Going into the season, we expected the NL East race to be fairly boring by the end of the year, and as expected, there’s not a lot of drama left about the likely outcome; of course, the fact that it’s the Mets and not the Nationals running away with the race is a pretty big surprise. Led by a quality rotation and a surging second-half offense, the Mets have put themselves in prime position to get to the postseason for the first time since 2006.

Of course, this being the Mets, there is still plenty of drama to go around, even with a big lead over the second-place Nationals and just two weeks left in the regular season. Lately, that drama has come from the team’s handling of Matt Harvey. It started off with a public disagreement between Scott Boras and the team about whether doctors recommended or required a 180 inning limit for Harvey this season, with Harvey initially appearing to side with his agent, but then coming around to the team’s side of things, stating that everyone is on the same page about his usage over the rest of the season. With Harvey quickly approaching that 180 inning threshold, but the Mets also wanting to retain the ability to use him in the postseason, the Mets are now shortening his remaining regular season innings in order to reduce the amount of stress his arm takes in his first year back from Tommy John surgery.

That limitation was on full display last night, when the Mets and Yankees met up on Sunday Night Baseball. With ESPN’s cameras showing the game across the country, Harvey dominated the Yankees, allowing just one hit and one walk in his five innings of work, striking out seven of the 18 batters he faced on the night. And with the Mets holding a tenuous 1-0 lead entering the sixth inning, Harvey was replaced by Hansel Robles, who proceeded to give up five runs in the sixth inning; his fellow relievers would give up six more, and the Yankees eventually won 11-2.

Predictably, the reaction to removing Harvey after just 77 dominating pitches is not a positive one this morning. Here’s Anthony Rieber from Newsday, for instance.

Harvey threw five innings. Gave up one infield hit. Walked one. Struck out seven. It was the Dark Knight at his best. His last pitch was 95 miles per hour. He made the Yankees look like minor-leaguers.

None of that mattered. What you saw with your own eyes on the baseball field didn’t matter. What the Mets needed as they try to nail down the National League East against the suddenly showing-late-signs-of-life Nationals didn’t matter.

All that mattered was a line on a chart somewhere that said Harvey could only go five innings — not six, good heavens not seven — because of some unproven benefits that might come his way in the postseason, or next year, or after he leaves the Mets as a free agent following the 2018 season.

Ridiculous. Arrogant. Unfortunate.

New York’s papers are filled with this same kind of criticism this morning; since Robles and the rest of the bullpen struggles, removing Harvey was clearly stupid, given how well he was pitching at the time. Except, it wasn’t, and more often than not, it’s probably going to work out just fine for the Mets.

First, let’s present a few pieces of actual facts. Here are the opposing batters lines against Matt Harvey this year, based on how many times they’ve faced him previously in that game.

Times Through The Order

At-Bat	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	0.191	0.242	0.320	0.562
2	0.214	0.259	0.308	0.567
3	0.253	0.291	0.419	0.710

The first and second times through the order, hitters have done next to nothing against Harvey this year; he’s been nearly as dominant as he was pre-surgery. Beginning the third time through the order, however, Harvey has been decidedly mediocre, and this is true of most every starting pitcher in baseball. The times-through-the-order penalty is a well established effect that has been documented countless times, and applies to everyone, even pitchers who are throwing really well early on.

Despite the temptation to buy into the “he was throwing well, thus he would have continued to throw well” logic, the data simply refutes the idea that we could look at Harvey’s early-game dominance and presume that the Yankees would have continued to struggle against him simply because he pitched well the first five innings. Starting pitchers perform much better earlier on in the game than they do in the middle and later innings, and we simply can’t take their early-game performance and extrapolate it forward into the later innings.

