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Where Did The Playoff Teams Get Their Best Relievers?

reedThere’s a lot of talk about what the Mets should or shouldn’t be doing this offseason. Relievers are a popular request. That makes sense as no team ever has enough relievers and with a possible suspension to Familia, the Mets could certainly benefit from another quality arm or two.

Still, it’s January and relievers are volatile. The top relievers from one year are sometimes complete unknowns the year before, and guys fall off cliffs fast. Relievers get so few innings that sometimes the stats can be misleading as the samples size is small. We’ve all seen the Mets give significant deals to relievers only to have them be sub-par, whereas random minor league deals turn out big dividends.

So, where did last year’s playoff teams get their best relievers, by fWAR? All these teams, which include the Mets, were in the position the Mets are in right now–trying to find the final pieces for a championship. So did they go out and sign high price relievers, promote from within, make trades, 3D print them or get them from Earth 2?

Mets
Addison Reed was their best reliever.
Acquired August 30th, 2015 for Miller Diaz (minors) and Matt Koch.

Do you remember Diaz or Koch? Have you heard about them since? Probably not. This was the stretch run pick up for 2015 that worked out, and the Mets kept him around.

Jeurys Familia was the second-best reliever, and he was drafted by the Mets as a starter and converted.

Cubs
Aroldis Chapman
Trade with Yankees on July 27th.

Their best reliever was literally only on the team two months.

Pedro Strop
Came over in the Arrieta deal from Cleveland in July 2013.

Strop was a nice reliever they’ve had for years who really flourished in Chicago.

Indians
Dan Otero
They got Otero last offseason, on December 18th, for cash from the Phillies. He was an under-control guy not yet in arbitration.

Otero pitched great for them but there is no way they were counting on that. They took a flyer on a guy and it worked.

Andrew Miller
2016 deadline trade with the Yankees.

Another guy that put up great numbers in two months.

Cody Allen
He was drafted by the Indians in 2011.

Allen was a little off in 2016, giving up a lot more home runs than usual, but was still reliable.

Red Sox
Craig Kimbrel
They grabbed Kimbrel last offseason, 11/31/2015, from the Padres.

Kimbrel had a sizable contract through 2017 with a 2018 option so this fits the ‘pay for a big name’ model, and the Red Sox gave up quite a few prospects for this as well. Kimbrel was still very good, but his ERA rose, as did his walk rate. His ground ball percentage dropped. Was it worth the expense? Hard to say.

Brad Ziegler
7/9/2016 trade with Arizona.
Over the full season, Ziegler was better than Kimbrel. The Red Sox used him and let him walk in free agency, where he went to Miami.

Blue Jays
Roberto Osuna
Signed as 16 year old in 2011.

Basically a prospect they brought up through their system.

Joe Biagini
Rule 5 pick from Giants last offseason.
Biagini was mostly an unexceptional AA guy the previous year but the Blue Jays must have saw something they could work with. They got good value from him despite a sub-par strikeout rate.

Joaquin Benoit
7/26/16 trade with Mariners.
Benoit was garbage with Seattle and the Blue Jays got him for Drew Storen, who was garbage with the Blue Jays. Storen pitched alright with the Mariners, but Benoit was amazing for the Jays before getting hurt just before the playoffs. He pitched 23.2 innings and allowed one run. One. Benoit has been a good reliever for a while, but he did turn 39 on the day of this trade so it’s easy to see where he might just have been done, instead he was key in getting the Blue Jays to the postseason. The Phillies signed him for a one year and nearly eight million after the season.

Orioles
Zach Britton
Drafted 2006

Britton had an absurdly good year, and should get into that Wild Card game any moment now.

Brad Brach
11/25/2013 trade with the Padres.

Brach is a pre-Free Agent. He was pretty good in previous years but really stepped up last year.

Rangers
Matt Bush
Signed to Minor league deal on 12/18/2015
Bush is a unique case as personal issues and jail time kept him away from the game after being drafted in 2004. The Rangers gave him a chance, and he started in the minors, succeeded, and was promoted.

