Since there’s no game tonight, here are a few things you may or may not know about the Mets that you can ponder during the Subway Series this weekend.
In no particular order:
On Friday April 13th the Mets were 11-1. Since then they’ve been 16-31. Reminder all baseball fans: You can’t judge a team or a player on two – or even three or four – weeks of information. See also; Gregorius, Didi.
The bottom line is the Mets are what they are: Two great frigging pitchers, two very good young players who’ve been held behind mediocre old guys, and (insert Brad Pitt voice) 50 feet of crap. When totaled up that adds up to a team with a .458 winning percentage, which is around where I expect them to be in September.
Think I’m being harsh? Among NL teams the Mets are:
- 14th in OBP
- 13th in SLG
- (When you can’t get on base or hit for power that means you’re…) 12th in runs scored
But they are best in the NL in one category: Swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. (Look for Masahiro Tanaka, who led MLB last season and is tied for first this season in getting batters to chase, to have a good night Friday.)
Oh…they’re also dead last in defensive efficiency.
But there is good news for the Mets: deGrom and Syndergaard are friggin’ great. No need to waste time on analysis there. And then there’s Brandon Nimmo…
…who is one of the best players in baseball so far this season. Among 229 MLB players with a minimum of 150 plate appearances, Nimmo:
- is 8th is wRC+, tied with Aaron Judge.
- has the same fWAR as Carlos Correa even though he has about 100 fewer PA.
- is 6th in OBP (ahead of Judge)
- has the 16th lowest chase rate
- has the 19th best walk rate, tied with Joey Votto. Joey. Votto.
And if you weren’t impressed that his plate control and ability to get on base are on par with Judge and Votto, he’s also 27th in SLG at .533.
Phew, good thing Jay Bruce could be had for $39 million.
One of the things I enjoy about the Subway Series is that I can watch and listen to the Mets’ broadcast. Gary Cohen is great at what he does. He’s knowledgeable and directs questions to his color commentators that a casual fan might have about a play or as a devil’s advocate for his partners.
As opposed to Michael Kay, who thinks a game is a 3 hour (unmanageable!) opportunity to conduct his dopey ass talk show.
The only odd thing about the broadcast is Keith Hernandez’ – and I like Keith, both as a former player and broadcaster – disinclination towards analytics. Keith was the poster child Moneyball hitter: Do not swing at pitches you can’t hit and drive the ones you can. And over the past few years there’s been a push for Hernandez for the Hall of Fame that comes predominantly from statistician types who see he was far more valuable than his traditional stats may have suggested. Ironic he has such a distaste for numbers now.
Interesting tidbit regarding Sunday night’s game: With the caveat that we have far more and far better information now than we did 40 years ago, so we don’t really know about Nolan Ryan…
Noah Syndergaard and Luis Severino are the two hardest throwing starting pitchers in the history of the game. Sunday night should be fun.
Back to the Mets’ proclivity for injury prone thirty somethings over highly regarded young players:
Think they’d be interested in Ellsbury?
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