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You Better Believe We’re Going To Overreact

Mets snag an Opening Day WinThree games is a very small sample of data.  It’s still early.

 

I don’t care.  I’m going to enjoy it.  I’m going to throw out ridiculous information because it’s fun to look at projections of Lucas Duda hitting 120 home runs.

 

While three games is just three games, it’s still a lot more meaningful than Spring Training data.  Frank Francisco nailed down three saves.  The bullpen pitched well.   Lucas Duda really does look like he can hit.   Ruben Tejada’s looking good.  The Mets are in first place.  Even Jason Bay has an RBI, and leads the league in sacrifice flies.

 

Just enjoy it.  Things will probably shake out differently the rest of the season.  I doubt the Mets go 162-0.  Still, I think as people see this team play they’re realizing that they actually do have talented players on it.  Enjoy the ride.  Is there something from this weekends games that opened your eyes involving this Mets team?

 

David Wright is on pace to … I don’t even want to say it.  I’m afraid I’ll jinx it.  There is a certain batter outcome that happens at the plate, and it’s one that’s been very prevalent in Wright’s game the past couple of years.  Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn are experts at it.  Wright hasn’t done it this year.   He didn’t do it in Spring Training either.  Keith Hernandez is practically drooling over his batting stance so far this season.   We all know what David’s capable of.  This is my biggest point of optimism this weekend.

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Here’s Your Optimistic Mets Prediction

Calling predictions predictions under-emphasizes how inaccurate and subject to random luck they are, even when it’s the so-called experts making them.  I am not an expert, merely a blogger that likes to think positively.  So what do I think the Mets do in 2012?

 

I think the highest probability bet is they finish third.  Right around 82-84 wins.  I know there are people out there that think that’s crazy, but it’s really not that outlandish.  The bullpen and rotation are improved over last year, even if you want to argue over how much.  The offense lost some big pieces, but it’s also got some guys back too.  Adding in some power to a team that was already going to get on base a lot should score a lot of runs.  I don’t think the Marlins improved enough to get above .500, and I think one of either the Nationals or Braves will deal with enough problems to fall below that mark.

 

This doesn’t mean the Mets can’t make the playoffs.  (Nor does it mean they can’t finish last) I’ve watched enough baseball to know anything can happen, and I think the Mets do have enough potential upside in a lot of their players to be able to realize competitiveness if enough things go right.  Ike Davis, Lucas Duda, Ruben Tejada, even Dillon Gee, Jon Niese and Josh Thole all are of an age or stage in their career where improvement is possible, even expected.   Mike Pelfrey keeping the ball down and yielding fewer home runs this season and Johan’s shoulder holding up better than we can reasonably home are other key factors that could lead to a good Mets season.

 

So all in all this season should at least be a lot of fun.  If you had to pick just one thing to zone in on and believe in, one reason to seriously watch this Mets baseball team, I’d say watch Lucas Duda and Ike Davis.  The lefty power the Mets have this season is very real and the Pepsi Porch may become the new hot spot to catch a home run ball this season.

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Reasons To Be Optimistic About 2012

Yesterday the Wilpons settled their Madoff case, putting a pretty firm handle on what their liabilities are going forward.  This is a big step in getting the Mets financially stable.  The second step was announced last night as official; The 12 minority shares have sold.  They’ve paid back the bridge loans, and have the cash on handle to start getting things straightened out.  They’ve got other financial woes on the horizon, but none of those are looming at this moment, so it’s time to focus on the baseball.

 

Kerel Cooper at Ontheblack.com lists five reasons to be optimistic about the 2012 Mets.  Five good solid reasons, beyond the finances, which you should definitely check out.  Here’s a couple more to round out the list.

The bullpen:  Frank Francisco and Jon Rauch haven’t historically been regularly awesome, but they’ll be a step up from Ryota Igarashi and D.J. Carrasco.  Add in Ramon Ramirez, who’s a very solid reliever, and the Mets should have a good bullpen.  This helps the Mets keep and hold leads, where maybe they’d have given them away last year.  It also limits the pressure on a recovering Johan Santana to go deep in games too often.

 

The opposition: You’ll here that everyone in the division got better, but it’s not true.  The Phillies lost a starting pitcher in Oswalt, lost Madson and Lidge and replaced them with Papelbon, and are starting the season without Ryan Howard and probably without Chase Utley.  Their top three pitchers are awesome, but they also all posted career low ERAs.  Halladay and Lee are not pitchers you expect to be improving at their age, so it’s almost a lock that they’ll regress to a somewhat less awesome state this year.  That’s without mentioning Halladay’s declining velocity or the Spring Training rumors (that mean nothing, it’s Spring Training) that he’s been hitable and his arm angle is all messed up.  The Atlanta Braves finished second in the division, and after an epic collapse really didn’t do much to alleviate their problems.  They’re also dealing with some pitcher injuries.  With the top of the division coming back to the pack, the threshold to make the playoffs is lessened and intra-division games could go a long way towards deciding the victor.

