The Mets missed out on signing Trevor Bauer, and they didn’t sign J.T. Realmuto or George Springer, either. That’s not to say they’ve had an unsuccessful winter — their blockbuster deal for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco significantly upgraded the team, and they’ve made other solid moves as well, but center field remains an area of need. Jackie Bradley Jr. is clearly still the top center fielder available, and would make for a sensible fit, but the Mets aren’t the only team pursuing him. Over the weekend, they made a smaller-scale addition signing center fielder Albert Almora Jr. to a one-year deal worth $1.25 million plus incentives. The question is whether that constitutes an insurance policy or an all-too-familiar half-measure.

Almora is best remembered as the player who scored the go-ahead run for the Cubs in the 10th inning of Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Pinch-running for Kyle Schwarber after a leadoff single, he alertly tagged up and took second base on a Kris Bryant fly ball to deep center field, and came home on Ben Zobrist’s double. He was a 22-year-old rookie at that point, a 2012 first-round pick who had arrived in midsummer and made a solid showing as a bench player. After the Cubs won the World Series, they let Dexter Fowler depart as a free agent and handed the keys to center field to Almora.

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Just two years ago, the Blue Jays used an MLB-record 21 different starters over the course of a season, most of whom were either years past their prime or pitching in the majors for the very first time. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t go so well. Toronto tried to fix that last winter by adding nearly enough pitchers to build a whole new rotation, then acquired three more starters at the August trade deadline. Even after all that movement, though, the Jays still finished 24th in the majors in pitching WAR.

The Blue Jays don’t have an arm quantity problem; they have an arm quality problem. But between a free-agent market lacking in top-end starting pitching and an apparent unwillingness to compete with the Padres and White Sox in making trades for aces, Toronto has been unable to address that need. Instead, it has directed its financial resources elsewhere, adding two of the best free-agent hitters of this winter’s class and the best reliever of the 2019 season. The Blue Jays have improved their offense and their bullpen. As for their starting pitchers, well, there sure are a lot of them.

You can add one more arm to that growing pile, as Toronto acquired left-hander Steven Matz from the Mets on Wednesday in exchange for three young right-handed pitchers: Sean Reid-Foley, Yennsy Diaz and Josh Winckowski. Matz, 29, is entering his final year of team control and is set to make just over $5 million in 2021. He became expendable in New York after the team acquired Joey Lucchesi — a younger, cheaper, and more controllable left-handed starter — from the Padres in the three-team deal that sent Joe Musgrove from Pittsburgh to San Diego. On the Mets, Matz was either the fifth or sixth starter in an elite rotation. In Toronto, he’ll be the fifth or sixth starter in a rotation that is merely okay.

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Ah, relievers. Can’t predict them, can’t live without them. Between the changing demands of a modern game and the fact that bullpen arms seem to fluctuate randomly between unhittable and unreliable, everyone always needs more relievers. Both New York teams, set at many other positions, made moves to bolster their bullpens yesterday. The Yankees are signing Darren O’Day, while the Mets are adding Aaron Loup (pending a physical).

Let’s address O’Day first. Only two days ago, the Yankees traded Adam Ottavino to the Red Sox for a bag of baseballs. Actually, it was worse than that: they traded Ottavino and a prospect and $850,000 to the Red Sox for future considerations. As Dan Szymborski detailed, the Yankees made that trade to dodge the Competitive Balance Tax, but doing so left a right-handed hole in their bullpen.

One thing that no one can dispute is that Darren O’Day is right-handed. That has, in fact, been his calling card for 13 major league seasons: O’Day breaks right-handed batters down, end of story. Over his lengthy career, he’s held them to a .248 wOBA, with a 27.5% strikeout rate doing most of the heavy lifting. His sidearm delivery is a rarity these days, and it turns righties into… well, into whatever you want to call Bobby Dalbec on this swing:

That goofy (though not in a skateboarding sense) arm angle turns an 86 mph fastball into a devastating weapon, a pitch that batters think will hit them in the leg before it explodes up and away. He complements it with a sweeping slider he commands well to his glove side, a useful counter when hitters start to adjust to the unexpected release point.

The last time O’Day allowed even league average production to opposing righties was in 2011, when he faced only 43 of them. ROOGY is an overused term — at this point, even LOOGYs hardly exist — but O’Day might be the rare pitcher who fits the bill.

By using O’Day strategically against righty-heavy patches of the opposing lineup, the Yankees hope to get a steady diet of strikeouts and weak fly balls. Unlike most sidearmers, O’Day works up in the zone, something which surely adds to batters’ confusion. It’s not so much the velocity, the location, or the delivery; the combination of everything is simply too strange to deal with.

