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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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There Is No Replacement For Jose Reyes

There is an interesting juxtaposition among Mets fans that talk about things like trading Wright or letting Reyes walk.  The same people that justify this with statements about not competing for years and being in rebuilding mode seem offended that some (I’d say many) Mets fans suggest they’ll be much less interested in the Mets if Reyes leaves.

 

There’s always a lot of comparison, as well as attempts to avoid comparison, to the Yankees with the Mets.  They share a city and compete for the same entertainment dollar.   The common rhetoric among Mets fans is that the Yankees fans are front-running morons that only care about yelling about how many rings they’ve won and that Mets fans are truer fans that love the team, good or bad.   If a vastly diverse group of millions of Mets fans can agree on anything, it’s that Jose Reyes is a talented baseball player that’s fun to watch.   At what point does it stop being about watching your favorite players play your favorite game and start becoming about being a consistent winner?

 

What is baseball without the season, with the ups and downs of a 162 game scheduled filled with bad breaks and huge hits and the ebbs and flows of stress and emotion?  I don’t follow the Mets for optimal lineup constructions and high-value controlled commodities.  I watch the Mets because I love baseball and I’ve formed an attachment to the players that have worn the uniform year after year.  Jose Reyes is one of those players.  He’s a life-long Met and it’s hard to imagine him anywhere else.  The Mets have other good players, but there is something special about Jose Reyes and his fun-loving attitude.  Perhaps it’s the way he seems to love playing the game as much as we love watching him play it.

 

Sure it’s possible to make arguments about injury risks and long contracts that suggest perhaps giving Reyes too much money or too many years may be detrimental to the long term success of the franchise, but frankly I’d rather take my chances with Reyes.  Those risks exist with every player in every circumstance, and if you’re not going to take a chance with a fan-favorite and top of the line player at a sparse position, what are you even doing?   Reyes is already bordering on legendary Mets status, and that’s not something that comes along every day.   Mike Piazza came here when he was great, Dwight Gooden left in 1994 and Darryl Strawberry before him.  Ignoring that there is long-term financial value to having legends to invite back to Citi Field in the future, do we really want to let one walk away for what’s some kind of  ‘smart process of value contracts and prospect development’?  A couple more years and the Mets record book will be Jose Reyes’ biography, with a guest appearance by David Wright.

 

The Mets have struggled for years now with collapses followed by injuries followed by just about everything else.  Now you want to take the most exciting player on the team away too?   While I’ll always be a Mets fan, there comes a point when it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It’s easy to say that we need things to stabilize, for bad contracts to work their way off the payroll and for prospects to mature and contribute at the fraction of the cost, but in the meantime other teams are playing baseball and competing for the postseason and doing all sorts of wonderful things.  Taking seasons off is not the way to build a perennial contender.  Every year the Mets spend in rebuilding mode, defined by me as letting Reyes go and not replacing him with at least as much talent, is a year that customers find other ways to spend their entertainment dollar.  Some will go to the Yankees, some will switch to other sports.   Some will stop watching with their kids who will spend more time on video games, movies, or something else entirely.   Husbands will take their wives out to a nice dinner instead of to Citi Field, because maybe without Reyes, and winning, they don’t feel it’s worth the traffic and the rushing home from work.

 

Building a winner will eventually repair the damage, but even if you could guarantee repeated success it takes time to rebuild a fan base.  The Yankees had a healthy amount of fans show up, but even in 2000 they were 8th in total attendance.  The difference was that payrolls hadn’t yet skyrocketed to the levels they are at now.  The Yankees payroll in 2000 would be  the 13th highest payroll in 2011.  It was still possible for teams to maintain a rebuilding payroll and keep some talented stars while keeping revenues at or above payroll.  The way I see it, the Mets can’t easily get their payroll down that low, so they need to work on keeping revenues up.  Reyes can’t do it all by himself, but coupled with the right moves he could be the difference between the Mets raising attendance to 2.6 million or it dropping to 1.7.   Just in ticket prices alone, a swing like that more than pays Reyes salary per year.  Factor in revenue associated with advertising prices based on TV ratings and fans in the seats viewing them on the walls and it’s an even starker difference.   I find it hard to believe that having Jose Reyes playing baseball in New York can’t be profitable, and it’s certainly possible, even likely, that Jose Reyes can be a part of the success even four years from now.

