Mikey Romero has hit a few speed bumps since the Boston Red Sox drafted him 24th overall in 2022 out of California’s Orange Lutheran High School. A back injury limited the 21-year-old multi-position infielder to just 34 games in 2023, and he then didn’t return to game action until last May. He also missed time in August after suffering a concussion.
When healthy, it’s been mostly smooth sailing for the former first-rounder. [Boston took Roman Anthony 16 picks later the same year]. Romero’s last-season ledger included 16 home runs and a 125 wRC+ over 362 plate appearances between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland.
He’s off to a strong start in the current campaign. Back at the higher of those levels, Romero is swinging to the tune of a 134 wRC+ in 154 trips to the plate. Fully half of his 34 hits have gone for extra bases. The San Diego native’s smooth left-handed stroke has produced 10 doubles, a pair of triples, and five home runs.
As the season was getting underway, I asked the promising youngster how he’s grown as a hitter since joining the professional ranks. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of weeks ago, Hannah Keyser of The Bandwagon asked Kodai Senga about his reverse splits when it comes to times through the order. His .347 wOBA allowed the first time through the lineup drops to .275 the second time through it, and then sinks to .205 the third time through. However, his total batters faced sits at just 90 for each of the first two times through the order and 48 for the third time through. That’s a small enough sample that it’s difficult to say how much of the credit goes to Senga and how much is naturally occurring variation.
Either way it doesn’t matter much to Senga, who cares more about process than results, “Quite honestly, I don’t feel like I’m very good at any point during the game this year,” he told Keyser through his interpreter. Harsh words for a pitcher with an ERA- of 37. He does acknowledge that he makes adjustments throughout the game to get a better feel for his pitches and tweaks his strategy based on how each pitch is looking in a given start, which offers some explanation for the improved outcomes as the game goes on. But according to Senga, all of his pitches feel off this year, as he remains in the process of re-establishing his mechanics following the shoulder and calf injuries that sidelined him for nearly all of last year.
Senga’s self-evaluation reminds us that folks performing at the elite level of their fields don’t get there by letting good enough be good enough, but rather by insisting that nothing is ever good enough. To the layperson, it’s baffling to hear that Senga feels he’s pitching worse, despite posting better results than in 2023, his first MLB season, and the last in which he was fully healthy. Add on that he somehow manages to gain effectiveness throughout his starts despite a certain level of displeasure with all of his pitches, and it couldn’t be any clearer that regardless of what you read in Us Weekly, the stars are not actually just like us. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Memorial Day marks the point at which we’re a third of the way through the season, a great time to take stock of how preseason story lines have fared in the light of the regular season day. The Orioles might be bad. The Phillies and Tigers might be great. The Rockies might be the worst team of all time. Aaron Judge might be an alien. We’ve learned a lot so far – but none of those things affect the day-to-day experience of watching baseball. That’s what I like about it so much – you can turn on a random game, completely ignore any of those overarching narratives, and still see something delightful. So this week, let’s celebrate the little things that don’t necessarily win games but do consistently bring a smile to my face. With my customary nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for his basketball column that inspired this one, let’s dive in.
1. Determination
I’ve always been fascinated by Nick Allen, who blends elite shortstop defense with a completely powerless approach to offense. That combination got him traded to the Braves this winter to play a utility infielder role, but he outplayed Orlando Arcia in spring training to claim the starting job, and he’s been running with it. Not on offense – his 68 wRC+ is both mortifying and a career high – but on defense, he’s never been better.
Allen’s defense is many things, but most importantly to me, it’s kinetic. He doesn’t give up on plays. He’s always moving. He’ll throw from any platform, any arm angle, jump or twist or slide to get more force behind it. He’s graceful around second base, but it’s a nervous kind of grace, a ballet dancer after four shots of espresso. And if something gets in his way, he’ll just run through it:
Shortly after the piece ran, two people suggested David Stearns as a followup interview subject. That’s understandable. Now in his second season as the president of baseball operations for the New York Mets, the 40-year-old Ivy League product has two decades of experience within the industry, almost all of it in front offices.
