Let Edwin Díaz Start Opening Day You Cowards

Let’s get wild, let’s start Edwin Díaz on Opening Day. Kodai Senga of course deserves it, but this is only his second year, and there’s no chance he’s pitching deep into the first game of the year anyway. There’s not some long-tenured Ace cemented in that role, so why not pump up the fans and start the season with some fanfare?  

There’s no reason we can’t cheer just as loud in the second inning for Kodai Senga. There’s no reason you can’t refer to him as the “starting” pitcher after the Opener. There’s no reason you can’t announce Díaz as the Opener and Senga as the Starter in the pre-game lineups and graphics. HYPE IT UP.

Díaz and his trumpets, entrance music and dominating performance might have been the highlight of 2022, and it was sorely missed in 2023. So why not remind us all and get that Timmy Trumpet blaring to start the year–nothing else would get the blood pumping as much as that. Getting an inning of Díaz regardless of the score is good strategy anyway, there’s a day off after that so it’s not like you’re worried about wearing him out early, he hasn’t pitched since late 2022 so why wait to get his return started?

There’s a reasonable chance the Mets bullpen, as a unit, might be pretty good this year, perhaps even the best part of the team. So highlighting that strength to start the year is only fitting. Come out throwing gas. 

This also potentially sets up something that so rarely happens–The first and last pitch of the season could be thrown by the same player.

The Brewery At Citi Field

far shot of the Ebbs Citi Field bar, with a tv above the taps, and a few cans on the bar

I’ve reported on the brewery at Citi Field before, but it’s worth a refresher. The Mikkeller NYC space, owned by Bruce Wilpon and Tomas Larson, was closed early in the pandemic despite Ebbs Brewery, owned by Bruce Wilpon and Tomas Larson, using the space to brew beer. Even as fans returned to Citi Field, and Ebbs beer was present, the space remained closed until Opening Day 2022.

If you remember, the Mikkeller spot, while currently not a great spot to visit when the Mets aren’t home, was a great spot for beer and food. They had a large tap list of Mikkeller beers and also guest beers, with all sorts of great things to try. They made two specialty beers for Citi Field, and a special beer for The 7 Line Army. All those are now gone, as even though the location has now reopened as Ebbs Citi Field.

Our friend Steve Rogers shared this photo of the place before the last game of the first homestand.

Let’s zoom in a bit at that “menu”.

Ebbs Citi Field Menu as of 4/21/2022

Okay, what poorly designed mess of text is that? Why is Watermelon and Mango spelled with a 4? Did they really run out of As? They couldn’t of sprung for a couple more packs of lettering? It’s Ambassador not Abmassador. Those are upside down Vs.

I guess if you’re at a loss of letters you have to abbreviate ,but no one knows HVB means Hudson Valley Brewery without googling Amulet, a sour farmhouse ale. Aval Gold is a cider, Jiant Himacaya is a hard kombucha. And the Interboro is an 11% imperial stout. That’s quite the variety grouped together. Also there are no prices, never mind ABV for anything.

Those numbers after the Ebbs beers are different beers. Ebbs has decided not to name beers, for..reasons. I dare you to figure out the difference between Lager 1 and Lager 3 without a detailed description. Does this mean the bartender has to explain it to literally everyone that’s ordering? Gose 1 has watermelon, which isn’t the standard Gose recipe, so it might be nice to know that?

Ebbs whole aesthetic is this simple “our recipe is just the style and the recipe number” as per their “our story” on their website, which is full of snarky answers and avoiding their own questions. For instance, they’re snarky about what Ebbs means. “It sure does.” they say. Ebbs brand identity was designed by Pentagram, and according to them:

The name “Ebbs” is short, strong and simple, evoking water and New York’s rivers and harbor, as well as Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team.

It’s interesting given who owns them and where they started that they’re being coy about the name.

Fountain hard seltzer is also owned by the same people, hence it’s inclusion here. I imagine the “Spritz” option means they’ll water down some wine for you with one of the seltzers.

This also means there are a lot of empty taps. Maybe they’ll expand this by the summer, as things get up and running, but it’s not like Opening Day showing up was a surprise, and they’ve literally operated in this space since 2018. As of 4/21/2022, there have been no additional labels filed with the TTB, which would be required to can more Ebbs beer.