You might think that a sidearmer throwing high in the zone to lefties — three batter minimum and all — would undo all the good that O’Day does against righties. You’d be right — O’Day has been brutal against lefties as his career has worn on. Since the beginning of the new lively ball era in 2015, he’s allowed 1.5 HR/9 against lefties, good for a 4.67 FIP (ERA isn’t really compatible with splits like these). For comparison, his FIP against righties over the same window is a stellar 2.61.

The onus is on the Yankees to find good spots to use such a situational reliever, but the opportunities will certainly be there. Consider the rosters of the Yankees’ three division rivals (sorry, Orioles). The Blue Jays signed righties George Springer and Marcus Semien to join righties Bo Bichette, Teoscar Hernández, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., while the Red Sox have only three lefty batters on their roster. The Rays — well, yeah, the Rays will be a problem. Even then, though, sending O’Day out to face a dangerous righty with two outs will often be worth the gamble — he’s bad against lefties, but not enough to offset his mastery of righties.

At $2.45 million, O’Day doesn’t need to set the league on fire to meet expectations. The Yankee bullpen is strong at the top — Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton, and Chad Green provide quantity and quality, and two of them are even lefties. If O’Day can contribute 40 to 50 innings of right-handed filth, the Yankees will be pleased — that’s Ottavino production at a quarter of the price.

Speaking of New York teams signing situational relievers, the Mets signed Aaron Loup, who will become the only left-hander in an already-excellent bullpen. Calling him reverse O’Day misses the mark — he throws harder and doesn’t display such extreme platoon splits. Still, though, bringing in a southpaw in an all-right-handed bullpen tells you what the Mets want from Loup: come in against opposing leftys, sit them down, and tread water against the righties.

Okay, fine, there’s one major similarity between Loup and O’Day:

Like his new borough neighbor, Loup comes at hitters from a novel angle. Unlike O’Day, he lives in the bottom of the zone with a sinker. He complements his fastball, which sits around 92 mph, with a cutter, curve, and changeup that he uses almost exclusively against righties — the last time he threw a changeup to a lefty was in 2017.

The terms of Loup’s deal haven’t yet been disclosed, but they’ll likely closely mirror O’Day’s contract. So, too, will his role, though this time I mean mirror in the sense of the same thing in reverse. Loup will face dangerous lefties and then try to survive against the righties who follow them, shielding the Mets’ top relievers from the slings and arrows of outrageous Juan Soto highlights.

Neither of these deals are going to turn into wild, runaway success stories. Neither player is going to garner Cy Young votes. But teams need innings out of the bullpen, and both the Mets and Yankees are in competitive divisions. Filling those innings with quiet competence might be the difference in a game or two, and a game or two might be the difference in the playoff race.

How might these signings backfire? It all depends on what you mean by “backfire.” The most obvious downside is that O’Day and Loup might simply not be very good. O’Day throws a mid-80’s fastball and Loup is a 33-year-old reliever who struck out only 22.9% of opponents last year. It would hardly be shocking for one of these pitchers to be a roster casualty within the year — a few bad weeks, a pressing need for 40-man space, and that might be that.

Short of that, the downsides are all opportunity cost. If you’re out of the Loup market, you might be in the market for an exciting call-up from Triple-A. Giving innings to known and medium quantities is all well and good, but it lowers your odds of making exciting discoveries with that roster spot. The odds of O’Day turning into the next hot reliever du jour are essentially nonexistent.

For two presumptive playoff teams, however, that’s a negligible downside. It’s fun to discover new young relievers, but the downside is no joke: they might be bad! For teams far from contention, volatility is good. If you’re right in the thick of things, though, reliever volatility is definitely not where you want to be. By lowering their odds of failure, the Yankees and Mets are increasing their chances of success. Not bad for two sidearmers.

On (day of week), the Padres acquired (talented pitcher) from the (spendthrift team) in exchange for a seeming pittance, including (name of decent but not overwhelming Padres prospect). Now, surely, AJ Preller is done. Or is he?

Oh, hello there! Sorry about that. That’s actually the Mad Libs-esque form that I normally use to cover Padres pitching transactions. Today, I’ve got some details for you. It’s Joe Musgrove heading to the best weather in baseball, Hudson Head and Endy Rodriguez highlighting the group headed out (in a three-team trade involving the Pirates and Mets), and Andrew Friedman gently whispering words of affirmation to himself: “We’ll still win the long game, we’ll still win the long game, the Dodger Way can’t be beat.”

