The 2016 New York Mets have been eliminated from the post-season after losing last night's National League Wild Card Game. Noah Syndergaard was brilliant, getting into the sixth inning before giving up a hit and finishing with a pitching line of 7.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 10 K, good for a Game Score of 80. That would've been tied for the second-best start of the 2015 playoffs. It's the second-best start ever in a game which eliminated the pitcher's team, behind a Mike Mussina gem from 1997. (It is therefore the best such start by a National League team.) Unfortunately Madison Bumgarner turned in an even better start, a complete game shutout with four hits and two walks against six strikeouts (Game Score 83), and Jeurys Familia gave up the game-winning three-run home run to Conor Gillaspie of all people in the ninth inning, bringing the Mets' season to a close.
Which means it's time to look to next year. Here's what I figure the incumbent 2017 Opening Day 25-man roster looks like:
Showing posts with label Yoenis Cespedes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yoenis Cespedes. Show all posts
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Sunday, July 17, 2016
How To Use This Mets Roster
The Mets just recalled Michael Conforto from AAA Las Vegas, with fellow left-handed outfielder Brandon Nimmo being sent down in his place. (The latter move follows as a matter of course; Nimmo, a top prospect, needs to get consistent playing time, which he's definitely not going to get with the Mets with Conforto back.) Conforto was shockingly great last year after being called up directly from AA, was Ted Williams levels of great in April this year, and then was pitcher-with-a-bit-of-pop levels of awful from May 1st onward. May 1st was the day when he was kept in the lineup against Madison Bumgarner, one of the best left-handed starters in the world. I dunno if that's what caused the slump, but it makes for an awfully convenient marker. Anyway, he went down and was raging hot at AAA (his first exposure to the level! actually!), so now he's back. Makes sense.
Except it creates a bit of a sticky situation regarding the outfield configuration. Conforto is strictly a corner outfielder; until his stint in Vegas he had only ever played left field as a professional. Curtis Granderson is, at this point, also a corner outfielder, and like Conforto he's left-handed. Yoenis Cespedes, meanwhile, is the Mets' best position player. To start the year, he was playing a lot of center field, flanked by Conforto in left and Granderson in right, with the team thinking it could live with Cespedes's below-average defense in center in return for getting those three bats into the lineup simultaneously. But Cespedes keeps being banged up with minor injuries, and he suspects that the toll center field takes on his legs may be contributing to that. So they'd really like to keep him in left field as often as possible, where, as it happens, he's a Gold Glove defender. That, of course, leaves them with no center fielders, but not to worry, because we've got Juan Lagares, who ought to be a legitimate contender for the Platinum Glove award (given to the Gold Glover in each league who's the best overall defensive player) any time he plays a full season, and who's also been hitting well to start the second half of the season (as well as on the entire year to date). Great! We've got four legitimately major league quality starting outfielders! Hooray!
...except, of course, you only typically play three outfielders. I mean, you could play four of them, but then you'd only have three infielders, which is probably a bad idea. So we have four deserving candidates for three spots. Whaddaya do?
Here's what: you play everyone. Some of the time.
Except it creates a bit of a sticky situation regarding the outfield configuration. Conforto is strictly a corner outfielder; until his stint in Vegas he had only ever played left field as a professional. Curtis Granderson is, at this point, also a corner outfielder, and like Conforto he's left-handed. Yoenis Cespedes, meanwhile, is the Mets' best position player. To start the year, he was playing a lot of center field, flanked by Conforto in left and Granderson in right, with the team thinking it could live with Cespedes's below-average defense in center in return for getting those three bats into the lineup simultaneously. But Cespedes keeps being banged up with minor injuries, and he suspects that the toll center field takes on his legs may be contributing to that. So they'd really like to keep him in left field as often as possible, where, as it happens, he's a Gold Glove defender. That, of course, leaves them with no center fielders, but not to worry, because we've got Juan Lagares, who ought to be a legitimate contender for the Platinum Glove award (given to the Gold Glover in each league who's the best overall defensive player) any time he plays a full season, and who's also been hitting well to start the second half of the season (as well as on the entire year to date). Great! We've got four legitimately major league quality starting outfielders! Hooray!
...except, of course, you only typically play three outfielders. I mean, you could play four of them, but then you'd only have three infielders, which is probably a bad idea. So we have four deserving candidates for three spots. Whaddaya do?
