There’s No Catch With Mets Signing of Ramos
Earlier this month, Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen made the first big splash of his tenure with a blockbuster trade geared towards contending in 2019, bringing Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz from Seattle in exchange for two former first-round picks and some expensive ballast. After considering a variety of trade scenarios involving Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto, Van Wagenen went a more conservative route to fill one of the team’s glaring needs, signing free agent Wilson Ramos to a two-year, $19 million deal with a club option for 2021. It’s an appropriate bit of restraint that nonetheless provides a solid upgrade.
The 31-year-old Ramos split his 2018 season between the Rays (78 games) and Phillies (33 games), hitting .306/.358/.487 with 15 homers. His 131 wRC+ was tops among catchers, and his 2.4 WAR fifth. He earned All-Star honors for the second time in three seasons but missed the game itself due to a left hamstring strain that sidelined him for a month. During his time on the disabled list, he was traded to Philadelphia for a player to be named later or cash on July 31.
The big knock on Ramos is that he’s had a hard time staying healthy during his nine-year major league career. The 2015 and 2016 seasons are the only ones in the past seven years in which he’s avoided the DL. He’s had three surgeries (two in 2012, one in 2017) to repair the meniscus and ACL in his right knee, served three stints for hamstring strains (2013 and 2014 being the others), and suffered a foul tip-induced fractured hamate that required surgery in his left wrist in 2014. He’s averaged just 92 games a year since arriving for good in the majors in 2011.
The hamate fracture was a fluke injury, but the lower-body woes are of a concern for a catcher who lists at 245 pounds. In our Top 50 Free Agents rankings, Ramos was 17th, nine spots lower than fellow free agent catcher Yasmani Grandal, in part due to his size and durability issues. While he’s been the slightly better hitter of the pair over the past three seasons, with a 120 wRC+ to Grandal’s 116, he’s made 296 fewer plate appearances in that span, including 102 fewer in 2018. He’s also 15 months older, and nowhere near Grandal’s class as a defender. Baseball Prospectus’ pitch framing-inclusive metrics have Ramos 6.1 runs above average over the past three seasons but slightly in the red in both 2017 and 2018. By comparison, Grandal was 79 runs above average in that three-year span, including an MLB-best 15.7 above average in the framing department in 2018; by DRS, the three-year, framing-inclusive tally is -11 runs for Ramos, 39 for Grandal.
Thus you can understand why teams might prefer Grandal, though his postseason pitch-blocking woes might hurt the perception of him. Also working against Grandal is his attachment to a rejected qualifying offer for the Dodgers. Had the Mets signed him, they would have forfeited their second 2019 draft pick and $500,000 of international pool money.
The surprise is in Ramos’ price tag. The New York Times‘ James Wagner reported that Ramos will make $8.25 million in 2019 and $9.25 million in 2020. He’s got a $10 million club option for 2021, with a $1.5 million buyout for a total guarantee of $19 million. The salary is just over half of the $36 million (spread over three years) that both Kiley McDaniel and our crowdsource project estimated he would receive when we made up our free agent list. By comparison, the estimates for Grandal range from $39 million to $45 million for three years.
As for Realmuto, the Mets were reportedly very interested in him, but balked at the possibility of including major league talent such as Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, and/or Amed Rosario in exchange — to say nothing of a rumored three-way trade involving the Yankees that would also have required dealing Noah Syndergaard.
Now that they have Ramos, the key for the Mets is finding another catcher with whom to pair him. Between Kevin Plawecki, Devin Mesoraco, Tomas Nido, Jose Lobaton and Travis d’Arnaud, the team got just an 82 wRC+ offensive showing (.208/.297/.355) from its catchers in 2018, and a total of 0.7 WAR by our measures (0.8 via Baseball-Reference, and 1.5 WARP via Baseball Prospectus). Mesoraco and Lobaton are both free agents, while the going-on-30-year-old d’Arnaud, the best defender of the bunch (41.8 FRAA career, 11.4 FRAA in 2017) is coming off April 2018 Tommy John surgery and has a track record for health that would make Ramos blanch.