 

There is never a guarantee that smart moves focused on the long term will lead to continued success.  There is no formula Sandy Alderson can follow that means the Mets will definitely be a perennial contender in 2014 and beyond.  Prospects, even highly touted ones, hurt themselves or flame out.  Free agent acquisitions that look like can’t misses age badly or under perform in a new environment.   Other teams in the division and/or league do a better job, or get luckier, in scouting and signing players and suddenly no one knows what the solution is for out-performing them.  It’s not hard to get into a cycle of suck like the Pittsburgh Pirates, constantly looking for All-Star prospects that maybe have a good year or two and than take off for greener pastures while the team struggles to even play at .500.  The best you can do is put yourself in a situation every year where the right set of circumstances gets you into the playoffs.  For the Mets that means keeping Jose Reyes.  It probably also means hoping Johan Santana stays on the field and is still pretty good at pitching, and that other players stay healthy as well.   It may be a long shot, but if you don’t keep yourself in the game you often miss opportunities.

 

I was at the game this year when Jose Reyes felt that first hamstring tightness and left the game.  It was a packed house for a Subway Series game, and Tejada jogging out to shortstop was like a punch in the gut.  I watched the rest of the game in a daze, barely caring about the result.   Reyes had such a great first half that there were road games in May that I was reminding myself to make sure I turned the game on in time, because Reyes would lead off and I might miss something special.  There are reasons to watch bad teams because even bad or average players hit for cycles, throw pitching gems, and smash home runs.  They can stage remarkable comebacks and rock opposing aces and there’s always the looming possibility that someone will throw that no-hitter.  Without Jose Reyes the chances of something magical happening go down.

 

Faith and Fear in Flushing, in an awards presentation to Jose Reyes, makes similar points and sums up my feelings pretty well in this quote.

except for habit and a lifetime of devotion, I can’t think of a good, rational reason to get squarely behind this team if you’re not on it.

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Hunting For Old Mets VHS Tapes

A lot of the official broadcast tapes for old Mets games and post/pre game shows like Kiner’s Korner have been lost in time.  However, Mets fans are always recording things.  I bet there are hundreds of tapes of old Mets stuff on TV, including Kiner’s Korner episodes no one’s seen in decades, sitting in boxes in fans’ basements.  

 Why not put out a public service announcement during Mets games asking fans to check out what they have?  Set up a phone line and have some interns catalogue what people have.  Then offer free Mets tickets to anyone that sends in something new.  Before these VHS tapes, and VCRs, are lost forever we should recover what we can.  This doesn’t have to be limited to Kiner’s Korners or broadcasts.  If you open the door I bet you’d find some interesting stuff.  Mets appearances at Little League dinners, old appearances on news programs, and even some fun commercials. 

Mets fans love their history, and we’d surely watch some of these things on SNY.  The station isn’t exactly overloaded with things to air that keep Mets fans tuning in beyond the games.  I’m sure we’d get a kick out of some of that old stuff, even the old advertisments and sponsors.  The Crane Pool Forum even devotes their Player of the Game awards to an old sponsor: Schaefer.   It can’t hurt to ask can it?

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The Sporting News Outlook for the 1993 New York Mets

Below is scans from The Sporting News 1993 Baseball Yearbook previewing the 1993 season.  It’s not real positive.  There are even a lot of parallels you can draw to this year.  The Mets are hoping Dwight Gooden and Bret Saberhagen can fully recover from surgery and return to Cy Young form.  The Mets needed to cut payroll after having the highest one in MLB history in 1992 yet finishing 5th.  GM Al Harazin is hoping most of the 1992 failure was due to injury.

Other interesting tidbits:

It’s due or die time for Todd Hundley.  (Perhaps the same for 2012 Josh Thole?) The 1992 Mets trust Hundley’s defense, but are unsure if he’ll ever be a good hitter after hitting just .209 in his rookie year.

Harazin is still happy with the David Cone for Jeff Kent and Ryan Thompson trade.

The Mets depth in the minors includes Jeromy Burnitz, Brook Fordyce, and Bobby Jones.

The Mets bullpen, besides John Franco, will also feature Mike Draper, a Rule V pick they took from the Yankees.  Imagine how that’d go over these days?

The Mets open the season at Shea Stadium to play the newly minted Colorado Rockies.

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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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On Writing Off 2012 in October of 2011

You can find remarks about the Mets 2012 season being over all over the place.  It’s on Twitter, in the mainstream media, in blogs and blog comments.  Its popularity doesn’t make the statement any less ridiculous.  To suggest that anyone knows exactly how much money the Mets will spend, who they will spend it on, and the likely makeup of the 2012 roster is crazy.  To suggest that anyone how that roster, and the other 29 rosters, will perform is crazier.

The randomness of injuries is one such pitfall to this.   If you can suggest with confidence that the Mets will get hurt, and the opposition won’t, for all of next year you’re kidding yourself.   Every year some injury prone guys stay healthy and have big years, and some perpetually healthy guys get hurt and miss time.   On every team.   Ryan Howard is already out for at least 5-6 months.  David Wright missed months.  Ike Davis missed almost the entire season.  The Mets were a revolving door of injuries and if you’re sure that David Wright is going to get hurt again you’re either delusional or you have a voodoo doll.  Every team deals with injuries, but the Mets managed to have more than most and have them happen to their key guys.  What if it had been Scott Hairston, Jason Pridie and Tim Byrdak that had the most serious injuries last season?