Here's what: you play everyone. Some of the time.
Friday, January 22, 2016
Creatively Structuring Contracts: Yoenis Cespedes Edition
One rumor about the Mets' pursuit of Yoenis Cespedes is that he doesn't just want an opt-out after the first season of a potential three-year deal, but after the second season as well. That's pretty extreme: the ability to opt out is a very useful one, essentially shifting an awful lot of risk onto the other side. If the player performs, he can seek a new, even bigger deal on the open market; if he doesn't, the team is stuck with what now probably looks like a not-so-fantastic contract. In no case does the team get to enjoy the normal fantastic bargain that comes when you sign a player and then they're even better than you anticipated. This year has seen an awful lot of opt-outs in star players' contracts, but mostly only one of them. (I think there's one deal that gives someone, perhaps Heyward, two opt-outs after consecutive seasons in the middle of a long-term deal.) The idea of giving the player an opt-out after every season is not super appealing for a team. It's a lot like turning every season into a player option, and player options are great. For players.
But I have an idea about how something like this design could be made to work in a way that might benefit both parties. Typically, contract years have one of four statues: guaranteed, team option, player option, or mutual option. Typically the salary of a team option year will be very high, and of a player option year very low; in both cases the side with more control is giving back some money in return. In that last category, the contract is extended only if both the team and the player want it to be; the size of the buy-out typically depends on which side declined the option. But what about combining team and player options in a different way? What if you had, basically, sequential options? So, at Step One, the team gets to exercise an option to just plain keep the player under contract, no questions asked--but, with a very high salary. Maybe even higher than a regular team option would be. If they decline that option, then the player has an option to extend his current contract at a significantly lower salary, or to become a free agent.
For the player, they get most of the benefits of an opt-out/player option, except that some of those benefits are realized not in the form of control over their own destiny but in the form of cash. For the team, it's better than an opt-out, because they have a lot more control if they decide the cash is worth it. And they get the benefit of giving the player something to play for every single year. That could be particularly relevant with someone like Cespedes, where it's rumored that teams don't want to just give him a large guaranteed contract for fear he'll get all Manny/Hanley-esque. This is a way to do that on a truly perpetual basis without giving up the insane amount of control that an opt-out after each year would give up. In principle I could see a contract structured like this over a basically indefinite period, if the dollars were balanced the right way on each side. (This would probably mean that the player option's value would decline substantially after a few years.) It's designed to make each side okay with whatever the other side does at any time. That way, a player and a team who aren't quite comfortable just signing on with each other for a term of six or eight or ten years might nonetheless be willing to sign on to a framework of perpetual tolerable uncertainty covering just such a term.
I feel like this is the logical next step after this off-season's opt-out craze.
But I have an idea about how something like this design could be made to work in a way that might benefit both parties. Typically, contract years have one of four statues: guaranteed, team option, player option, or mutual option. Typically the salary of a team option year will be very high, and of a player option year very low; in both cases the side with more control is giving back some money in return. In that last category, the contract is extended only if both the team and the player want it to be; the size of the buy-out typically depends on which side declined the option. But what about combining team and player options in a different way? What if you had, basically, sequential options? So, at Step One, the team gets to exercise an option to just plain keep the player under contract, no questions asked--but, with a very high salary. Maybe even higher than a regular team option would be. If they decline that option, then the player has an option to extend his current contract at a significantly lower salary, or to become a free agent.
For the player, they get most of the benefits of an opt-out/player option, except that some of those benefits are realized not in the form of control over their own destiny but in the form of cash. For the team, it's better than an opt-out, because they have a lot more control if they decide the cash is worth it. And they get the benefit of giving the player something to play for every single year. That could be particularly relevant with someone like Cespedes, where it's rumored that teams don't want to just give him a large guaranteed contract for fear he'll get all Manny/Hanley-esque. This is a way to do that on a truly perpetual basis without giving up the insane amount of control that an opt-out after each year would give up. In principle I could see a contract structured like this over a basically indefinite period, if the dollars were balanced the right way on each side. (This would probably mean that the player option's value would decline substantially after a few years.) It's designed to make each side okay with whatever the other side does at any time. That way, a player and a team who aren't quite comfortable just signing on with each other for a term of six or eight or ten years might nonetheless be willing to sign on to a framework of perpetual tolerable uncertainty covering just such a term.