Those prices are cheaper than a beer inside the park, but it’s hard to say I’d actually recommend stopping here instead of just going inside and taking in the park and batting practice. Perhaps if you’re not ready to head home after, it’s good for a nightcap, and hopefully they add some new guest taps going forward.

It perhaps also worth noting that the Citi Field guide on the Mets website is updated to reflect Ebbs being open, though other recent changes have not been added. There was very little promotion of Ebbs going to sudden (re?)open in the space until a few days prior on Instagram.

Thanks again to Steve Rogers for the recon, I’ll head out to Citi Field myself next homestand and will at least walk through the place.

Many Questions Remain About A Safe Opening Day

New York has allowed ballparks to operate at 20% as of Opening Day, so the Mets have released information towards filling that capacity. Of course, they’ve sold roughly 100% of Opening Day tickets already, so now they get to attempt to redistribute those tickets to other games of the next two seasons, and re-sell, probably to season ticket holders, Opening Day and other games through early May (for now). 

The protocol for attending are, not surprisingly, sparse. They’re selling ‘pods’ of tickets, and requiring a negative COVID test or vaccination. That’s a start, but I still have a lot of questions.

  1. The guidelines mention showing proof of a negative test. How recent? And what questions are being asked to gauge potential exposure between that negative test and the day of game?
  1. Will ALL bathrooms be open, to spread out the #1 place fans bunch up? 
  1. How far apart are these pods really? Shouting “Let’s Go Mets” expels particles much farther than six feet, especially because the ground is sloped down in the direction fans shout. If I let out a “yeah!” after a strikeout, in between bites, I could easily send droplets many many rows away. 
  1. Will there be guidelines and exit procedures that properly educate and space apart pods so they don’t all try to get out the same way? The same question going in. Will gate assignments be enforced to limit bottlenecks? Where is proof of vaccination or test happening? Are we bottling up entry with even more paperwork? 
  1. If I come down with symptoms the day AFTER the game, are their tracing protocols in place for me to report that? 
  1. Less important, but still valid, if I come down with symptoms the day before, are you going to give me a hard time about straight-refunding my money? 
  1. What percentage of Citi Field staff is vaccinated? Are you requiring or assisting these employees with getting vaccinated, particularly the ones that will be doing admission or handling food? 

It _should_ be possible to have 8000 or so fans in a wide open outdoor area, with good mask usage and hopefully a large percentage of vaccinated fans. Whether it will be or not remains to be seen, and cases in NY are still holding steady and not really decreasing much, only a few weeks before Opening Day. Hopefully they’ll be extra cautious, everyone will behave and get vaccinated, and we can all find ourselves happily at a baseball game this season. 

The 2020 Season, A Bad Experiment

No. It’s bad.

I gave it it’s best shot. I was pro-season going in, but now that it’s almost over it just didn’t do it for me. It wasn’t..normal?

That’s been a trend for me with the pandemic. Everything and everyone is trying their hardest to approximate normal. How can we dine? How can we shop? How can we cram the same educational milestones into a school year remotely? How do we have a baseball season?

It’s not normal though, and a little foresight would’ve gone a long way into envisioning a different type of season, not just a shorter one. Rob Manfred  though, seems to hate baseball, and it shows. So instead of anything approaching creative, we get shoe-horned in last minute changes like a runner on second in extra innings, or 7 inning games, extra teams in the playoffs and no breaks in the playoff rounds.

First mistake was ignoring the pandemic. MLB dragged its feet on playing at all, purposely waiting until they could mandate 60 games. Maybe that could’ve worked if they started earlier and factored in time for potential quarantines. Instead anytime anyone had to miss games, even if it was only a few days, they were faced with a 10 game in 7 day scenario, or long stretches with no off days.  

So teams would go from a bunch of days off in a row, to suddenly playing non-stop. I haven’t run specific numbers, but it’s hard not to imagine players timing being off, players routines being off. These are players that, accurate or not, would complain about all sorts of minor disruptions from not getting enough work in, to having to pitch the 7th instead of the 9th, as reasons why they were less effective. 

The injuries too. They go from cold to hot, with no build up. ‘Summer camp’ was abbreviated. Players rushed, and got hurt. The games mean more, so they’re pressing more. It’s like every complaint about the WBC without any guidelines or protocols in place. Never mind rehab starts. Need to miss a start or two because of a tight hamstring or a hangnail or anything else? Right back into live games without any minor league time. Hope you’re sharp!

