By Brian Joura November 13, 2020
There are a lot of contenders for “Best Surprise of 2020” for the Mets. There’re the offensive explosions by Michael Conforto and Dominic Smith, the overall exciting play of Andres Gimenez and the return to form by Edwin Diaz. But all of those seem to be vying for second place behind the unexpected performance of David Peterson. Just about no one anticipated a guy who opened the year at the alternate site, after a 2019 season that wasn’t exactly overwhelming at Double-A, to come on and post a 6-2 record with a 3.44 ERA. And outside of one lousy outing against Philadelphia, where he allowed 5 ER in 2 IP, Peterson had a 2.64 ERA. It’s still hard to wrap one’s head around it, even months later.
Let’s start by looking at his 2019 season for Binghamton. He made 24 starts and finished the year with a a 3-6 record and a 4.19 ERA. But Peterson’s peripherals painted a different picture. He had a 3.19 FIP and a 2.91 xFIP. Peterson was done in by a .340 BABIP and a 66.3% strand rate. While he was unfortunate in the “luck” categories, Peterson put up a 9.47 K/9 and a 2.87 BB/9. But those strong numbers were being dwarfed by hits falling in at the exact wrong time.
In the majors last season, Peterson had the exact opposite thing happen to him. His 3.44 ERA flies in the face of his 4.52 FIP and 5.11 xFIP. He succeeded last year due to a .233 BABIP, and a 76.8% strand rate didn’t hurt, either. And if that wasn’t enough good fortune, Peterson was supported nicely by the offense, too. In his starts, Mets’ hitters averaged 5.73 runs per game for him. While it was a different team, the offense in 2018 supplied Jacob deGrom with an average of just 3.49 runs per game.
With the rest of the non-deGrom starters either injured or imploding, Peterson gave the club a much-needed shot in the arm in 2020. But there’s a reason to be concerned about him repeating his performance in 2021. Hopefully the experience he gained will help and he can work on that ugly 4.35 BB/9. With more runners reaching base with hits next year, he’ll need to compensate by allowing fewer walks.
THE CENTER OF ATTENTION – With all of the trouble that Brandon Nimmo had in center field last year, it’s at least a little bit surprising that the club didn’t try Conforto out there. After all, Conforto has experience at the position, playing a handful of games there in each of the previous four seasons, for a total of 1,137.1 innings, or nearly a full year’s worth of games. The problem with Conforto in CF is range, with DRS showing 14 of his 16 runs below average in center due to his lack of range. Surprisingly, that range was also an issue in right field for Conforto last year. DRS shows him with a (-3) while UZR had him at (-4.1) in its range component. Statcast also measures range with its Outs Above Average metric, which give a little more detail than either DRS or UZR. Conforto had a (-5) in this department, compared to Nimmo’s (-4) in this position-adjusted metric. Conforto was average going to his right but struggled going towards the foul line (-3) or going back on balls (-2) – not exactly what you want from a center fielder.
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