I feel like this is the logical next step after this off-season's opt-out craze.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
The Mets Should Give Cespedes Five Years
Apparently the Nationals are offering Yoenis Cespedes a five-year deal, while the Mets have no interest (reportedly) in going beyond three years. This seems to me an obvious mistake. At 5 years, $100 million (around where the Nationals' offer is believed to be), you're paying Cespedes to be worth under 3 wins above replacement per year. He's been in the Majors for four years. Yearly WAR totals, averaging Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs: 3.4, 1.9, 3.7, 6.5. It's tough to project this guy not to be at least something like a 3.5 win player, if not 4, and if he's that then 5/$100 is an entirely fair contract. Perhaps a bargain. And the funny thing about the reluctance to go longer-term is that the one big concern about Cespedes and the Mets disappears after 2017, because that's when Curtis Granderson's contract expires. At that point, you could quite naturally move Cespedes to right field rather than having to play him primarily in center, and he's a really good defensive corner outfielder.
And I don't actually buy that long-term payroll constraints, and the need to pay their young pitchers, will be that much of a problem. In 2020, the Mets will have the following players under contract at sub-free agency prices: Kevin Plawecki, Domonic Smith, Dilson Herrera, Amed Rosario (as well as several other shortstop types), Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, and (I think) Zack Wheeler. Now, none of these guys with the possible exception of someone like Smith or Rosario would still be making the league minimum; they'd all be in arbitration, many of them in their last round of arbitration. You'll also have David Wright on the books at $12 million that year, because his contract was middle-loaded. Put it all together and I just don't see how having Cespedes under contract at a pretty reasonable rate is going to be a problem for that team. Not if the payroll has actually risen back to a more ordinary level, after what looks like it should be a pretty prolonged period of the team's being really good.
So yeah, if the Nationals sign Cespedes to 5/$105 or something like that, that's just not gonna be okay, and the Mets' reluctance to go that far really does seem to signal that something remains deeply rotten with the team's long-term financial situation.
And I don't actually buy that long-term payroll constraints, and the need to pay their young pitchers, will be that much of a problem. In 2020, the Mets will have the following players under contract at sub-free agency prices: Kevin Plawecki, Domonic Smith, Dilson Herrera, Amed Rosario (as well as several other shortstop types), Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, and (I think) Zack Wheeler. Now, none of these guys with the possible exception of someone like Smith or Rosario would still be making the league minimum; they'd all be in arbitration, many of them in their last round of arbitration. You'll also have David Wright on the books at $12 million that year, because his contract was middle-loaded. Put it all together and I just don't see how having Cespedes under contract at a pretty reasonable rate is going to be a problem for that team. Not if the payroll has actually risen back to a more ordinary level, after what looks like it should be a pretty prolonged period of the team's being really good.
So yeah, if the Nationals sign Cespedes to 5/$105 or something like that, that's just not gonna be okay, and the Mets' reluctance to go that far really does seem to signal that something remains deeply rotten with the team's long-term financial situation.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Meet the (2016) Mets
Well. That sucked. I mean, first it was awesome, and then it sucked. That's true of the whole year, and also of each individual game. Good lord, has a team ever lost a World Series where it led every single game before? And four of them after the seventh inning? Jeez those Royals are obnoxious to play against. For many of the same reasons that, for a neutral fan, they're a really cool team and a great story. But... jeez. Break up the Royals, man.
Anyway, National League Champions and all, and at least this time our losing didn't mean the Yankees won. (In fact, the Mets were playing baseball 26 days later than the Yankees were, woohoo! Which is presumably a record, actually, since the playoffs were shorter in 1986.) But now the Wheel of Time turns and seasons come and pass; 2015 is over and the 2016 season, in the form of the off-season leading up to it, is upon us. So let's take a look at the 2016 New York Mets as they stand now, and some thoughts of mine about what should be done to make sure we get more meaningful October baseball last year.