Then, there’s the little matter of the fact that Hansel Robles has actually been quite good for the Mets this year. He’s struck out 28% of the batters he’s faced this year while allowing roughly average walk and home run totals, and while it’s probably not predictive of anything, his .240 BABIP suggests he’s at least not just throwing the ball down the middle to try and maximize his strikeout rate. Even after last night’s meltdown, opposing batters are hitting just .190/.267/.379 against Robles this year. To illustrate the point, here’s opposing batters lines against Robles this year, and against Harvey the third time through the order.

Harvey vs Robles

Comparison	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Harvey, AB3	0.253	0.291	0.419	0.710
Robles	0.190	0.267	0.379	0.646

Yes, last night, Robles performed poorly, and it was juxtaposed against Harvey’s early-pull, making the narrative an easy one to sell. But thinking that taking Harvey out after facing 18 batters — meaning he would have begun the third-time-through-the-order with the next batter he faced — and replacing him with Robles made the Yankees more likely to put up a big rally is unsupported the evidence. A tiring Matt Harvey is just not much more (if any more) effective at getting outs than even just a reasonably decent middle reliever. And there’s plenty of reasons to think Robles is a reasonably decent middle reliever.

Last night’s results made for a very easy Monday morning story. For everyone who wants to rail against innings limits and modern pitcher usage, there is no better time to get on the soap box than when a starter is throwing well, is removed for an inferior-talented reliever, and then that reliever immediately gives up the lead. The problem is that the same soap box isn’t revisited when tiring starters are left in to face hitters a third or fourth time within the same game, and that lead disappears before the bullpen is ever called upon; this happens all the time, but the story told then is that the pitcher simply failed to do his job, rather than that the manager failed to recognize that going to to a reliever would have provided a better opportunity for a good outcome.

It might be frustrating to watch, but the reality is that if you’re going to limit a pitcher’s workload, the most rational way to do it is to shift as many innings as he can throw towards the beginning of games, when he’s facing hitters only two times each, rather than skipping starts; these shortened starts allow Harvey to still pitch when he’s most effective and rest when he’s likely to be least effective. If you’re going to enforce an innings limit, this is the best way to do it, even if you’re going to take heat for it on the days when the bullpen doesn’t live up to Harvey’s early-inning standards.

The key is to remember that Harvey probably wouldn’t have lived up to those standards either. The choice the Mets made wasn’t to take out a guy who going to continue to be unhittable and replace him with a batting practice machine. In reality, the Mets took out a starter who has been roughly an average pitcher the third time through the order this year, and replaced him with a perfectly solid reliever. It didn’t work this time, and it happened on a national stage, but it’s certainly not ridiculous to realize that letting Harvey pitch deep into games has only a marginal benefit versus handing those middle innings to relievers who are likely to perform at a similar (or better) level.

If you want to debate the merit of managing workloads in general, that’s another story, but given that the Mets are going to manage Harvey’s workload — and with the fact that he wants his workload managed, they don’t really have a choice — giving him shortened outings is probably the best way to go about this. Despite a highly-publicized failure last night, concluding that the Mets plan is “arrogant” or “unfortunate” is simply ignoring the pertinent facts.

This post is not about Yoenis Cespedes’ amazing run of late for the New York Mets. Not really, anyway. You have probably heard about Cespedes since his trade to the Mets. He is hitting .302/.352/.676 with 17 home runs and a wRC+ of 179 in 193 plate appearances with his new club. Even more amazing, from August 12 through September 14, Cespedes hit .323/.379/.805 with 17 homers and a wRC+ of 220 in 145 plate appearances. During this time the Mets went 22-9 and seized control of the National League East from pre-season, early-season, and even most of late-season favorites Washington Nationals. What Cespedes has done is incredible, but he is not the only major league player to have a great run along these lines.

This post is also not about Cespedes’ MVP candidacy. Matthew Kory did a good job breaking that argument down and discussing whether Cespedes’ time in the American League should be a part of the consideration when discussing MVP. What this post is about is recognizing those performances throughout the season on the hitting side that have been up to par with Cespedes’ great run. Some of the performances are from players on winning teams, some are from non-contenders, many of these runs have been covered by various FanGraphs authors as the runs were happening, but they all deserve recognition for playing incredible baseball for a stretch at least a month long.