Musgrove isn’t an ace, at least not in the way that new teammates Yu Darvish and Blake Snell are. He would have been Pittsburgh’s number one starter this year, which isn’t the same thing. In San Diego, he’ll slot in as the Padres fourth starter. Let the words of Anakin Skywalker speak for the rest of the NL West: “This is outrageous! It’s unfair!”

Seriously, take a look at our Depth Charts predictions for the Padre rotation:

There simply aren’t other teams throwing out pitchers like Musgrove after a whopping three other pitchers. We think that the Padres, Yankees, and Mets will accrue roughly equal value from starting pitchers next year, but the New York teams are doing it with Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom, the consensus best two pitchers in the game. Yu Darvish is nice, but not that nice. The Padres are building their own Death Star rotation, and they’re doing it with volume. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve written many words talking about the blockbuster deal that sent Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco to the Mets, and rightly so: It’s rare for two players of such impact to be acquired by a single team in the same trade. We know that the Mets are now a better team than they would have been if not for the trade, at least if you hold onto the apparently quaint notion that bringing in superior players makes your team win games and, as a result, is desirable. But just how much better? Read the rest of this entry »

For years, rumors have circulated that Francisco Lindor was available in trade. Cleveland, ever penny-pinching, always looked unlikely to sign him to an extension. He’s due to reach free agency after this season, which put a clock on the situation. Today, that clock struck midnight. As first reported by Jeff Passan, the Mets have acquired Lindor and Carlos Carrasco in exchange for Amed Rosario, Andrés Giménez, Josh Wolf, and Isaiah Greene.

It’s easy to like New York’s side of the deal. Lindor is one of the 10 or so best position players in baseball, and at 27, he’s just entering his prime. In addition, he’s one of the best defensive shortstops in the game, a huge upgrade for a team that induces a ton of grounders.

He’s a free agent after this year, of course, which limited Cleveland’s return for him, but the Mets have talked all offseason about signing marquee free agents, and Lindor blows this year’s crop out of the water. None of the available free agents this winter project for more than J.T. Realmuto’s 4.1 WAR, and none of the top 10 are younger than 30. Lindor is better, younger, and arguably more marketable than anyone on that list, and it’s not particularly close.

Most of the best hitters in baseball get there by, well, hitting. Lindor does that too — Steamer and ZiPS think he’ll be the third-best batter at the shortstop position in 2021 — but he gets an outsize proportion of his value from defense. From 2018 to 2020, he’s been the second-best shortstop defender in baseball per UZR, behind only Andrelton Simmons. DRS has him fourth, behind Simmons, Paul DeJong, and Nick Ahmed. Per Outs Above Average, he’s second only to Ahmed. No matter how you slice it, his defense is stellar.

If you plug Ahmed or Simmons (and probably DeJong, too) into your lineup, you’re sacrificing offense for defense. Not so with Lindor. His worst season at the plate was 2020, but even then, he managed a .258/.335/.415 line, good for a 100 wRC+. For his career, he’s a .285/.346/.488 hitter, a line buoyed by his phenomenal contact skills. Despite an aggressive approach at the plate, he strikes out only 14.1% of the time while walking at an average rate, which gives him a high floor.

Though he brings plenty of other positive qualities to the table, that contact skill is his only true standout offensive ability. He displayed shocking power in 2018, barreling up 9.3% of his batted balls on the way to 38 home runs, but for the most part, he gets to his stats by being roughly average when he makes contact while making far more contact than the average hitter. In his career, he’s accumulated a .383 xwOBA on contact and a .380 actual wOBA on contact, a hair higher than the .376 and .370 marks the league as a whole has accrued over the same time period. Even average power plays up when you get so many opportunities, though, which is how he put together three straight 30-homer seasons from 2017 to 2019. Read the rest of this entry »

The quiet that had descended over baseball since San Diego’s flurry of trades was shattered by the Mets on Thursday as the team landed Francisco Lindor, the most-coveted player likely available this winter, in a trade with Cleveland. And since most good ideas become even better with a bit of fit and finish, the team also secured the services of Carlos Carrasco, adding crucial depth to the rotation. In return, the Mets are sending Amed Rosario, Andrés Giménez, Josh Wolf, and Isaiah Greene to play at the Jake.

Full trade, per sources:

To Mets: Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco.