Jose Reyes has stated he’d like to stay with the Mets, and Sandy Alderson has declared it Reyes month.  If you’re sure Reyes isn’t going to be a Met next season, you’re not listening.  It all flows from there.   Sandy Alderson could remake the bullpen and acquire a quality starting pitcher that provides the team with much needed quality innings and allows the offense to build leads.  Jon Niese could develop into an ace.   Lucas Duda could hold down right field and prove to be a force at the plate.  There are a lot of ifs around the league, and despite finances or contracts, the Mets have as much a shot of making themselves better as anyone else.

You’ll often hear “The Mets are so many players away from contending.”  This seems to be a shot in the dark, at best.  No one knows how many players the Mets need, and at what positions.   Health plays in.  The Mets needed to completely collapse in 2007 to miss the playoffs.  It’d have been easy to say that adding Johan Santana, the best pitcher in baseball, was that ‘one player away’ the Mets needed.   Baseball is a team game, and often little moves have a cascading effect.  Adding one solid starting pitching could take 20-30 innings off the bullpens workload.   Most of the time those innings will be the lesser relievers, the guys that generally pitch in the 5th and 6th of games that aren’t critical.   You’re able to shift those innings away from the lower quality relievers, to the higher quality relievers.  Those innings also save total innings pitched for the relievers as a whole, providing them with a little more rest and making them more effective.   Then you can couple that with signing a couple of relievers, no one that’s big-impact, but talented pitchers that help raise the amount of quality innings you’re getting out of the bullpen.

The Mets have a lot of talent.  David Wright, Ike Davis, Daniel Murphy, Jon Niese, Johan Santana and hopefully Jose Reyes.  Hopefully some of the other guys like Lucas Duda, Mike Pelfrey, Angel Pagan, and Jason Bay have pretty talented years as well.   You don’t round out a team with All-Stars, you do it with quality players that provide consistent value.   You sign relievers you trust to get guys out most days.  You sign a veteran backup catcher to help mentor Thole and perhaps platoon with him.  Decent bench guys that can provide value in a key pinch-hitting spot and provide defense when they come into the game late.  The Mets, even with a less ridiculous payroll than the Yankees, will add a bunch of new players next year.  Some of these players will surprise, some will disappoint. If more surprise than disappoint, something we’re hopeful of because of Sandy Alderson, than the Mets will compete.

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A Week Later: Hopeful for the 2012 Mets

No Met has made an error, hit a home run, or struck out looking in over a week.  With a week of the offseason under my belt to let the highs and lows of emotion mellow out with time, it’s time to take a closer look at what transpired in 2011 and what hope there is for 2012.

 

The team played harder than was expected.   They didn’t give in, whether because of a tough loss, a rough week, or a poor start to a game.  They’d battle back late in games, and bounce back from a tough loss with a solid win.  There were plenty of times late in the season where they did seem to be going through the motions a little bit, but they seemed to bounce back from that as well.  Hopefully 2012 avoids any long periods of being out of it and prevents the team from getting complacent.

 

The bullpen, while successful for some stretches of times, was mostly a failure.  Part of this was the trade of Francisco Rodriguez, part of it was the depression of Taylor Buchholz.   Part had to do with the starters rarely giving length, as was the main problem in April.   The Mets are aware of this problem, and with some good scouting and analysis, there are relievers out there that you can get for reasonable prices.   I would expect at least 2-3 new faces in the pen to compliment the ones that stay.  The Mets lost a lot of games late last year, and strengthening the pen will go a long way in 2012.

 

The starting rotation is what’s going to be the big deal in 2012.  This is what’s going to make or break the team as a contender.   Niese and Dickey are locks.  Mike Pelfrey is also pretty much a lock, although he does become a trade candidate as well.  I wouldn’t be against keeping Capuano, but I suspect he’s priced himself out of what the Mets want to pay him.  Johan Santana is supposed to be ready to go as normal during Spring Training, but I’d put the certainty of that at somewhere around 75%, and that may be optimistic.  Right now he’s penciled in, and it won’t be until February before we know if he’ll be able to progress normally towards an Opening Day start.   Therefore the Mets need a backup plan.  Adding Santana would certainly help, but it’s likely the Mets need to upgrade further.   Finding another quality starter and reassigning Dillon Gee to be depth for Santana could be the way to go.  However, Dillon Gee may have earned a major league job.   If the Mets can get to the regular season with a healthy Santana, and everyone else, having to send Gee to the minors to start the season would be a nice problem to have.  From there they could reexplore trading Mike Pelfrey.  Other teams will deal with injuries, and many teams could make good use of a guy that will throw 200 innings of slightly above league average value pretty consistently.

