Steven Matz, the Mets, and the Super Two Rule
The Mets have, theoretically, too many starting pitchers. With top prospect Noah Syndergaard forcing his way into the rotation, the team experimented with a six-man rotation for a week, but has now reverted back to the standard five-man grouping, with Dillon Gee heading to the bullpen as a result. Gee is not particularly happy with this arrangement, and voiced his displeasure with the situation over the weekend.
“I’m almost at the point now where I just don’t even care anymore,” Gee said. “I mean, I’m kind of just over it all. I’ll do the best I can out of the pen now.”
…
Later, Gee was asked if he would have preferred being traded. “I mean, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not a G.M., so I don’t know. I mean — I don’t know. I’m done trying to figure out this whole situation.”
But even with Gee demoted to the bullpen, the Mets still have too many pitchers. Beyond their three young studs in Matt Harvey, Jacob DeGrom, and the aforementioned Syndergaard, they also have Bartolo Colon and Jon Niese, both of whom are inoffensive back-end innings-eaters. With the first three guys locked in on talent and the latter two unlikely to get dumped for payroll reasons — Colon makes $11 million this year, while Niese is making $7 million and is due another $9 million next year — the Mets rotation remains full, even without considering pitching prospect Steven Matz, who is excelling down in Triple-A. Matz’s performances are forcing the team to consider promoting him sooner than later, even if they don’t have an obvious opening for him at the moment.
But despite the fact that there isn’t really a job opening for a starting pitcher in Queens, it’s become increasingly popular to suggest that the Mets are playing the Super Two game, holding Matz down to prevent him from reaching arbitration a year earlier, and keeping his future earnings down in the process. Joel Sherman, in this morning’s New York Post:
But their bigger short-term issue is assuring Matz does not become Super Two eligible. The top 22 percent of service time between two and three years do not have to wait until three completed seasons to become arbitration eligible. Thus, clubs keep down some of their better players to prevent them from qualifying in a few years. The Astros brought up their best prospect, shortstop Carlos Correa, on Monday, though the belief is the cutoff line is probably a week away, perhaps two just to be safe.
The first-place Astros are willing to gamble in a way the first-place Mets are not. They appear to be willing to wait until about July 1 to make sure. Remember GM Sandy Alderson told the Post’s Mike Puma that Matz has nothing left to prove at Triple-A – hence, he is ready now. This is another moment when Met fans might ask why is the organization counting dollars rather than putting the best team on the field.
Given the Mets lack of spending over the last few years, this is a very easy narrative to sell. But it also appears to be mostly lacking in fact.
Because the Super Two timeline is a moving target, there’s no clear line of demarcation that can be pointed to in real-time; the amount of days needed to qualify as a Super Two are only known in retrospect. But we can get a pretty decent sense of the range from past history, and helpfully, MLB Trade Rumors has been tracking the Super Two line for each of the last six years. From their records:
2014: 2.133
2013: 2.122
2012: 2.140
2011: 2.146
2010: 2.122
2009: 2.139
The numbers after the decimal reflect the number of days of service needed beyond two full years, so last year’s Super Two group had two full years and between 133 and 171 days of service, since 172 days of service counts as a full year. The number has dipped as low as 122 days a couple of times, but has generally been on the higher side, up near 140 days, which is what it is currently projected to be for this year’s class as well.
But it’s fair to say that anything in that 120-140 range makes a player a potential Super Two, and you probably need to come in under 120 days of service if you want to feel fairly safe about avoiding that tag with your top prospects. So, did the Astros really risk Super Two status with Correa, as Sherman asserted, rather than holding him down another “week or two” in order to ensure that he would miss the cut?
Let’s simply count the days. In every Major League regular season, there are 183 days of service, starting at Opening Day and finishing with the last day of the season. This year, Opening Day was April 5th and the season ends October 4th, so there were 26 available service days in April, 31 in May, 30 in June, 31 in July, 31 in August, 30 in September, and 4 in October.
The 57 service days available in April and May are gone, as are eight of the days from June’s total, so players who have been up since Opening Day have accrued 65 days of service this year, leaving 118 remaining on the year. Correa, who debuted yesterday, will end the year with 119 days of service; that’s three fewer than the lowest total of any Super Two cutoff line over the last six years. That was not a coincidence.