To Indians: Amed Rosario, Andrés Giménez, Josh Wolf, Isaiah Greene.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 7, 2021

At this point, it would have been more surprising if the Cleveland didn’t trade Lindor before the start of the 2021 season. This move was long expected, but the “where” has been one of baseball’s long-burning questions. Lindor’s 100 wRC+ in the abbreviated 2020 and his 114 wRC+ from 2019 were both well below the 130 he spiked in 2018, but at this point, we’re simply quibbling on degrees of superstardom. The Mets were serious second-tier contenders in the National League – San Diego and Los Angeles are in their own class — and even if you like Rosario and Giménez, you can’t pass up the opportunity to acquire a top-five shortstop in Lindor (he’s third in our Depth Charts, first in ZiPS). Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 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 better or worse, I’m a completist. In 17 years of analyzing Hall of Fame ballots using my JAWS system, I’ve never let a candidate pass without comment, no matter how remote his chance of election. From the brothers Alomar to the youngest Alou and the elder Young, I’ve covered ’em all. Thus it’s my sworn duty to tackle the minor candidates on the 2021 BBWAA ballot. I count 18 major ones — the 14 holdovers plus Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, Torii Hunter, and Barry Zito (the only newcomer to win a major award) — leaving seven candidates for this series.

To be eligible for election, a player must appear in games in at least 10 major league seasons, with a career that ended at least five calendar years ago, and then be nominated by at least two members of a six-member screening committee — a step that can produce some arbitrary results, as I’ve noted in the past, though their leaving the younger Young off this year’s ballot given his meager numbers and high-profile mistakes on and off the field was merited. Getting this far is a victory unto itself, but these candidates aren’t going any further; given that the seven players have combined for a single mention on the 36 ballots published so far, it’s fair to say that none is going to get the 5% necessary to remain eligible, let alone the 75% needed for election. Just the same, these one-and-done candidates were accomplished players who deserve their valedictory, and in this series, they’ll get it.

Our first batch covers a pair of outfielders who seemed to take forever to secure major league jobs, though both wound up helping several teams reach the playoffs before injuries eroded their performances and led them to walk away in the their mid-30s. Read the rest of this entry »

Going into the offseason, the Mets had a huge hole at catcher, and with Steve Cohen taking over as owner, they also had a lot of money to spend. Those two forces have apparently combined, resulting in free-agent catcher James McCann making his way to New York. Robert Murray indicated a four year-deal was likely two weeks ago, last week Andy Martino reported talks were serious, with Ken Rosenthal reporting the sides were close to a four-year deal. On Sunday, it was Rosenthal who first reported a deal in the range of $40 million, pending physical, with Jeff Passan saying the deal was just over the $40 million mark. But while McCann is certainly an upgrade for the Mets at the position, the deal is curious given the years involved and J.T. Realmuto’s continued availability.

In our Top 50 Free Agents, I ranked McCann 33rd and expected a contract in the range of two years and $14 million; the average crowdsource numbers were in that same ballpark. Over at ESPN, Kiley McDaniel ranked McCann higher at 14th, but expected a modest deal of two years and $21 million, while Keith Law left McCann off his top-40 at The Athletic entirely. In his write-up for us, Jay Jaffe went over McCann’s plusses and minuses:

Quality catchers aren’t easy to come by these days, and for teams that can’t afford to offer a nine-figure deal to Realmuto and are loath to invest in a 38-year-old [Yadier] Molina (or simply aren’t the Cardinals), McCann offers a reasonable alternative. Admittedly, his track record for above-average play isn’t a long one; he was 0.7 wins below replacement as recently as 2018, and netted -0.1 WAR from 2014-18, that while hitting for just a 75 wRC+. Even so, his 3.8 WAR over the past two seasons is tied for fifth among catchers, while his 116 wRC+ is eighth. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Magadan nearly won a National League batting title in 1990. A first baseman for the New York Mets at the time, “Mags” finished with a .328 average, seven percentage points behind Willie McGee. A big final game of the season could have pushed him over the top — the math showed as much — although the odds were against him. So too was a cagey southpaw making his 547th, and final, big-league start.

“I think I needed to go 4 for 4,” recalled Magadan, who is now the hitting coach for the Colorado Rockies. Willie McGee had been traded to the American League around the end of August — he went to Oakland — so his batting average was frozen. Because of that, those of us who were chasing him had a number to shoot for.”

Magadan went into the Wednesday afternoon finale hitting .329 — Eddie Murray, then with the Los Angeles Dodgers, was at .328 — and the targeted 4 for 4 would indeed have allowed Magadan to match McGee’s mark… albeit only through rounding. Magadan would have finished at .3348 to McGee’s .3353, leaving the latter with the official title by the narrowest of margins.

No decimal points were needed. Magadan went 0 for 1, and then hit the showers with his lone plate appearance having served as a reminder that you can’t always believe what you’re told told. This is especially true when the words are spoken by the opposing pitcher. Read the rest of this entry »