A summer intern with the Pittsburgh Pirates prior to graduating from Harvard University in 2007, Stearns subsequently worked in MLB’s central office, then served as co-director of baseball operations with Cleveland, became an assistant general manager with the Houston Astros, and, in 2015, was hired by the Milwaukee Brewers as general manager. His data-driven approach was a common thread throughout. Moreover, he has remained true to his analytic bent since assuming his current position following the 2023 season.
Stearns was at Fenway Park this past week when the Red Sox hosted the team whose front office he now leads, so I took the opportunity to get his perspective on the subject at hand. Here is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
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David Laurila: I’ll start with the question I asked Atkins, Cashman, Dipoto, and Mozeliak: How has the continued growth of analytics impacted the job?
David Stearns: “Over the span of my career, we’ve been inundated with more and more sources of information — information sources that are increasingly granular in nature, increasingly have to do with the processes of playing baseball, and not necessarily the results or outcomes of playing baseball. Those lead towards more and more complex algorithms and models that require greater numbers of analysts, and really smart, creative people to have in a front office. So, one of the greatest changes is just the size of the departments within baseball. The information has grown to such a enormous extent that we need more and more people to manage the information. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind. And then we need to make all that information actionable.” Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Actually, the title is a misnomer today. A week of baseball is great, but you know what else is great? A single game of baseball. Monday night, Paul Skenes and the Pirates took on the scalding-hot Mets. It was one of the most exciting matchups we’ll get all regular season, pitting my pick for the best pitcher in baseball against one of the top offenses in the game. This being baseball, the best pregame matchups don’t always lead to the most exciting events. This time, however, the hype was warranted, and the game was both delightful and delightfully weird. So with apologies to Zach Lowe for changing the format he created, let’s try this again: Welcome to Five Things I Liked During The Mets Pirates Game From Monday.
1. My Skenes vs. Your Team
It’s downright crazy how good Skenes is. He’s so fun to watch, at least as long as he isn’t making your team look silly. He throws everything, and all of it is nasty. He drew swinging strikes on five different pitch types, and some of them left batters baffled:
Juan Soto doesn’t look like that very often. But that’s because pitchers like Skenes also don’t come around very often. Seriously, this pitch was 94 miles an hour?! This is unfair:
The Mets hassled Skenes repeatedly throughout his six innings. He surrendered six hits, tying a career high, and walked three. But when there were runners on base, Skenes found another gear. Five of his six strikeouts came with men on. He threw harder, pitched for whiffs, and generally flummoxed his opponents. He’s not always going to allow only one run, but despite the Mets finding occasional cracks in his armor, one earned run felt like a fair result. When Skenes is on the mound, the other team starts at a disadvantage. Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday, the Rocket City Trash Pandas shut out Pensacola, 9-0, in the Southern League. In the Midwest League, the Quad Cities River Bandits eked out a 7-6 win over the Dayton Dragons. And in the big leagues, television cameras captured an enormous raccoon traipsing through the Citi Field seats during the seventh inning of the Mets-Pirates game. It was a good day for raccoons at the ballpark.
The major league raccoon went down one row of seats in center field, then back across the next row up, looking for all the world like it was just searching for its seat. “I’m scared of raccoons,” said SNY broadcaster Ron Darling, stammering slightly. The brief clip makes it look like the Citi Field raccoon was simply out for a late-night stroll, not bothering anybody. It turns out there’s more to the story. Read the rest of this entry »
Francisco Lindor has played MVP-caliber baseball for the Mets over the past three seasons and change. He finished as the runner-up to Shohei Ohtani in last year’s NL MVP voting after ninth-place finishes in 2022 and ‘23, and over that span, no position player besides Aaron Judge has accumulated more WAR than his 20.8. Yet Lindor hasn’t made an All-Star team since 2019, in part because he’s often started slowly, making it easier for voters and managers to bypass him. While he was scuffling along in typical April fashion until eight days ago, he’s spurred a seven-game winning streak that’s given the Mets the best record in baseball at 18-7.
Through 25 games, this is the Mets’ best start since 1988, when they also jumped out to an 18-7 start. Those Mets finished 100-60, taking the NL East title under manager Davey Johnson before losing a seven-game NLCS to the upstart Dodgers. They also started 18-7 in 1972; the only time they’ve done better was in 1986, when they started 20-5 and went on to win 108 games and the World Series.