All told, our Depth Charts projections suggest that the signing of Ramos eyeballs as about a one-win upgrade over a Plawecki/d’Arnaud pairing. Given that the Mets now project as an 86-win team, this is exactly the type of move they should be making, one that significantly increases their odds of securing a playoff spot without compromising their longer-term resources. When was the last time anybody could say that about a move that the Mets made?
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Great value contract. Raise your hand if you had Lance Lynn getting more guaranteed years than Ramos. Anyone?
It’s also worth noting the Mets may have just freed up another trade chip in Plawecki (Andy Martino/SNY reports plan A is to keep D’Arnaud and trade Plawecki for help elsewhere). The bottom of the catching market falls out after Grandal signs and Realmuto is traded, if he’s traded, and someone will be left without a dance partner. Plawecki obviously isn’t in this tier of player, or the one beneath it, for that matter, but he’s solid enough at less than one million with four years of control left. Maybe a little more bat left in him. Could be a late bloomer guy who thrives in a timeshare, like Tyler Flowers.
I would hope the Mets’ plan is essentially to give both Plawecki and d’Arnaud another year to try to play their way into that kind of late-blooming success — given that both guys have flashed that kind of promise and neither one has put it together for a full season yet — but I concur that if they’re going to deal one at this point, Plawecki is the one to deal, since the rest of baseball probably sees him more in this light. (I don’t, I would put it at almost exactly a 50-50 shot which one of the two is still more likely to develop into a non-awful starting catcher.)
I could see trying to trade D’Arnaud because of the injury issues, but that’s the same reason he is probably less attractive than Plawecki to other teams.
He won’t bring in too much but he’s tradeable to a team with little to lose from the deal. The Jays, Mariners, Rangers all come to mind. Even Cleveland.
Three catchers is common these days of oversize bullpens, much less in the NL. Neither of them is too likely to stick as a utility or a pinch hit specialist, especially since the Mets still have work to do with the OF.
D’Arnaud in particular needs a change of scenery. Maybe tbe Jays?
The Mets have talked about d’Arnaud as a 3B/OF utility type. Might make sense given his injuries to keep him as a 3rd catcher and occasional starter at a few different positions.
The Jays is where d’arnaud came from.
Doubt the Blue Jays are interested…already have Danny Jansen, who they’re trying to open up playing time for. There are already other names on the catcher market too- Russell Martin, Cervelli, Realmuto, so the demand for someone like D’Arnaud would be pretty rough.
I’m of the mind that Plawecki hasn’t gotten a fair shake. He’ll never be a star but he’s projected for a 90 wRC+. With that, and his defense, he’s an excellent choice for backup, especially since d’Arnaud can’t stay healthy at all. I’m honestly a little surprised they tendered d’Arnaud a contact.
Heck, a 90 wRC+ with his defense is basically a low-end starter. That’s an improvement over something like 12+ teams’ catching situations.
He’s a younger version of Maldonado it looks like and he keeps getting chances to start.
I think there is some irrational post-prospect attachment to d’Arnaud leading the Mets to overvalue him. He’s missed so much time with injuries that it’s tempting to feel he still has a breakout in him, but in the cold light of day it is probably time to cut bait.
At least they recognized that they can no longer count on him being the “catcher-of-the-future”. I’m not opposed to them tendering him as they can cut him in ST for a discount if he suffers a setback.
Nice article, it was interesting to see the comparison between Ramos and Grandal. That defensive difference is acute. I hope the marketplace properly values it, maybe a team like the White Sox could make great use of assisting the development of its young pitching with Grandal’s glove. Ramos’ contract certainly seems light for a top offensive catcher (when healthy) and hopefully that’s due more to the issues of health and defense Jay discussed. I guess we’ll see once we know what Grandal signs for.
The White Sox have Wellington Castillo and just signed James McCann as his back-up so they won’t be in on Grandal . . .
I am going to guess that this is the best FA deal we’ll see all winter (for the team) unless Grandal also clocks in unexpectedly low. The guy has injury concerns, but when healthy he’s one of the best offensive catchers in the league, on par with Realmuto and Grandal, and he’s an average defender/framer. He’s a great addition, and although they probably would have been better off with Grandal, this was the second best option once they deemed Realmuto’s asking price too high. It turns a pretty big hole into something that’s more like a strength.
