Mack Ade – Morning Report – 11-2-13 – TV, Adrian Cardenas, SkaP, Juan Lagares, Steve Keane, Mets Pitching

MLB –

For the entire month of Postseason baseball beginning with the Wild Card games, viewership increased +20% across FOX, TBS and MLB Network (6.3 million average viewers), the largest year-over-year increase since 2009. In addition, 2013 marks the first year since 2001 that viewership increased for every round of the Postseason as well as the All-Star Game. The World Series finished with an average of 14.9 million viewers, up +17% over last year and marking the largest year-over-year viewership increase for the World Series since 2009. As for Game 6 on Wednesday night, 19.2 million viewers tuned in, making it the most-watched MLB game since Game 7 of the 2011 World Series, based on Nielsen data. The game was the highest-rated show across all of television on Wednesday, and FOX once again won the night in primetime against all competition, something it has done on all six nights of the World Series.

Mack – This is a big deal and the main reason why you want your team to make the playoffs. Do you have any idea how much each team makes in moolah if they are hosting a playoff game? Tickers, network revenue, cable, hot dogs, t-shirts, peanuts and cracker jacks. It all adds up to a tremendous amount of money that can turn around the profit and loss statement of a struggling team. Just go ask Baltimore in2012 or Pittsburgh in 2013.

 

Adrian Cardenas -

I came to realize that professional baseball players are masochists: hitters stand sixty feet and six inches from the mound, waiting to get hit by a pitcher’s bullets; fielders get sucker punched in the face by bad hops, and then ask for a hundred more. We all fail far more than we succeed, humiliating ourselves in front of tens of thousands of fans, trying to attain the unattainable: batting a thousand, pitching without ever losing, secretly seeking the immortality of the record books. In spite of the torments—the career-ending injuries, the demotions, the fear of getting “Wally Pipped”—we keep rolling our baseball-shaped boulders up the impossible hill of the game, knowing we’ll never reach the top. Baseball is visceral, tragic, and absurd, with only fleeting moments of happiness; it may be the best representation of life. I was, and still am, in love with baseball. But I quit. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/10/why-i-quit-major-league-baseball.html?currentPage=all

                Mack – This is a very interesting article – READ THIS!

 

SkaP

So now for the statistic:  SkaP, or Skill at (the) Plate, is a number that uses all that batted-ball data to find the expected run and out values of each at-bat.  It would weight the following things:  home runs (although maybe a regressed version could use lgHR/FB%*FB instead), walks, strikeouts, HBP, and each ball put in play by the player.  This makes it so that it is not defense-dependent, and so that Andrelton Simmons catching that sure double does not penalize the hitter.  I haven’t calculated this statistic, though, so I don’t know if this would be best as a rate, counting, or plus-minus statistic (maybe all three?). http://www.fangraphs.com/community/skap-a-new-metric-to-measure-hitting-prowess/

                Mack – Another SABR stat… I’m thrilled to hell…

               

Andy Martino –

Oh, by the way: Don’t look for the Mets to pursue Jacoby Ellsbury.  People familiar with the team’s thinking confirm what you probably suspected: Sandy Alderson and Co. will not be comfortable with the type of contract Ellsbury will command. Plus, they like Juan Lagares in center, and will pursue corner outfielders.

Mack – I don’t always like what Martino says, but, he tends to be accurate when he quotes his Mets sources.

The building of the 2014 Mets will only be finished after all the pieces are in place. Centerfield has been up in the air for a couple of years (decades?), and I appreciate the fact that the Mets seem happy with Lagares there for 2014. I don’t agree with them but there are more pressing problems and I’m willing to move on to the corner outfield positions which both need an upgrade.

His winter OBP is .360, but it’s lower than his batting average (.375). He has zero walks in 24 at-bats. It’s a small sample of a recurring problem.

However… I’ll move on.

 

Steve Keane –

Jeffy Boy took some heat for saying that David Wright, Dillon Gee, Zack Wheeler and John Niese were the only sure things for next season. Why was this wrong? The only omission Lord Jeffery made was excluding Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard as the other untouchables. Everyone else in this organization is fair game to be shipped out of town in order to make this team better. The Mets won 74 games last year, and for the last five years they’ve average a dismal 75-87 win/loss record, seriously are you that worried who gets traded off this team?

                Mack – I guess we really should lay off Mr. W. This is a team that needs an awful lot to become a contender and, frankly, he was just saying what we all knew anyway.  I hope he’s right when it comes to the pitching. The Mets will never become anything important until they have the best rotation they can put up and, right now, that would include all five guys mentioned above.

 

BA –

The Mets believe they have as much pitching depth as anybody. For proof, they can point to the fact that their pitchers at the full-season levels finished with a collective 2.79 K-BB ratio, better than any of the other 29 organizations. They handed out the second-fewest unintentional walks (7.6 percent of batters) and struck out the third-most (21.3 percent).

                Mack – These are some impressive numbers and proves my point about not breaking up the rotation. You fill this team in with a couple of decent bats, get a productive year out of d’Arnaud and/or Davis, and add a couple of 95+mph relievers, and we can get this done.