The Morning Report 1.26.2015 | Piazza's #31 to be Retired, Cespedes Projections for 2016, Mets Avoid Arbitration with Mejia and Duda

Associated Press | Sports Illustrated- Mike Piazza's No. 31 will be retired by the New York Mets this summer. The Mets said Monday the number will be retired July 30 before a game against Colorado, part of the weekend celebrating the catcher, who will be inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame on July 24. Piazza's joins Tom Seaver (No. 41) as the only Mets' players whose numbers are retired. New York also retired the numbers of two managers, Casey Stengel (37) and Gil Hodges (14) and No. 42 is retired throughout the majors to honor Jackie Robinson.

(Chris Soto: It's about darn time...to be fair though....the Mets played this perfectly. Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time until Piazza made it into the Hall of Fame. So waiting till it was official to retire his number makes reasonable sense. The club has not been circulating his number either since he left.)


Mets Daddy | Metsmerized Online- It’s incredible to think that Yoenis Cespedes is back with the Mets. Everyone associated with the team should be thrilled and proud for how it all came together. Cespedes’ presence in the Mets lineup obviously makes them a significantly better team than the alternative Alejandro De Aza and Juan Lagares center field platoon. The question is, how much better? I took a look at three of the more popular projection systems and they all seem to think he’ll hit a little worse than his career averages in 2016:

Steamer: .266/.312/.463 with 26 homers and 72 RBI
ZiPS: .270/.312/.498 with 30 homers and 98 RBI


(Chris Soto: To get the full picture of how much more value Cespedes is going to bring to this Mets offense, one has to also bring in Juan Lagares' projections;

Steamer: .257/.297/.366 with 5 homers and 29 RBI
ZiPS: .261/.297/.369 with 6 homers and 49 RBI

We're talking almost almost 150 basis points of offensive improvement between the ZiPs projections between both players. That a MASSIVE boost to the line-up.)

HOT STOVE REPORT (courtesy of mlbtraderumor.com)

• The Mets avoided arbitration hearings with 1B Lucas Duda and RHP Jenrry Mejia by agreeing to 1 yr contracts with both players. Duda will make $6.725M this season which is 75k below the projection MLBTR had for him. Meanwhile, Jenrry Mejia agrees to take a pay cut down to $2.47M for 2016. This amount is 130k below what MLBTR had him pegged for. The only players left to sign via arbitration are CL Juerys Familia and 2B Neil Walker.
• The Mets are interested in RHRP Tommy Hunter. In 2015, Hunter was decent with the Baltimore Orioles but fell apart down the stretch when he was traded to the Chicago Cubs as he became a big victim of the long ball. He did post a strong 3.3 K to BB ratio that could provide decent value as a low to medium leverage guy.
• The Minnesota Twins are interested in recently DFA'd Carlos Torres. If the club decides to use a waiver claim on him, they would assume the full value of $1.05M contract that the Mets are on the hook for. They could also wait for the Mets to release him and then sign him via Free Agency which would leave the Mets on the hook for $175,000.