Of course, there are no fans. We knew that, but for all the jokes about it being normal for the Marlins, or whoever, it’s wrong. It feels wrong. I can’t quite take the whole thing seriously because the images from the park are so foreign. The playoffs are going to feel weird, muted, without all the pomp and circumstance that goes with a fanatical group of people in the stands getting excited. 

Now that this season is just about over, even though it feels like it barely started, and I just never really found the passion to dive into the season and really commit. Part of that is just that with so much going on, sports feels so secondary anyway. I have so much on my mind, so much I’m worried about, caring about, dealing with, that sports? I just can’t get myself there. 

All in all, this season has mostly been an abomination. I was really rooting for it, but they just couldn’t pull it off, but that’s a discussion for another day. At least they mostly kept everyone safe, so far. 

Time For The Mets To Extend Noah Syndergaard

Noah Syndergaard, if you’re still reading about the Mets at this point, is a hot topic of trade rumors these days. These seem to be real rumors too, and not the clickbait ones SNY was peddling in Spring Training. While turning pitchers into prospects if you can get excess value is usually a good bet given the fragile nature of pitchers, particularly hard throwing ones that haven’t had Tommy John surgery, I think the better play is to extend him, not trade him.

The Mets control Syndergaard for two more years after this one. He has a career 3.21 ERA and accumulated 17.1 fWAR so far. Speaking of WAR, it’s at 2.7 this season. That’s 21st in baseball. (Jacob deGrom is 7th and Zack Wheeler is 25th) The ERAs aren’t as sparkling as last year, but at least with Syndergaard, a lot of that can be chalked up to two things. The juiced ball, and defense.

Syndergaard’s HR rate has spiked, as has literally everyone’s with the way the ball is these days. He’s on record saying he’s struggled to get the same grip on it as he has in previous years. It’s something he knows to work on, and sometimes does seem to have better success, and it’s also something that might be corrected if there’s any correction to the ball in 2020. It’d be foolish to plan on that correcting, but Thor’s still providing a lot of value despite it, and a correction can only help pitchers. You’d also hate to pull a Daniel Murphy, and trade him only to have the ball change in his favor afterwards.

The other thing that’s hurt Syndergaard is LOB%, the percentage of baserunners he strands. This is a stat that’s mostly out of the pitcher’s control, though obviously higher strikeout pitchers will tend to strand more runners. Syndergaard is 31st of qualified pitchers with a 23.8 K%, which is above the starting pitcher league average 22.3. Thor has the 10th worst LOB% of qualified pitchers at 68.1%, and Zack Wheeler is 5th worse. League average is 72%. Defense can kill this, allowing a lower percentage of balls in play to become outs.

So Noah Syndergaard is a really good pitcher still, and could be even better. He’s under team control. This is only his age 26 season. That’s the kind of guy you want on your team. I don’t know what Thor would be looking for in a contract extension. He’s previously shown to be very cognizant of how underpaid MLB players are pre-free agency, so perhaps he’s not willing to give away any of that. Still, if you can pay him more for 2020 and 2021 to buy 2022 and possible more, it’d be hard to believe a trade package could be worth more than Syndergaard himself, barring a spring 2020 Tommy John surgery that cancels is 2020 and 2021 season, but that could just as easily happen to the pitcher the Mets would have to acquire to replace him.

The Mets should absolutely listen to offers on any player they have that can garner something big in return, and measure the odds of that making the team better both in 2020 and beyond, but it’s hard to see the Mets getting a return that has a high-probability of out-performing Noah Syndergaard himself. Keep him, extend him and enjoy him. 


Forget Manny Machado, Sign Josh Donaldson

This headline is clickbait, there a ton of reasons to covet Manny Machado over virtually everyone else, but those are obvious, and less interesting to write about. Machado is awesome, he fits the Mets very well, and they should absolutely try to sign him. Alas, all 29 other teams are also aware of this guy, and the Mets could seriously pursue him and still not get him.

So what other infield help is there? Well, there’s Josh Donaldson.

