FG on Fox: On the Mets and Going For It
On Monday, the Mets made the first significant free agent signing of the offseason, bringing Michael Cuddyer to New York on a two year, $21 million contract. Because the Rockies anticipated Cuddyer’s market and made him a qualifying offer, the deal also cost the Mets the 15th pick in next summer’s draft, so this move exchanges potential future value for a short-term upgrade. In other words, this is a win-now move, and signifies that the Mets are probably set on improving their 2015 roster, even if it comes at the cost of sacrificing assets that may prove valuable in the long run.
This seems like a bit of a weird decision, given that the team finished 79-83 last year, and perhaps more importantly, finished 17 games out of first place in the National League East. 17 games is not a trivial gap to overcome, and so the Mets don’t necessarily seem to be in a traditional position that incentivizes future-for-present talent swaps. However, I think it’s worth considering that perhaps the Mets position is perhaps more advantageous than it looks at first glance.
The primary variable in whether a team’s status as a potential contender is, of course, that teams own talent level. On this test, the Mets seem to fall a bit short at the moment; the Steamer projections hosted at FanGraphs currently have the team pegged for approximately +27 WAR, roughly the same as the Cubs and Diamondbacks, and well behind the +41 WAR that the Nationals are currently projected to produce. A 14 win gap might be slightly less intimidating than a 17 win gap, but either way, it seems nearly impossible that the Mets could improve enough this winter to match up with the best team in their division.
But being a contender is no longer just about being the best team in your division. We just had a World Series where neither team accomplished that; in fact, neither reigning league champion even won 90 games. MLB’s current playoff system offers some potentially lucrative rewards for being a respectable runner-up, and thanks to the non-Nationals teams in the NL East, it is not entirely crazy to think that the Mets might be able to aspire to that more realistic goal.
Read the rest at Just a Bit Outside.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Going for it? Yes. By signing Michael Cuddyer to be a starting outfielder in the National League again? Less Yes.
This is why I think they need to go all in and trade for Tulo. According to BaseRuns they were lucky to even be a 79 win but adding Tulo, Harvey and Cuddyer could represent an 8-10 win improvement that puts them into that “if we catch a few breaks” 85 win sweet spot.
Of course, a healthy David Wright alone represents a bigger improvement than adding Michael Cuddyer, and that’s without considering Cuddyer’s salary, age, defense, or the draft pick.
OTOH, you have to wonder whether the upgrade from a healthy David Wright is swallowed up by Lucas Duda turning back into, well, Lucas Duda (30 HRs last year; 40 HRs the previous three seasons).
I would think Lucas Duda could put up similar numbers. You’d expect some regression but then again, the RF fences are coming in, so he’d net out about the same. He’s also pretty much in his prime right now, and he’s making more contact than he used to.
Or it could be further improvement from a young slugger and additional improvement from youngsters like legare darnald wheeler etc
You can look at plenty of information to turn the team into a contender or a flop. BaseRuns might have said they were lucky to win 79 games, but if you look at actual runs scored, they were the only under-.500 team with a positive differential. They essentially had the same differential as the 90-win Cardinals.
Tulo should obviously help the team, but it’s also a matter of what it would cost. If they really want a few top prospects, plus the other team to take on his full salary, then I don’t see how that’s in the Mets’ best interest.
maybe so, but the bullpen blew a lot of games in the first half of the season…easily could have been at .500 or a game or 2 over
They already profile as an 84.5 win team compared to last year, based on the additions of Cuddyer, Harvey, and an even diminished but healthy David Wright, as well as the subtractions of Valverde, Farnsworth, Rice, Matsuzaka, Germen, none of whom should be facing ML hitters at all next year. I’m not going to argue against Steamer’s methods, but all of their projections for most Mets (except d’Arnaud) look easily beatable. If the Phillies really tank next year and the Braves’ offense stays stagnant, that could also boost the Mets’ chances. They’ll still face competition for the Wild Cards in SF and Pittsburgh, but they’ll be comparable to the Brewers/Marlins/Cubs and look to be in the hunt all year.
d’Arnaud’s Steamer projection looks quite beatable. He made a mechanical change after getting sent down and put up a .272/.319/.486 after getting called back up at the end of June. That’s good for a 128 wRC+. If a guy can put up a 128 wRC+ for a half season in his first year as a Major Leaguer after averaging around a 180 wRC+ in AAA, it’s not a leap to hit better than a 111 wRC+. The defensive projections look optimistic, though.
In an “anything can happen” sort of way, the Mets are definitely in it!
I’m no expert at defensive metrics, but does the fact that Cuddyer has to cover so much ground in Coors Field play into his dWAR? He’ll be in RF for the Mets so he’s going from 350 down the line to 330 and the Mets are currently moving in the RCF wall so he’ll have less ground to cover there. Not to mention he has the best defensive CF on the planet next to him.
What kind of role does that play in the calculations and should we maybe bump up that WAR because of it?