The Astros held Correa down just long enough to make it very likely that he’ll miss Super Two eligibility, and called him right in the sweet spot of when they can get the most value from him in 2015 at the lowest long-term cost possible. The Mets could call Matz up today, and likewise, he’d almost certainly be free and clear of Super Two status.
If they wait another week or two, as Sherman suggests they will, it won’t even be in question; the probability of Matz obtaining Super Two status will have moved from something like 0.1% down to 0.0%. But given that the Mets essentially guaranteed Super Two status for Syndergaard by promoting him back on May 12th — giving him 146 days of service this year, assuming he stays in the big leagues — when they didn’t need a starter, I think it’s a little shaky to suggest they’re holding off on promoting Matz because of service time issues. And it’s also probably incorrect to suggest that the Astros are “taking a risk” that the Mets are unwilling to take, because it was the Mets and not the Astros who promoted their best prospect back in May, when Super Two status actually was on the table.
Those cheap Wilpons putting profits before winning is an easy story, but in this case, it doesn’t appear to be a factually correct one. The Super Two deadline has very likely passed, and it seems more likely that Matz remains in the minor leagues because the Mets simply don’t have a spot for him right now.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
This doesn’t fit the narrative. How dare you, Dave Cameron.
Also not fitting the narrative: $60m to Curtis Granderson, $21m to Michael Cuddyer, $20M to Bartolo Colon. And the fact that they are quietly building a strong young team. If they resist giving into the Yankee fan wannabes they can be contenders for 5 to 10 years but developing players and re-signing them long-term. If you have to sacrifice a few games in a year when they’re plagued with injuries anyway, so be it.
Cuddyer and Colon certainly do fit the narrative, actually. Colon was signed to help bridge the 2014 season (no Harvey), provide insurance with another iffy arm (Wheeler), all the while, bringing veteran leadership and traits to a young, developing, team. Not to mention, Colon has most certainly earned that paycheck and will be gone after this season, seceding to our younger arms. Which is pretty much the same thing Cuddyer is providing this season and parts of next as he fills the gap prior to our young outfielders being promoted up (Conforto, Nimmo, and possibly someone not currently here).
There’s a reason they brought in veteran players on short deals. They’re not the answer. They are role players and stop-gaps, biding time until our younger players develop and take over.
I think you’re confused about what “the narrative” is, in this case the notion that the Mets prioritize savings over wins.
“They are role players and stop-gaps, biding time until our younger players develop and take over.”
If they are simply stop gaps why spend the money and lose the draft picks? You call Cuddyer a stop gap, I call him an expensive clog. They should of signed Nori Aoki instead.
Aoki’s skill set is to be LH, high OBP, top of the order hitter. That’s not what the Mets needed.
The Mets needed a RH power bat and Cuddyer was the best available relative to his price.
Obviously Aoki is having a better year (having a higher WAR and wRC+) but you can’t quibble with the logic of paying Cuddyer at the time.
Besides, Cuddyer is the least of the Mets offensive concerns right now. He still has a 110 wRC+. He’s been far from a bust.
Sure you can. Aoki might be a LHB but he hits LHP well. And who doesn’t need OBP at the top of their lineup (or anywhere for that matter?).
Should of, could of, would of.
…never say any of those phrases.
Can’t quibble with the logic of paying Cuddyer? Of course you can. Terrible idea, imo. Aoki was a much better deal and filled the Mets’ other big need.
Compare the size of the Mets’ opening day salary to their ticket prices, market size or media deal. Spending/not spending isn’t a binary. People (correctly!) call the Wilpons cheapskates for forcing the Mets to spend like a small-market club when they play in the largest and richest market in the hemisphere.
In a world with almost any other ownership, the Mets are going after guys like Scherzer, not Colon in free agency.
My impression is that Mets fans are frustrated with seeing them trot Niese out there when they have Matz dominating in the PCL who is by most accounts ready for the show. The hope, I guess, is that they are aggressively shopping both Niese and Gee.
Yes. that’s mostly the case, Niese and Gee stunk it up the past few weeks, we want Matz because we think he can and will outperform them.