The big risk with Donaldson is that he’ll be 33 and had a bad and injured season. You could read into that as the end of the line for him as a useful player, it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing. You definitely have to give him his physical, look at the underlying numbers, do your due diligence. If you find a red flag, balk, but if you don’t, he could be a huge addition.

Donaldson was a late bloomer, and floundered a bit his rookie year at age 26 in 2012, but after that he’s been among the best in baseball. Last season was hampered by injury, but he was traded to Cleveland and mashed much like he’s mashed in the past. It was a small 60 plate appearance sample, but all the peripheral stats seem to support him being much like himself.

He’s a great hitter, he’s got power, he walks a bunch, he makes a lot of solid contact. He’s not fast, but he’s not a base-clogger. He plays good defense. He’s not exclusively a pull-hitter, shifts don’t seem to hurt him too much. He’s a righty, which plays nicely with the Mets having a lot of lefties providing their power right now.

MLB Trade Rumors is predicting the Cardinals will sign him for $20 million, one year. That seems like a steal. Crowd-sourced predictions at Fangraphs have him signing for 3/58, which could still be a steal if Donaldson puts up even something less than his career line. If he’d simply stayed healthy and had an average year, he’d be getting mentioned with Manny Machado and Bryce Harper.

Steamer projections have him just a tick off his average, at 4.6 fWAR for 2019. Even if he continued to decline from there, getting 10 or so WAR from Donaldson over three years would be worth 60 million, easy.

Donaldson might want to try to have a healthy season and jump back into the fray, but Nolan Arenado will be a free agent next year and Donaldson would be a year older too. Perhaps Donaldson could be the right target while other teams are focused on Machado, and maybe Donaldson takes one option off the board for teams looking for shorter term 3B options, raising possible demand for a Todd Frazier trade.

Oh, and Donaldson’s twitter handle is BringerOfRain, which is cool.

 

We’ll Miss You David

David Wright is returning at the end of this season for, probably, just one game, and maybe not even a full one. The spinal stenosis and related injuries have wrecked his back to the point that it’s a constant companion, and one that has made it so doing the one thing he loves more than anything, playing baseball, is agony.

 

That sucks. On so many levels. David has meant so much to the team, to the fans, to baseball in general. I’ll miss him quite a bit, now that he’s officially not coming back.  He’s been a part of the Mets routine for so long that it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea of him not being out there somewhere, swinging a bat and making great plays at third. He was a Met before I had even had my first real job, long ago.

 

It’s crazy to think about how the game has changed since then. The Mets no longer play at Shea Stadium. There’s Twitter, and Smartphone apps, and hell, smartphones. When Wright debuted, MLB TV was still very new, and Moneyball had just come out the previous year. Fangraphs did not exist. Amed Rosario was eight years old.

 

David Wright was a Hall of Fame caliber player,  and he was ours. I think about him hitting these last few years, with the juiced ball that seems to particularly favor the type of hard-contact, gap-hitting player that David Wright is was, and I lament that we didn’t get to see him putting up what surely would’ve been a few more MVP caliber seasons that would’ve cemented his Hall of Fame case.  We’ve spent David’s career watching him climb over and take every Mets record imaginable, and he’s been stuck so close to taking that Home Run title from Darryl Strawberry for so long that it’s been agony.

 

But mostly, I’m just sad for David Wright. By all accounts a great guy that loves playing this game and now he’ll struggle to even play some token innings at the end of a lost season. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

 

 

 

 

Who Will Save The Mets?

It’s been rough hasn’t it? Luckily, the season is still pretty young. Let’s try to find Mets players to latch to as reasons the Mets will be better going forward.

 

Let’s start with Amed Rosario. Our top prospect guy who didn’t suddenly appear and set the league on fire as happened, so far, for teams like the Yankees and Braves. So far. It’s early, remember. A month of mashing does not mean a decade of success is eminent for anyone.

 

Amed Rosario still isn’t walking enough, but he has walked twice in the last few days. Once as a pinch-hitter, which is hopeful for a guy that seems to get over-aggressive even when he has four or five AB in a game. He’s also hitting the ball hard. The more of the beginning season you cut off, the better his numbers look. It’s been a slow climb, but he’s starting to contribute with more than just defense. His talent will continue to manifest as he learns and adjusts, and hopefully he gets a little more patient as well.

