self. Cohen is rich enough to know something his brothers in the cartel don’t: Money isn’t real to a man who’s worth tens of billions. Why are the Mets doing this? Because they can.

Correa is the splashier deal, the more expensive, and will ultimately be the more impactful. But by going out of their way to lock Mendick down, the Mets have truly shown their contempt for the other owners’ hysterical cries of poverty. They will not be outbid, anywhere on the depth chart.

Catchers are not the swiftest of ballplayers, yet they’ve been moving around this winter like hot potatoes. Willson Contreras went to St. Louis as the heir to Yadier Molina’s throne. Sean Murphy, William Contreras, and Manny Piña switched places in the biggest trade of the hot stove season. Veterans Christian Vásquez, Mike Zunino, and Luke Maile changed uniforms as well. As things currently stand, more than a dozen clubs will have a new primary catcher in 2023.

The shuffle continued within the past week, with the news that three more backstops are moving teams. On December 15, the Mets signed Omar Narváez to a one-year, $8 million contract with a $7 million player option for 2024. Two days later, the Pirates signed Austin Hedges on a one-year, $5 million deal. Then, late on December 21, the Mets sent James McCann to the Orioles for a player to be named later. Hedges and McCann have already been added to the Pirates and Orioles rosters, respectively; the Mets have yet to announce Narváez. Read the rest of this entry »

This offseason has seen an avalanche of activity early on, with 22 of our top 25 free agents signing before Christmas. But last night, we somehow doubled up. After an undisclosed medical issue held up the official announcement of Carlos Correa’s contract with the Giants, the entire deal fell through, and the Mets stepped into the fray, signing Correa to a 12-year, $315 million deal this morning, as Jon Heyman first reported.

I’ll let that breathe for a second so that you can think about it. The Giants went from laying out $350 million and adding a cornerstone player to their roster for more than a decade to nothing at all. The Mets went from a big free agency haul to an unprecedented one. Correa is going from shortstop to third base, and maybe losing one gaudy vacation home in the process when all is said and done.

The Mets had already spent heavily this offseason to shore up their pitching. With Jacob deGrom, Chris Bassitt, and Taijuan Walker all leaving in free agency, the team had a lot of high-quality innings to replace, and they did so in volume, adding Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, and José Quintana. Those were in effect like-for-like moves, as was signing Edwin Díaz, Adam Ottavino and Brandon Nimmo after they reached free agency. The 2023 Mets stood to look a lot like the 2022 Mets in broad shape – most of their additions were either swaps (deGrom for Verlander) or small (Omar Narváez will be a platoon catcher, David Robertson will shore up the bullpen). Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets, in their shopping spree of an off-season, have brought back yet another player from last year’s squad. Joining the already re-signed Brandon Nimmo and Edwin Díaz, Adam Ottavino has also agreed to run it back with a team clearly willing to upgrade wherever necessary in pursuit of a championship. He will earn $14.5 million over the next two seasons, with the opportunity to opt out after 2023.

Ottavino is coming off of arguably the best full season of his career and a major rebound from his previous two years. From 2013 to ’19, he had a 2.90 ERA and 3.34 FIP as one of the only pitchers who could figure out the nightmare of Coors Field. He spent 2020 with the Yankees and ’21 with the Red Sox, where his performance declined a bit but his peripherals were still above average. His 2022, with a 2.05 ERA and 2.85 FIP, was certainly a return to form, but he did so with a newfound skill that he’s excelled in for the first time in his career: limiting walks.

For the first time since 2016, Ottavino had a single-digit walk rate, and in the span of just one offseason he went from dreadful (seventh percentile) to very good (77th percentile) at avoiding free passes. In addition to bringing his strikeout rate back to the level of his Rockies days, he posted the best full-season K-BB% of his career. Not only are these improvements impressive in the context of his own career, but the jump is also an outlier among all major league pitchers; between 2021 and ’22, only three other pitchers had their K-BB% improve more than Ottavino. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 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.

Francisco Rodríguez was the October Surprise. As the Angels went on their 2002 postseason run, they introduced a secret weapon out of their bullpen, a 20-year-old Venezuelan righty with an unholy fastball-slider combination and the poise of a grizzled veteran despite him having all of 5.2 major league innings under his belt. Often throwing multiple innings and quickly graduating into a setup role in front of closer Troy Percival, Rodríguez set a number of records, including one for the most strikeouts by a reliever in a single postseason (28) while helping the Angels to their first (and to date only) championship in franchise history.