If MLB was going to collapse this off-season and 2015 was all that mattered, then it would make sense to call up Matz, let go of Niese, and let it ride. There’s a lot of upside to Matz. But a GM has to look at the long term vision of the team as well, and you can’t just destroy Niese’s trade-value.
He’s been a solid starter for the last few years, and while he had a rough 4-start stretch in May, he’s been fine otherwise. Aside from that stretch, his ERA is right around 2.00 over 7 starts. He hasn’t been as lights out as the ERA would suggest, but it’s not like he’s incapable of preventing runs. And since his contract isn’t bad, with a couple $10MM team-options tacked on, their best bet is to hold out for a trade.
Or Matz could headline a package for a big-time hitter and Niese could stay on as the 5th starter and left-handed balance with those cheap options as well.
What top prospects do you see getting called up immediately as we cross the Super 2 barrier?
Maybe Duvall (SF), Peraza (ATL), Heaney (LAA) … I doubt Corey Seager.
I appreciate the additional perspective on it, Dave, but this decision to keep Matz down does fit the “cheap” narrative.
First of all, the Mets major league payroll is a joke. Every move the Mets have made has been to operate within the low-payroll framework that they have set up. Money has been spent on stopgaps (Colon, Cuddyer) intended to placate the fans and keep the team from dipping below 75 wins, while not entering into any long term deals that cost real money.
To that point, the Mets have been unwilling to take on additional money to help the team win this year, or do anything to hurt the value of players making money this year. To wit, Jon Niese and Dillon Gee have been getting every chance to stay in the rotation despite the fact that it’s clear as day that they are inferior to Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz.
So here, is the point of all of this. Yes, the Mets called up Syndergaard early enough to ensure his Super 2 status. But they did not do that because they suddenly had some altruistic bent about winning, or not minding a small payroll bump – they did it because Gee was heading to the DL and Syndergaard had nothing left to prove in Triple-A. At that point, the cost of ostracizing Gee (one year, $3M or so left in 2015) was worth the additional wins from Gee to Syndergaard.
The decision between Niese and Matz is similar, but the outcome is less clear. Niese is owed more money than Gee, and Niese is ostensibly better then Gee. The cost of displacing Niese is higher to the Mets than it was to displace Gee, by a magnitude of 3x. On the other side, although Matz appears ready, he is no more ready than Syndergaard was. It’s a tougher call for the Mets, since the improvement is less and the financial cost is more.
So, it’s not just about Matz and his dollars and cents – it’s about the dollars and cents it’ll cost to displace the starter that is already there. The Mets won’t eat Niese’s money, and he won’t go to the bullpen, so they’re kicking the can down the road as long as they can, even though the Super 2 date is already past.
This is nonsense. As DC pointed out, holding back Matz has nothing at all to do with payroll. If anything, the team has wasted $ by tendering Gee and Parnell, when non-tendering both/either would have been prudent.
Tendering Gee and Parnell were nice cheap one year moves to keep the team competitive and have nothing to do with the Niese v. Matz choice … I feel as if you have not read my comment.
I feel as if you have not read your comment. You acknowledge that spending $9 million on tenders to Gee and Parnell was an expense meant “to keep the team competitive” while simultaneously insisting that “every move the Mets have made has been to operate within the low-payroll framework that they have set up.” Those statements are incongruous. Then you insist that the Mets have been “unwilling to … do anything to hurt the value of players making money this year” only to acknowledge that Syndergaard’s early promotion will cost the organization additional money while displacing Gee. The hyperbole regarding a $100+ million payroll being a “joke” didn’t help your argument either.
Look, I love prospects. I’ve been watching and evaluating them since my dad (a scout) started taking me as a teenager, and I’ve been writing about them for over a decade. But you can’t just assume that a prospect will immediately be a 2+ win player, which is a mark that Niese and Colon have both achieved in each of the last four seasons. If either was showing signs of velocity loss or significant changes in walk/strikeout rates that indicated declining performance, then maybe you assume they aren’t at that level anymore, yet the only significant change in their profiles is a dramatic increase in HR/FB%. Maybe Matz would be better from here on out than one or both of them and maybe he wouldn’t, which isn’t a good enough reason to add yet another starter to an already crowded rotation that doesn’t even have room for last year’s Mets fan prospect fixation (Rafael Montero).