Sam Dyson
7/31/2015 with Marlins
2015 deadline deal and 2016 closer for the Rangers. 2017 is his first arbitration year.

Giants
Derek Law
Drafted 2011
Major League debut in 2016, and he pitched well.

Hunter Strickland
Signed off waivers from Pirates in April 2013
Giants grabbed Strickland in 2013 after the Pirates gave up on the 24 year old in AA, sent him down a level, and managed to turn him into a useful pitcher.

Dodgers
Kenley Jansen
Drafted 2004
Jansen has been a solid Dodgers reliever for years. They just re-signed him to a long 5/$80 deal with an opt-out.

Joe Blanton
1/19/16 for 4mm off first year of relief.
Back end rotation guy turned reliever with the Royals and Pirates in 2015 got a $4 million dollar deal with the Dodgers and pitched pretty well as he now strikes out a lot more batters. He remains unsigned for 2017.

Adam Liberatore
11/20/2014 trade with Rays
Came over with Joel Peralta. Wasn’t great in 2015 but improved for 2016. Had surgery this offseason but he’s still pre-arb.

Nationals
Shawn Kelley
3 year deal signed on 12/11/2015
Kelley’s one of the few free agent signings on this list. He’s on a relatively inexpensive 3/$15 deal that has already paid off through a successful 2016 with the Nats. He had a career high K/9 rate as well as a career low BB/9, though hitting the zone that much seems to have led to a few more home runs.

Mark Melancon
7/30/16 trade with Pirates
Melancon pitched really well for the Nationals down the stretch and then left for the Giants and a 4/$62 deal.

How about previous Mets teams?

2014-2015 Jeurys Familia – Drafted
2014 Mejia – Drafted
2013 Parnell – Drafted
2013- Latroy Hawkins – 1/31/2013 minor league deal
2006 – Wagner – FA, Heilman – drafted, Bradford – FA.

Perusing this list leads to the conclusion that it’s hard to determine who your best reliever is going to be in an upcoming season. Many teams acquired a great reliever sometime between the end of the last season and the trade deadline, but it was rarely a heralded free agent.

It seem just as likely that you’ll find a quality reliever as a throw-in for a trade, as a flyer on the waiver wire, or simply in your own minor league system. It could be a minor league free agent that you had no real expectations of. Additionally, plenty of the major league free agent relievers signed did not end up pitching in the playoffs or even pitch that well. Antonio Bastardo, Joakim Soria, Tony Sipp, Tyler Clippard to name a few.

So there’s every chance that the Mets minor league signings of Ben Rowen and Cory Burns could pay dividends. We certainly shouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. Sandy Alderson has been pretty active over the playoff seasons with moving smaller pieces around and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more relievers show up by the time the season really gets going. Or maybe the Mets starters all stay healthy and someone like Wheeler or Lugo gets some quality time in as a reliever.

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Are You Ready For The World Series?

photo by CeetarI’m not sure I’m ready. I’m not sure it’s really fully sunk in that the Mets are one series away from perhaps a World Championship. Being a tiny child during the last one the idea of winning it all is this mythical beast suddenly very much real. Dragons are alive and well in Westeros Flushing.

 

In roughly a week the Mets will either be planning a parade or adding a new mortal enemy to the list of teams that we don’t like. There will be players that will be revered as much as Keith Hernandez or perhaps vilified as much as Mike Scioscia and Yadier Molina. The stakes are high.

 

No matter what you believed about this team, a World Series appearance requires all sorts of things to break right. Just a few months ago we were pondering what it would take to fend off the Washington Nationals, not wondering how the Mets match up against an American League champion.

 

The World Series has a certain level of awe to it above that of the NLCS. There are only two teams left in all of baseball, just four to seven games left in the entire season. For the first time in 15 years no team will play baseball after the Mets have gone home. The final quest for a third championship begins now.