Though he endured some growing pains at the major league level, by 2004 Rodríguez was an All-Star, and from ’05-08 he led the American League in saves three times, setting a still-standing single-season record with 62 in the last of those campaigns. His mid-90s fastball and mid-80s slider befuddled hitters, while his demonstrative antics — “a melange of pirouettes, fist pumps and primordial screams,” as one writer put it — sometimes got under their skin.

Rodríguez cashed in via free agency, signing a three-year, $37 million deal with the Mets, but he was rarely the same pitcher he’d been in Anaheim. He made three more All-Star teams, but was arrested twice, once for assaulting his girlfriend’s father (and tearing ligaments in his thumb in the process) and once for domestic abuse. He pled guilty to the former and attended anger management classes, while the charges for the latter were dropped when the woman left to return to Venezuela. Both incidents likely would have interrupted his career to an even greater degree had they occurred after Major League Baseball and the Players Association adopted its domestic violence policy in 2015. Read the rest of this entry »

Mid-day Sunday in Japan (and typo-inducingly late Saturday night in the U.S.), the New York Mets added to their rotation, signing 29-year-old righty Kodai Senga to a five-year, $75 million deal. The contract reportedly includes a no-trade clause and an opt out after the third year of the contract.

The addition of Senga provides the Mets rotation with perhaps the final hard-throwing patch it needed due to the departure of several free agents. The Flushing starting pitcher carousel has seen Jacob deGrom, Taijuan Walker, and presumably Chris Bassitt depart, while that group has been replaced, seemingly man for man, by living legend Justin Verlander, José Quintana, and now Senga, an 11-year NPB veteran who led Japan’s top league in strikeouts in 2019 and ’20.

After starting his career as a reliever, Senga moved into the Fukuoka Hawks rotation in 2017 and has spent the last half decade as one of the better starters (and hardest-throwing pitchers) in all of Nippon Professional Baseball. As I noted when analyzing Senga for our Top 50 Free Agent ranking (Senga checked in at no. 18), while the soon-to-be 30-year-old righty struggled with walks early in his tenure as a starter (he walked 75 hitters in 180 innings in 2019 and 57 hitters in 121 innings in ’20), free passes have become less of an issue during the last two seasons. Senga’s walk rate has fallen from the 10-11% range to the 8-8.5% range during that stretch, and his WHIP was a measly 1.05. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets, who had gone some three days since singing a top free agent, went shopping again on Thursday evening. Brandon Nimmo was a sort of Aaron Judge situation-in-miniature: a New York team flirted with losing its best outfielder before realizing it’d be more trouble than it was worth to replace him. Best just to bring him back, even if it meant making him rich beyond the wildest fantasies of avarice.

Nimmo, the no. 9 player overall on our top 50 free agent list and no. 2 outfielder behind Judge, got paid quite a bit more than our projections, which is emerging as something of a theme this offseason. The readers thought he’d make an even $100 million over five years; Ben Clemens had Nimmo penciled in for $110 million over the same time frame. Instead, Nimmo has signed for eight years and $162 million.

To put that number in context: for $162 million, Nimmo could buy this 15-foot-by-25-foot inflatable water slide for every single one of the 578,000-plus residents of his native Wyoming. (Wayfair says two-day shipping is free for a purchase of this size. We shall see.) He’d then have enough left over to pay the $10 million the Mets agreed to pay relief pitcher David Robertson in their second major signing of the evening. And even after that he’d have some $1.2 million left over. Maybe he could spend that on a new garden hose or swim trunks so as to get the most out of the water slide. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets have done it. They’ve finally landed a superstar starter to replace Jacob deGrom. Wait, sorry, I’m being told that someone already wrote about the Justin Verlander signing. Instead, I’m here to talk about José Quintana, who signed a two-year, $26 million contract, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon.

Just to be clear, Quintana was a very good pitcher in his own right this year. Despite his 6–7 record (I’d like to see you try starting a game for Pirates and being credited as the winning pitcher), he posted 4.0 WAR, a 2.99 FIP, and a career-best 2.93 ERA, pacing the Cardinals down the stretch after a deadline trade.

The 34-year-old will no doubt enjoy his new role as the precocious youngster of the Mets’ starting staff, next to wizened aces Verlander and Max Scherzer. In fact, as the rotation stands now, the 27-year-old David Peterson is the only starter younger than Quintana. The Mets will be expecting a whole lot of innings from pitchers who are just a few years away from having an entire bookshelf devoted to biographies of Winston Churchill. Read the rest of this entry »