Jd, you’re conflating the issues somewhat.
The Mets don’t have a $20M payroll. By definition, they have been willing to spend some money.
The expense of a Colon or a Cuddyer is not nominal, but those improvements were substantial over what would otherwise be out there. They required spending money, but the alternative was Ceciliani every day, or having nobody to fill the gap in the rotation at the beginning of 2014 while Harvey rehabbed. It would have cost the Mets more money to bottom out rather than keep the team with a reasonable floor for wins, which guarantees some attendance.
The problem inherent here with Matz/Niese is that, although Matz is not guaranteed to be better, he is likely better by some amount. However the Mets have identified that the upgrade from Niese to Matz is not worth to them the $16M Niese is owed the next two seasons.
Again: Gee, Parnell, Colon, Cuddyer – the most any of them are being paid is $10M in a year, and in the cases of the tendered guys, substantially less on one year commitments.
I don’t want to get too far afield with these comments as to what they should have done, but in the Niese/Matz context, it IS about the money, even though Super 2 is past.
Well that is ludicrously untrue. The continued reliance on obvious hyperbole in your arguments is going to harm your credibility and cause people to dismiss what you have to say. There were quite a few options between sacrificing a first round pick to sign Cuddyer and giving the job to Ceciliani. Similarly, they weren’t limited to either signing Colon or having no one to fill Harvey’s spot. Setting up false choices in order to dismiss financial commitments to Cuddyer and Colon because they hurt your argument isn’t going to fool anyone.
Actually, updated projection systems don’t favor Matz by a significant amount over Niese for the remainder of the season, if they favor him at all. You’re assuming that it would be an upgrade and pretending that it would be larger than non-Mets fans expect.
JD – I think we can talk about this without making is “versus” or knocking one another or exaggerating. You’re obviously a smart guy with good ideas.
I never said that there were no options between Cuddyer and Ceciliani. I said that the upgrade from one to the other was large and, to the team, it justified a level of expense. Same thing with Colon. Both were reasonable deals, and neither deal in any way disproves the notion that the Mets are not promoting Matz because of cost considerations, which is what we are talking about in the first place.
You said, “projection systems don’t favor Matz by a significant amount over Niese for the remainder of the season.”
But they DO favor Matz. Fangraphs for instance has 3.64/3.67 ERA/FIP for Matz and 3.99/3.88 for Niese, a substantial gap of about 1/3 of a run. And if anything, Matz’s dominance at Triple-A should only have served to expand that gap.
Maybe Matz struggles at first. Only the baseball gods know. But the argument remains the same — as I said — “Matz is not guaranteed to be better, he is likely better by some amount.”
But Matz is not here. And it’s because of money. Not Matz’s Super 2 money, but Niese’s money.
Niese vs. Matz is complicated. I don’t think anybody would dispute that Matz has the higher upside. But for his 50% percentile projection, is it any better?
Over the last few years, Niese has been pretty consistent with an ERA/FIP/xFIP in the 3.50 range (give or take 10-20 points or so). He hasn’t had any stellar years, but hasn’t had any horrendous years.
Now let’s take Zack Wheeler. My recollection – and correct me if I’m wrong – is that there was enormous hype surrounding his debut, and he was universally ranked as a higher prospect than Matz is now. After his call-up in 2013, he pitched 100 innings with an ERA right around 3.50 and a FIP/xFIP over 4.00. Last year in his first full season, they were all in the 3.50 range. In fact, he essentially threw the same innings, with the same FIP/xFIP and same WAR as Niese last year.
Now, there are two issues to consider. Is Niese, right now, a different pitcher than over the last few years, or are his #’s being dragged down by a few bad starts and it’ll even out over the rest of the year. If he’s a different pitcher due to injury, lack of velocity, etc, then maybe you forecast his #’s in the low 4’s instead of the mid 3’s.