 

Ready or not, here we go.

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The Mets Aren’t Playing With House Money

The Mets are now officially going to the playoffs, something very few people expected them to seriously do, especially as division champs. You may be telling yourself everything from here on out is gravy, that you’re just happy they made it.

 

You’d be wrong. It won’t be as big a failure if the Mets lose in the NLDS, but it’ll still be failure. It’ll still be gut-wrenching and horrible, and you still won’t be able to sleep for a week afterwards. You’re not going to just shrug your shoulders and say “It was a fun ride, happy with what they gave us.” Maybe in a few months, after rationally thinking about it, you’ll feel that way, but half the enjoyment of sports is the visceral in-the-moment emotional roller coaster. I still hear people bemoaning things that happened decades ago, and a first round exit won’t happen without creating a few ghosts for us to carry with us. 2006 stung, despite it being a fun ride and despite it seemingly like a stepping stone to long term success.

 

Fandom requires a certain amount of emotional buy-in, and this team is an exciting one to buy into. It’s not just that we’re invested though, they’re a quality team. These Mets are not squeaking into the playoffs in a way that makes us thankful just to make it; they’ve legitimately got the horses to make a run at the whole World Championship. The Mets have a team that CAN win this year, and if they fail to do so it will undoubtedly be crushing. Yes, the journey has been fun and crazy and magical.

 

Of course, it WILL probably all come crashing down. The Mets would have to get through three rounds against three quality teams and there are absolutely no guarantees in a short series. There’s no shame in losing early, but it’d still be pretty disappointing. The ride has been fun, and it’s that possibility of gut-wrenching defeat that makes the highs so high.

 

Let’s all enjoy the ride. Just don’t pretend you’ve got nothing to lose and it’s all house money. When October 9th rolls around, we’re all going to be on the edge of our seat fretting every pitch. A crushing defeat does not invalidate the stunning season despite being a disappointment in it’s own right. That great season just bought us a ticket to a higher-limit table is all.

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Believe It: Other Its.

The wave of optimism coming from the Mets fanbase this weekend has been refreshing.  Welcome to the club.  (Guest euphoria welcome) It’s impossible not to be giddy about how this team played this weekend.  Finally, a Mets pitcher has pitched a no-hitter.  Believe it.

Believe It!

What else can you believe?  An MVP? Playoff berth?  The World Series?

 

Why not?  Many of us would’ve put the odds of those above a no-hitter, and we’ve beaten those odds.  David Wright has to be one of the favorites for the MVP a third of the way through the season.  You could make a case for both Johan Santana AND R.A. Dickey as Cy Young candidates.  According to ESPN’s Cy Young predictor, R.A. Dickey is the early favorite.

 

The Playoffs?  Well, the Mets are now tied for first place in the division.  They’ve been in “If the season ended today” position to make the playoffs most of the season.  Winning in the playoffs? I’ll take my chances with R.A. Dickey, Johan Santana, and David Wright, that’s for sure.

 

Greg from Faith and Fear in Flushing has this to say on those “We’ve never had XXX” lists:

 

“And what’s left of a never-got-one nature to ache for anyway? Put aside a World Series championship even if you’ve never seen one before, because the Mets have two of those. They have cycles, triple plays, a 6-for-6 night, 10 consecutive strikeouts, a batting title and now a no-hitter. What is left hanging out there on the vine that can be attained on the field? An MVP has to be voted on, so that’s not it. A perfect game would be something, but that’s like waiting for the clouds to rain candy. Not everybody has one of those, so it’s not as if the Mets are being left out. Ditto for a four-homer performance. We’ll love if it happens, but it’s rare enough to advise against holding breath for.”

 

What can’t the Mets do this season? Nothing.  There is nothing the Mets can’t achieve.  Believe It.

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It’s All About The Giants..But Not For Long

This weekend is about the New York Giants.  It’s about the Super Bowl, and a championship.  It’s about perhaps a parade on Tuesday and random rankings of Eli Manning among the greatest QBs in the game today.

