Tom Brennan - DEFENSE, DEFENSE, DEFENSE!
Defense is often the forgotten ingredient in what makes a team successful.
Or unsuccessful.
The Mets D in 2018? Kind of middle of the road, but not terrible. Let's briefly look at some team stats:
Fielding % - Houston's Astros had a remarkable .989 ratio, with just 63 errors. Surprisingly, St Louis was the worst at .978, with 133 errors.
The Mets? Tied for 13th at a low 88 errors (.985).
Unearned runs? Houston excelled at just 33, but the Mets were close at just 46. Detroit was worst at 70 unearned runs.
Passed balls - surprisingly, two of the best teams (Boston and NYY) led with 25, while the lowly Reds allowed just 6.
The Mets impressed with just 9.
Wild pitches? Pittsburgh led with 95 passed balls.
Lowest team, with just 26? The Mets!!!
Between passed balls and wild pitches, the Mets catchers? Pretty darned good. Of course the pitchers get much credit too. Lousy pitch placement adds to wild pitches and passed balls.
Stolen bases allowed, though? The range was again wide, 136 for the worst team, 46 for the best (Grandal's LA Dodgers).
The Mets allowed 134, a very close second, while gunning down just 36 (LAD nailed 33, so their caught stealing rate was 42% - the Mets' rate? A paltry 21%. That's gotta hurt. How much due to catcher throwing weakness, how much due to pitcher carelessness or inability? You tell me.
DER - MLB.com has this stat, which it defines as follows:
Defensive Efficiency Ratio is the rating of team defensive outs recorded in defensive opportunities. To determine Defensive Efficiency Ratio for a team, divide the total number of hits in play allowed (subtracting home runs and times reached on error) by the total number of defensive opportunities (all balls hit into play, not including home runs), and subtract from one: 1-(((H+ROE)-HR)/(PA-(SO+HBP+HR)))
The best DER was .717 (Oakland). The worst was .675 (Baltimore).
The Mets were 17th (.691).
Message to Brodie:
While building a winning team, defense matters, too.
The Mets were middle of the road in 2018.
One goal should be to improve there in 2019.
Not just improve the offense and pen.
11 comments:
I love defense. My wife tells me I am always getting defensive LOL.
I am a big fan of good defense (fundamentals) and good pitching, Tom.
The fewer chances you give your opponent, the better. Plus, this team (pitching centric) and our ballpark (large) are more conducive to run suppression, which also benefits from strong defense.
Provided we get an upgrade behind the plate, the defense should be solid if not slightly above average.......The Pounder could be a bit of an issue, but if you believe him and your eyes of late, I think he will get to the point where he is neutral with the glove, which is OK.
Mike, Pounding Pete made just 3 errors over his last 80+ games - sounds solid right now, to me.
Defense matters but scoring runs wins games
Offense is just as important as defense.
It is when a team tries to be cheap and settle for a defensive but offensively poor or offensive but defensively poor player that issues occur.
If available, pay the extra for a balanced player.
Frankie Taveras, 4000 AB's and two dingers. He was a hitter though.
Bob, the favorite phrase in Mets front office is "No offense taken."
The Mets historical-wise are a sub par offensive contingent, in a pitcher's park
Generally a run saved = a run scored. But if your team scores lots of runs, D is less important. If you score 10 in a game, who cares if you give up 5 on Es?
If you hold your opponent to 2 Runs, who cares if you only score 3?
Putting pressure on a pitcher is never a good idea.
Pressure = tightening up or trying to throw too hard or too precise = stress = injury
Jake had non stopstress last year. Hopefully his 10-9 in 2018 is 20-6 in 2019.
Thoughts on Remaining Potential Good Moves
Juan Lagares.
Juan is thirty years old this March. Has averaged less than 100 games per season on his tenure here. Average stats, few homers. And obviously gets hurt a lot, although probably not as much as Travis d'Arnaud does.
I think that the new GM Van Halen has done a really, really excellent job thus far. Kudos there. Solidified catcher, bullpen, left Noah here (and thank God for that), got the infield a veteran leader in Cano, and added one of the top closers in baseball today (Diaz). Not bad Mr. Van Halen!
All that remains is getting the outfield depth and "maybe" one more starter for the four spot in the rotation. One word here is "trade", but smart trades.
I keep going back to the Padres. I love what they are currently doing there with their young fielding/positional players and batters. It is building from within mostly, drafting wisely, and developing them for the show. But they still have a slight problem, their rotation. It has a number of solid young kids but what it does not have are the one or two quality starter veterans to lead the way.
They have two guys there that are not slated as starters currently. One is the guy I keep talking about, catcher Austin Allen and the other is a quiet outfielder with a gorgeous right handed homerun swing to die for, Hunter Renfroe (26 homers last season, 26 the season prior with the Pods). Both Allen and Renfroe are somewhat buried with all the really good kid players coming up.
Worth a look and inquiry perhaps. Again the Padres need veteran starting pitching. And the Mets have Lugo and Vargas. And the Padres do have some pretty good AAA pitching there. Mets need to start considering getting younger because Syndergaard is their youngest starter from 2018 at 26 years of age.
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