Why Jose Reyes Should Want to Stay With the Mets

Here's a thought experiment: let's assume that Jose Reyes plays the rest of his home games at Citi Field. And let's assume that his performance both on the road and at Citi Field stays constant for the rest of his career. Now let's assume he plays, on average, 150 games split evenly between home and road games for the rest of his career. What would his career stats look like in 2020?

Well, the big banner headline is that he would have 3045 career hits. On top of that he'd have 489 doubles, 278 triples, and 182 home runs; the triples number would be third all-time, and easily the most since the deadball era. He would have scored 1716 runs and driven in 993, while stealing 816 bases, fifth all-time, while being caught just 186 times. Overall he would be a .297 hitter, with an on-base percentage of .347 and a slugging percentage of .452.

Obviously there's one rather obvious complaint against this projection, which is that it has him maintaining his current career level of play through his age-37 season. That may be unrealistic, but it's also true that he's entering the traditional baseball player's peak, 28-32, and lo and behold is putting up an insanely great season. Maybe he'll play at his career average for the next five years and then tail off, but he could also play better than he ever has for five years and then tail off. In terms of counting stats, he could balance playing below this level for the next ten years by continuing to play, albeit at an even lower level, beyond 2020, a not-entirely-unreasonable possibility given that he's a good defensive shortstop. So overall I think this isn't an unrealistic view of what he might be able to achieve if he stays with the Mets for the rest of his career.

But what if he leaves? Here we'll make the opposite prediction: since almost all of his games will be played neither in Citi Field nor in Shea Stadium, two places he's done well in, we'll assume that his standard of play going forward will be that of his road performance. Under this assumption, we get fairly different numbers for Jose in 2020, specifically a career batting average that's fallen back down to .287, taking his OBP to .335 and his slugging percentage to .434, in other words, erasing the gains he's made this year. Now, he's still have impressive numbers, like 2977 hits, 240 triples, and 859 steals (he's been a little less aggressive running at Citi Field, apparently, though that's probably just about being a bit older and a bit more leg-injured and wouldn't actually change on the road). But this analysis suggests that simply having half his games at Citi Field might be worth ten points to Jose's career batting average, twelve points of on-base percentage, and thirteen points of slugging percentage. He simply thrives at Citi Field. That means he should want to stay with the Mets, because he'll be a better player with them, and it means the Mets should want to keep him, because there's reason to think he'll be a better player with them than he's ever been before, or than he would be with any other team.