 

So good luck to the Giants.  I’m looking forward to this game, and like so many so-called experts on Twitter, blogs, radio and tv, I’m going to give you my meaningless prediction.  30-16 Giants.  It’ll seem closer than that though.  The Giants will score early in the second half to go up 23-13, and the Patriots will answer with a field goal.  The next score will be halfway through the fourth quarter when Tom Brady is picked off deep in his own zone.   He’ll then turn the ball over on downs on the Giants 44 yard line, and Eli will run out the clock slowly driving down the field and taking a knee.

 

The Giants, and NY and NJ, will celebrate.  The Senate will drink NY beers bought by New England politicians.  There will be a parade.  Then, despite five other local sports teams playing professional sports, all eyes will turn to baseball.  We’ll tick into single digits of days remaining until pitchers and catchers report.

 

And it can’t come soon enough. Let’s Go Mets!

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A Chance For The 2012 New York Mets

Take 2011 where two teams completely out of it suddenly made the playoffs and one of them even won it all.  It’s impossible to predict baseball.  Sure you usually have a pretty good chance of knowing which teams will be good, and which will be bad, but every year dozens of people that watch hundreds of games are completely wrong about who’s going to win divisions.

 

Despite a handful of games against the Wild Card-leading Atlanta Braves still to come in the last 60 or so games, when the Mets traded Carlos Beltran on July 27th while trailing those Braves by 7.5 games, it was considered the right move.  That’s a lot of ground to make up for a team barely above .500, and the long term benefits of trading Beltran were largely considered to outweigh any gutshot chance the Mets had at overcoming that deficit.  As it turns out, the Mets were only two games behind the team that eventually won the Wild Card.  The St. Louis Cardinals were a mere couple of games better than the Mets at that point, and they even still had head to head games remaining.    A lot of things still went wrong for the Mets from that point forward.  They didn’t finish above .500 and it’s extremely unlikely that keeping Beltran would’ve made much of a difference.  Still, it’s a pretty good example of how you never quite know what it’s going to take to make the playoffs.

 

That’s what I want from the Mets in 2012 while they get their payroll/revenue balance under control.   I’m not demanding they throw money around and attempt to buy a championship, but they need to keep the possibility of a championship open.  Put the team in a position so that if most things go right they can make the playoffs.  I’m not talking outlandish things like Ruben Tejada putting up a season like Jose Reyes.   Jose Reyes plays 140+ games.  Jason Bay has a season that splits the difference between his best years and his Mets years.  Johan Santana makes 30 starts and is a good, if not great, pitcher.  Pagan is more pre-2011 Met than 2011 Met.  Josh Thole, Lucas Duda, and Ike Davis progress and have good solid major league years at their positions.  Jon Niese takes a step forward.  Mike Pelfrey‘s numbers fall more in line with 2010 than 2011.   The bullpen guys that get signed, coupled with the ones that remain from last year, perform reasonably well and keep the games from getting away.  The biggest one of course is that the Mets stay reasonably healthy.

 

None of those things are that outlandish.  Some are even likely.  There are also good things and bad things that will be completely unforeseen.   David Wright could break his back again, or R.A. Dickey could decide to live on Kilimanjaro and back out of his 2012 contract.  One of the yet unsigned relievers could go on to have an unbelievable shut-down type year, and Mark Cohoon could be promoted from the minors in May and have a Rookie of the Year caliber season.  You just never know, so give it a chance and hope and root for more good than bad.  We’re certainly due.

 

 

 

 

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New York Mets: Winning Franchise?

With all the bumbling and incompetence attributed to the Mets, I started to wonder how they’d do in a purely random system.  If you simply decided the World Series champion based on a roll of a 30-sided die on Opening Day the Mets would win one out of every 30 seasons.   The Mets have two titles in 50 years, but there weren’t always 30 teams.  So what does the math say?

