Tom Brennan: A Met's Mind-Blowing MLB Record; & Justin Turner

"OUCH! HE NAILED ANOTHER ONE!"

Sometimes, MLB all-time record stats are simply mind-blowing.

I googled which pitcher in MLB history hit the most batters in a single season.

The answer?

"Austin Adams (now with the NY Mets) set a MLB record for the Live Ball Era (since 1920) for most hit batsmen in one season when he hit 24 batters with a pitch while playing for the Padres during the 2021 season."

What, though, makes this truly mind-blowing?

He didn't do it throwing 300 innings, or 200 innings, or even 100 innings.  

He only threw 52 innings that season.

24 HBP in 52 innings??

Mind-blowing. Googled him and he was hitting righties with balls running in on them, and sliders to leftie that broke severely into their legs and feet.

Remarkably, in his career, he has also walked 75 in 114 innings, so walks and HBP? 106 in 114 innings.

His WHIP must be in orbit, right?

Wrong.  His career WHIP is 1.286!  Not quite sure how that math works, but MLB and Baseball Reference both showed that as his WHIP.  

Why?  He's only allowed 72 hits (and 7 HRs) in 114 innings.

And Ks?  170 in 114 innings, or 13.4 Ks per 9 innings.  

Career 6-5, 4.17.

THIS guy REALLY ought to be interesting.  Assuming he is 100% healthy.

Surgery in 2022, and a 2023 ankle fracture on a come back shot, with just 32 innings (majors and minors) the past 2 seasons.

In the minors and majors in 2023, in 30 innings, he hit a tamer but still high 6 batters, and walked 14.  Lots of free passes.  Oddly, only 11 MLB steals while he has pitched; he has picked off 6 runners, so maybe that is the reason.  And just 1 MLB error.

He will play 2024 as a 33 year old.  If he works out, I read that he will still be arb-eligible for 2025.

Read this in a Sports Illustrated post in November 2023 about Adams:

"Adams was signed by the D-backs as a minor league free agent in January 2023, and appeared in 24 games, posting a 5.71 ERA in 17.1 innings. Adams threw his hard slider almost 90% of the time, mixing in the occasional four-seam fastball. While it's a nasty pitch, he struggled with command, typically running out high walk and hit by pitch totals. Adams season ended August 1st when he was hit by a comebacker, fracturing his ankle."

Maybe his nickname (sorry, Lenny) should be Nails.  He sure nails lots of hitters.

He could be the Mets' designated batsman-hitter.  You hit ours, we have a true specialist to hit yours.

JUSTIN TURNER REDUX?

Jon Hein made his case on SNY to bring back Justin Turner.

He never had to leave.

Had the park been hitter-neutral, maybe he wouldn't have.

Justin's first year with the Mets was in 2011, and that lasted until 2013.

In 814 at bats, he had 8 HRs as a Met.  Clearly devoid of power?  Not really.  In 4,200 post-Mets at bats, he's smacked 179 HRs, 266 doubles, and driven in 670 runs.  Plenty of pop there. 

He was happy-go-lucky as a Met, but also smart.  He KNEW trying to hit the ball deep meant one thing in Citi Cavern: deep OUTS.  So he settled for line drives.

This is the environment be found himself in, as noted in an article I did in 2014:

Are the field dimensions at Citifield too deep?  Is the Grand Canyon just a small crack in the ground? As noted in Wikipedia:

During its first three seasons, the large field dimensions caused Citi Field to play as an extreme "pitcher's park", and home-runs at the stadium were among the fewest in the Major Leagues. 

Mets' general manager Sandy Alderson changed Citi Field's dimensions in time for the 2012 MLB season in order to make it more friendly to hitters. Changes include building an 8 feet (2.4 m) wall in front of the high 16 feet (4.9 m) wall in left field that many had dubbed the "Great Wall of Flushing", removing the nook in the "Mo's Zone" in right field, and reducing the distance in right center field from (a ridiculous) 415 feet from home plate to (a still too deep) 398 feet.  (Brennan commentary)

The dimensions were again changed in the 2015 off season, long after Turner had become a lethal hitter for the LA Dodgers.

So...when he had 435 of his 814 Mets at bats in 2011, in his first full Mets season, he was still subject to the original cavernous dimensions of Citifield. 

Even with the first move-in of the fences in 2012, the field's dimensions remained very hitter-unfriendly.  So, smart guy that he was, I am sure that Turner still focused on hits, not power.

What if, when he arrived in 2011, the dimensions had been Citifield's current, still pitcher-friendly dimensions?  He might well have (smart guy that he is) tried to incorporate power into his game, been successful at it, and never left the Mets.

So now, if the Mets were to sign him, the Mets would get a guy who had a very successful 2023 for Boston, but who will be 39 this season, an age at which his bat could start to decline (his fielding already has).

Daniel Murphy adapted, too, being a line drive hitter while he was a Met. In Citifield's first cavern season, Murph led the Mets with 12 HRs. 

He left the Mets a few years later and put up prodigious power numbers in 2016 and 2017 for the Nats.  Had those Citi-fences been even at the current pitcher-friendly Citi-depths throughout his long tenure as a Met, he also would have switched to power much sooner, in my opinion.

I recall one game I went to in 2014 or 2015, where Murph ripped a high line drive to right center.  My first reaction was "GONE!"  The park, though, had different plans for that drive - it hit near the top of the wall and stayed in.  I can only imagine that Daniel felt deflated at that.  In 2023, that ball would have cleared the fence by several feet.  Daniel, a smart guy, would have recalculated his hitting approach and hit for power, no doubt about it, far sooner than he did in late 2015, when he knew he was about to become a free agent and needed to show some more punch for a bigger payday.

What would the Mets have been with both a Turner and Murphy retained and with their power switches turned on? 

Answer: a whole lot better.

Repeat after me: Dimensions Matter.

If Pete stays, move the fences in one more time, make the park neutral to help him "age well", and finally get the dimensions right.