 

The 2012 Mets are going to surprise some people.  They’ve got some real talent on the team, and every day is another day closer to some of the reinforcements in the minors being ready.  It’s going to be a fun season, and I can’t wait for it to start.

 

 

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Some Optimism For Mike Pelfrey

Mike Pelfrey pitches against the Marlins on May 16th, 2011Mike Pelfrey‘s FIP has actually stayed pretty steady over the last four years, and his xFIP was even steadier. The main difference being that he game up less home runs in 2008 and 2010.     So the question becomes what was it that caused the home run rate to be lower in those years?  Was it dumb luck, or some adjustments on Pelfrey’s part?  Personally I think his xFIP staying the same is precisely what’s wrong with the stat.  Pelfrey clearly pitched better in 2010, particularly in the first part of the year, than he has since.

 

There probably still is some luck to it.  The margin of error for flying out instead of hitting a home run is tiny.   Optimistically, Mike Pelfrey’s numbers in 2011 were probably at the far end of bad luck and it’d be pretty easy to see how even with changing almost nothing he’d probably have a better result in 2012.  Hoping for lucky bounces is not a good philosophy for a major league pitch to adopt however.

 

Pelfrey is working hard this Spring at his sinker.  This is something he admittedly struggled with in 2011, and harnessing it against should be a positive.  For one, it’s a different look than teams are used to.  Adding in a pitch provides a new wrinkle to the scouting report and helps keep hitters off balance.  Additionally, sinkers are harder to hit out of the park as they are harder to hit in the air.  So far the reports are positive on his feel for the pitch.

 

With luck and the sinker, Mike Pelfrey should be an improved pitcher again in 2012.  Throw in a likely improved bullpen and more of Pelfrey’s games should turn into Mets wins.  That only happened 12 of 33 times last season.

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Will The Mets Be Better Than 2011?

Optimism starts small; will the Mets improve on 2011’s record?  Are they a better team?  Will they perform better?

 

I’m leaning towards yes.   Losing Reyes, Pagan and Beltran is a big hit, but the Mets offense is still pretty strong.  Lucas Duda looks like a solid player.  Andres Torres may not be great, but even if he’s not good the Mets have high hopes for Kirk Nieuwenhuis coming up pretty quickly.  David Wright and Ike Davis are healthy, and Daniel Murphy should get some more playing time as well.  Josh Thole and Ruben Tejada may not be the best, but they’re pretty good at not making out and keeping the line moving.  This team won’t have problems scoring runs.

 

The bullpen is clearly slated to be better.  Francisco Rodriguez will not be here, but the Mets added Frank Francisco, Ramon Ramirez, and Jon Rauch.  Some injury concerns, but the bullpen has some pretty good depth.

 

The starters are where the big questions come in.  The Mets lost Chris Capuano, who did a pretty good job for them.  Good job aside, his eminently replaceable 1.7 rWAR is not going to handicap them much.  Johan Santana is slated to take that spot, provided he does not have a setback during Spring Training.  Despite this serious possibility I have faith Santana can at least approach the 1.7 rWAR Capuano gave the Mets.  Even if he’s somewhat diminished, he’s a smart competitor that should be able to get by with somewhat reduced ability.    With luck bouncing a little more in Pelfrey’s favor this season, and Jon Niese’s peripherals leading to a better ERA, it’s possible the Mets starters will be better too.  It probably hinges most on health, but that’s an argument and concern for every team.

 

So there’s a very high-level argument for the Mets being better.  We can worry about how much better another time, particularly as it pertains to the other NL East teams and their records.  Specifically, it’ll be decided on the field with the games being played, not on a blog or newspaper somewhere before the season even starts.

 

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Apparently Optimism Is Not A Sin

Ted Berg over at Tedquarters.net is doing a four part series on “If absolutely everything falls right” and looking at the upward bounds of expectations for the Mets roster.  It’s nice to know I’m not the only person looking at the optimistic avenue.  I was beginning to feel a little like Highlander as an optimistic Mets fan.

 

I think this post on the infield  is very reasonable, and it’s even possible that some of the players overshoot his proposed projections.   The most unrealistic part is them all staying healthy all year.  Still, health is not an unreasonable expectation.  I’m not expecting Wright to break his back again, or Ike Davis managing to fall in exactly the wrong way to ruin his season.

