HOW CLUTCH IS CESPEDES? by Tom Brennan
I am writing this before the Mets-Nats series begins.
How clutch is Yoenis Cespedes, and where would we be without him?
Answers: 1) VERY clutch. 2) Nowhere, man.
Yoenis Cespedes had been up 91 times with runners in scoring position, hitting .286 on a team that is hitting .218 with RISP, and is last in RBIs with RISP at 330 and 19th in homers with 33, despite being 5th overall in homers with 196.
He has an amazing 50 RBIs (including the 4 on his grand slam in Sunday's finale with the Braves) and a .648 slugging percentage in those at bats.
By comparison, Curtis Granderson is 12 for 91 with RISP, Travis d'Arnaud is 5 for 44 with RISP. That's .125 in those clutch situations for those 2 over 135 at bats. To have 2 key guys doing so awfully in those spots, and still be in the Wild Card race, someone has to be doing something right. Even Asdrubal Cabrera has hit none of his homers with RISP.
Several players have been valued contributors with RISP, such as Neil Walker, Kelly Johnson, and Jose Reyes, but most notably in the RISP contributor column is Yoenis Cespedes. One can only imagine if he had not missed so much time with injury, having missed 27 games to date and 6 others in which he only pinch hit.
So, Sandy, Wilpons, Cespedes is a keeper. Please keep him. Please. Thank you in advance. Speaking of Clutch, I needn't remind you that you didn't, by the way, keep the very clutch Daniel Murphy...The guy hitting .350 With 44 doubles with 3 weeks to go...and how is that one looking right now? Keep Cespedes, the other Mr.Clutch. or be prepared for very rough terrain in 2017 and beyond.
I reiterate my call for Paul Sewald to be added to the Mets after Montero's and Ynoa's poor pitching last night.
ReplyDeleteSewald has had one rough month in his entire minor league career, mid-May to mid-June in Vegas, where in a stretch of 13 IP, he surrendered w8 baserunners andx11 earned runs, otherwise, he had a stellar year for Vegas, including the last 10 weeks where he lowered his spiked ERA from a peak of 4.35 on June16 to 3.29 by season's end. Except for that bad stretch, his WHIP IN Vegas was just above 1.00, and his full season WHIP was 1.20. The WHIP for the rest of the Vegas squad was around 1.60 by comparison.
Including this year in Vegas, for his career, Paul is 16-8, 2.20, 1.03 WHIP, 66 of 72 saves converted, 10.7K per 9 IP in 258 IP. PUZZLED why he is not in Queens.