We’ll start with the very best players in baseball this season. Looking at the top ten in WAR on the season, we have four players from the American League, five players from the National League, and Cespedes, who has split time with both. First, Cespedes’ line, mentioned above.

Yoenis Cespedes and His Incredible Run

	Dates	PA	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	wRC+	Team W-L
Yoenis Cespedes	8/12-9/14	145	17	.323	.379	.805	220	22-9

Read the rest of this entry »

I went to a baseball game in Oakland last night. This wouldn’t have any bearing on this article if not for this: I drove to the game, and in that 30-minute drive to the stadium, the Washington Nationals went from clawing their way back into some sort of contention in the NL East by beating the Mets to looking up October beachfront condo rentals. When I got in the car, there was the prospect of an interesting September division race. When I got out of the car, poof — that was all but gone. One inning, three pitchers, six walks, and six runs after the start of the top of the seventh, the score of the game was tied at 7-7, and all it took was a home run off the bat of Kirk Nieuwenhuis in the eighth to finally sink the Nationals.

If you follow either or both of these teams, yesterday’s seventh inning was an encapsulation of how the season has unfolded. The Mets have been one of the best stories in baseball; the Nats have been 2015’s poster child for the biggest gap between performance and preseason expectations. One of the most alluring things about baseball is how large season trends can play out in the microcosm of a single inning, and so the seventh inning saw a shift in win expectancy inline with the arc of the Nationals’ season, from spring training to today:

At one point, with two out and one on in the top of the seventh, the Nationals had a 99.2% expectation of winning the game. And, while late 7-1 leads are blown in games many times during the course of an entire baseball season, when they happen in this sort of context and with this kind of futility, it’s our responsibility to break them down.

Read the rest of this entry »

A home run is generally the result of a one-on-one battle between pitcher and hitter. A pitcher throws the ball, the batter hits it, and all the other players are more or less observers as the ball sails out of the park. Weather and park factors play a role in whether the ball leaves the yard. An outfielder might give chase. Then teammates show elation or disgust depending on the side of the battle where they are aligned. An inside-the-park home run is not like those other home runs. An inside-the-park home run needs this:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets closer has a new pitch, and it is fantastic. A 95 mph split-finger fastball is already superlative by name, but when you drill down into the arsenal of Jeurys Familia, it starts to look unique… and unfair.

But first we must appreciate the pitch in all its GIF glory.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the news this past weekend that (former) Diamondbacks reliever Addison Reed was headed to the Mets, New York may have finally secured the missing piece to their bullpen: a steady seventh-inning reliever to bridge the gap between the talented starting rotation and the eighth- and ninth-inning guys, Tyler Clippard and Jeurys Familia. This was a forward-looking move by the front office: an anticipation of, dare we say, the likely reality of the Mets in the playoffs.

Any memories of Reed’s 2015 season in Arizona — which was punctuated by early struggles, culminating in him losing the closer role — may need to be revised given his move to New York. While his lack of command was the main driver of his first half problems (as well as some bad luck in terms of balls put in play), his second half has been more along the lines of the reliever that at times showed dominance for the White Sox and Diamondbacks.

Let’s take a look at a few key stats for Reed between the first and second halves of the season to get a better handle on who the Mets might be getting in return for two young arms:

Reed’s command has returned in the almost two months since the All-Star break, his strikeout rate is up from the first half of the season, and his velocity is largely unchanged from the previous two seasons. The vital signs point to a useful reliever who has seemingly put both first half struggles and an injury behind him, one who will be at the very least an upgrade over the previous option of Hansel Robles (even though Robles has been very effective in the second half of the season).