The other issue is whether Matz is better than his prospect rankings. I’ve never seen him pitch and don’t know why he’s ranked where he is. His numbers certainly justify a better ranking, but I’m in no position to scout the stat line and suggest that all of the prospect rankers are wrong about him. If he *is* better than his ranking suggests, and Niese *is* worse than he’s been over the last few years, then maybe you make the move. But their best bet is most likely to give it a few weeks, hope for a trade, and get some value out of Niese/Gee. They could use some infield help, and it would seem nonsensical to get rid of Niese for nothing. It’s not like he’s an albatross.
Viva– a couple of thoughts on your comment.
1. I’d say that Matz is a highly superior prospect to Wheeler. With Wheeler, there was always a certain amount of, “he will be a great pitcher IF…” I always had Harvey ahead of him, and Thor ahead of him 18 months ago.
http://thereadzone.com/2014/05/06/checking-in-on-noah-syndergaard-yes-hes-better-than-wheeler/
2. As for Niese, it’s hard to tell. Nobody is discarding his run the last three years where his ERA/FIP/xFIP were all between 3.40 (’14 ERA) and 3.84 (’13 xFIP). However, two considerations.
a) He’s never been healthy. Maxed out at 190 IP, average is much less, more like 170 over the last five years.
b) His components are bad right now – not just FIP (at 4.34) but also his swinging strike is a career low 5.7% and his velocity remains around 89.
I think the odds are Niese is a little worse than his 12-14 track record, but better than 15 so far. Nonetheless, it makes Matz/Niese an easy choice for me.
this is a weird argument – the Mets are not the only team in baseball that would stick with a guy making 10 million bucks a year over a prospect, unless the difference in the level of play is gargantuan.
Niese and Matz are very similar players, all things considered, so OF COURSE the Mets are going to keep the guy making all the money, and let the young kid stay in the minors. Why are we pretending that this is unusual? Every team in their position makes that move.
Matz isn’t better enough than Niese to warrant bringing him up at the cost of Niese/Gee.
Brian, the Steamer projections for Matz include his AAA performance, as the ones before the season were not as rosy. They also give him the added benefit of projecting relief appearances instead of all starts like Niese. Again, there just isn’t much if any reason to believe that Matz will be a significant improvement over Niese as they’re actually very similar pitchers in everything but age. Even absent the salary difference, a major league team is understandably going to choose a player with an established level of positive performance over an unknown. Repeating your claim over and over again doesn’t make it true.
JD.
> Again, there just isn’t much if any reason to believe that Matz will be a significant improvement over Niese
That is a wonderful opinion, although “much” and “significant” cloud it somewhat.
> Even absent the salary difference, a major league team is understandably going to choose a player with an established level of positive performance over an unknown.
That’s never been in issue or a debate. I’ve said as much in about four different comments. In fact, that’s the point of all of this.
What? You’ve doggedly insisted that not promoting Matz and displacing Niese is strictly an issue of money, yet now you’re going to pretend that you said most MLB teams would choose Niese this season even absent salary considerations? That’s the complete opposite of what you said, lol.
It’s not “clear as day” that Matz is better than Jon Niese, he of a career 3.76 FIP and owed $12MM +/- going forward. It would be a lateral move at best to swap them in a year when main cogs Wright, Wheeler, and d’Arnaud have (unsurprisingly) gotten hurt and turned the team from wild card contenders back to mediocre.
Matz is about as good a prospect as Daniel Norris was, and that guy got knocked around pretty good in MLB. So yes, bring up Matz and let him gain seasoning, possibly in the bullpen or a six-man rotation a la the Red Sox, but don’t assume he’s ready to displace your current guys right out of the gate, and rightly make him earn it.
Your point is well taken, although I think Matz (with his 1.94 ERA in the PCL in 75IP, 2.24 ERA overall) has a substantially better track record than Norris (3.93 MiLB ERA, 2.81 K/BB in Triple A).
Insofar as earning it is concerned… I agree with you that eating the Niese money is somewhat pointless if the Mets are going to drift along like this… but Matz can’t really do anything else at this point to earn it. So again.. and I’ve never said it’s wrong necessarily… it IS about the money.
I was going by industry top 100 ranks which all put Norris at or above Matz’ rank. Norris, also lefty, is 2 years younger, already has a fourth pitch, and was coming off a monster AA-AAA breakout season.