Admittedly, these Mets haven’t assembled their record against the most robust competition. While they did just sweep a three-game series from the Phillies, who won 95 games last year, they’ve played 12 of their 25 games against the Marlins (who lost 100 games last season), A’s (who lost 93), and Blue Jays (who lost 88); their other 10 games have come against the Astros (who won 88), the Cardinals (who won 83), and Twins (who won 82) — and St. Louis and Minnesota appear to have taken several steps back from their 2024 mediocrity, at least in the early going. The Mets have won blowouts (4-1 in games decided by five or more runs) and close ones (7-2 in one-run games); they’ve dropped series only to the Astros and Twins, each of whom took the rubber game of a best-of-three by one run. Competition aside, New York’s record isn’t soft, in that the club is only about one win ahead of its major league-best PythagenPat and BaseRuns winning percentages (.675 and .672, respectively). Read the rest of this entry »
First impressions are everything, the expression goes, and a poor one could have doomed Juan Soto’s 2024 season. The Yankees dealt five quality players for one year of his services; a slow start in the Bronx would have invited the wrath of tabloids and fans alike. But Soto started with a bang, gunning down a runner at home plate to preserve a ninth-inning lead in his debut and going on to hit .325/.438/.561 in his first month as a Yankee. From day one, he was undeniable.
This time around, he hasn’t been as lucky. Soto remains in New York, albeit in a different borough, and he’s fresh off signing the largest contract in professional sports history. By those standards, his start this season is underwhelming. His batting line is 25% above league average, but the shape of his production is essentially Soto at his least productive: tons of walks, a few too many groundballs, and not much extra base damage. The quasi-slow start prompted a story written by The New York Post’s Mike Puma headlined “Juan Soto opens up to The Post about pitchers’ new approach without ‘the best hitter in baseball’ behind him.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Mets upgraded their outfield in a big way this past winter simply by signing Juan Soto, but even with the $765 Million Man hitting reasonably well — if not up to his own high standards — the unit has been one of the majors’ least productive thus far. Now an injury has shaken up the roster, as Jose Siri has been sidelined by a fractured tibia, leading the team to test Jeff McNeil in center while he’s on a rehab assignment and setting up some further experimentation.
The Mets acquired the 29-year-old Siri in a trade with the Rays last November 19. Through the first two and a half weeks of the season, he shared time in center with Tyrone Taylor; both players are righties, so the Mets didn’t have a strict platoon in place. On Saturday, Siri fouled a ball off his left shin, and while initial X-rays were negative, a follow-up MRI taken two days later revealed a fracture. The Mets finally placed Siri on the 10-day injured list prior to Thursday’s game, but they haven’t given any indication as to when he’ll return. As manager Carlos Mendozasaid, “[H]e’s going to be out for a while.”
It’s never fun being the subject of a story that people call a saga. So when the Pete Alonso free agency saga transpired over the winter, I wondered whether he’d get off to a sluggish start as a result. Signing for less money than your agent told you you’d make, later than you expected to sign, and with a team offering you a smaller contract than they had the year before? It’s enough to make spring training a bit less of a ramp-up period and a bit more of a time for taking out frustration. If Alonso had started slow this season, I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.
Turns out, Pete Alonso isn’t like me. Instead of sulking a little and coasting into the regular season, he’s come out like a man possessed. Through Tuesday’s action (17 games), he’s hitting an outrageous .356/.466/.729, the kind of batting line that doesn’t really make any sense and doesn’t need to. Suffice it to say, he’s not going to stay this hot unless he’s secretly Lou Gehrig, a development that would raise more questions than it answered. So we don’t need to ask whether this form is real – we can instead focus on what Alonso is doing the same and differently, and then go from there.
What is Alonso best at? That’s right, hitting the ball in the air with authority. That’s always been his calling card and it’s no different this year. Want a simple way of stating that? He leads the majors with 13 barrels, one ahead of Aaron Judge. That’s the kind of power you’d expect from a first baseman who averages 38 homers per 600 plate appearances (2020 makes “per year” stats pretty annoying). Even last season, Alonso’s worst in the bigs, he finished 13th in the majors in barrels. He plays a lot and he hits the ball very hard; those are things we’ve always known about Alonso. Read the rest of this entry »