Presumably, a replacement player for Cuddyer would also have the benefit of playing within the same Citi field dimensions and would also benefit from playing alongside Lagares in center. So I don’t see how either would be expected to alter the WAR* calculations for Cuddyer.
That’s what I’m asking though. Do they actually use a replacement player for that specific stadium with that specific center fielder or do they just randomly assign a replacement player value based on league averages or something of that sort?
UZR does have a park adjustment factor – I believe it applies one factor to all zones that an OF’r sees.
I’m going off an older publication but it basically adjust each play by that factor – specifically the RngR component. If a play was in a zone at say a 65% out clip that 65% would be adjusted slightly up or down (I don’t know the specifics on the park adjustment methodology).
So it’s not changing the replacement level to do the adjustment, it’s adjusting the actual value of each individual play. I don’t think UZR does an adjustment for the ArmR component though. Back when Fangraphs used to have home/road split data Carl Crawford was a plus arm at home and a negative arm on the road. This was a 6 year sample and I think the delta was ~5 runs on a UZR/150 basis so I’d suspect that was more a turf (park) effect as opposed to noise.
It’s all still a black box with little data published on error bars and variance, so who knows how accurate it is.
The impact of the player next to you is supposed to be accounted for – if for example two OF’s can make the same play. I don’t know how they do this or even if they can really do it well; it’s somewhat subjective and at the end of the day UZR is still a counting stat
But Prospector, if a team’s environment is able to hide a player’s flaw, then it makes that player more valuable to the team than he is in a vacuum.
For instance, if you put early 2000’s Manny Ramirez in any other stadium, his horrible defense would have had a decent impact on his value. By putting him in Fenway, it lessened the negative value.
I don’t know if Citi Field is the answer for Cuddyer – but the concept itself isn’t so bad.
One thing I notice is that Steamer has the Mets pitching projected as the 3rd worst in baseball, beating only the Phillies and Padres. I think Steamer is totally missing on that one. Steamer is projecting way too many innings for retreads like Colon, Gee, and Niese, projecting only 46 innings combined for Syndergaard and Montero, and ignoring Matz altogether. And in the pen, it doesn’t really know that Mejia was an ace once moved to closer, and is also projecting innings for guys like Eveland and Rice who have already been dropped from the roster.
Mets still have some work to do, and would need an awful lot of luck still to actually have playoff hopes, but I think the pitching will help push them over .500, anyway.
More great stuff from Streamer…Does anyone really think the Mets pitching is 3rd worst in baseball?
I think the projections are missing a lot on the Mets, and that is coming from someone who is a devout saber-nerd.
The Mets, even before the Cuddyer acquisition, were not a bad team by any stretch of the imagination. Matt Harvey, who, people seem to be forgetting, was the best pitcher in baseball by basically every advanced pitching metric while healthy. David Wright is coming off a season where he was effectively injured the whole year. Developing young players like Travis d’Arnaud, Wilmer Flores, and Zack Wheeler should only get better. Noah Syndergaard should have a monster debut (for some reason people don’t learn that pitchers actually get better going from Vegas to Citi Field).
Steamer’s team projections, while arguably the best in the public, are still hilariously inaccurate. There are many signs indicating that there offense will rebound:
1. The Mets were one of the most unlucky teams in 2014 by xBABIP. Curtis Granderson, Wilmer Flores, and Travis d’Arnaud are three potential gainers in BABIP going into 2015.
2. Nobody had a clearly unsustainable offensive performance. Juan Lagares is the only one who may have mildly over-performed offensively.
3. Mets pitchers finished 29th out of 30 in wRC+, masking a somewhat decent offensive performance by the rest of the lineup, who finished 8th in the National League with a 100 wRC+. Remember, that is with a terrible David Wright, Chris and Eric Young in LF, Ruben Tejada at SS, and no offensive production from the catcher position until July.
Rather than using Steamer, let’s use Tom Tango’s bbFIP to evaluate the front 3 of the Mets rotation. Keep in mind that park adjustments for bbFIP are extremely minor (or non-existent).
Matt Harvey: Finished 1st in Majors in 2013 at 2.31.
Jacob deGrom: Finished 22nd in MLB (min 140 IP), 2014 bbFIP at 3.17 (keep in mind he had an elevated LD%, bbFIP could have been much lower).
Zack Wheeler: 24th in 2014, 3.19.
That’s three already very good pitchers, despite Steamer and park-adjusted (runs park adjustment makes little sense) FIP’s objections. Then you have Jon Niese, Rafael Montero, Bartolo Colon, Dillon Gee, and Noah Syndergaard. I’d bet that Sandy tries to trade Niese/Colon, keeping Gee as a 5th/6th starter. That leaves a superstar rotation of Harvey/deGrom/Wheeler/Syndergaard/Montero with Gee and Matz as depth. Not to mention an excellent farm system (ranked in top 5 by most recent lists) to boot.
So if you haven’t been following what the Mets have been doing recently, and simply base your opinion of the team on Steamer projections, then I guess it’s easy to see them as a team far away from contention. It doesn’t make this line of thought any more true. They may not be the Nationals, but they are getting awfully close.