Plus, stat scouting is folly; a guy like Jeremy Hellickson can kill it in the minors but come up and be middling while a guy like Sonny Gray who looked middling can come up and dominate.
Even the Trouts of the world struggle in their first MLB taste, and for every Syndergaard there are several Gausmans, Bundys, Norris, Skaggs, Sanchez, etc. so it while Matz has earned a callup, it would be reckless to anoint him as better than Niese, until we actually see it in MLB.
All that… and Niese has been awfully fungible the last four years or so – in almost no way was Dillon Gee even cromulent.
I don’t think there is a team out there that would ever punt on a 2.0-2.5WAR player – even if the next coming of Roger Clemens is at AAA.
You said “to wit”
I think it’s more of a matter of the Mets front office acting haphazardly rather than cheaply. I still don’t get why they’d sacrifice a first round pick for Cuddyer? That makes no sense.
#veteranpresents
But I have “grit” and “play the right way.”
That was a smart move, actually. They’ve identified the window and they know that a first rounder who might make an impact four years from now has less value to the team than the guys in the high minors that they’d have to trade right now to get a player of Cuddyer’s caliber on the trade market.
I think that is looking at it the wrong way. The issue was thinking they needed a right handed power bat who contributes nothing everywhere else on the field. They sacrificed $, a 1st rd pick, and defense for 6hrs to date. They should of been looking for good players, not simply a right handed power bat. I see a guy like Nori Aoki, and have to think he would of been a far smarter signing and fit.
I advocated for Nori Aoki, although there was no telling that he’d be so good this year AND sign for so little.
It made plenty of sense at the time. The team wanted a RH power bat that could play the outfield vs righties and could shift over to first base and spell Duda against lefties. That’s why they signed John Mayberry and his career 126 wRC+/.259 ISO to play left field against lefties when Cuddyer was at first. That was the plan. What threw a wrench into things was that Duda has unexpectedly crushed lefties this year.
Also right handed power is at a premium and Cuddyer was one of the better free agent ones available. The alternative would have been to trade prospects for a guy like Justin Upton and surrender more talent than the forfeited pick.
*Those are Mayberry’s career numbers against lefties.
Dave Cameron is to Joel Sherman as Sean Connery is to Barry Nelson.
Dave Cameron is to Joel Sherman as Sean Connery is to Alex Trebek.
You did phrase that in the form of a question.
Suck it Trebek! Suck it long, and suck it hard.
Ha.
To be fair Sherman is pretty good as far as tabloid sports reporters as far as knowledge of advanced metrics, etc. I think Dave respects him but just thought he was wrong on this call.
Er, didn’t, I mean. Little quips are a lot funnier when you type them right.
Does somebody want to clear somthing up for me? Why did holding back Bryant delay his FA by a year? I understand that holding him back 12 days (?) will leave him with 0.171 years of service time at the end of the season, but by the end of next year, won’t he have 2.010 years? And then at the end of the 2020 season, wouldn’t he have 6.054 years, thus making him a FA? I’m obviously missing something here, so if somrone could illuminate me, that’d be cool.
They made sure he won’t accumulate a “full season” this year, so basically this year won’t count at all for his 6 years of team control. He will be just a tad under 6 full years of service after 2020.
You can only accrue 1 season of service time (a max of 172days)in a calendar year. So even if you are up all year (183 days), you only get credit for 172 that year(those extra 11 days don’t count).
I assume you are counting a potential next season for Bryant as 183 days of service based on your 2.010 calculation?
I think a key difference between Syndergaard and Matz is that Syndergaard had already pitched a full year in AAA last year. Granted he struggled, especially in the first half, but he looked great the start of this year. When Gee hit the DL, no reason to delay his progress another month+.
With Matz, he has not been in AAA very long, though he has dominated. And unlike Syndergaard, there is the aforementioned logjam of established, albeit mediocre, pitchers at the major league level. I expect that will work itself out with either injuries or trades in the near future.
I’m a bit surprised Cameron doesn’t mention Rafael Montero when Montero performed better than Syndergaard at AAA.