 

Michael Conforto is an easy one. He came back earlier than expected and had a good initial few games and then slumped a bit. While he slumped he was still getting on base via walks, which I always find to be a trait in the really good hitters. Carlos Beltran was this way a lot. He’s starting to drive the ball now and get comfortable, which will be make him a real threat going forward.

 

Brandon Nimmo has been great all year, at times being near the top in baseball in wRC+. He’s almost definitely not _that_ good, but enough time has passed that it seems obvious that he’s a very good baseball player and should be playing more. It feels like the media, and maybe the Mets too, have finally started to take note.

 

Devin Mesoraco is better than Matt Harvey, who’s still not missing bats and walking too many, so that’s an upgrade. He was always a guy with talent that maybe hadn’t realized it, and so far he’s thriving here with the Mets. He won’t continue at this pace, but Kevin Plawecki is back now too, and Plawecki has been pretty good this season and last, and has a good eye at the plate. At the very least this means they don’t have a hole at catcher in the lineup, and it helps keep the offense moving.

 

I’m always hesitant to bank on guys coming back from injuries soon to necessarily do so, but the Mets have a few guys starting rehab games which should mean they’re almost back. Getting Todd Frazier and Yoenis Cespedes back will help the offense a lot, and Anthony Swarzak will hopefully be a nice add to the bullpen.

 

The Mets have two of the best starting pitchers in the game, but they’ve managed to queue up some of the worse bullpen performances of the year behind them. Logic states that this is just a lot of bad luck, and as the season progresses it’ll even out, and Mickey Callaway will start to have more trust, and more arms, to use in better spots. An improving offense building bigger leads will help too. Callaway’s bullpen management should adjust as the innings mount and relievers show him who can and cannot be trusted. This should pay off down the road.

 

Wheeler’s actually been better than it seems, and has been one of the victims of some bad defense. He’s given up a few too many home runs, and walked a few too many guys. Some of that’s fly ball luck, some of it might just be something that we have to live with, but he strikes guys out and is due for some more of those bounces to find gloves instead of glance off them.

 

The Mets rotation problems have mainly been pitchers absolutely bombing, and it’s hard to see that continue for long. Technically, Jason Vargas is a lot better than he’s shown, even if he’s not particularly good. He’s pretty much what you’d call a veteran journeyman though, and if he can tweak whatever the problem is and give the Mets a stretch of decent starts, that’d go a long way. Stephen Matz has been wild, but even last year this wasn’t the case. If he settles down and starts executing better, he should at least be serviceable.

 

The Mets still have a lot of potential, even if it feels like they’re squandering some of their best chances right now with heartbreaking walk-off losses. Things will pick up soon, let’s just hope they pick up soon enough, and long enough, to catch and pass the Nationals again.

I’m Not Dead, Think I’ll Go For A Walk

Losing Jacob deGrom for an unspecified amount of time is bad no matter how you cut it.  Losing one singular player, even perhaps the best player, is not catastrophic in baseball.  It’s way too soon to close the casket on this season, or act like we’re going to close the casket, especially when we don’t even know deGrom’s timetable.  Let’s give it a few days at least? The Mets had two of the best pitchers in baseball, but the good news here is that they still have one. Noah Syndergaard is still awesome.

 

It is still a huge blow though, the Mets depth in pitchers was, and is, pretty large, but none of them have stood out. It’ll need to be more than Thor, maybe some decent Wheeler and Vargas starts, and then hope. Between Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman, Steven Matz, and even Matt Harvey and some of the AAA depth, there’s some potential for quality innings and competitive starts, the Mets just need to find it.

 

The real issue right now is the bats, and getting more offense from some of these guys. Especially with another quality pitcher down, you’d like to score even more runs to account for it, and I suspect the Mets will hit more than they have lately, though the lineup isn’t without it’s own concerns, particularly at catcher.

 

So losing deGrom is a concern, but it’s way too early to panic and there is still a lot of decisions to be made, games to be played, and wins to be had. If you still believe the Nationals are the best team in the division, the Mets still have a nice lead. The Braves and Phillies might be playing well for a month, but there’s no reason to think these teams are this good, even if they were underestimated in the offseason.  It’s time to hold serve, and get back to some winning baseball.  We’ll know more about the holes we need to patch, or repair, in a few weeks.