 

Then there is the offense.   The offense was very good last year, despite few home runs and a lot of injuries.  2012’s hinges on Reyes staying, but if he does the Mets offense again looks to be very potent.  The biggest concern would be if Pagan can shake off the bad defensive year, and if Duda can take a step forward out in RF.   Thole needs to improve as well, and there’s something to be said for having a veteran right-handed catcher to work with him.  The Mets are discussing moving the walls in a bit in right and left, which will probably help the home run numbers, although they may shrink the gaps a little bit.   It looks like the Mets should still have a top-flight offense next year, capable of dealing damage to opposing pitchers.

 

The Mets could be competitive next year.  A lot hinges on Reyes re-signing and Johan turning up healthy.  The Mets do need to revamp the bullpen, sign another starter, and address the bench, but those are all reasonable expectations.  It’ll be an interesting offseason, and hopefully it will be a launching pad for a good season to come.

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More Info on 2012 Mets Tickets

The usual cast of bloggers just finished up a conference call with Mets VP Dave Howard about the new ticketing schemes.  Not a ton of new info came to light, but some things were clarified and hinted at.

 

I asked about the dynamic pricing floor.    Specifically that the dynamic pricing will never dip below what a season ticket holder paid for the same seat in that section.   What was left unclear was if that meant you’ll never get a ticket less than $12 in sections 535/536 where season ticket holders sit, or if you’ll never get a seat less than $12 in the Promenade Outfield section which encompasses a large subset of the cheaper seats.

 

This is not a move towards being a small market team or anything.  The pricing was created off of a lot of data, meant to optimize revenue.   Adjusting prices should help them sell more tickets, and if the team remains competitive all year, the dynamic pricing will increase revenue.

 

Renewal date is coming earlier, although there will be a payment plan option.  Basically it seems the Mets want your commitment as early as possible, but are more flexible with the actual cash.  It was hinted at that you could see your 2013 invoices by this time next year.

 

Mostly there wasn’t a lot of specifics revealed in the conference call.  Dave Howard mentioned keeping the ticket fees within a reasonable percentage of the ticket price, and mentioned that Tickets.com offered best technological package and had a good relationship with MLB.  Went into the thinking of dynamic pricing without breaking down when prices would go up/down and what types of prices you could expect to see.    There will be more to come as season plans and individual ticket info is released.  I’d say the number one thing I took out of this is:   Buying tickets day of game is getting to be a worse and worse idea around sports.

 

For now, read other recaps around Metsopotamia.

Metsblog

Metspolice has a bunch today, keep checking back for analysis.

Amazin’ Avenue has a full transcript.

 

 

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Tendering A Contract to Mike Pelfrey

I’d be shocked of Angel Pagan and Mike Pelfrey are not given contracts this season.  They’re both due raises via arbitration, and the raises they get could possibly push the money they make beyond the value they’re likely to provide.  Of course, it’s very hard to form a direct relationship between money and performance.  Ultimately it’s about getting the most value, not the best price for that value.

 

Mike Pelfrey and Scott Boras agreed to a 3.925 million dollar contract last year.  It’d be pretty hard for them to argue for much more than that in arbitration off this year.  I could see them settling for a similar value, which is not the six million dollar figure some are talking about.   Four million is a pretty reasonable amount, and it’s also a very tradeable contract if the Mets were able to find something better or they had a prospect knocking on the door in May.

 

Mike Pelfrey has not had a very good season, but he’s also not had a horrible one and has pitched on his turn every time and accumulated 200 innings.  Most teams don’t have five guys that do that, which is where Pelfrey’s value comes in. All in all Pelfrey’s peripheral stats look very similar to his stats from last year, and his stats from the year before that.  A new pitching coach may help some, specifically with working on his sinker again,  but it’s probably a safe bet to expect Pelfrey’s numbers in 2012 to be somewhere between 2010 and 2011.  I believe that has value, not as an ace but as a contributing member of a rotation.

 

I trust Mike Pelfrey to work hard this offseason and in Spring Training to do what he can do to get better.  He may not be worth the full value of what he’ll get paid, but he’ll provide the team with innings and consistency.  A lot of teams would snap him up if the Mets released him, and that’s yet another reason he’ll be offered a contract.  Someone will be willing to give the Mets a player in return for Pelfrey, were the Mets to look to trade him this offseason, in Spring Training, or early in the season.  Pitchers are always getting hurt, and reliable starters are always a commodity.   Having more than you need, even if one’s a little more expensive, is being able to deal from a position of strength.