Montero wasn’t better than Matz, and I understand from reading various commentators opining about Syndergaard that he has better stuff than Montero, but Montero is a very legitimate starting pitching option for the Mets and other teams, and I think he deserves a mention in this article because as soon as he comes off the DL he has little to prove at AAA.
I think the main thing about Montero is that he’s on the DL indefinitely. Once he is healthy, though, he should certainly be pitching somewhere in MLB, whether it’s for the Mets or another team, in the pen or the rotation.
So pick up matz or wait a week?
The reason that Niese is still up, as opposed to Matz, seems to be because of a want to maximize value. If Matz is brought up, and Niese is banished to the bullpen, then Niese loses almost all of his possible trade value. However, if Sandy is able to trade Niese then the Mets gain value either in the form of a prospect, monetary relief, or both. It makes no sense to destroy Niese’s value now for a small upgrade at best, when you can wait until a trade is made.
Why? People assume if the Mets have 5 better starters that means Niese is suddenly worse than he was?
There’s also the matter that putting Niese and Gee in the bullpen means that 2 of 7 relievers have never pitched in relief. Add to that the expected return of Parnell, Black, Mejia, Carlyle and Blevins to one that has the established Familia, Torres and Torres, plus Rule 5 Gilmartin who can’t be optioned without losing him and the emerging Goeddell and Robles, and you realize the long term problem you are creating. You can’t have a 13 man bullpen, so some tough decisions are going to have to be made in terms of sending Robles/Goeddell down, letting Gilmartin or Carlyle go, etc. once (if!) everyone gets healthy. That is a fact even before you talk about putting 2 starters in the BP to bring up a rookie with half a season at AAA.
What are they really going to get for Jon Niese? No one is going to give up an impact prospect for him. He’s an NL average pitcher for his career (106 ERA-, 98 FIP -) and now he’s older, more expensive, and pitching with declining velocity and peripherals. He’s basically an injury prone 5th starter now and he’ll probably not even be worth his contract for the rest of its length. People who believe he’s bringing back anything of real value are engaging in magical thinking. They tried to move him previously to no avail.
If the Mets are serious about contending they need to replace him with Matz right now. I’m just not going to believe Steven Matz can’t be better than a 114 FIP- and a 1.54 WHIP.
Of course he “can” be better. The question is will he be better than Niese is now, to the point that it makes sense to destroy Niese’s trade value, which is at least enough to get a decent reliever, or a 4th OF at the moment (both of which are useful pieces).
The answer to that question is “probably not.”
Right. Exactly this.
So you’re saying that his trade value is 4th OFer, but somehow moving him to the ‘pen today destroys that? That seems pretty unlikely. Scouts and the years of stats you have on him are going to drive your decision to trade for him, not where he throws his next 30 innings. The problem is that he has no significant trade value because the Mets are over staffed and Niese isn’t performing well.
I don’t understand the “he’ll probably not even be worth his contract for the rest of its length” logic. He’s been a 2-2.5 WAR pitcher for the last 4 years, which is more than fine for a 4th/5th starter. He’s owed about $13MM through the end of next season (prorated $7MM this year, and $9MM next year), which is below market value for his performance level on a short term deal.
If his performance tanks or he tears his shoulder, you’re not out much money. If he continues to be a stead 2+ WAR pitcher, you pick up his 2017 option for a below-market $10MM. The next year, you do it all over again. If he sucks or gets injured, you let him go. If he’s good, you pick up his 2018 option for a below-market $10.5MM. Solid back-end starters aren’t cheap these days, and they often sign for several years. To be able to go year-to-year at $9-10MM/year is nice.
The logic is based on the idea that Jon Niese is no longer a 2+ WAR pitcher due to diminished skills and injury problems. I’m not sure how much of Niese you’ve seen this year, but it has been pretty bad. I’d rather go year to year on the Chad Billingsleys and Aaron Harangs of the world at this point if I need a back of the rotation guy. I don’t think Niese is going to significantly outperform them and as such, I wouldn’t want to pay more for him in money and player(s). Those back end $10M options? I don’t think anyone picks them up.
What an immature response from Gee. This is the professionals buddy it’s either put up or shut up, and you have younger, more promising prospects waiting in line behind you. And than he goes and pitches horrific in his spot start over the weekend smh.