Anyway, National League Champions and all, and at least this time our losing didn't mean the Yankees won. (In fact, the Mets were playing baseball 26 days later than the Yankees were, woohoo! Which is presumably a record, actually, since the playoffs were shorter in 1986.) But now the Wheel of Time turns and seasons come and pass; 2015 is over and the 2016 season, in the form of the off-season leading up to it, is upon us. So let's take a look at the 2016 New York Mets as they stand now, and some thoughts of mine about what should be done to make sure we get more meaningful October baseball last year.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
On Yoenis Cespedes and the MVP
So. .312/.357/.675. 36 runs driven, and 33 scored, in over 36 games. 14 homers, three triples, and nine doubles over that time. Four stolen bases, never caught stealing (for what that's worth). Mostly while playing center field, and providing dynamic defense in center or in left. That's what Yoenis Cespedes has done since coming to the New York Mets. Oh, and since they acquired him (including one game after the trade but before Cespedes got to the team) the Mets are 26 and 11. They've surged from two game behind the Washington Nationals to seven games up on them, including going 6-0 against the Nationals themselves. Before they got Cespedes, Baseball Prospectus gave the Mets just a 26.8% chance of seeing the Division series; now (not even including tonight's win) that's up to 94.6%. And Cespedes has been everywhere. He had a home run and also a run-scoring double in Monday's game, hit a big two-out, bases-clearing double in last night's game to get the Mets all the way back from a 7-1 deficit to trailing by just a single run (and would later score the tying run), and tonight he absolutely crushed a hanging slider off Drew Storen for a two-run shot to give the Mets a lead they would not relinquish in the 8th.
It's got people, at least Mets people, talking about Yoenis Cespedes for National League Most Valuable Player. Which, y'know. He wasn't in the National League on July 30th. Gary Cohen was saying after tonight's game that he had been thinking over the Cespedes-for-MVP chatter prior to the game and was skeptical, but then Cespedes was the hero yet again, and at some point you just have to wonder. Especially since the guy who's having the absolutely bonkers season, hitting .336/.467/.657 including a heroic if futile 10-total-bases effort tonight against the Mets, is Bryce Harper, who plays for the Washington Nationals, who have just suffered a miserable collapse. Harper is unambigously the best player in baseball this year (his full-season line is better than Cespedes's line with just with the Mets), but sometimes best players in baseball don't win the MVP if their team disappoints. So that makes you start to wonder whether there's a window for a non-traditional candidacy from Yoenis. And for what it's worth, his whole-season stats are MVP-worthy, if divided between two leagues. Including his numbers with the Tigers Cespedes is hitting .298/.333/.554 with 32 homers, 37 doubles, 5 triples (for 74 total extra-base hits), 95 runs scored, and 97 runs driven in. FanGraphs credits Cespedes with 2.6 Wins Above Replacement with the Mets so far, and 6.6 WAR on the season. That's a very MVP pace; indeed, his Mets pace is at peak Ruth/Bonds levels.
Now, this is not necessarily the only kind of argument one could make, and there's certainly plenty of reason to think that past years' MVP voting practices were quite flawed, but it's interesting, I think, to look at other players who've done something like what Cespedes is up to. Here are three examples from the last decade-plus:
It's got people, at least Mets people, talking about Yoenis Cespedes for National League Most Valuable Player. Which, y'know. He wasn't in the National League on July 30th. Gary Cohen was saying after tonight's game that he had been thinking over the Cespedes-for-MVP chatter prior to the game and was skeptical, but then Cespedes was the hero yet again, and at some point you just have to wonder. Especially since the guy who's having the absolutely bonkers season, hitting .336/.467/.657 including a heroic if futile 10-total-bases effort tonight against the Mets, is Bryce Harper, who plays for the Washington Nationals, who have just suffered a miserable collapse. Harper is unambigously the best player in baseball this year (his full-season line is better than Cespedes's line with just with the Mets), but sometimes best players in baseball don't win the MVP if their team disappoints. So that makes you start to wonder whether there's a window for a non-traditional candidacy from Yoenis. And for what it's worth, his whole-season stats are MVP-worthy, if divided between two leagues. Including his numbers with the Tigers Cespedes is hitting .298/.333/.554 with 32 homers, 37 doubles, 5 triples (for 74 total extra-base hits), 95 runs scored, and 97 runs driven in. FanGraphs credits Cespedes with 2.6 Wins Above Replacement with the Mets so far, and 6.6 WAR on the season. That's a very MVP pace; indeed, his Mets pace is at peak Ruth/Bonds levels.
Now, this is not necessarily the only kind of argument one could make, and there's certainly plenty of reason to think that past years' MVP voting practices were quite flawed, but it's interesting, I think, to look at other players who've done something like what Cespedes is up to. Here are three examples from the last decade-plus:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)