By Jennifer Corozza October 20, 2020.
The Mets need starting pitching. Once upon a time, this was a franchise known for starting pitching beginning with the Franchise himself: Tom Seaver. In the recent and more relevant past, there was a dream of five aces, a 2015 World Series run, and a 2016 Wild Card appearance. Even when the Mets fell off a cliff between 2017 and 2019, they still had their starting pitching. That’s not true anymore. Jacob deGrom is brilliant, but he stands alone. Zack Wheeler was foolishly left in the wind when he reached free agency (FA) in 2019, Steven Matz is now a home run machine, Noah Syndergaard will just be coming back from Tommy John surgery in 2021, and Matt Harvey, sadly, is gone and, even more painful for him, no longer good at pitching.
Now, it’s October 2020 and the Mets have a new owner-to-be in billionaire Steve Cohen. While the New York Post indicates his plan to invest heavily in analytics1, there is room to buy starting pitching in FA. That brings us to Trevor Bauer and Marcus Stroman. There appears to be a ramp up in Mets fans wanting the team to go after Bauer; however, the better choice is Stroman.
Both pitchers are 29 with similar career statistics if you review their Baseball-Reference page (ERA 3.90 for Bauer, 3.76 for Stroman). Bauer is the favorite for the 2020 NL Cy Young Award (ERA 1.73). However, one can argue that working out of the NL Central in this regional-centric season helped him quite a bit considering he had to face such juggernauts as the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Detroit Tigers, and the Milwaukee Brewers. Moreover, there are allegations regarding his spin rate increase this year being a tad suspect.
Stroman didn’t pitch this year due to an injury and, then, he opted out in this pandemic-shortened season related to COVID-19 concerns. While he only started 11 games and was merely mediocre for the Mets in 2019, there’s no reason to believe he can’t come back to the team ready to go in 2021 as a two or three starter. While he could use better defense behind being a more ground ball pitcher, he’s also as athletic as they come as a pitcher. He’s fun to watch. Both Bauer and Stroman are expressive on the mound, which is a nice contrast with the more stoic deGrom.
Bauer’s MLB experience is mostly in the Midwest with the Cleveland Indians and the Cincinnati Reds. Stroman played for the Toronto Blue Jays, but he’s from Long Island and has experienced the harsh New York media for the last year plus. Thus, one might wonder if Bauer could handle New York. While both pitchers have a strong social media presence. Stroman brings fun, a social conscience, and argues a bit with fans, but nothing outlandish. Bauer is different.
Bauer goes after MLB quite a bit on Twitter and he’s been elevated by baseball media for being outspoken.
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An aside: A couple of years ago, Mets360 banned any criticism of the Wilpons on their site.
ReplyDeleteI've refused to read anything from them since -- just as I don't read their material now that it's posted here.
You can't talk about baseball without recognizing financial realities, ownership, etc. It's part of the equation in every single aspect of the game.
Just me.
Oh, I forget to sign that comment above.
ReplyDeleteJimmy
That's a gross mischaracterization of what happened.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened - what caused me to shut down the site for a month - was that every single article, no matter what the topic was, people were bitching about payroll. And it was a bitching largely based on perception, rather than reality. Payroll actually was flat from the previous year and went up the following two years.
What happened at my site was that there was a demand from me that any complaining about payroll be limited to articles that actually talked about payroll.
I was sick of writing an article about, say, Jacob deGrom and having the comments on that article bemoan that he was going to leave when he became eligible for free agency because the Wilpons were too cheap to sign him. Guess what? The Wilpons re-signed him.
The non-stop bitching was no different from having someone on your feed post 25 political posts in two hours. After the first 10, do you really need to keep it up? Especially day after day after day. It was taking all of the fun out of the site for me.
When the site re-started there was an updated Comment Policy. Here's the relevant point:
3. Everyone starts from the same point on the team’s owners.
A. They acquired the team through less than glorious ways.
B. They hold a crippling amount of debt on both the team and the stadium.
C. Even given number two, the payroll is less than it should be.
Since we all agree on these points, there’s no need to say them over and over and over and over and over again. There’s no need for anyone to play the role of Captain Obvious. There will be articles devoted to payroll or the general lousiness of the owners. These articles will contain a double-asterisk (**) in the headline. That means you are free to bitch and moan about the payroll/owners in the comments on these stories. Any stories without the double asterisk where your comment complains about the owners/payroll– your comments run the risk of being edited or deleted.
And this was largely successful as readers did a wonderful job of self-policing. I don't recall deleting any comments. Perhaps I did - but if I did, it wasn't more than a few. And you can look back at that time period - or now, even - and see comments where people talked about finances or the Wilpons being lousy.
The idea that criticism of the Wilpons was banned is simply not true. What is true is that people were told to keep comments based on what the article was actually about. And there were Open Threads available where people could talk about whatever they wanted, as long as it was Mets-related. From articles about the Wilpons, double-asterisk articles about payroll and Open Threads, there was ample opportunity to express your thoughts on the Wilpons and payrolls.
To say there was a ban on criticism of the Wilpons is erroneous and unfair.
Hey lets be happy today. We just got one small step for Stevie and one Giant step for Met fans and I'm really getting excited.
ReplyDeleteI saw it, and still see it, as censorship and that's why I don't participate there.
ReplyDeleteJimmy
I respect your right to participate in whichever forum you feel most comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI will defend my site against spurious accusations.