I’m a huge fan of what the Mets have done this winter. The only thing I haven’t liked so far is that they seemed a bit too interested in meeting the Marlins’ price for Realmuto, which is pretty high. But they didn’t actually do it, so no harm done?
The new front office is still a wildcard to the fanbase. BVV seems to be in on every free agent and every guy on the trading block plus seems to freely leak everything to the media.
A ton of rumors like the Realmuto trade scenarios and trading Thor to the Padres stuff is making us all have heartburn, but he isn’t actually following through on the stupid front. Consensus on the Mets sites is he’s doing a B+ job so far considering ownership.
Are they really leaking everything to the media? Both the Familia and the Ramos signing seemed to come out of nowhere.
Considering Grandal’s asking price (4 years @ $10+MM per year) and draft pick attachment, I’d say this deal was the best option at catcher on the market.
If Grandal’s looking for 4/$45M or something like that, I’d want my team to jump on it. That’s a great price for one of the best catchers in the major leagues. That’s cheaper that McCutchen!
A solid get for the Mets, and I say that as a Nats fan. If Ramos can stay healthy, he should be productive. The one knock that I have on his defense is that for some reason Ramos is turrible on fielding throws for a play at the plate. Fortunately for him that play doesn’t really happen all that often. But man, it will drive you nuts when he whiffs on a throw in a key situation.
Grandal has that same reputation among Dodgers fans.
It’ll be interesting to see how he is throwing out baserunners…
2017- threw out only 6 of 35 base stealers 17%
2018- threw out 14 of 48 base stealers 29%
Especially given the #1 base stealer in MLB lives in the NL East- that’ll be really big. Mets catchers allowed 79% success rate last season- so if he’s closer to the 29%(which is slightly above average)- that’ll be a huge upgrade….
As always, baserunning success has way more to do with pitching than it does with the guy behind the plate.
Ramos numbers are really funny…
In Tampa- he threw out 7/32 runners. 22%. Rest of staff threw out 27%.
in Philly though- he thru out 7/16 runners 44%. Rest of staff threw out 23.5%
The error bars on that 7/32 run 9% – 40%.
(Standard disclaimer: that’s not a confidence interval on true talent, which is harder. That’s the binomial 95% confidence interval saying “if he were truly 22% what would we measure in 32 trials”.)
“one that significantly increases their odds of securing a playoff spot without compromising their longer-term resources. When was the last time anybody could say that about a move that the Mets made?”
2017, Cespedes
Also, I know it’s what the cool kids are doing, but the constant ‘hurr durr, Mets are cheap, lol’ articles are really tired. I come to this site because it’s usually above the fray and more intellectual than the idiot gossip rags. But there’s been an awful lot of this. Do better?
The Mets have been cheap. They are just now getting out from the last of the Madoff repayments (next year’s the last $4.5 million I believe).
I read it as more of a compliment to the new front office than lolmets which can get tired.
Great signing. The Mets really an 86 win projection right now? That very much surprises me. Maybe just all the Mets jokes, but I guess before injury, they were projected pretty well last year, too, right?
Not sure if the win projection takes SOS into account, but the NL East gets the great fortune of playing in interleage play the AL Central this year. So you would think that’ll inflate the win totals for the entire division quite a bit. Mets get 4 with Twins and 3 each vs Royals, White Sox, and Tigers. That’ll help the record some….
Why was it necessary to end an otherwise objective analysis with this loaded question that turns the whole piece into backhanded praise?
“[This move] increases their odds of securing a playoff spot without compromising their longer-term resources. When was the last time anybody could say that about a move that the Mets made?”
The question is framed so that any answer is debatable; this type of move — win now, but don’t pay later — isn’t easy to pull off. I’d like to see the same question answered for all 30 teams.
No one will deny that the Mets have been cheaper than a typical big-market team in recent years, but they’ve still made *some* good moves, and there’s no reason for a FG writer to be snarky when they do.