Reese Kaplan -- You Can't Add Strength By Making Your Club Weaker

When a ballclub goes from identifying a list of needs, then reaches into the bag of weaknesses to address these needs, at best it makes you scratch your head.  At worst, you consider what the return is and it's clearly in your favor, then you accept it as doing what needs to be done.

In the Mets universe, however, neither of these scenarios appears to be head on what happened between New York and Pittsburgh.  Pretty much everyone acknowledges that the team is struggling at the DH position to provide enough offense to help with scoring runs and winning games.  No one is arguing that point.  With Dom Smith and JD Davis being the primary occupants of the Designated Hitter role, their aggregate total of 309 ABs compares more-or-less on point with the 354 accumulated by regular Pete Alonso.  We won't try to assess how much they're producing against the Polar Bear.  Let's instead just add their numbers.

In these 309 ABs the two have combined for 3 HRs and 42 RBIs.  Surprisingly the RBI number is not awful considering doubling it would lead to 84 for the season.  However, it also means accepting that the aggregate total of 68 hits in those 309 ABs would mean a batting average out of that DH slot of just .220.  That's not good.  So it would seem a known slugger with markedly better numbers would make sense, right?

Well, the player they chose to add to this mix is Daniel Vogelbach, a Bartolo Colonesque power hitter who appears to have some nasty left/right splits depending on which type of pitcher he's facing.  Overall he is hitting .229 with 12 HRs and 32 RBIs.  That's not great, but to be fair he did that in just 240 ABs.  If we increased his output by 50% to be right on par with the number of chances Pete Alonso has had, that would keep the same mediocre batting average but the run production numbers would rise to 18 HRs and 48 RBIs.  The home run production is definitely up over the pair of Davis and Smith while the RBIs show a slight uptick.  Overall it doesn't appear that two bad-2022 hitters are much worse off than one bad 2022 hitter.  

Now comes the hard part.  To get the career .213 hitting Vogelbach the Mets gave up one of their more dependable relief pitchers in Colin Holderman.  The 26 year old was a bit late to make his rookie debut in the majors, but he was sporting a 4-0 record, a 2.04 ERA, striking out over 1 per inning pitched and showing a WHIP of just a hair over 1 runner per inning.  After missing two full seasons due to injury and the 2020 minor league shutdown, Holderman was making a steady improvement in his pitching numbers as he worked his way up the ladder.  Given the state of the New York Mets bullpen, it would seem odd to hand select the second best reliever after Edwin Diaz as the price to pay for big Daniel Vogelbach.

So if they didn't get a huge improvement in the DH production and weakened an already vulnerable bullpen by losing out on Holderman, you really do suspect you might start bleeding from the intensity of the head scratching this transaction generated.  Now there are a few ways to play this thinking to rationalize it.  Yes, Vogelbach way back in 2019 had a 30 HR season for the Mariners and made the All Star team.  Since then, however, he's accumulated more that 100 additional ABs over that 2019 season yet manifested fewer HRs.  He does not strike out in gargantuan numbers by today's standards and does seem to know how to take walks.  That's still a lot of potential you're putting on a well traveled and obese DH candidate.

Apparently Vogelbach is complete toast when it comes to facing southpaws who take advantage of the left handed challenge he presents in the batter's box.  So the other thought process struggling to make its way to the surface is that the Mets are thinking of him as a replacement for Dom Smith on the left handed side of the DH hitting equation only, but right handed hitting would go to someone else.  It could be JD Davis or it could be someone else.  

For now, however, it seems as if Billy Eppler's work is far from complete.  While the stories are rife with the Mets being in the Juan Soto trade sweepstakes or landing another bigger name bat like Josh Bell or Nelson Cruz, the fact is that the club seems right now weaker by what they did, not stronger.