Paul Articulates – Observations on the Mets

My posts are usually centered around an observation – something the Mets do or something their opponents do that point towards an exploitable weakness or a competitive strength.

This week my observation is that the baseball world is upside down.  Three National League teams that won more than 100 games are out of the playoffs while two teams that won less than 100 games and really didn’t have impressive Septembers are fighting it out to see who makes the World Series.  

The Padres went 13-12 in September and the Phillies were 11-14.  The two AL favorites are once again in the ALCS, but via very different routes.  The Yankees barely held on to beat a Cleveland team who were hot in September while Houston just cruised.

So many people in the press and in social media have lamented the failures of the Dodgers, Braves, and Mets to make a long playoff run.  They have accused the teams of choking and accused the managers of malfeasance.  

It is so hard to square up a baseball moving at more than 90 mph and moving more than 6 inches vertically and/or horizontally.  It is so easy to say that a player choked if said player doesn’t square one up with runners on and the game on the line.

Mike Steffanos authored an excellent post on October 18th about the chaos in the playoffs, and it accurately pointed out that all the pundits will use any results they can to justify a theory on how a team was improperly constructed or a game was poorly planned.  It isn’t that easy.  Baseball isn’t that easy.  

There are so many variables involved from the environment (weather, field conditions, crowd involvement) to the performance (umpire judgement, pitcher effectiveness, batter effectiveness) to the equipment (broken bats, scuffed balls, uncalibrated humidors) that some combination of the above can cause an unexpected result.  

Sometimes it causes a player that batted .068 for September (Grisham) homering against the two best pitchers in baseball (Scherzer, deGrom) in the playoffs.  Sometimes the expected happens, like it did 111 times for the Dodgers before the chaos ensued.

My point here is that although people want to find someone or something to blame for their team not winning the championship, there is not always a single root cause.  If you run someone out of town on a rail, you may regret it next year when you realize their value.  I can think of a few times that people called for Jeff McNeil to be offered up as trade bait at the end of the 2021 season – I’m pretty glad we kept him.

So as we move on into the off-season and begin to speculate about all the shiny new possible acquisitions out there that will guarantee us a championship, remember one thing – there are no guarantees.  I have more confidence this off-season that the Mets leadership have level heads and will not to anything crazy with the personnel, but just in case I will offer some of my thoughts on  where the value is.

1) Buck Showalter was a consistent, capable leader who did everything he could to position this team to win, including giving sufficient rest to pitchers and players to avoid injuries.  Keep him for as long as he wants to manage.

2) The core of Nimmo, Marte, Lindor, Alonso, and McNeil was as solid as you can get and all are talented enough to continue producing at a very high level.  Keep that core intact for as long as you can.

3) The supplemental players to that core: Canha, Escobar, Guillorme, Vogelbach, and Nido were very complementary pieces to the puzzle.  They meshed will with the culture and contributed often.  Each had some ups and downs, but the value was how they fit on the field and in the clubhouse.  If they cannot be retained, it is very important that they are replaced with similar characteristics; above all the “team first” mentality.

4) There were also supplemental players that didn’t get it done last year – but only their statistics were different from the above group.  McCann, Ruf, Naquin, and Smith (and you can include JD Davis) are capable of playing at a better level.  So before you dismiss them as total failures and cast them off on the waiver wire, remember that they got here because they have tremendous talent – so get fair value if they are traded.

5) The motto in the stock market is “buy low, sell high”.  Aaron Judge just had his career year.  This is not the time to outbid everyone to sign a player for the kind of money that 60 HRs commands.  He wouldn’t hit 60 next year in Yankee Stadium let alone Tom Brennan’s least favorite park in Flushing.  Find a DH that hits doubles and strikes out less often than Luke Voit (.315 K/AB).

6) Pitching staffs are more volatile every year with the salaries, the injuries, and the diversity of techniques being taught by pitching coaches.  It will be impossible to retain the current staff of starters and relievers, and even if we did, their results would likely be very different.  When assembling the 2023 pitching staff, the most important qualities are durability and mental toughness.  The other stats will follow.  We will need that in the important games next year no matter who is throwing.

I hope the fan base appreciates what this team accomplished as much as I do.  There are always folks who are going to blow off steam by whining on social media about things that went wrong.  But above all, the support of the fans is what makes these athletes appreciate what they do.  

It was disappointing to see the attendance below capacity at Citi Field during game 3 of the playoffs.  Mets home playoff games have been rare, so when they happen, the crowd has to be a competitive advantage.