 

His second part, on the outfield, seems a tad more pessimistic to me.  Maybe Bay does rebound a little.  I’ve mentioned that here in the past, but  I think we’re doing a disservice to Duda in projecting his ceiling defensively as “not terrible”.  His outfield experience in the minors was mostly in left, and he’s only got about half a season of time in the majors.  Perhaps his hulking frame tends to make one  believe he’ll never be good defensively, but I think he can hit “not terrible” just by having all of Spring Training to start at the position and build on it as the year goes on.   He can clearly hit the baseball, and if he were to improve on what he did last year he could be our own version of Mike Stanton.  In fact, their offensive WAR on baseball-reference were very similar factoring in playing time.   Ralph Kiner and Keith Hernandez both love his swing, for whatever that’s worth.

 

Ted dreams of Jason Bay having a great first half and becoming a trade chip and Kirk Nieuwenhuis forcing his way up to the majors.  Personally I think that’s unrealistic, because I don’t think a half season of good baseball is going to yield the type of return to make it worth trading him.  He’s not Carlos Beltran and his trade would come along with 24 or so million dollars owed to him and a possible vesting option.  More likely if Nieuwenhuis does warrant a call-up, Andres Torres will become a fourth outfielder.  If this happens we’ll lose a little defensively, but gain a lot offensively, including some flexibility with defensive replacements.

 

So what’s the highest fWAR we can expect from the Mets offense?  I’m going to say somewhere in the 28-30  range.  This would’ve had them 4th in the NL last year and best in the NL East.   I think this number represents of everything goes well.  It’s certainly possible that if one or two things turn out to go extraordinarily well, they could shoot past it.  Because fWAR heavily relies on fielding, if the pitching does better there will be less balls in play and less fielding damage to the values.  I assume part three and four of Ted’s series will deal with the rotation and the bullpen.

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Some Optimism For Jason Bay

There hasn’t been a lot of positives with Jason Bay, but barring something weird, he’ll be here next year.  So are there any signs that he can have a season that we can even remotely describe as good?  Before you jump all over me, I know I’m grasping at straws here.  On the other hand, Jason Bay sneezes harder than he hit the ball the last two years, and you’d figure he could have a better year almost by accident.

 

Health would be a good start. He’s missed some time each of the two years, keeping him from getting a steady rhythm that often helps baseball players. He finished 2011 hot, but he also finished it injured.

 

He hit one home run in April and one in May.
He hit two home runs in June and two home runs in July.
He hit three home runs in August and three in September.

 

That’s a steady progression.  It’s not a sign for 40 home runs, but three a month would at least give him 18. (Which is how many he has for the Mets now)

 

He had a hit in each of the last 15 games he started except two, a Tim Hudson 10K game and a clunker against the Nationals. That’s a .954 OPS in September.  It was nice to see him avoid some of those prolonged 0-20 slumps he so frequently got himself into.  However he did have a 2 for 45 slump in August just before getting hot.

 

His OPS jumped from a .656 in the first half to a .758 in the second half.

 

He was clearly hitting the ball with authority in September; In addition to his three home runs, he had seven doubles.  75 AB is hardly a representative sample, but we were beginning to doubt he was capable of being good even that long.

 

Even a modest 10% improvement from Bay would put him close to a .800 OPS with around 20 home runs.  That’s still well below his career averages.  2011 was the bottom of the barrel for Bay, but his career trajectory doesn’t read as a straight down arrow, so there’s hope and even optimism that he’ll have a better year next year.

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2011 Mets fading into the Sunset

The local football teams played Sunday night, marking the beginning of the end of baseball.  With the Mets eliminated from the NL East and almost eliminated from the Wild Card race, Mets related traffic and discussion has slowed to a crawl outside of the die-hard in Metsopotamia.

 

But we’re going to miss them when they’re gone.  The New York Mets now have as many games remaining as the New York Giants; another sign of the end.  Time is ticking down, the Mets are playing poor, sloppy and uninspired baseball and even Reyes isn’t hitting like he was for most of the rest of the season.

 

As much as it’s not much fun to watch lately, I’m going to watch.  You never know when something crazy will happen, and this team probably still has a couple of fun wins in them.  I’m going out to Citi Field tonight for Star Wars night, which should be interesting at least.

 

Much thanks to the Mets for including Optimistic Mets Fan in the final issue of Mets Magazine. It’s very cool to see this blog in the Mets program. If you happen to buy the final issue of the season, flip over to page 153 and check it out. Then turn to page 154 for Faith and Fear in Flushing‘s entry. I love that there is a Spanish translation as well, although anyone that needs it isn’t going to find the site too readable. Maybe I need a ‘translate to Spanish’ widget for Fanáticos Optimista de los Mets?