For the first seven years there was a 5% chance to win, so they should’ve won .05 titles a year.   As expansion happened that .05 number drops towards the .0333 it is today.

 

7 * .05 = .35 (1962-1968)

8 * .04167 = .3333  (1969-1976)

16 * .0385 = .6154 (1977-1992)

5 * .0357 = .1786 (1993-1997)

14 * .0333 = .4667 (1998-2011)

 

If you add that all up you get 1.944 titles the Mets would’ve won in their history purely based on the roll of a die.  Statistically they’re beating the odds, however they will fall behind the pace if they don’t win one in the next two years.

 

How about just making the playoffs, based off the randomness.

7 * .1  = .7 (1962-1968, 10 teams, 1 spot)

24 * .1667  = 4 (1969-1992, 12 teams, 2 spots)

.1429 (1993, 14 teams, 2 spots)

4 * .2857   = 1.1429 (1994-1997, 14 teams, 4 spots)
4 * .1667 = .6667 (1994-1997, 12 teams, 2 spots)

14 * .25 = 3.5 (1998-2011, 16 teams, 4 spots)
14 * .1429 = 2 (1998-2011, 14 teams, 2 spots)

The Wild Card and divisional format makes it a little tricky, as the Mets technically aren’t competing for an NL West playoff berth.   I don’t think even random odds should award them that.   I did the math based on the two potential spots the Mets could win, and removed the two teams that would win the other two divisions.   It’s not exact since if the two best teams were in another division the Mets could get in as the third best team, but for the sake of randomness I think it’s close enough.

 

Adding them up gives you 7.5096 playoff berths (9.4858 if you want them to try to win the NL Central) which is a shade off the seven playoffs the Mets have seen.

 

What if just the playoffs were determined randomly?  The Mets actually do pretty good there.

 

4 * .25 = 1 (1969, 1973, 1986, 1988.  4 team playoffs)

3 *  .125 = .375 (1999, 2000, 2006.  8 team playoffs)

 

They would’ve won 1.375 championships once they made the playoffs, suggesting that the Mets have made the most out of their playoff berths. ( They’re 9-5 in playoff series)

 

So overall, the Mets aren’t a bad franchise.  They win their fair share of championships, make the most of their time in the playoffs, and get regularly, if not frequently play in October.

 

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What Beer Were the Red Sox Drinking?

Doesn’t it depend on what beer they were drinking in the Red Sox clubhouse as to how big a sin it was?  Why has no one asked this very important question?

First off, if it was something that said Busch, Miller, or Coors on it, that’s just wrong.  It’s like rooting for the Cardinals, Brewers, or Rockies.  The same goes for Blue Moon, which is part of Coors and there is a Blue Moon Brewery attached to Coors Field. 

Even worse would be if they were drinking a Bronx Pale Ale from the Bronx Brewery.

For the Wilpon conspiracists: If they were drinking a Brooklyn Brewery Pennant Ale ’55, Fred wants to trade for Lester.  Pennants aren’t won in September either. 

Perhaps the best beer they could’ve been drinking was a local microbrew: Wachusett Green Monsta IPA.  Although it says it has a homerun of hops in every sip, so perhaps that’s more of a David Ortiz beer.

Presumably anything from Sam Adams would be appropriately Boston, except Oktoberfest.  If they were drinking an Oktoberfest that’s ridiculously presumptious when they hadn’t even made the playoffs yet.

What beer do you think they were drinking?

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1969 World Series Tickets

Not trying to step on the toes of Metspolice’s ’80s week, but I came across these 1969 playoff ticket stubs (Not mine, I wasn’t alive) and figured the Thursday before the second half would be the perfect time to post them.  (And a much longer post I have planned complaining about FIP is lazily unfinished)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s the clinching game of the NLCS, which I’d forgotten was only a five game series.  Game 3 of the World Series, presuming they mean game 3 and not home game 3, would’ve been the Agee catch game and the first World Series game ever at Shea Stadium.