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

The Mets are about to get all six of their best starters healthy again, as Steven Matz just had his second rehab start yesterday in his return from a strained muscle in his side. It looks like they’ll return to the six-man rotation. They should. The circumstances on this particular team make the six-man rotation a perfect match.

Yes, Matt Harvey made some waves when he complained that he didn’t know what to do with his extra day off after the Mets went to the six-man rotation. Turns out, he’s not alone. And yet, his rotation mates have a lot to teach him about maintaining a schedule with an extra day of rest.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past weekend’s four-game series in San Francisco between the Giants and Washington Nationals may be remembered as an important point in the playoff race for the teams fighting for the NL East crown. By getting swept for their sixth consecutive loss, the Nationals now find themselves reeling, four and a half games behind the Mets. Victims of their own sweep at the hands of the Pirates, New York can now look forward to better times, as they play no other NL teams with a winning percentage over .500 for the remainder of the season.

The Mets currently have an almost 70% chance of winning the division per our playoff odds; we predicted them to have a 7% chance at the beginning of the year. Crazy things happen during baseball seasons, and projections are made with the information on hand at the time — teams over or underperform; players get traded; young stars get called up early. The Mets now find themselves in a position that was viewed as extremely unlikely at the beginning of the race, and for the first time in what seems like a long time, they’re now favorites.

Adding to the unlikeliness is the fact that New York’s offense has been powered in large part by a resurgent former 40 home run threat who now finds himself toward the later stages of his career. Quite simply, Curtis Granderson is having a great season, and he’s turning back the clock in some rare ways by doing so.

We know who Granderson was during his prime: an elite power-hitting outfielder with great speed on the base paths. An injury-marred 2013 season with the Yankees seemed to mark a steep downturn, as he was able to perform just 7% better than league average on offense during his first season with the Mets in 2014. Though passable, it probably wasn’t the kind of production New York had in mind when they agreed to terms on his four-year, $60 million deal in the winter of 2013.

This year, however, we’re seeing glimmers of the Granderson of old. Already matching his 20 home run output from last year, the left-hander’s overall offensive performance is at its highest level since 2011: he’s now performed 22% better than the league average offensive player, good for the 17th-best offensive outfielder in the major leagues as measured by wRC+.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

All it takes is a game like the one Noah Syndergaard had over the weekend — five runs in four innings despite six strikeouts against two walks — to be reminded that even a Norse God has to maintain his game by refining it. Though Syndergaard’s curve is already a top-ten hammer by whiffs, he’s been working on it. And he might be adding a new baby weapon to go along with it.

–

Heading into the season, Kris Bryant enjoyed favored status when it came to predicting a National League Rookie of the Year. When FanGraphs writers were polled before the season, 20 of 36 votes went to the Chicago Cubs’ third baseman; seven went Joc Pederson; six were cast for Jorge Soler; Noah Syndergaard, Jung Ho Kang and Raisel Iglesias each got one. A couple months into the season, Pederson inserted himself into the race with 13 home runs by the end of May. As the year has moved on, Bryant and Pederson have come back to the pack a bit while Matt Duffy, Kang and Syndergaard have moved into the conversation for the NL’s top rookie. The award is no longer a two-horse battle, and all the players who have risen up are sure to see plenty of exposure since each of them is in the middle of a pennant race.

As Owen Watson wrote, this season has been a historic one for rookies, particularly position players. With Bryant and Pederson leading the way, the rookie class is producing at a greater level than any in the past decade. It’s likely the best class in nearly 30 years, back when Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco were rookies. In the past month, Bryant and Pederson have allowed a few other players to enter the race. Pederson — a three-true-outcomes player to begin the season — has removed the two positive outcomes over the past month, walking just 3% of the time and hitting only one home run. Bryant hasn’t fallen quite as far. He’s still drawing walks, but he is striking out nearly one-third of the time and has a wRC+ of 58 over the past 30 days. Read the rest of this entry »